Insmed Incorporated (INSM) Q3 2012 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Brian Ritchie William H. Lewis - Chief Executive Officer, President and Director

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Q3 2012 Insmed Earnings Conference Call. My name is LuLu [ph], and I will be your operator today. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder this call is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Brian Ritchie of FTI Consulting. Please proceed, sir.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. This is Brian Ritchie from FTI Consulting, and welcome to Insmed’s third quarter 2012 conference call. Insmed issued a press release this morning containing third quarter 2012 financial results, which is posted on the Company’s website. Today, we are joined by Will Lewis, President and CEO, who will provide a business update and review the financials. Following the prepared remarks, Will will be available for a question-and-answer session. Before we proceed with the call, I would like to remind everyone that this conference call and webcast will contain forward-looking statements. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. For additional information about the factors that could cause results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements, please refer to the cautionary language in the Company's previously filed Form 10-K and Forms 10-Q in today's press release -- and in today's press release, which information also pertains to this conference call and webcast. Please go ahead, Will.

Thank you, Brian. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. As you know, I was appointed President and CEO of Insmed in September. I began this position and remain very much so today, extremely excited and enthusiastic about the prospects that lie ahead. I'd like to begin the call by giving you a sense of these prospects. Today we are at the threshold of several potential value-creating milestones, with our recent successful $25.7 million financing, we are now poised to effectively execute our strategies. As planned, we intend to report data from 2 ongoing clinical trials in our primary indications next year. We are aligning our team for the successful commercial launch of our lead candidate, ARIKACE, in the U.S. and Europe, following receipt of the required regulatory approvals. Let me now back up a bit, and talk some about why I was so pleased to join Insmed. I was drawn to Insmed because of my interest and experience in bringing new treatments to patients who suffer from orphan diseases, which are often among the most severe and life-threatening. I and everyone at Insmed, believe that they deserve our attention, and we are fully dedicated to delivering innovative treatments that can change their lives. Our initial focus is on 2 orphan patient populations who face very serious and debilitating chronic lung infections. The first is CF patients who are battling chronic Pseudomonas lung infections. In fact, these infections are so pervasive that 70% of adult CF patients have chronic infections. The second indication, and let me stress equally important and prevalent, are patients suffering from non-TB mycobacteria or NTM lung infections. NTM lung infections are chronic and progressively debilitating. There is currently no approved treatment for NTM. Both of these patient populations must now deal with the very…

[Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from the line of Aaron[ph] Hoftersen [ph] of Carco[ph].

Mr. Lewis, my question is somewhat of a 2-part question. I've been invested in Insmed for quite some time. Is IPLEX of no value or is there something working behind the scenes? And if the answer to your question is there's something going on, when will we hear about IPLEX, especially with ALS and when?

It's a question that I obviously, looked at the right when I came on board. I think the simple answer to the question from the point of view of the company is the focus of Insmed going forward is on ARIKACE. That's not to say that IPLEX and the role it's played in the past is of no value. It's that it is not our focus. And what I would tell you by way of guidance is that our strategy continues to be, as it has been, that we will look to license opportunistically these technologies so that someone else who may feel that they are of value can pursue them. We are underway in that regard as you know, with respect to Premacure. We've signed an amended agreement there. We have one waiver in place with Roche. The second, with Ipsen, is pending signatures. So we feel good about where that is. I think any further licensing activity that may be underway or in discussion, as soon as we have progress made that's definitive and material, you can be assured that we'll disclose that.

We have no further question in the queue. [Operator Instructions] Sir, we have no more questions in the queue. I will now hand the call back to Mr. Will Lewis for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator, and thanks, again, to everyone for joining us today. We genuinely appreciate your interest in and support of Insmed. And we look forward to providing you with future updates. Please enjoy the rest of your day.

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes the presentation. You may now disconnect. Thank you.