Peter Hecht
Analyst · Vamil Divan from Credit Suisse. Your line is open
Thanks, Meredith. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. The Ironwood team continued to deliver strong performance toward our operating goals this quarter, and at the same time, to execute on our plans operation and launch of two exciting companies. Before touching on a few business highlights, I would like to draw your attention to two financial disclosures that impact our reported numbers this quarter. First, during the quarter, Allergan reported to us a $59 million adjustment to LINZESS net sales, touring up estimates to actual subsequent payments made for the three year period between 2015 and 2017. We've recorded our share of this adjustment in the quarter, resulting in a $30 million reduction to collaborative arrangement revenue. This reduction also flows into Ironwood's total revenue. Second, in connection with our terminations of the Lesinurad Licensing agreement, we recorded a full intangible asset impairment of approximately $150 million. Note that there is no cash impact to this impairment. Gina will discuss both topics in more detail in her portion of the call. Turning to the business, LINZESS demonstrated another quarter of double-digit volume growth in the U.S. increasing 12% year-over-year, with net sales of $205 million. Commercial margins and profitability continue to expand nicely. As our partner commented last week, industry wide pricing dynamics are reducing net price. With that said, LINZESS continues to be a growth brand and the branded prescription market leader with many years of expected patent coverage ahead. Our two companies are investing together in several innovative growth strategies. Ironwood believes each of these represent opportunities to drive sales growth overtime that is higher than guided by our partner last week. We're progressing our clinical portfolio as well. With the Phase III readout, now expected from appetite abdominal symptoms study in mid-19, the two pivotal Phase III trials for our persistent GERD drugs IW-3718 now enrolling and Phase II readouts for olinciguat and praliciguat expected in the second half of next year. While executing day-to-day, we're also on track to launch two independent publicly traded companies in the first half of 2019. Upon separation, we expect Ironwood to be a profitable, focused, growing GI company. We expect the new R&D Company to be a development stage biotech advancing five carefully tailored sGC simulators for serious and orphan diseases. We're confident that the separation will unlock value through focused innovation resource allocation, and the both R&D Co. and Ironwood will launch with the resources to drive substantial value to patients and shareholders for many years to come. Before I turn the call over to Tom, I want to thank the exceptional and dedicated teams here at Ironwood, who have been working tirelessly to simultaneously execute on our goals and to position the two companies to thrive. I know I speak for the management team and the board when I say thank you for your commitment energy and sense of urgency. With that, let me turn the call over to Tom.