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Plus Therapeutics, Inc. (PSTV)

Q3 2019 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 14, 2019

$5.83

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Plus Therapeutics Investor Conference Call. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode and the floor will be open for questions following the presentation. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, we want to advise you that over the course of the call and question-and-answer session, forward-looking statements will be made regarding events, trends, business prospects and financial performance, which may affect Plus Therapeutics future operating results and financial position. All such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, including the risks and uncertainties described under the Risk Factors section, included in Plus Therapeutics Annual Results on Form 10-K and Quarterly Results on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time-to-time. Plus Therapeutics advises you to review these risk factors in considering such statements. Plus Therapeutics assumes no responsibility to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect events, trends or circumstances after the date they are made. With us today of from Plus Therapeutics Dr. Marc Hedrick, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Desiree Smith, Corporate Controller. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor to Dr. Marc Hedrick, President and Chief Executive Officer of Plus Therapeutics. Sir, you may begin.

Dr. Marc Hedrick

Analyst

Good afternoon. Thank you, Erica, and welcome to our Q3. As Erica said, I’m Marc Hedrick, President and CEO of Plus Therapeutics and I’m happy to have for the first time joining me today our Corporate Controller and Principal Accounting Officer, Ms. Desiree Smith. I’m extremely pleased to report the operating results for the third quarter 2019 for Plus Therapeutics, which identically is a first reported quarter under the Plus Therapeutics Company. It was indeed a milestone quarter for us and honestly perhaps the most important in the Company's history. In three short months, Plus Therapeutics reinvested itself as a clinical stage oncology company. Let me hit a few of those highlights for you. First of all, we achieved long-term viability in a directed series of actions including adding approximately $20 million in cash to the balance sheet through both a $15 million public offering and a $4.6 million reimbursement payment from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for our work on our BARDA contract. Second, we moved the Company headquarters from California to a lower cost, lower cap state Texas where we had a preexisting facility and an active center of operations. That move was timely and that it coincided with the November 2019 approval by Texas voters of a ballot measure that doubled to $6 billion, the value of bond issuances look forward to Cancer Provision and Research Institute of Texas also calls CPRIT. CPRIT is the nation's second largest public funder of cancer research after the U.S. Government. We believe that as a Texas-centric company, there will be greater opportunities to partner with CPRIT now that we have relocated. Finally, we made a sweeping structural change to our business focus and development model. As previously described, we very deliberately virtualized our development model in order…

Desiree Smith

Analyst

Thank you, Mark, and good afternoon everyone. I am very excited to be part of the team at Plus Therapeutics and I will be discussing Plus Therapeutics' financial results for the third quarter of 2019, as presented in our earnings release today. I'll get right to the financial results. For the nine month ended 9/30/2019, our operating cash burn was 6.9 million or to 9.5 million in '18. Our Q3 2019 operating cash burn was approximately 2.1 million compared to 2.6 million on Q3 2018. The reduction in annual cash burn was mostly related to this discontinued operation which resulted in reductions in operating expenses. Net income for Q3 2019 was 520,000 as compared to a net loss of 2.3 million in 2018. The increase in net income was mainly due to the BARDA development revenue of 4.6 million, which was offset by 1.2 million a warrant issuance. For the nine months ended 9/30/2019, the net loss was 11.8 million compared to 10.4 million for 2018. For research and development expenses, Q3 2019 our research and development expense was 900,000 as compared to a $1.2 million expense in Q3 2018 [Audio gap]. For the nine months ended 9/30/2019, R&D expenses were 3.6 million compared to 3.9 million in [Audio gap]. The decrease in research and development year-over-year spending was primarily attributed to a decrease in professional services, finance services, and product samples offset by increased in BARDA related product studies. Now onto our sales and marketing, sales and marketing expenses decreased this quarter to approximately 94,000 compared to approximately 118,000 in Q3 2018. For the nine months ended September 30th 2019, 9/30/2018, our sales and marketing expenses were 305,000 compared 596,000 respectively. A decrease in sales and marketing expenses was mainly due to a reduction of salaries and benefits as…

Dr. Marc Hedrick

Analyst

Thank you, Desiree. Let me just briefly provide some color on key forthcoming milestones. Typically, regarding DocePLUS, the rest of 2019 CMC development is our focus. Focus specifically on manufacturing validation lives, developing key test methods, finalizing contracts with the PMO providers and on the clinical side, finalizing our phase two protocols with FDA. By mid 2020, we intend to have drug supply, approved Phase 2 trial and be ready to begin enrollment. Regarding our DocePLUS asset, discussions in partnership with a number of parties, as mentioned are ongoing. Finally, we continue to evaluate new potential and licensing candidates in an ongoing manner. So with that, I'll turn it over to Erica and if there are any questions, floor is now open.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Emad Samad with WBB.

Emad Samad

Analyst

Mark, you've mentioned potentially finding other assets, now that the Company divested itself of the assets. Can you give us a little more information on the pipeline expansion plans, the kinds of characteristics you're looking for, the types of assets you're targeting, et cetera? And as a bit of a follow on and twist on that, do you also sort of explain how specifically Texas and the incentive there could affect you, both your current pipeline and help you in your strategies for pipeline expansion as well?

Dr. Marc Hedrick

Analyst

Thank you for the question. So, we talked about the new assets, things that we're looking for. That was pretty clear in the presentation of what kinds of assets we're looking for. Let me highlights something that I think are most relevant to your question. First of all, we're looking for things that are late preclinical, through early clinical phase. We don't want early preclinical related asset. We like drugs that have a regulatory advantage or regulatory edge such as 505(b)(2) or we're looking for things that also have a market opportunity that equal to greater than $2 billion. So, we do like drugs that are in the oncology orphan space. And I'll get -- I'll talk about the oncology related opportunity as it relates to CPRIT in a moment. To cut a close out the question you just asked, I think what's our balance sheet being much stronger. In fact, relative to burn, it's strongest than it's ever been as I've been with the Company. We've also decreased our structural burn, our core burn, in other words, what we spend every day is down [Audio gap] been before. It gives us enormous flexibility in terms of types of active assets that we can bring in. But I think, bottom line, we still roll that down, we're looking for things near term impact this year. Now with respect to moving to Texas, and not only is sort of the core, cost structure better than [indiscernible] for obvious reasons. We were relatively confident that these CPRIT funding would be re-upped by the Texas voters this November, which we're happy to see. That gives us some opportunity with our lead drug DocePLUS perhaps in terms of funding for the core or potentially, noncore indications, in other words, spending that opportunity with that as well as potentially other assets that we might bring in. We can leverage that funding for those assets as well. So that's definitely something that's on our radar screen, and we think that's a potential advantage for us as a public company in Texas with an oncology focus.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is from a Sydney Trevor, an Investor.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

If you can explain to me, says warranty liability 10,400,000. What does that mean?

Dr. Marc Hedrick

Analyst

Hi, Sidney, yes. So, in a recent transaction with FC Wainwright, there were warrants as part of that deal and those [Audio gap] liability.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

But why is there a liability, if someone has warrant to buy it?

Dr. Marc Hedrick

Analyst

There are features in that warrant that, dictated that to be booked as my liability, not as stockholders' equity.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

The voice hasn’t coming in good. I mean, someone has a warrant to buy your stock it means that the potential inject money into the Company in the future. So why would it be a liability?

Dr. Marc Hedrick

Analyst

We appreciate the question. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your next question is from Ed Woo with Ascendiant Capital. Okay, it looks like Mr. Woo withdrew his question. So, there are no further questions at this time. Dr Hedrick, I'll turn the call back over to you for additional or closing remarks.

Dr. Marc Hedrick

Analyst

Hi, Erica, Thank you. Once again to conclude, Plus Therapeutics emerges from the third with financial strength, focus development strategy and the cost structure to maximize the chances of long-term viability and growth. We're extremely excited about the road ahead and I want to thank you for participating in this call. Please have a good evening.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference call. Please disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day.