- Ligand presented at the Stifel Nicolaus Healthcare conference on 9/9/11 - click here for full schedule of biotech webcasts and links to my notes.
- Click here for complete LGND stock research page with pipeline and partnership notes.
- Keep reading for my complete notes from the webcast:
- Presenter: Rob McKay (Business Development)
- Today will focus on drivers of excitement/buzz in stock last couple quarters
- 1) Promacta - this was the one key asset retained by board for new LGND company as foundation. COM patent thru 2022, method of use thru 2025. US ITP sales are about flat, outsold by free (insured) once weekly injection from Amgen vs pill with copay. Growth has been largely due to ROW - don't have reimbursment discrepancy. Sales will be >$100m in 2011. LGND didn't know ahead of time GSK was going to talk about Promacta HCV results on CC - data will be presented at scientific conference 4q2011 (liver disease in San Francisco in November- late breaker is in) [Note that my guess in a previous post was incorrect - I didn't think GSK would submit the first trial alone for publication, but they did. So there is a chance the second study ENABLE2 could be presented at the December ASH meeting]
- 2) cydex/captisol (our 5th acquisition...not that it will be our last)
- Currently about 25 employees.
- Two types of captisol opportunities LGND pursues. First is low to mid single digit royalties plus captisol material sales (partner comes to us and asks to license for their drug candidate). 2nd type is- the case of current drugs out there being used today that have formulation issues. We reformulate internally with some formulation work then license again. This side is bigger than we thought it was when we did the acquisition...after the baxter-prism deal...people are asking...is this what these drugs are worth (that deal was $175m upfront , $338m total possble value). Now working on melphalan - $7-8m investment to take thru approval w/ orphan designation- we will start final pivotal studies 1q2012 for early 2014 launch target. We'll decide later what to do with it on approval.
- As investment thesis, biopharm sector is broken. We devised a system to generate ROI for investors - build portfolio of royalty assets to generate waves of royalty revenue. Partnering is core to our strategy.
- We spend $20m to operate our business - no large r&d programs
- aggressive partnering - agnostic to molecule or science
- Spend on 1-3 internal programs at any one time. For most we will license out before phase 2
- 2012 - expect about $30m revenue up from $24-25m which is this year's guidance
- slide 5 - expect at least half of shots on goal shown to fail. >$200m revenue is absolutely achivable if some # of them hit.
- $500m NOLs...we don't expect to pay anything but minimal AMT tax for next 7 years
- >50 different molecules subject to fully funded partnerships
- portfolio will expand further, we will buy more revenue as cash comes in. Or else will dividend it back to shareholders if we can't find anything o buy. We won't build out r&d.
- could have flexibility to monetize royalties or spin these out? yes, there are many ways to monetize. We get calls to monetize royalties weekly, but we don't want to sell off what we just built.
- Does promacta contribute to SVR? If you don't keep platelets up, doctor has to reduce or stop antiviral therapy ...so promacta allows patient to finish course of treatment. Need to elevate platelets before starting whatever cocktail (old SOC, new approved agents, future combos)