Anika Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ANIK) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Unidentified Participant: Got it. Yeah. That makes sense. And I wanted to follow-up on the veterinary products and what the quarterly cadence you’re expecting from those products throughout 2023?

Mike Levitz: All right. Yeah. So we don’t provide quarterly guidance generally and there are reasons for that. One of them being it can be pretty lumpy. Frankly, and as we said, as I said in my earlier remarks, you really need to look at things on an annual basis. It’s a very small number. I mean, we’ve talked about last year, so it was about $5.9 million last year, but our guidance for non-orthopedic, which impacts all the elements in non-orthopedic, is down 35%. And so it’s not a big — non-orthopedic as a small part of our business. But what I think it reflects is, us focusing on the things that are really going to drive the most growth and us making decisions to place more priority there. And to really drive value from what we’ve got in the non-orthopedic segment.

Unidentified Participant: Thank you. That’s helpful and thanks again or congrats again on the strong quarter. Thanks.

Mike Levitz: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Jim Sidoti with Sidoti & Company. Please proceed with your question.

Jim Sidoti: Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. A couple of questions on Cingal. The first one, has the release of the Phase III clinical data helped your business overseas? I know it’s U.S. trial, but have you been able to use that to build some of the business outside the U.S?

Cheryl Blanchard: Hi, Jim. Yeah. Thanks for the question. We will be using that data. It’s obviously fairly knew that it’s come out, but it is being incorporated into our marketing materials for use overseas. It’s obviously very supportive of the strength of the product. We’ve got = what we think is unparalleled clinical data for especially the OA pain product, but the next generation of OA pain product because it really demonstrates superiority over both of the active ingredients in Cingal and placebo across all three of the clinical trials that we’ve run. So yes, we are using all of that data for use in our marketing efforts overseas.

Jim Sidoti: And in general the OA business, the volatility was less in 2022 than it was in 2021. Do you think that trend continues in 2023 or do you go back to a more lumpy year, quarter-over-quarter?

Mike Levitz: Hi, Jim. This is Mike. That business can be lumpy, but one of the reasons that it is, it’s less so in the end user side than it is in the transfer units. Over half of our revenue comes from transfer sales with the corresponding remainder being related to royalties. On the transfer sales, that’s entirely driven by how J&J Mitek manages their business within their buying group. And so it does become a bit challenging to predict that because it’s really driven by their own internal decisions. That’s why we generally say, focus more on the year than on the quarter because that quarterly volatility tends to offset itself. I think historically and at this Q2, it tends to be a stronger quarter than other quarters. But as I say, it really is unfortunately more impacted by decisions within J&J of how they manage their own operations.

Jim Sidoti: And then on the other side of the business, it looks like the big launch will be the — there were shoulder. What investments do you need to get that out to market other than the tooling Is there going to be an increase in salespeople or increase in surgeon training? How should we factor that into the expenses as for 2023?