Axonics, Inc. (NASDAQ:AXNX) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Larry Biegelsen: Okay, fair enough. Ray, I feel compelled to ask because we keep getting asked about it, on tibial nerve stimulation, you don’t seem – maybe I’m just asking, I guess if anything has changed, you don’t seem interested in having access to this technology internally for Axonics nor do you see it as a threat. I’d love to hear your updated thoughts on why? Thanks for taking the question.

Raymond Cohen: Well, thanks, Larry. But personally, I’m boycotting those questions, but Dan has volunteered to answer.

Dan Dearen: It’s an inside joke, Larry, you know as well. Look, our position hasn’t changed, we understand, we know these companies well, we’ve tracked them for the better part of 10 years now, and look our thinking is, an implant is an implant, our device has a 90% efficacy in our FDA study, we haven’t seen any efficacy for many of the implantable tibial companies that comes close to that. It’s a complex procedure and a part of the anatomy that these doctors are trained to do, and there are obviously a lot of questions about how you do market rollout, and then ultimately what reimbursement looks like coming from the CPT Editorial Panel. So I would just leave it at that, look, we’re watching and will pay attention to this, this is going to unfold over the next three to five years and we’ll see how it plays out, but we’re not concerned and we certainly don’t see it as a short-term or intermediate-term competitive threat.

Larry Biegelsen: All right, thanks for taking the questions.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Pasquale with Nephron Research. Your line is now open.

Chris Pasquale: Thank you and congratulations, guys, on a great year. Wanted to maybe dig in on the other half of Larry’s question about the guidance and the assumptions there and talk about Bulkamid, 25% is a nice round number, how you’re thinking about the goals for that franchise in ’23, and you talked about getting more involved with the gynecology call point, is that something that you’re planning for this year?

Raymond Cohen: Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Chris. I appreciate the question. Once again, I think that it’s very difficult to predict, right. We’re going to grow this particular product line at 75% again this year. I mean it’s very, very difficult to do that. So we’re once again trying to be conservative. We think this product has got a lot of legs as we have seen so far, and is very quickly become first-line therapy for women with stress urinary incontinence. Now having said that, we treated – the number was maybe, call it 52,000 or so patients in 2022, but if we go back to slings in 2015, there were 350,000 sling operations done in 2015, so – and you can imagine, it’s difficult for women to agree, yeah, I’d like operation because I cough or sneeze and leak some urine or exercise, I mean it’s annoying problem, there’s no question about it, and it can directly impact people’s quality of life, we understand that.

But women don’t want an operation for stress urinary incontinence, that’s not what they want. And so I think it’s just going to take some time for us not to persuade the people, the women, but to persuade the physician community that Bulkamid is the right solution for the vast majority of patients who present with these symptoms, that’s our challenge. And as you know Chris, medicine changes slowly, it’s almost like built in and it’s just going to take time for us to continue to create awareness and get the physicians to really start talking about this as an option to their patients. Now, you mentioned the GYN community, right, so that’s a community that we haven’t been aggressive with, but we’re starting now to market to that community, but even within our core urology and urogynecology community, I mean, not enough of them are currently offering Bulkamid, right.

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