Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Kemp Dolliver with Brookline Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
Kemp Dolliver: Thanks. I have two questions. First, with regard to Apersure, what needs to change for you to start advancing that program again?
Michael Rowe: Thank you. It’s good to have you on the call and a good question. Right now, that market is pretty stable and Buity [ph] is selling about $14 million or $15 million, maybe not even that high, per year. So to be successful in this market is going to require, in my opinion, a strong promotional effort to basically do a relaunch of this. So if I look at it, if we do it, it’s $1 million to do the registration batches. It’s $4 million to file the NDA. So that’s $5, and that’s without making the investment, try to lift the market and that’s pretty pricey in a market right now that’s doing less than $15 million. So there is already one approved product that’s waiting on the sidelines, an eye drop to come in. There’s another one that’s in Phase III.
I think in the end, there may be multiple eye drop competitors in the market, but we would be the only Optejet. So if one or two of them come in and are able to resurrect this market, we are entirely comfortable with letting someone else do that and coming in with what we perceive as the better product, better for patients and better for the doctors as well, and coming in after they do the heavy lifting. So we’ll be happy to take our money and use it elsewhere and then wait and know that we can pivot to this at any time.
Kemp Dolliver: Is this something you would partner out, possibly?
Michael Rowe: We would, and we certainly could be talking with people, but I don’t think at the moment there’s a tremendous amount of interest in the market. So again, I think there’s a lot of the big players are waiting by the side to see what happens as well.
Kemp Dolliver: Great, thank you. And the second question is on clobetasol and with your market share guidance, just to take the other side of the thought process. So you have a product with superior dosing. What’s the gating factor with the uptake, given that advantage?
Michael Rowe: So if you look at the glaucoma market as a surrogate, because it’s very similar, you basically have 80% or 85% of the units are actually sold are generics and then you have a small group of branded products that make up 15% of the units, but they make up about 50% of the value. So it would be very similar in the steroid market. There’s one other brand that’s in there that I think does about $35 million a year and it’s been out there maybe two years. So we would be coming in to that. So we do have the better product, but we’re always going to be up against people who will want to go with the generic option and this is why we’re pricing our product basically at the same as a generic co-pay, so that the economics do not become an issue when using us and we’re going to see what happens over the next two years by doing this strategy of what we call value pricing and if it takes off the way we suspect after talking with customers, then I would be very happy to come back here a year or two from now and say, that number’s much higher than I thought.
Kemp Dolliver: And have you started speaking with payers? Do you have any progress report yet?
Michael Rowe: We’re doing the entire thing cash. We’re working with an e-pharmacy as well as getting the wholesale licenses, because about 85% of ophthalmic surgeons sell the steroid right out of their office and so the way we’re doing this is, as a wholesaler, we’ll be supplying the physician offices, and for individual patients, they’ll be using an e-pharmacy, one they’re very familiar with, and the entire thing is cash. Again, the same as a branded co-pay. So there’s no insurance issues, there’s no callbacks, there’s none of the things that are both timely and costly for the physicians.
Operator: We have reached the end of our question-and-answer session, and with that, I would like to turn the floor back over to Michael Rowe for closing comments.
Michael Rowe: Thank you. And thank all of you for joining us today and that concludes today’s call. We are very pleased with our progress to date, and we are very well positioned to continue our current momentum as our long-term commercial plan and strategy continues to emerge. So thank you again for joining us, and we look forward to talking again with you for our first quarter update in the spring.
Operator: This concludes today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
