Nektar Therapeutics (NASDAQ:NKTR) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Nektar Therapeutics (NASDAQ:NKTR) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript May 9, 2024

Nektar Therapeutics isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Nektar Therapeutics First Quarter 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Vivian Wu. Please go ahead.

Vivian Wu: Thank you, Crystal, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. With us on the call are Howard Robin, our President and Chief Executive Officer; Dr. Jonathan Zalevsky, our Chief Research and Development Officer; Dr. Mary Tagliaferri, our Chief Medical Officer; and Jennifer Ruddock, our Chief Business Officer. Unfortunately, Sandra Gardiner, our acting Chief Financial Officer, was not able to make it on today’s call due to an unexpected family emergency. On today’s call, we expect to make forward-looking statements regarding our business, including statements regarding the therapeutic potential of and future development plans for drug candidates and research programs, the timing of the initiation of clinical studies and the availability of clinical data for drug candidates, the timing and plans for future clinical data presentations, the formation, future development plans or success of our collaboration agreements, the expectations following our corporate restructuring and reorganization, financial guidance, and certain other statements regarding future of our business.

Because forward-looking statements relate to the future, they are subject to uncertainties and risks that are difficult to predict, many of which are outside of our control. Our actual results may differ materially from these statements. Important risks and uncertainties are set forth in our Form 10-K that was filed on March 5, 2024, which is available at SEC.gov. We undertake no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of information, future developments, or otherwise. A webcast of this call will be available on the IR page of Nektar’s website at nektar.com. Before turning over the call to Howard, I would like to note that our team is dialing in from different locations and that Howard will be moderating the Q&A session for our team, so we can avoid technical issues during the session.

We appreciate your patience. With that said, I would like to hand the call over to our President and CEO, Howard Robin. Howard?

Howard Robin: Thank you, Vivian, and thank you all for joining us today. We begun 2024 with positive momentum as we continue to build a best-in-class pipeline focused on immunology and inflammation. One of our key goals is to address the underlying deficiency in regulatory T cells, which underlie a range of serious immune disorders. So we have several key immunology targets and first-in-class mechanisms in our pipeline, including our lead program, REZPEG, as well as the new TNFR2 agonist, NKTR-0165, both of which target immune-resolving pathways. In the first quarter, we continued to make significant advancements with our REZPEG program. As you know, we’re evaluating REZPEG in a Phase 2b study in moderate to severe atopic dermatitis, which started last year and this study is currently enrolling patients worldwide.

I’m pleased to report today that the study enrollment is on track to report top-line data from the study’s 16-week induction period in the first half of 2025. There are approximately 30 million people in the US alone living with atopic dermatitis and half of these patients are diagnosed with moderate to severe disease. Biologic treatments in atopic dermatitis represent a multi-billion dollar market that continues to grow. And we’re excited that REZPEG could become a highly differentiated treatment for atopic dermatitis, a disease that still has a high unmet need for safety and durable treatment options. We believe REZPEG has the potential to be a significant advancement in the treatment of atopic dermatitis. The new and corrected data from the Phase 1b study we reported at the EADV conference last year showed a dramatic drop of 83% in ESI scores over 12 weeks of treatment.

Notably, the study also showed that REZPEG resulted in durable responses 36 weeks after treatment ended, opening up the potential for REZPEG to have an immunomodulatory effect. This past quarter, we initiated our second Phase 2b study of REZPEG in patients with severe to very severe alopecia areata. We believe there is a significant opportunity for REZPEG to help people with this devastating disease. Nearly 7 million people in the US alone have or will develop alopecia areata. This disorder significantly affects the quality of life for patients, and the currently available therapies are not durable, have high relapse rates, and carry significant safety risk. Therefore, there’s an urgent unmet medical need for new therapies. Enrollment opened in March for the Phase 2b alopecia areata study to evaluate REZPEG over a 36 week induction period.

JZ will talk more about this program later on the call. Enrollment is on track for this study, and we expect to report top-line results in the first half of 2025. In addition, we’re advancing NKTR-0165 our novel TNFR2 agonist antibody TNFR2 has been shown to potentiate the suppressive effects and overall functional properties of Tregs. This program is built on what we’ve learned through our deep experience with REZPEG and the Treg field and represents a promising first-in-class differentiated mechanism for multiple sclerosis, ulcerative colitis and a range of other autoimmune diseases. We are currently conducting IND-enabling studies with the goal of submitting an IND in mid-2025. And I’m pleased to announce that our preclinical data has been selected for presentation at UR, and we’re looking forward to presenting the first data on this program.

Moving to NKTR-255, our IL-15 program in oncology, we’re continuing our clinical work with our partners, and we expect data from some of these partners this year. And consistent with our strategic focus in immunology and inflammation moving forward, we’re continuing to evaluate strategic partnership opportunities for this program. Finally, Nektar is in a strong financial position with a cash runway that extends well into the third quarter of 2026. I’m very proud of our team at Nektar, and we are laser-focused on executing the development plans for REZPEG in order to achieve value-enhancing data milestones next year. And with that, I’ll hand the call over to JZ for an R&D discussion. JZ?

Jonathan Zalevsky: Thank you, Howard. Beginning with REZPEG. This program is the most advanced IL-2 Treg mechanism in the field. In the setting of atopic dermatitis, there are three important issues that patients with this disease continue to face: first, there is a need for more efficacy, a greater magnitude of response and rapid onset of treatment. For example, only about half of patients treated with IL-13 based biologics achieved a meaningful clinical benefit. Second, patients lack of durable responses and therapy free remission. Once current therapies are discontinued, patients rebound rapidly. And third, treatments with tolerable long-term safety profiles are lacking. This is especially important given the chronic nature of the disease and the need for continuous dosing.

We believe there are major opportunities in this disease state that REZPEG could potentially address. In our Phase 1b data in atopic dermatitis, REZPEG demonstrated dose-dependent efficacy and encouraging durability seems long after the patients completed the 12-week induction period. In fact for both patient-reported outcomes and physician-assessed endpoint, we observed the same trend: rapid onset of effect, dose dependence, and long durability of control. Additionally, REZPEG was well-tolerated and treatment with REZPEG did not induce anti-drug antibodies in patients, which has been reported with some examples in the IL-2 mutein class. We are looking forward to publishing in a peer reviewed journal this year new translational biomarker data from this study, along with the clinical and safety data from atopic dermatitis and psoriasis.

The rapid onset of action and the type of extended disease control after the end of dosing rivals or outperforms that of dupilumab or JAK inhibitors. These promising data have us and KOLs are very enthusiastic about the potential for long-lasting responses and in frequent maintenance dosing with REZPEG in atopic dermatitis. Enrollment is progressing on track in our Phase 2b study of REZPEG in biologic-naive atopic dermatitis patients. Our goal is to enroll roughly 400 patients with three different regimens of REZPEG versus placebo evaluated over a 16-week induction period. After the induction period, patients that meet a threshold to advance from induction to maintenance will be re-randomized into one of two maintenance regimens at different dosages at either once a month or once every three month dosing schedules.

We expect initial data in the first half of 2025. And moving to alopecia areata, we believe REZPEG has strong scientific rationale in this indication. Alopecia areata is also a disease of the skin where your immune system starts to attack the hair follicle, weakening the ability of stem cells to grow hair. With prolonged immune attack, it causes the hair follicle to release the hair altogether, resulting involvement. And biologically speaking, REZPEG through its central pathway of T-reg rescue, is uniquely poised to address the diversity in immunohematology, providing broad potential for targeting multiple dermal diseases including alopecia areata and specifically, alopecia areata is a breakdown of immune privilege in the hair follicle. And so what does this mean exactly?

Well, normal hair follicles exist in the state of immune privilege. So in other words, there are no immune cells, no MHC expression, and basically no immune system components inside the follicle. We know this exclusion of the immune system is needed to maintain healthy long-lived and continuously functioning stem cells to grow hair during our lifespan. In people with alopecia areata, there is a breakdown of the immune privilege in the hair follicle. Infiltration of the immune system, inflammation, and all this leads to hair loss and eventually, complete baldness. Preclinical studies in vitro and in mice implanted with human alopecia skin samples have shown that Tregs are essential for restoring and maintaining immune privilege and thus are a novel therapeutic strategy for the treatment of this disease.

And consequently, we believe Treg mechanism of REZPEG can restore immune privilege and could provide durable disease control, which would be game changing in this indication. In alopecia areata, JAK inhibitors are the only agents approved in this field, and it is a lifelong treatment. With JAK inhibitors, it could take a patient anywhere from 6 to 12 months to grow hair, and once a patient stops taking a JAK inhibitor, which may happen for a variety of reasons such as toxicity, their hair falls out again rapidly. And there is a high unmet need in this patient population for tolerable treatment options that provide durable responses. And for these reasons, we believe there is an opportunity for REZPEG to become a novel biologic therapy in alopecia areata.

We are well underway with enrolling patients into the Phase 2b study of REZPEG in alopecia areata. This study plans to recruit roughly 80 patients with severe to very severe disease that will be randomized to REZPEG or placebo. Patients will be treated for a period of 36 weeks and observed up to 60 weeks in total. Our primary endpoint for this study is mean percent improvement in SALT or the Severity of Alopecia Tool at week 36. We will also be looking at a number of other secondary endpoints, including proportion of patients that were observed to have varying degrees of improvement in SALT score. We expect to have top-line data in the first half of 2025. Now turning to NKTR-0165, our TNFR2 agonist antibody. TNFR2 is highly expressed on Tregs, myeloid suppressor cells, regulatory B-cells, neuronal cells and others.

And TNFR2 agonism has been shown to potentiate the effector function, suppressive function, and maintenance of lineage stability of Tregs, especially in non-lymphoid tissue compartments. If TNFR2 is absent, the phenotypic effect is autoimmunity, and other genetic conditions that resembles loss of function. In contrast, its presence and activation of its signaling has been associated with immunoregulatory function and protective effects for multiple cell populations and tissues in the body. The TNFR2 agonist program is built upon many years of direct experience that we’ve gained from studying REZPEG. TNFR2 is the most abundant TNF superfamily member expressed on Treg and the key driver of NF-kappa B signaling in those cells, which is why we are very excited about this program and target.

In our program, we collaborated with an AI-based antibody engineering company to screen a wide diversity of TNFR2 selective binding antibody for novel modes of TNFR2 agonist. We are very excited with the unique and differentiated profile of the antibodies that we have discovered, and we are rapidly advancing these into the clinic. We anticipate our IND submission for this program in the middle of next year. Examples of indications that could be addressed by TNFR2 agonism include multiple sclerosis, mucosal immunology conditions such as ulcerative colitis of GI or other oral mucosal diseases, and even dermal autoimmune diseases like vitiligo. As Howard mentioned, data from our preclinical research of this program have been selected for poster presentation at UR.

This will be the first look at this novel therapeutically active anti-TNFR2 agonist antibody and we’re looking forward to presenting these data. There is growing interest for a novel selective TNFR2 agonist like NKTR-0165, and as we move forward with our IND-enabling studies, we will continue to be open to the opportunity of working with companies that have interest in these areas to strategize on the best path forward. And finally, turning to our IL-15 based oncology program NKTR-255. We believe the IL-15 based mechanism of action has promising potential of the combination agent with cell therapies and other mechanisms such as checkpoint inhibitors. We are exploring the best partnering paths for continued development for this drug candidate.

We are completing our Nektar sponsored trial combining NKTR-255 with approved CD19 CAR-Ts Breyanzi and Yescarta for treatment of patients with large B cell lymphoma. A separate investigator-sponsored trial at Fred Hutch is also evaluating the combination of NKTR-255 and Breyanzi, and we plan on presenting data from this ongoing study at a medical meeting later this year. We continue to collaborate with AbelZeta, a leading cell therapy company to evaluate NKTR-255 in combination with their tumor infiltrating lymphocytes or TILs — TIL therapy in an ongoing Phase one clinical trial in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer who do not respond to anti-PD-1 therapy. Lastly, we are continuing to work with our partner, Merck KGaA in the Phase II JAVELIN Bladder Medley study evaluating NKTR-255 in combination with Bavencio and expect to report interim data, including PFS later this year.

And with that, I will turn the call over to Jennifer for a review of our financial guidance. Jennifer?

Jennifer Ruddock: Thank you, JZ, and good afternoon, everyone. We ended the quarter with $326 million in cash and investments with no debt on our balance sheet. Our financial position remains strong and we still plan to end 2024 with $200 million to $225 million in cash and investments. This cash guidance includes the $30 million private placement of pre-funded warrants completed in Q1 and a $15 million cash payment from an amendment of the 2020 agreement with health care royalty, also completed in Q1. Our cash runway now extends well into the third quarter of 2026, which will take us through several key data milestones, including of course, the top line data from the Phase 2 REZPEG studies. I’ll now briefly review our quarterly financials and reiterate our financial guidance for 2024.

Our revenue was $21.6 million for the first quarter of 2024. We still expect our revenue for the full year to be between $75 million and $85 million, which includes $55 million to $65 million in noncash royalties and $20 million to $25 million in product sales. R&D expense for the first quarter of 2024 was $27.4 million, and we still anticipate full year R&D expense to range between $120 million and $130 million. G&A expense in Q1 was $20.1 million. We continue to expect G&A expense for the full year to be between $70 million and $75 million. And our 2024 non-cash interest expense guidance also remains unchanged, and is expected to be between $20 million and $25 million. Our net loss for the first quarter of 2024 was $36.8 million, or $0.19 per share.

I will note that the loss per share reflects an increase in weighted average shares outstanding during the first quarter as compared to a year ago. The increase is primarily related to the effect of the PIPE financing in March, and is partially offset by the effect of the shares we repurchased from Bristol-Myers in February. Both of these items will be fully reflected in the calculation of weighted outstanding shares at the end of the second quarter. And as I mentioned earlier, we still plan to end 2024 with $200 million to $225 million in cash and a runway that extends well into the third quarter of 2026. And with that, we’ll now open the call for questions. Crystal?

See also 10 Stocks You Should Not Buy According to Jim Cramer and 15 Best Eventbrite Alternatives for Registration & Ticketing.

Q&A Session

Operator: [Operator Instructions]. Our first question will come from Jay Olson from Oppenheimer.

Jay Olson: Hey, congrats on all the progress and thanks for taking my questions. Could you talk about the enrollment progress for REZPEG in both AD and AAA? And how is the enrollment tracking with your internal projections?

Howard Robin: I’ll let I’ll let Mary answer that in detail. Our enrollment is going perfectly according to plan, but I’ll let Mary explain it in a little more detail. Go ahead, Mary.

Mary Tagliaferri: Thanks, Howard, and thank you, Jay, for the question. And so just to remind you, in October of last year, we started our Phase 2b study where we planned to enroll 400 patients with moderate to severe atopic dermatitis and these patients are all biologic naive. And as both Howard and JZ mentioned on this call, we are absolutely on track to have our top-line data from the 16-week induction period in the first half of 2025. The study is enrolling as expected, and the trial is currently open for enrollment in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe. The feedback we’ve received from our investigators is that they’re very excited to evaluate REZPEG given the novel mechanism of action to boost Tregs. The investigators also like the compelling data in atopic dermatitis that was presented by Dr. Jonathan Silverberg at EADV last year.

As Howard and JZ have mentioned that Phase 1b show that REZPEG have 83% reduction in mean percent change in EC and with just a small sample size, we reached statistical significance compared to placebo. So the doctors are also very excited about the powerful efficacy. They, as practitioners, are very familiar with the real world evidence showing the lack of durability when they treat their patients with Dupixent. And it’s shown in the literature that 79% of patients that discontinue Dupi lose their disease control after an average of four months of treatment. So the practicing dermatologist greatly appreciate the remittance effect that JZ was talking about and the durability of responses that we saw of treatment for nine months in the patients that were dosed in the Phase 1b.

I’ll just say finally, the staff at these sites as well as the investigators also really appreciate that REZPEG has a very well-tolerated safety profile. And so moving over to alopecia, it was in March when we started the Phase 2b trial. As JZ mentioned, we’re going to evaluate two different doses versus placebo with the SALT scores as the primary efficacy endpoint and the trial is going to be open at roughly 28 sites in the US, Canada, and Poland. And again, we are absolutely on track with our enrollment to allow us to have data in the first half of 2025.

Jay Olson: Thank you so much. That’s super helpful. Really appreciate the additional color on the promising efficacy of REZPEG, especially in atopic dermatitis. Maybe just — if I could follow up on your comments about the safety. Since there was a competitor’s Phase 2 atopic derm study that was recently closed following the clinical, could you just comment on any feedback you’re getting from the DSMB on the safety of REZPEG in atopic derm?

Mary Tagliaferri: Sure. We have now conducted nine clinical trials in the REZPEG program and there are 592 patients who’ve been exposed to REZPEG to date. And there were about 150 patients in the program who were randomized to the placebo in our trials. And when we received all the data back from LILY from these completed trials, our very astute biostatisticians and drug safety team created pooled safety tables, so we could more closely review the safety profile of REZPEG and we plan to publish these data. But from a very high level, there are some really important key takeaways from the integrated safety data. The first is most common side effect we see is injection site reactions. These tend to be mild to moderate and they’re seeing mostly in the first or second cycles and their frequency and duration wane over time.

But most importantly, REZPEG is not a classic immunosuppressant, and we were very pleased to see there were no increased risk for infections. So we didn’t see any increased cases of COVID on the REZPEG arms versus placebo. We don’t see any increased risk for reactivation of herpes — either herpes simplex or herpes zoster. And we don’t see conjunctivitis as an increased risk on REZPEG. And we don’t see the facial erythema red face or arthralgia. Now getting to the other hepatotoxicity issue that you’re talking about with the other agent of great importance, we do not see any increased risk for hepatotoxicity or AST or ALT increases. We do see that some patients have increases in eosinophilia, but no cases of any kind of symptomatic eosinophilia or tissue damage or organ involvement.

And then just finally, we saw that there was a higher incidence of severe treatment-emergent AEs and serious AEs only in the placebo group when compared to REZPEG. And so we’re very pleased by the safety profile. And again, our investigators are very happy to move this compound forward in clinical testing, given the well-tolerated safety profile for a biologic. And again, no evidence of increased risk for hepatotoxicity. So thanks for pointing that out, Jay.

Jay Olson: Well, thank you so much for the comprehensive overview of REZPEG’s safety. If I could maybe sneak in one more question on the TNFR2 program. Can you please talk about the preclinical data that you’re expecting later this year and the strategy behind clinical development and prioritizing the different indications you’re thinking of?

Jonathan Zalevsky: Yeah, sure. Hey, Jay, this is JZ. So yeah, EULAR in June, right? So we’ll be presenting in roughly a month and it’s in Vienna this year. And so the data that we’ll be presenting is, we will present work around the discovery of the antibody. We took a novel approach in how we identify agonists. So part of that was in definitely came from the AI-based computational engineering. And the other part was how we screen for the agonism. So that will be one element of the presentation. That defines the discovery of antibody specificities and apoptosis. And then we’ve, of course, turned those into preclinical development candidate. So that kind of data is presented there as well. So there’ll be binding data, specificity, data, cell signaling data changes in the architecture of the cells that you expect to see when you agonize TNFR2, and also some animal data showing biological activity and clinical efficacy in some animal models.

So it’ll be, for us, an important milestone as the first, we have a preclinical presentation of the work that we’ve been doing in the program in a public forum under under the guise of a very important and critical medical meeting as EULAR is very, very large conference. In terms of indications, so one of the things that’s really unique about TNFR2 is that has as regulatory T-cells move further and further away from either the thymus or the blood or the secondary lymphoid organs, like the lymph nodes, the spleen and so on — as they move into non lymphoid tissue, they become much more dependent on an NF-kappa B signal and on actions of ligands for TNFR2 as a key transducer of NF-kappa B. So we’re looking at other indications, and that’s why for example, mucosal immunology kinds of conditions are very high on our list.