Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:NBIX) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Ami Fadia: Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Can you talk a little bit about the Huntington’s disease chorea? With the awareness that physicians have with INGREZZA in TD, how do we think about the ramp of the launch in that indication, if you could talk about that? And in CAH, separately, can you talk about kind of where the patients are treated? And if there are differences then, how and where patients are treated in Europe as opposed to the U.S.? Thank you.

Eiry Roberts: I’ll take the second one first, Ami. Thank you for that. I think it’s pretty consistent in how patients with CAH are treated. It’s usually in our experience in expert endocrinology clinics. These clinicians know their patients well. We certainly don’t have an issue of diagnosis here. And I think we have seen a lot of similarity as we’ve run these global trials.

Eric Benevich: Yes. With regards to the first part of your question about the dynamics within the Huntington’s community, I’ll start off by saying that we’re excited about the data that we’ve generated and certainly look forward to getting the labeling from the FDA later this year. We have complete coverage of the movement disorder neurology community with our existing neurology sales force. And obviously, we need to introduce the data and the label to those neurologists that are treating these Huntington’s patients. But this doesn’t require any kind of significant lift or change to our commercial footprint. So this is really another opportunity to create leverage with our existing infrastructure, and we’re excited to bring what we think will be a differentiated product to a population in need.

Operator: And we’ll take our next question from Yatin Suneja with Guggenheim Partners. Please go ahead.

Yatin Suneja: Hi, guys. Thank you for taking my question, a two-part question. First is, you have three major catalysts this year. You have the focal onset, CAH data and then the anhedonia and MDD data. Can you maybe articulate for us how you are thinking about these three distinct catalysts? Is there one where you have higher probability of success, especially on the focal onset and CAH where there is sort of more mechanistic rationale? And then if you can also talk about anhedonia, why do you think agonist might be more sensitive in these patients? And what should we anticipate on the endpoint that you are evaluating the endpoint that you are looking at in Phase 2? Thank you.

Kevin Gorman: Yatin, you asked a few dozen questions in there. We could probably spend the better part of the hour of this call in going through that. What I’m looking forward to is, as the year goes on, to be able to talk about each of these programs in greater depth. And as we get closer to data, obviously, we’re going to be speaking about them. So I’d like to basically put your questions on hold until we have a better forum where we can hit each one of them in detail.

Operator: We’ll take our next question from Sumant Kulkarni with Canaccord. Please go ahead.

Sumant Kulkarni: Good morning. Thanks for taking my question, which is in effect an expense management one. Given the timing of your recent new gene therapy collaboration with Voyager, are you thinking about your stake in Voyager as a longer term strategic one? Or does the timing of your transaction allow for some tactical moves that could allow you to defray some SG&A expense related to the — R&D expense related to GBA1-associated program in the near to midterm, especially if Novartis opts into its collaboration with Voyager in the current quarter?