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

Matt Abernethy: Yes. So from an expense management perspective, this wasn’t done for any type of expense management. There will be not a ton of burn here in 2023, but it really puts us in a position to have an expansive gene therapy preclinical portfolio that’s going to put us in a position to be able to — hopefully be able to have both disease-modifying curative medicines for patients when you look back 10 years from now. So very strategic in terms of what we’ve done here. And also on the financial front, we have plenty of financial flexibility here even post the upfront payment that we’ll be making. And so it allows us strategically to continue to make larger or different investments even outside of gene therapy as we look forward. Thank you.

Sumant Kulkarni: Thanks.

Operator: We’ll take our final question from Mohit Bansal with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Mohit Bansal: Great. Thank you for squeezing me in. I have another question on crinecerfont. So when we talk to doctors, they all are excited about the profile of the drug and everything. But they said payers are going to be a little bit of a challenge. To that end, how do you foresee potential challenges there given that glucocorticosteroids are cheap, what can you do to help payers understand the profile of the drug? And is there a bar in terms of clinical efficacy that would basically move them over? Thank you.

Eric Benevich: Yes. So I’ll just comment quickly on the payer front. This is a disease area where we’re going to have to educate payers, similar to what we did with tardive dyskinesia. The thing that we’ll be emphasizing with payers is that these patients are often very poorly managed. The steroids are an important treatment that keep them alive. But most patients are either at any given point in time, either over treated or undertreated with their steroids. And therefore, their disease is not well controlled. And that’s really where the value story for crinecerfont comes in to improve that disease control and what we hope to demonstrate is to reduce the steroid burden. So we’re excited about the opportunity. Obviously, we need to see the data.

But we’ve got a plan, and the plan is not only to educate the provider and patient communities but also to work carefully with the payers so that they understand the value proposition of crinecerfont and where it fits in, in terms of the overall treatment landscape.

Mohit Bansal: Super helpful. Thanks.

Kevin Gorman: I want to thank you all for your questions. I have just a couple of final remarks here. First and foremost, we’re looking forward to a very strong 2023, which is evidenced by the guidance that we gave you for INGREZZA and looking forward to the potential of adding the HD, Huntington’s disease, to our label in August, which is our PDUFA date. The other thing is that, as you know, we’ve talked a lot over the years. And the goal of the company is to become the leading neuroscience company in the world. And we broadly talk about neuroscience as being neuroendocrinology, neurology and neuropsychiatry. It’s interesting if you look at the three data readouts that we have this year, CAH, FOS and anhedonia, they cover all three of those areas of neuroscience. And with that, again, I’d like to thank you for all the questions you had and look forward to getting together with you in the coming months. Take care.

Operator: Thank you. And this does conclude today’s program. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time.