NovoCure Limited (NASDAQ:NVCR) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So, what I will say is, rest assured, we are very focused on this and the P&L and free cash flow metrics are something that are in our control and is very much actively being managed, I would say just – to ensure that we maintain our strengths throughout the journey.

Lei Huang: Okay. So, no comment on the redemption or conversion optionality at this point.

Ashley Cordova: Correct.

Lei Huang: Okay. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And our next question comes from Emily Bodnar of H.C. Wainwright. Please proceed.

Emily Bodnar: Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe two for me and starting with kind of a follow-up from the first question. I am curious to get your thoughts on PANOVA-3 as it’s also using paclitaxel backbone, which is used in INNOVATE-3 and maybe just discuss the differences and why you are still confident in PANOVA-3 being successful, given that with INNOVATE-3, the paclitaxel combination didn’t really show much survival benefit. And then second question, as you are getting closer to the METIS readout. What are – how are you kind of thinking about the market opportunity there? And any overlap that you think you may have in terms of launch benefits given your GBM commercial capabilities? Thanks.

Bill Doyle: Sure. So, thank you very much for the question. So, let me comment on the differences between the INNOVATE-3 study and the PANOVA-3 study. As we described in the script and other communications, the patient population that was recruited into the INNOVATE study consisted of women who had failed many prior lines of therapy. And we showed a benefit when women entered the study after failing one prior line of therapy, but we were unable to show a benefit after they had failed three, four and up to five lines of prior therapy. So, these were very sick, very brittle and in fact, these women have failed – I shouldn’t say the women have failed, but Phase 3 studies have failed again and again in this particular population.

It’s also a stage of the disease where the cancer has spread beyond the region that we are able to directly treat with the Tumor Treating Fields electric fields. I now contrast that with PANOVA-3, as I have said earlier, this is a study in the first line. So, this is after diagnosis. It’s a study in patients who have locally advanced, meaning that they have not – that the disease has not fully spread throughout the body. So, we can treat the full extent of the disease. So, I would anchor on these two facts when comparing our ability to derive great benefit. And in fact, we saw a greater benefit in the – in our pancreatic Phase 2 compared to the benefit that we saw in our ovarian Phase 2. The benefit that we saw again in our ovarian Phase 2 was, with women who were early in their cancer journey, not at the end of the journey.

And then that leads to PANOVA-4 that Uri just described, where we know we can treat systemic disease, is when we combine with an immunotherapy. This is what we saw in LUNAR, where we were treating patients after, with metastatic lung cancer after failing platinum therapy. And we saw really tremendous results when we combined with an immune checkpoint inhibitor. And in that case, you get the benefit of the antimitotic effect of the Tumor Treating Fields alone where we create immunogenic cell death, and then that will turbo-charge the effect of the immune checkpoint inhibitor. So, that was a lot of discussion. But with Tumor Treating Fields plus chemotherapy, we need to treat early in the disease progression in order to get a really maximum benefit for patients.

And if we have to wait until later in the disease journey, we want to treat with an immune checkpoint inhibitor.