OPKO Health, Inc. (NASDAQ:OPK) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Edward Tenthoff: I got you. So is that $8 million to $10 million in guidance sort of reflective of 3Q and 4Q or is that kind of what you would anticipate just for the fourth quarter? Thanks so much for answering the questions.

Adam Logal: Yeah, it’s just what we would expect for a normal quarter, it doesn’t have a catch-up on unexpected because it’s unknown to us at this point.

Edward Tenthoff: Because you don’t know, sure. That’s helpful, Adam. Thanks so much, everybody.

Operator: The next question comes from Yale Jen from Laidlaw and Company. Please go ahead.

Yale Jen: Good afternoon and thanks for taking the questions. Congrats on the ModeX collaboration approved by the BARDA. My question is that in terms of the COVID as well as the future influenza antibodies, are those mostly just for immune-compromised patients or that will have a broader usage?

Elias Zerhouni: That’s a good question. No, the COVID antibody we’re developing is really a multi-specific that will address both active patients who get the COVID when there is a surge, but there is a background need, which is the need of immuno-compromised patients estimated between 20 million to 30 million patients in the US, who will need this continuously, so we think the market will have both the baseline which is immunocompromised patients and then surges that may occur during that interval of time, you follow, so it’s two components, yeah. It’s a multi-functional antibody for all COVID-19 infections, yeah.

Yale Jen: Maybe just a little bit too early currently. In terms of this product, if be successful, would that be something OPKO would consider to launch or this very much a stockpiling type of our product?

Phillip Frost: Yeah, it’s too early to say. It really depends on what we’re doing now, that we’ve been funded $59 million to reach the end of Phase 1 and you have to really wait for the profile of the product and then decide what you would want to do, but we haven’t decided that, it’s too early right now.

Yale Jen: Okay, great. And maybe the last question here. Talk about oxyntomodulin in terms of the usage for obesity as well as Type 2 diabetes. Given this, obesity currently is a very hot field right now, could you give us another color in terms of oxyntomodulin’s effect — clinical effect so far in the obesity space? Thanks.

Phillip Frost: Basically, the Phase 2 trial shows a significant weight loss at the doses that we were giving. And we believe that the new analogs of oxyntomodulin that we have developed, we’ll have a better profile, and obviously, we are developing one for the oral formulation that Entera has the technology for, we want to do the feasibility studies of that, and then decide how to proceed. The injectable form can also be done with the new analogs that we are formulating and that decision as to how far you go on that really again is going to — have to wait for some results.

Yale Jen: Okay, great. Thanks a lot and congrats on all those progresses.

Phillip Frost: Thank you. Thank you, Jen.

Operator: Our next question comes from Dipesh Patel of H.C. Wainwright and Company. Please go ahead.

Dipesh Patel: Thank you. This is Dipesh on behalf of Yi Chen. Just a trend question for me, can you provide more clarity around the prescription trend of NGENLA as well as the BioReference’s testing volume growth/decrease?

Phillip Frost: So as far as the trend goes for prescriptions for NGENLA, so globally, it continues to do very well. I think it’s slow going and similar for most newly launched products in the US market. So I think — I think the trend lines are all positive and we think — we think there is great opportunity. Sorry, can you repeat the second question for me?

Dipesh Patel: Yeah. The second one was, if you could just provide some more color around that BioReference’s testing volume growth or decrease?