scPharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:SCPH) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Glen Santangelo: All right. Well, I appreciate all the detail. Thanks. Maybe if I can just ask Rachael a quick follow-up question. In the prepared remarks, you also talked about the number of sales reps that you have currently, and I think I missed that number as well. So I was wondering if you could just sort of give us that. And then Rachael, I think you said that the Q1 revenues will probably be a little bit front-end loaded with some of the specialty pharmacy stocking and then you plan to make some additional investments in marketing and the sales force. I was wondering if you could just sort of — I get it, you don’t want to give any guidance at this point, but maybe could you just discuss a little bit about the cadence of how the year should look and give us a sense for if 1Q will be disproportionately high on the revenues and then will sort of tail off before we build up?

And the expenses should that just be a constant build throughout the year? Any sort of color you can give us would be helpful. Thanks.

Rachael Nokes: Glen, this is Rachael. I’ll speak to the cost first. So what we were saying is that we expect that the Q1 or 2023 expenses to be higher to continue to increase from 2022 because we are putting that — we now have the full commercial infrastructure. So the full 40-person sales force as well as we continue to invest in marketing as well. So that was really a reflection of what to expect in 2023 versus 2022. And then regarding the revenue, John, I don’t know if you want to talk about that.

John Tucker: Sure. Let me turn to the expenses. So your question is, is it going to be linear from here. The reps started the end of January. So Q1 on the expense side is probably going to be lighter. And we do anticipate adding reps later in the year. We haven’t given time. So I wouldn’t say it’s directly linear because, again, Q1 will be a little lighter because the reps didn’t start until the end of January. But it should be pretty flat except for the addition of sales reps potentially as early as Q2. As far as revenue, we launched February 20. And in order to launch, you had to have inventory in our specialty pharmacies. So I think when you look at Q1 revenues, it will be predominantly that stocking inventory. We haven’t given guidance, but I wouldn’t think that stocking inventory would preclude revenue in Q2, Q3, Q4, all of that.

It’s just initial stocking inventory to make sure that the products there on the shelf when a physician puts a script in. So I hope that answers your question.

Glen Santangelo: Yes. That’s good. Thanks for the color.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from Nik Gasic with SVB Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Nik Gasic: Hi, everybody. This is Nik Gasic calling on for Roanna Ruiz. Congrats on the launch, and all your progress so far. And thanks for taking our questions. And maybe first on FUROSCIX. Could you give us a little more clarity around which external launch metrics you plan to share and which you’ll be focusing on the most?

John Tucker: Sure, Nick. This is John, and I’ll talk a couple. And maybe Steve, you can add to it. Some of the key things, we’ll start communicating as early as May Q1 earnings call would be kind of a number of new prescribers that are — have used FUROSCIX average length of script, which is a big thing for us, as I think we’ve said we anticipate 3% to 4%, so we’ll be able to report on that. It will still be early data, but it would give us some directional things. Steve, what other things are you thinking of communicating quarterly?