Acorda Therapeutics, Inc.
Q4 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 4 Mar 2021

[Operator:]

Welcome to Acorda Therapeutics Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2020 Financial and Business Update. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a question-and-answer session to follow. Please be advised, that this call is being recorded at the company's request. I will now introduce your host for today's call, Ms. Tierney Saccavino, Executive Vice President, Corporate Communications at Acorda. Ma’am, please go ahead.

[Tierney Saccavino:]

Thank you, . Good afternoon, everyone. Before we begin, let me remind you that this presentation will contain forward-looking statements. Detailed disclosures can be found in our SEC filings, which are public, and we encourage you to refer to those filings. I will now pass the call over to our CEO, Ron Cohen.

[Ron Cohen:]

Thank you, Tierney, and welcome, everyone. I will go right in to INBRIJA’s net revenue for the full-year 2020, which was $24.2 million, and for the fourth quarter, net revenue was $9.3 million. We're encouraged that sales increased every quarter during the year given the impact of COVID-19. AMPYRA net revenue for the full-year 2020 was 98.9 million, and for the fourth quarter net revenue was 25.3 million. Physicians and patients maintained their high degree of brand loyalty, and Acorda continues to offer copay mitigation and a free 60-day trial to those patients who are eligible. I’ll now review our key achievements of 2020. We set several important goals for 2020. And I'm pleased to report that we achieved all of them. First, to monetize the excess capacity of our Chelsea manufacturing facility; then to improve our balance sheet; to reduce our cost structure; to accelerate the INBRIJA trajectory; and to maintain our AMPYRA franchise. And I'll now review these in more detail. So, we achieved our goal of monetizing the excess capacity of our manufacturing operations. In February 2021, we announced that we closed our deal to sell our manufacturing operations to Catalent. This deal includes a global supply agreement for INBRIJA, which ensures that it will continue to be manufactured to the highest quality standards and be available to people with Parkinson's worldwide. Acorda’s associates at the Chelsea plant will continue to manufacture INBRIJA and now as Catalent employees. We received an $80 million upfront payment, resulting in net proceeds of approximately $74 million. The deal also substantially reduces both our operating expenses and the cost of goods for INBRIJA. We believe that the lower cost of goods will also accelerate our efforts to obtain commercialization partners for INBRIJA outside the U.S. We also achieved our goal of strengthening our balance sheet by over $100 million, including the 74 million net upfront payment from Catalent, a $15 million milestone payment from Biogen for FAMPYRA and $12.7 million tax refund under the CARES Act. Regarding our goal of reducing our cost structure, we reduced our expected operating expenses for 2021 by about $40 million, about 10 million resulted from the sale of our manufacturing operations, 6 million from a 16% headcount reduction in our Ardsley and field teams, and 24 million in additional cost reductions. And note that in making these reductions, we focused on ensuring that the commercialization of INBRIJA would remain fully funded.

[Operator:]

[Tierney Saccavino:]

Okay, go ahead.

[Ron Cohen:]

Go ahead, Tierney.

[Tierney Saccavino:]

I was going to say thank you . If there are no questions, we're going to end the call now. And thank you, everybody, for dialing in.

[Ron Cohen:]

Okay. Thanks .

[Operator:]

Thank you, speakers. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.