Apellis Pharmaceuticals at Baird Conference: Strategic Insights in Healthcare

On Tuesday, 09 September 2025, Apellis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:APLS) presented at the Baird Global Healthcare Conference 2025. The company outlined its strategic focus on complement pathway therapies, highlighting both achievements and challenges. While Apellis emphasized its financial stability and product potential, it also acknowledged hurdles in market penetration and funding issues.

Key Takeaways

• Apellis is advancing its product portfolio with three approved treatments targeting rare diseases.
• A significant $275 million royalty deal with Sobi supports financial stability.
• Challenges include a $13 million sales impact due to co-pay assistance program issues.
• The company is focusing on expanding EMPAVELI into additional kidney disorders.
• Real-world evidence is being leveraged to enhance SYFOVRE’s market position.

Financial Results

• Sobi Deal: Apellis secured a $275 million upfront royalty monetization agreement with Sobi for ex-U.S. royalties related to its C3 glomerulopathy program. This capped royalty deal allows Apellis to retain over 95% of the net present value.
• Impact of Good Days: The closure of the Good Days co-pay assistance program resulted in a $13 million sales impact in Q2. This program remains closed to new patients, presenting ongoing challenges.
• Financial Stability: Despite headwinds, Apellis asserts its funding is sufficient for sustainable profitability, bolstered by the Sobi deal and other strategic initiatives.
• SYFOVRE Growth: The company forecasts low to mid-single-digit growth for SYFOVRE in upcoming quarters.

Operational Updates

• EMPAVELI Launch in C3G/ICMPGN: The early launch is on track, with 50 early access patients expected to switch to the commercial product by year-end. The GALE extension study will see 124 patients transition to commercial use.
• SYFOVRE in Geographic Atrophy: Approximately 10% of GA patients are currently treated with SYFOVRE. Apellis is enhancing communication tools to better convey treatment benefits.
• Clinical Trials: Phase 3 trials for EMPAVELI in FSGS and DGF are slated to begin by year-end. The APL-3007 siRNA program has entered Phase 2, aiming to enhance SYFOVRE’s efficacy.

Future Outlook

• EMPAVELI Expansion: Apellis is expanding EMPAVELI into FSGS and DGF, targeting 13,000 primary FSGS patients and 21,000 DGF cases annually. The company believes complement control can positively impact DGF outcomes.
• SYFOVRE Enhancements: The APL-3007 program seeks to extend SYFOVRE’s dosing interval from two to three months, using siRNA to reduce systemic C3 levels by 80-90%.
• Market Growth: Apellis sees significant potential in the GA market, aiming to increase treatment uptake by improving disease understanding and communication.

Q&A Highlights

• EMPAVELI Launch Expectations: The launch is progressing as planned, with key metrics focusing on patient starts and payer interactions.
• Differentiation of EMPAVELI: EMPAVELI’s broad label and potential to delay hemodialysis set it apart from competitors.
• Physician Pain Points with SYFOVRE: Apellis addresses challenges such as disease progression and treatment visualization with real-world data presentations.
• Good Days Headwinds: The lack of funding at Good Days remains a significant concern, with no expected changes in the near future.

In conclusion, Apellis Pharmaceuticals remains optimistic about its growth trajectory, driven by strategic product launches and market opportunities. For more detailed insights, readers can refer to the full conference call transcript.

Full transcript - Baird Global Healthcare Conference 2025:

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: Good morning, everyone. Thanks for being with us for Baird’s Global Healthcare Conference. My name is Colleen Cousy. I’m one of the Senior Analysts covering biotech at Baird. This morning, I’m pleased to have with me the team from Apellis Pharmaceuticals, including CEO Cedric Francois and CFO Tim Sullivan. Cedric, Tim, thanks for being with us.

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: Thank you.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: Maybe kick things off for us, if you would, just with a company overview, kind of where Apellis Pharmaceuticals has been at and what’s on the near-term horizon.

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: Thank you, Colleen. Great to be back here for, I don’t know how many years now, but it’s always wonderful. Apellis Pharmaceuticals is a company that’s focused on the complement pathways, specifically on complement factor C3, which sits central in that cascade and allows you to have that unique and broad control of the complement pathways regardless of what the source of activation is. It is a target that we know particularly well, in which we are, I’d say, fair to say, the global leaders in this particular field and where we currently have three approved products that we have on the market.

We had our initial approval in 2021 for EMPAVELI in paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria, which is a blood-based disease where, because of a mutation, red blood cells are prone to destruction by the complement pathway and where EMPAVELI has been a life-changing option for these patients for the past four years now. We then had our second approval, of course, with the first approved therapy for geographic atrophy, the leading cause of blindness in the elderly. That happened in February of 2023. We’re now a little over two years into that launch, with SYFOVRE continuing to make headways there and making an enormous difference in the lives of these patients. Of course, just last month, the approval of EMPAVELI in C3 glomerulopathy and immune complex membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis, ICMPGN. I practiced a lot to say that.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: I was going to say, I don’t know what you said on the red tap.

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: We’re really excited about what this therapy can do for patients. Among all of the things in C3 glomerulopathy and immune complex membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis, what is worth thinking about is how, after only six months of treatments in the clinical trial that we ran in the phase three, already in 70% of patients, there was no more trace of disease on histopathology in these kidneys. This is a really unique opportunity to make a difference there as well. In the meantime, our development is also moving forward. We have two phase three clinical trials for focal segmental glomerulosclerosis and delayed graft function with that same product, EMPAVELI, where we’re going to take advantage of this unique target engagement that we see in the kidney to explore other kidney indications where we believe we can make a difference for patients.

We have the so-called APL-3007 program, where we believe that SYFOVRE, being the unique and real disease-altering product that it is in geographic atrophy, can still improve on the efficacy there, as well as provide a treatment that is less frequent by combining our every two-month intravitreal injection with a subcutaneous injection that allows you to go to every three-month dosing and bring the slowdown of the atrophic lesion growth from 30% to 40% to a much more meaningful number. This is really exciting work there as well. In the meantime, our preclinical pipeline is advancing, and we have an IND right now in front of us with a gene editing program around the neonatal FC gamma receptor.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: Fantastic, fantastic overview. Let’s start with EMPAVELI. Actually, a change from the recent years where I feel like the GA was the first focus, but obviously a lot of progress has been made for EMPAVELI in the C3G ICMPGN space. Congratulations on the recent approval. Talk to us about the label you secured in the U.S. and how you think that positions you in the market relative to the recently approved oral competitor from Novartis’s Fabhalta.

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: Yeah, thank you. The Valiant trial, the read-out of the Valiant trial was pretty much beyond anything anyone had expected, including ourselves. It reminded me a little bit of Pegasus when we read out in PNH, so EMPAVELI has a way of doing that for us. In this trial, we kind of followed the philosophy that we always do, which is to create a product that has broad appeal to all patients and to really understand where this product has the highest impact. Not only did we study patients with C3 glomerulopathy, but also with ICMPGN. We studied patients pre-transplant, post-transplant. We studied not just the adult, also the pediatric population. What was remarkable is that across, we call it the trifecta of readouts, which is proteinuria reduction, stabilization of the glomerular filtration rate, eGFR, and then the removal of these deposits in the kidney.

Across all three of these markers, we saw this remarkable outcome in all patient populations that were studied. That is something that really stands out in a disease that you have to remember. We believe there are approximately 5,000 patients, which we believe is a conservative estimate in the U.S. alone. These are typically younger patients, and half of these patients over the course of 10 years, when left untreated, will progress to end-stage renal disease, which means hemodialysis and ultimately, if you’re fortunate, a kidney transplant, in which case, unfortunately, then a relapse almost certainly is the outcome there as well. It is really a terrible disease, but having the breadth of these outcomes across these populations and kind of the profound impact, which provides a best-in-class opportunity for us, is what we were looking for and what we got.

I do want to touch also on the twice-a-week subcutaneous infusion because it is actually something that patients very easily get used to. In PNH, obviously, we have gathered an enormous amount of information. We have about, you know, we’re somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000 patient years of dosing now. It’s very easy for patients to learn and get used to that subcutaneous infusion. It’s a device called Enable. It’s practical. It’s not hard. Worth noting here, we’ve heard this from nephrologists mention it to us, is that you can forget or not have the opportunity to do that subcutaneous infusion on a particular day and catch up a day or even two or maybe even three days later and go back on your schedule. If you’re traveling across the ocean, whatever it is, you don’t have to worry too much about having a lapse in your pharmacology.

Obviously, with the twice-a-day oral product, we all know that compliance can be an issue.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: Is this the Enable on-body injector that you’re talking about?

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: Correct. Yeah.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: Okay. Walk us through what our expectations should be around the early launch in these indications. Is EMPAVELI in PNH a helpful benchmark? How should we be thinking about this launch?

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: I think, look, our field-based team has done, we believe, subjectively, an amazing job at landscaping the patients that are out there, raising awareness, not just with the physicians, also with the patient community, making sure that access is there, explaining the differentiation of the product and what it means for patients to go on treatment. Again, that number of 5,000 patients in the U.S. is one that we feel is a conservative and a number that we can feel very confident about. The early launch is going as we had expected and hoped it would. We’re not yet providing any form of guidance. When we get to earnings, kind of the main metric that we will share will be patient starts and an update on what our payer interactions have been. All of that is on track.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: Understood. Remind us on the expectations around a bolus of patients in the early part of launch. I know you have some patients coming over from the clinical trials, and how quickly does that happen?

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: Yeah, so we have early access patients, approximately 50. We believe that the majority of those patients before the end of the year will have switched over to the commercial product. We also have the so-called GALE extension study from Valiant. Those subjects, as they exit the GALE study, will have the opportunity to go on commercial product as well. That is 124 patients, but across all geographies, right? About half of those in the U.S. That study is still ongoing, of course. Then a bolus of patients, look, there are, with a serious disease like this, always patients waiting, of course, to be treated. You go through that phase, and we believe there will be a steady stream of new patients coming on therapy.

Tim Sullivan, CFO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: Let me just clarify one thing. The Vail patients won’t be coming on this year, right? They’re going to be in 2026 and 2027.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: Okay, understood. With the broader label that you’ve secured versus the other recently approved drug in Febhalta, would the focus be on kind of the differentiated patients that fall only under the EMPAVELI label, or do you think the thought is to target broadly C3G and ICMPGN?

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: The thought is to target broadly, right? I think that there are, of course, the elements that we already discussed, but there are other elements that are really important and why efficacy is so important in this disease. Again, there is that threat of having to go on hemodialysis that kind of lurks in front of you. The longer you can delay that, maybe potentially never having to face that, that is a prospect that is very appealing, right? One that we believe with the data as we gather it, as we’ll get more from Vail, we’ll be able to put more clarity around. I think that is something that really stands out and speaks a lot to the physicians. There’s also the fact of concomitant medications.

We haven’t spoken a lot about that yet, but it was not an endpoint in the trial, of course, but publications and more knowledge will be gathered around, hey, these are patients that when they got diagnosed were highly symptomatic. That is why they received a kidney biopsy. A kidney biopsy is what leads to the code, which goes into our assessment of these 5,000 patients. If you’re highly symptomatic before, of course, this approval, these patients would be on treatments with very strong immunosuppressant drugs, steroids, and all the consequences that that entails, including, of course, a lot of these patients that become diabetic, but also severe immunosuppressants like Cellcept, tacrolimus, other calcineurin inhibitors. These are things that if you can wean them off in the patients, provide huge benefits to the patient’s quality of life and expectancy as well.

These are all elements that will come into the picture, but this is a field in medicine where efficacy is really, really important and where the differentiation for EMPAVELI is stark.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: Fantastic. I know in the GALE extension study, you’ve been able to publish on a whole wealth of data from that long-term extension. For the VAIL study that you have going on in C3 glomerulopathy and immune complex membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis, what are some of the expectations for additional data that we might learn from that extension study?

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: Yeah, I think the exciting thing there is that we’ll be able, it’s of course no longer sham controlled, right? We will be able to track on a historical basis how is the eGFR stabilization over time. Do these patients continue to respond as well as they did in the beginning? I mean, we have no indications of tachyphylaxis, for example. These are all things that will kind of continue to build. I’m happy you bring up GALE because it’s amazing to see, and that’s of course for those not familiar with GALE, that’s the extension study that we did for SYFOVRE in patients with geographic atrophy. We have now four full years, in about 800 subjects.

It’s an extraordinary database of information that we can tap into to really understand what the impact, the safety, efficacy profile of the drug is, and continue to speak about these products with the physician community.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: Building off this success in C3 glomerulopathy and immune complex membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis, you’re also expanding development of EMPAVELI in other kidney disorders, as you mentioned earlier, Cedric. In delayed graft function and focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, maybe talk about why those made sense as the next indications to go after, what gives you confidence that EMPAVELI will work, and lay out some of the timelines for those two programs.

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: Yeah, thank you, Colleen. When we got the data from the Valiant study, as I mentioned, what stood out was the exquisite target engagement in the glomerulus. We know that the drug gets where it needs to be and that it controls C3, you know, as well as anyone could hope for. What we did then is to really explore which are other glomerular diseases where we can have an important impact, where the competitive positioning makes sense, where the unmet need makes sense, where, you know, access makes sense. From going through that, that is really where FSGS and DGF rose to the top. With FSGS, we’re talking about its primary FSGS, so approximately 13,000 patients that could benefit from a good therapy.

The second indication, DGF, delayed graft function, for those not familiar with that, is transplanted patients that get a kidney, and this is not related to living kidney donations, but deceased kidney transplantations, of which there are about 21,000 per year in the U.S. About a third to half of these patients will suffer from delayed graft function, which means that you don’t get good creatinine corrections. The kidney is just not working as well as you would hope after the transplantation took place. We believe that by controlling complements, we can have an impact on that and really, you know, hopefully avoid delayed graft function. To put that in context and to provide numbers, 21,000, that is going to be a treatment for three months.

Every four patients with DGF, in terms of what it means for us from a bottom line perspective, equates to one patient with, for example, FSGS or C3G.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: Because FSGS would be a continuous therapy.

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: It’s a continuous therapy, correct.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: What are some of the timelines for those two programs?

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: Both of these studies are scheduled to start before the end of the year, the phase 3 clinical trials. That is all on track. We’re not providing guidance yet on when they will read out, but hopefully they will enroll fast, and when we have more details, we’ll provide that.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: When would we learn about the trial designs for those two programs?

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: The delayed graft function trial is currently on clinicaltrials.gov, so the details are available on that trial. For FSGS, not yet. We are still kind of following what is happening with another competing FSGS program that is currently going through the tracks with the Paracel project and then an ATCOM and a PDUFA for a competing product in January. We kind of want to make sure that we understand the regulatory path as well as possible, and there will be more public about it.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: Great. Now switching gears to geographic atrophy. We’re about two and a half years into the launch for SYFOVRE in GA. Just talk about the state of the GA market today and how you view the competitive position for SYFOVRE.

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: Yeah, huge opportunity, right? I mean, when SYFOVRE came on the market, and we think back of kind of the initial phases of the launch, the reason why the uptake was so enormous is because of the unmet need. There’s a paper that came out that was published by the Mayo Clinic before we launched, actually, where 85% of patients with geographic atrophy would like to receive treatment for that condition. It is a very bad disease in the later stages of life. Now, these older patients will also heavily rely on their physician to give them guidance. That same paper points out that 90% of patients will listen to their retina doctor as to what they should do. Currently, a little north of 10% of patients are on treatments between the two approved products that are on the market.

You can see the gap that needs to be filled there. That gap really comes down to, I think, two important elements. One is the ability to communicate better to the physician community what the impact is of this disease on patients. There is one particular element about geographic atrophy called best-corrected visual acuity, which is not a very good term because we’ve all gone to an optometrist or an ophthalmologist and read a Snellen chart. If you can read the small letters, you will be defined as having 20/20 vision. You can look through a straw and have 20/20 vision. Now imagine running through life looking through that straw. That is the reality of the lives of many patients with geographic atrophy. When that straw goes away, they will find a way somewhere in the periphery to have a little island.

Many patients with geographic atrophy, if you know some, will look sideways at you because they’re using that little island to be able to see your face, right? It’s a terrible reality. I bring this up because the progression of the disease or the impact that any therapy has on the disease cannot be measured by looking at best-corrected visual acuity, right? You really need to understand what happens with the light sensitivity across the retina. That is where we have made enormous progress to be able to actually qualitatively and quantitatively image and represent what the light sensitivity loss is and the impact of therapies on that for patients. We now have an opportunity in front of us to grow this segment, to make these patients be more seen, to provide that treatment.

As we’ve indicated, of course, it’s going to be a slow ramp, you know, low to mid-single-digit growth on an injection basis in the quarters moving forward. Again, I think with the unique opportunity for us to make a real difference in the lives of these patients and make them feel seen by their retina doctors and also their family members.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: Some of that exciting, those developments on better defining the patient experience, when can we expect that to kind of roll out more into clinical practice?

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: The good news there is that the science has been established, right? The wonderful thing about that four-year database that we saw is that this is really what allowed us to mine the information that we had to establish this brand new way of looking at what function NDI really represents. There are no new trials that are needed, no new work that needs to be done. It is really a matter now of creating the tools for a retina physician in their practice in a very easy way to see what goes on, what has been going on with the patient, understand the impact beyond best-corrected visual acuity, and then understand what drug treatment can do. Right now, if you see a retina physician and you are on treatment, you know, there’s no way of knowing whether the drug is actually making a difference.

If we can crack that code, I think it will have a really big impact.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: Great. Talk about some of the pain points for physicians that they have about using SYFOVRE, you know, and how you’re going to address those. Is it chair time, safety, efficacy, maybe just understanding of what the patient experience is? What are some of those pain points?

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: Yeah, I think it’s a little bit all of the above. If you would ask me, the one element that is difficult for everyone involved is that the sense of urgency with the retina physician is probably not there the way we believe it should be there. That has a lot to do, of course, with the fact that, yes, it is a slowly progressing disease, but once you lose retinal tissue, it’s not coming back, right? Whatever you lose is lost forever. Being able to kind of put the quantitative and qualitative element into that is going to be very important. I think there is really a lot of opportunity for us to work on that. The other element that I will mention, which we have seen coming up more and more now in retina conferences, is that the real-world evidence is really standing out.

What I most enjoy about Apellis and SYFOVRE, particularly right now, is that these data are presented not just our data, other people’s data as well. We have an enormous amount of academic presence. Our competitor, for example, has none. It hasn’t had for many conferences and will not have any more because there are no more data. That is really something that is absolutely key. At the American Society for Retina Surgeons conference in Long Beach in July, we had five podium presentations from us and three independent presentations, so eight in total. I mean, well over an hour of time entirely dedicated to SYFOVRE.

If you had seen what went on there in terms of kind of understanding the impact that the drug has, that not just what we report and what we have studied, but what large practices that do use the product now see, that is obviously going to carry the water for us.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: Yeah, absolutely. We were at a retina meeting in July, and I can just picture the line chart, right? You see it bending after treatment with SYFOVRE, and that’s not data we had.

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: Exactly.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: For the consumer.

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: To your point, being able to, on an individual patient basis, show the nick and the curve and show that that’s the, so it’s an imaging challenge, ironically, right now to be able to provide physicians and patients with more feedback on what’s going on.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: I feel like retina docs are big imaging nerds in a lot of ways.

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: They really are.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: I feel like that would speak to them a lot, that they would love to see that.

Over the last few quarters in 2025, you and other players in the retina space have noted some headwinds due to lack of funding at a third-party co-pay assistance organization, Good Days. Can you just describe how that’s affecting SYFOVRE this year and kind of any chance we see a change in that funding?

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: Sure. That’s had some significant impact. I think we disclosed that it was, we estimate it was about a $13 million impact in the second quarter. Currently, as we understand it, Good Days is still closed to new patients. We don’t expect that to change going forward either.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: Okay. I know you provided some guidance around expenses, and I know you said earlier in the presentation how low single-digit growth for SYFOVRE this year. What do you think you’d need to see in the market to be comfortable about providing potential SYFOVRE guidance for 2026?

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: That’s a great question. Part of the issue is that we will be also in the middle of a launch. Guiding on one product and then not on the other is a little awkward. This is the first, I would say, two quarters and hopefully a year where we’re in a steady enough state where we can say, okay, we kind of understand where this market is. We may understand some seasonal stuff. The one thing that remains an unusual headwind is this patient co-pay assistance issue. I think we’re getting much more comfortable that we can kind of give more in terms of understanding because we understand more. I’m not sure if we’re going to give guidance, but we’ll let you know.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: Understood. On the Good Days headwinds, is that something that, you know, we know the headwind now and that’s kind of the new reset, or do we think that’ll be, you know, additional headwinds in future quarters?

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: I think we should assume it’s additional. You mean incremental to where it is?

No, I think this is the new normal.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: Okay. Now shifting gears again to your development efforts in GA. Cedric, you already talked about APL-3007, your siRNA program. You know, you recently started phase 2 study in GA patients. Talk about the rationale for this development program and maybe some of the potential risks of systemic complement inhibition in the GA patient population.

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: Yeah, so this is a very exciting program for us, obviously, because I like to explain to people geographic atrophy like a lawn where you have a hole in the middle of the lawn, a bottomless hole. I mean, that is your geographic atrophy lesion. Outside of that hole, you have an area of earth without grass. That’s the so-called RP cell layer where the photoreceptor cells have died. Beyond that, you have a full lawn with grass on top of it. Sick grass, mind you, but grass. When you treat a patient with SYFOVRE, the grass is immediately 100% protective, and we can image and visualize that. The hole, however, continues to grow slower and slower and incrementally slower, up to 30 to 40%, as you know.

Now, when the hole catches up with the grass, then the grass starts dying again, not because the grass is not protected, but because it needs the earth to be supported, right? I mention that because we have that near approximately 100% efficacy for SYFOVRE on the grass. If we can get closer to something similar on the earth as well, that would have a dramatic impact. What we do with this subcutaneous injection, which will be synchronized with the intravitreal injection, so it’s in-office, it’s going to be very easy to administer like a subcutaneous autoinjector. If we can get that effect to be larger and go from every two to every three months injections, that would provide a huge benefit.

The way in which we do that is with siRNA, we lower the systemic levels of C3 by 80 to 90%, and we provide a stoichiometric advantage to SYFOVRE NDI to have that added benefit. We know that with approximately 10% of free floating C3 in the body, the safety is actually very good. We know that from EMPAVELI and PNH, right? I’d say the magic behind pegcetacoplan is it doesn’t try to get rid of all C3. It stabilizes the enzymatic activity of the cascade. That is really the key thing. When 80 to 90% of C3 is bound by pegcetacoplan systemically, you have this exquisite safety profile. By this time in the real world, we should have seen probably more than 10 cases of encapsulated meningococcal infection. We’ve seen zero, right?

That has probably something to do with those elements still being there in place when it is most needed. I think that really stands out because you combine SYFOVRE with something that we believe is going to be very safe systemically, providing that comfort, obviously, to retina doctors who are not used to systemic treatments and combining that with what will hopefully be a remarkable efficacy profile.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: Okay. You recently signed a new deal with your ex-U.S. partner, Sobi, to bring in $275 million upfront. Just talk about the benefits of that deal for you guys and what that highlights for their excitement for the program.

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: First of all, you know, we felt like we were being a little underappreciated at the time, and particularly our C3G and ICMPGN program. What that did was that sort of those pre-approval, and it sort of shined a light on the value of that program because that was simply just monetizing the royalty, the ex-U.S. royalty, which, as we had disclosed prior, was high teens to high twenties from Sobi, our partner. They obviously know the asset, they know the market really well, and they’re the ones who chose to buy it. It was a very competitive process. We had eight or nine players interested in that royalty. Ultimately, we were able to do an optimal deal with them. In a sense, that really showed the value of that program at a time when we felt it wasn’t being appreciated.

The second thing was it was a capped royalty deal. All of the upside for us is still there beyond that payback, which is, which on an NPV basis, we, in our calculations, we got 95+% of the NPV of that. Phenomenal. The NPV is higher than what we got, obviously. We’re excited about the deal.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: Great. Now I know we just have a minute left or so. With that deal and the other programs, you’re funded to sustainable profitability. What do you feel like is most underappreciated about the Apellis story today, and why should investors be paying attention to Apellis over the next six to 12 months?

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: Lots of exciting things coming up, right? I mean, this was very much a rebuilding year for us as well. I mean, we also internally in the company went through kind of important managing transitions as well. It’s a lot of fun to work at Apellis Pharmaceuticals right now because we have so much to look forward to, obviously, in the launch of EMPAVELI and C3G, but also in what we believe is the opportunity in SYFOVRE, right? Where, you know, we went through a lot of, needless to say, but where it is, it’s an amazing drug for patients, right? I mean, we know that from the data that we see, and that’s a unique opportunity.

Then to have all of the developmental opportunities that are going to become much more real, whether it’s the phase 3 clinical trials and having a view on readouts there, whether it is the early program, the preclinical programs that are going to go into the clinic as well. To do that with the cash position that we have, I think it’s the perfect foundation for a new future for us.

Colleen Cousy, Senior Analyst, Baird: Fantastic. With that, we’re out of time. Thank you so much, Cedric and Tim.

Cedric Francois, CEO, Apellis Pharmaceuticals: Colleen, thank you, Colleen.

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