Ardelyx at Jefferies Conference: Strategic Growth and Market Challenges

On Wednesday, 04 June 2025, Ardelyx Inc. (NASDAQ:ARDX) presented at the Jefferies Global Healthcare Conference 2025. CEO Mike Robb provided insights into the company’s strategic direction, highlighting growth prospects and challenges for its key products, IBSRELA and EXFOSA. The discussion reflected both optimism about potential market expansion and caution due to current market disruptions.

Key Takeaways

• Ardelyx reaffirmed its revenue guidance for IBSRELA, projecting $240 million to $250 million for the year.
• CEO Mike Robb expressed confidence in achieving peak sales of $1 billion for IBSRELA sooner than anticipated.
• EXFOSA faces challenges due to dialysis market disruptions but aims for $750 million in peak sales.
• The company is appealing to CMS to restore Part D coverage for EXFOSA, potentially expanding market access.
• Ardelyx is exploring business development opportunities in gastrointestinal and renal markets.

Financial Results

• IBSRELA Revenue Guidance: Ardelyx projects $240 million to $250 million for the current year.
• IBSRELA Peak Sales: The company anticipates reaching $1 billion in peak sales faster than the initial nine-year estimate.
• EXFOSA Sales Target: Ardelyx maintains a target of $750 million in peak sales, aiming for 30% penetration of the non-Medicare patient population.
• Q1 Revenue Impact: IBSRELA’s Q1 revenue was affected by insurance resets and inventory adjustments, while EXFOSA reported $20 million, including transitional scripts.

Operational Updates

• IBSRELA Market Growth: The IBS-C market is expanding at a double-digit rate, with 50,000 new patients monthly.
• First-Line Therapy: Though primarily a second or third-line treatment, some physicians use IBSRELA as a first-line option.
• CIC Indication: Ardelyx is considering trials for IBSRELA in treating CIC, a larger market than IBS-C.
• EXFOSA Market Access: The company chose not to engage in the TDAPA process, ensuring access for non-Medicare patients despite dialysis market turmoil.

Future Outlook

• IBSRELA Growth Strategy: Ardelyx is accelerating efforts to reach $1 billion in sales sooner.
• EXFOSA Market Strategy: Treating current conditions as a relaunch, focusing on physician education and non-Medicare adoption.
• CMS Appeal: Aiming for Part D coverage restoration for EXFOSA by January 2027, pending appeal success.
• Business Development: Actively seeking opportunities in GI and renal sectors to expand the product portfolio sustainably.

Q&A Highlights

• IBSRELA Sales Potential: Concerns about conservative sell-side estimates for IBSRELA’s peak sales.
• EXFOSA Access Prioritization: Focus on ensuring physician prescribing based on medical necessity, regardless of Medicare status.
• Legal Action with CMS: Ongoing efforts to reclassify EXFOSA, with a hearing expected in the fall.

Readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript for a more detailed account of the conference discussions.

Full transcript - Jefferies Global Healthcare Conference 2025:

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Good morning. Welcome to the Jefferies Healthcare Conference, Day one. My name is Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst at Jefferies. I have the pleasure of having Ardellix and CEO, Mike Robb here with us. Welcome, Mike.

Maybe to kick things off, just give a little bit of background in terms of the company. It has certainly been a roller coaster over the last few years. So just help level set us in terms of where the company was maybe last year or two years ago and some the progress that you guys have made and where the company is right now.

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: Sure. Good morning and thank you Dennis for having us here. So over the last three years, roller coaster for sure, probably going back to ’21 is the best place to start versus eighteen years ago when we founded the company, was when we had taken Exposa through the approval process with the FDA. We ultimately got a CRL that we fought, won subsequently two years later, but at that point made the decision to launch Ibsrela, which had previously been approved. And we saw that there was this incredible need for patients with IBS C who were not being well treated on the GCC agonists that needed another choice, which was what we had with IBSRELA.

Fast forward, we accomplished what we needed to in winning with the FDA on an FDR and an ADCOM and launched EXFOSA. So we now have two commercial products on the market, one for IBS C IBSRELA and the other for dialysis patients who have hyperphosphatemia who need either an add on to the binders or if they’re intolerant to the binders, they have the opportunity for Exposa. Last year was our first full year of Exposa sales. And as we all know, then towards the end of the year began to move the binders were being moved into the bundled payment system, which is the case for binders today. We made the decision not to participate in that because we felt that it was more important that at a minimum those patients that are non Medicare would continue to have unfettered access to XFOs to manage their hyperphosphatemia.

And we’re going through the chaos that comes from that, as I’m sure we’ll talk a little bit about Dennis. And we also then see Ibsrela continuing to grow at a dramatic rate and reaffirming our guidance for what we provided for this year of $240,000,000 to $250,000,000 for Ibsurlla. So we’re, I think, set up very well to be past the chaos as we begin to just execute and work hard in getting our products to the patients who deserve them.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Great. And if we can focus a little bit on Ibsurlla first and surely talk about Exposa. But how do you think about or like I guess what are the pushes and pulls on the $240,000,000 to $250,000,000 guidance this year? And maybe remind us around Q1 and some of the dynamics there.

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: Sure. Let me start with the last part of your question. So what you see in Q1 historically in the IBS C market is a contraction of that business for lots of different reasons, but primarily because we all know insurance policies reset January first of every year. So as people go through their deductibles and out of pocket expenses, that tends to hit patients hardest in the first quarter. And that shows the contraction that has happened historically in IBS C.

Even with that, the IBS C market has grown double digits for the last three to four years and continues to do so now going forward. So we experienced that contraction for the first time just given the volume and the size of the business that we had in Q1 and that was then exacerbated by another phenomenon that we’re all familiar with, which is in the fourth quarter distributors tend to buy up in anticipation of price increases and as that market contracts in the first quarter, you see a buy down of that inventory. So that push and pull is what we experienced in the first quarter of this year. I think it’s something we altogether can be far more aware of for the Ibsrela business going forward and will be something we all factor into the way that we think about those revenue streams on a quarter to quarter basis. In terms of the other pulls for IBS C, as I said, it continues to grow at a dramatic rate where you see fifty thousand new patients going on therapy for the GCC agonists every month versus what we need is a small fraction of that to get to what our projections that we have provided publicly of a billion dollars at peak is a far smaller number than that.

So the business is there for us. The team that we have in place is executing extraordinarily well and driving the demand with conviction and ultimately getting these prescriptions filled through our DelixAssist.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Right. And if I can put a finer point on Q1, Ipsurella revenue did come under consensus and you’re saying the majority of that or a big part of it may have been due to inventory dynamics that happened in Q1.

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: I think that’s fair.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: And then as you think about Q2, and we’re already in June, right? So two out of the three months have already been behind us. So how like how have demand how has demand looked in Q2? And how do you think about that trajectory moving forward?

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: Well, I think if you look at the demand in Q2, what I just reaffirmed is the $240,000,000 to $250,000,000 for what we provided as guidance for the year. That’s something that we’re confident that we’re going to hit. So pretty straightforward if you look at what that shortfall was in consensus, add that back in, you can see what the trajectory would be to get to those numbers.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Okay. And on the ground, when you talk with physicians, like what is the feedback been like around Ibsrela?

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: Excellent. I mean, if you look at the patients who have had a hard time getting benefits from the current products that are out there, the GCC agonists, when they take Ibsrela and have the benefit both for constipation, for pain, for bloating, and the other symptomatology that you get for IBS C. It’s a spectacular product for those patients and they see it. So once they have an experience with one or two patients, our ability to then drive many more patients that come within that practice is occurring with the success that they see.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Okay. And then what is the feedback on Ipsarella relative to some of the other standard of care in this space and like how is it positioned and how does it

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: Well, it’s important to note, Dennis, that our clinical work was a first line therapy drug, right? So we made the choice, just given the dynamics of insurance, that we would embrace the idea that we’re going be second or third line, which is predominantly how the product is utilized. We do see a significant number of patients coming in on first line. So it is not it is being used first line therapy, although we tend to position it such that it’s after GCC agonists because that’s the vast number of patients that are out there right now. And what they’re seeing is that we’re providing relief and benefit to those patients that were not getting it with a GCC agonist.

They’re getting it with IBSRELA and a new mechanism, a different mechanism, the GCC agonists.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Has that first line dynamic been growing recently or has that always been there since the launch?

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: It’s always been there, but you know it’s not something that we promote that way. But it’s something that is just interesting to watch as physicians and clinicians, healthcare practitioners begin to gain experience with their second and third line patients. Maybe they’re saying, gosh, I shouldn’t wait and try Ibsrela first line.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Okay. And you guys did provide some long term guidance on Ibsrela of a billion dollars. Can you just walk us through the math in terms

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: of Sure. Interestingly, Dennis, if you look at the $1,000,000,000 that we have said at peak, we said that at launch three years ago. And the market has continued to grow significantly, 10% year over year at least. So that 10% is now lesser than that, to get to the billion. And as you look at most of the models that are out there, tend to take it out until loss of exclusivity, which is in 02/1933, which means that you’d have to suppress the growth rate that we’re seeing over these last three years for ObsElla.

So if you look at where we are right now at $250,000,002 40,000,000, 2 50 million is our guidance. It’s going to you assume then it’s nine years to get to the billion. I would challenge people to think that there’s an opportunity for that to be sooner than nine years, which is why when we say a billion dollars or more we’re very excited about what Ipsarela can ultimately do for patients and the size of the market that we can create.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: And you know over the next several years because you know when we talk with investors I think people are generally very bullish around the Ipsarella business. But given the $1,000,000,000 guidance is still many years away, like what can we do or like what can you do to help communicate that better so that investors understand that more, at least in terms of the trajectory over the next five years. I think most people do assume that it goes off that the $1,000,000,000 is at like 2033 or 02/1934. But what can you do to prove or to show that it could actually happen earlier like like 2030 or 2029?

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: I think if we hit our numbers this year that’s certainly a big part of it. I think we started this conversation about consensus and what happened in Q1. Consensus is pretty much all over the map in terms of peak whether or not it’s a billion dollars. So I think that’s the first step is making sure that the sell side understands that when we hit the numbers that we’re going to hit this year that the horizon for a billion dollars is there. And then the conversations need to be at what rate is that growth given the history of three years of growth that we’ll see and certainly what we’ll see quarter to quarter this year.

It should become self evident that those numbers are likely to be sooner and potentially greater.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Okay. Would you ever consider and the $1,000,000,000 peak is that just for IBS C?

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: That’s correct.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: And would you ever explore other indications like adjacencies like CIC and things like that?

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: Oh, think that’s something we have to do, right? I mean, you look at the treating physicians, they’re seeing both, right? And for the current products, the GCC agonist, they don’t distinguish what it needs to be because it has both indications. So it’s incumbent on us now that we have the capital to invest in that to consider that.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: At what point so is that kind of relatively near term in 2025 that you guys would consider starting like a new trial in CIC and some of those adjacencies?

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: Well, certainly something that we’re considering. And when that decision is made, we certainly will announce that.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: What’s kind of the gating factor to not to like have a go or no go decision on that? Is it just cash? Is it getting to profitability?

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: And looking at the right trial design, how we do that and getting to cash flow breakeven, obviously, is an objective that we all have. But I think a bit of all of those things, Dennis.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Okay. And can you help frame at least for CIC just the relative sizing of the market to IBS C?

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: Well, at least if you look at the epidemiology, it’s thirty plus million people have chronic idiopathic constipation or functional constipation is also referred to as where IBS C is ten to eleven million depending upon it. So it’s a sizable market. But it is also treated well for a lot of patients with over the counter laxatives and things like that. So how you actually size that market for prescription product is something that we’re also trying to understand.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Okay. Okay. Why don’t we shift over to Exposa? Tell us a little bit about Q1, the $25,000,000 and just what you have seen on the ground and like what contributed to that number as well as just some of the underlying demand trends that you guys are So

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: if we think about what happened last year in 2024, a remarkable launch and EXPOSE has done some remarkable things for patients who need hyperphosphatemia management. I’m proud of the team and what we accomplished then. And when we made the decision to not participate in the TDAPA process, one of the fundamental reasons for that was to ensure that those non Medicare patients would be able to have unfettered access to a drug that can probably change their lives versus participating in that and being bundled literally and figuratively within a perspective that would likely prevent some of that opportunity. It was a tough decision. I think it’s not a completely well understood decision.

But for us our patience and paying attention to them and serving them is our North Star. And we believe that this decision, represents that. So what happened there is you lose sixty percent of your TAM, so that’s three hundred and thirty thousand patients, the five fifty, are now Medicare patients and exposed is not available to them because binders moved into the bundle Medicare Part B as in boy. So what we have encouraged nephrologists and health care practitioners is to continue doing what they’ve been doing in the past, meaning sending their prescription to our hub and that we can adjudicate whether it’s a Medicare, Medicaid, commercial, TRICARE, VA and then either for Medicare patient if they qualify would get free drug, non revenue product And if you qualify, you then go through the normal processes of getting coverage approved through your insurance. The turmoil of binders going into a bundled payment system has been dramatic in that dialysis organizations now basically need to become pharmacies, some of them.

Some of them don’t have the infrastructure or the staff to do so. So patients are being put on Tums, which is something that’s terrible for the patient. And there’s all sorts of other chaos that’s occurred in the dialysis business that has made thinking about exposed a sort of third, fourth in line of other things that they’re struggling with. That said, you look at the number of prescriptions that were written for Exposa in the first three months of this year, because this is frankly my opinion a relaunch of the drug, a total different environment than what we did in 2024. And we have demonstrated with prescriptions that have been written, they’re more written in these three months than there were in the first three months of 2024.

So from a launch perspective, if you wanna think of it that way, we’re doing extremely well, in terms of where EXFOSA is. Is it flat? Is it growing at the rate we want? Of course not. Because that turmoil, that chaos has really been a problem for the treating health care practitioners and most importantly for the patients.

But we are seeing the pull through happening. And the field force out there is focused on those physicians who have written successfully in 2025 because the number of patients that they have allow you to go deep in those patients in order to get them pulled through. So that’s a big part of our focus in the near term. Depth absolutely first and foremost and beginning to expand into breadth. I’m confident that we’re going end up in the place that we need to remember what we guided everyone to $750,000,000 of peak sales for Exposa.

What does that look like, right? How in fact do I believe that to be possible? Well, you look at our WACC and modest price increases over time using five prescriptions per year, which is what you see for binders, maybe we can do better with a small molecule tiny pill. That’s about $12,500 per annum per patient. You divide that $750,000,000 by $12,500 60 thousand patients.

That’s it. Of two hundred and twenty thousand patients, you need to penetrate thirty percent of those. Knowing what we did in 2024, the benefit that we provided those patients, it’s hard to imagine that we can’t accomplish what I just described.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Okay. And your strategy is very interesting because you are prioritizing access, right? Not necessarily reimbursement. You don’t want doctors to decide whether or not to prescribe Exposa if they have Medicare Part D or not Part D, right? You’d want to Many

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: physicians with whom we spoke to when we made this decision don’t discern whether that patient is Medicaid, Medicare, commercial, VA. So we want them to be agnostic and make the decision for the patient that’s the right medical decision for the patient.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Yeah. And you also don’t want to make it more difficult to put or like put additional barriers for the doctors to prescribe Exposa. We want to make it as easy as, you know, as it can be. So, you know, back to your comments around the disruption happening in the DOs. Can you talk a little bit more about that in terms of like how they are navigating some of these challenges?

Because you said they now they have to kind of operate as pharmacies. So like what kind of strategies have they done to navigate some of this disruption?

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: Well, so you think about what they need to do. You put with binders, they all have protocols, you pull it up and, you know, patient Mike versus patient Dennis is going to get binder A, or C. And that’s going be their preferred binder in their protocols. And then Exposa for some of them say available through the manufacturer. Right?

So there is a process that they go through in terms of putting their patients on whichever binders that they have chosen to utilize, and that’s an internal decision on which one they choose. Remember what happens during the TDAPA period with binders and it was not going to be the case with Exposa is this is a period where there’s ultimately end of this two year period CMS will make a determination as to how much money is spent for this and they will increase the base rate for that after the two year period. Had exposed a bit of the period, we were not part of that calculus. People forget that, is that we were not going to be part of the calculus for increasing that base rate, which is a driver for DOs, right? Because that’s their bread and butter in terms of what pays for the system that they’re engaged in in terms of treating patients who need dialysis.

So we were always treated as other in that whole process that CMS had put in place. Also part of motivation for me to not participate in it, frankly. And so as they go through this process, they put their patients on given binder. For some of the DOs, certainly not the bigger ones, the smaller independent ones who don’t have the resources necessarily to put in the infrastructure, it’s mail order pharmacy building those relationships, all of those things, and whether or the patients got them because it’s a new system. So there’s an awful lot of shaking out of what needs to happen to get a patient to get their binder in process.

And it has not gone perfectly well as you would expect. And the patients as a result for this first quarter plus, many of whom have not had the binders that they need or getting binders that they shouldn’t have according to guidelines that are all calcium based has been one of the bigger challenges. And then on top of that, for those physicians who’ve had great experiences with Exposa they then have to depend on us which to your point that you made earlier we want them to be agnostic. They then send to us their patients irrespective of coverage so that we can get them exposed as they need.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: So in terms of demand in Q1 and Q2, what have you seen so far at least Q2? Are things kind of improving on the non Medicare portion of the business?

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: So a couple of things to think about Dennis with that is if you recall in Q1 there were some transitional scripts that happened really mostly in January for Medicare. Some Medicare patients got a transitional script in January. That’s not going to happen again. Right? So those go away.

So it’s a one off. If you get rid of those, you actually see growth of that base business of non Medicare. So that’s the way I look at it. Is it growing at the rate that we want or expect? Not yet.

We’re seeing modest growth and certainly potentially we’re at the nadir, but you still see choppiness as you look at with your script data you see that coming out. We still see choppiness. But we’re on average, we’re flat to modestly growing and I believe we’ll see that going forward.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Can you clarify on what those transitional scripts were? Do you mean like those were written in early January but for some reason like

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: Yeah, there was a number of don’t have exact numbers. Some of the payers provided Medicare Part D patients a transitional script at the start of the year. And that is a one off that says, Mike, you’re Medicare D patient. We’re going give you one prescription on UnitedHealthcare. So if UnitedHealthcare did it, Mike you get one prescription to transition into the bundle and then you’re never going to get another one.

So there were a certain number of patients then it was the biggest number of that was in January and it diminished throughout the quarter.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Okay. And is there a way that you can kind of quantify the revenue impact from those transitional scripts from Q1?

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: Not off the top of my head. If you look at the total revenue that we had in Q1, there was the return release that we had. These transitional scripts are going to be numbers of millions of dollars, not tens of across the months.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Okay. So off of the $20,000,000 in net revenue, a portion of that would be the transitional scripts. So when you report Q2 and your comments around growth quarter over quarter, we should not be used $20,000,000 as the base. We should use, like, I’m not sure, like 12,000,000, 15 million, 18 million somewhere

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: Okay.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: And then in terms of recovery, I know it’s kind of difficult to see into the future, but, when do you expect things to kind of recover? And like when like do you think that is a function of just Salesforce and like education around Ardellix assist and I think it’s true.

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: Of it. And I challenge you to think of it as a launch not recovery because it is a completely different market. And what does it take to launch a drug effectively into a very tumultuous chaotic market? It’s the sales force, repetition. You try it, our dogs assist and it works.

You get conviction that in fact our dogs is actually delivering what we said we would. And then that just grows over time, right? It’s the persistence, it’s the stubbornness if you will and the resilience of our field force, right? I mean you think about our field force that they were having this remarkable growth in Q4. They got their legs taken out from under them with losing that 60%.

So motivating them and making sure that they’re focused that it is okay, that we have a relaunch, if you will. So keeping them motivated, focused, knowing the right thing to do for patients is to continue the efforts to educate all health care practitioners, whether it’s dietitians, the social workers, the physician, all the APPs are critical to make sure patients get what they need.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Okay. And, you know, if we can move on to our next topic, which I think people don’t really talk about at all, which is really surprising, the appeal with CMS around the Exposa and the classification of it as a renal dialysis service. So can you give a little bit of background as to what’s going on there? And maybe when should we expect the decision on that?

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: So if you think back to when we first filed the suit, we believe that CMS had overstepped its remit in defining binders, phosphorus lowering therapies as a renal dialysis service. Real dialysis service are the things that you as a physician provide me when I’m sitting in the chair getting dialyzed. That’s the original definition of it. And it makes sense because Medicare Part B as in boy And Part B is you as a physician get paid for the services you’re providing me when I’m there with you. Right?

And to expand the definition to include binders, which you’re not allowed to eat when you’re sitting in a dialysis chair, and you’re supposed to take a binder when you eat. Our package insert explicitly says do not give it before a dialysis session because if you’re going have a side effect, which some patients do, you don’t want to to take them off the dialysis machine. So it’s not a dialysis service. As you know, Dennis, we’ve gone through the process in the court system and we’re in front of the circuit now and they’re about to go into recess so there’s not going to be anything in the near term. Some are reasons because it’s the same judges, they’re dealing with an awful lot of the administration issues that are going on immigration and others.

So they have focused on those things, at the court level. We expect in the fall, that we would have our hearing. What the outcome of that is? I’m probably not a crystal ball to look at what that would be. I know what I would like it to be.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Yeah. But to frame that kind of situation for investors because I’m not sure, like, I don’t think that many people are aware, is we’re talking about a restoration of Part D.

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: That’s correct. For EXFOSA. And what I the way I characterize it that you’re absolutely right. It gets us back to where we were in ’24, which is the objective is unfettered access for unfettered access for everyone is what we currently have. We did not change that but there’s sixty percent of the patients that would then be back on D and getting we would get reimbursed for it.

So that’s the difference. However, what I have said also is that’s a free call option. Right? We spent an awful lot of discussions in 2024 about both the legislative and the legal paths that we were taking, and it can at times take the oxygen out of the room. So what I want people to think about is focus on the 220,000, which is our total available market, our TAM, of which as I said 60,000 patients gets us to the 750,000,000.

Free call option is what it is. If we succeed with this legal effort, then 60% of the it increases by 60%. Yeah.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Yeah. And if the appeals were did go in your favor, the implementation of that would start 01/01/2027, assuming presume that. Yeah, that’s

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: what I would presume.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: It’s not like immediately like the day of or something like that. Well,

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: guess in my mind, I think of it it would be like a new launch of drug again because the PPS would be out already. So remember the PPS prospective payment system begins mid this year to be implemented next year. So it wouldn’t be immortalized in the prospective payment system, but it would be basically like launching a new drug, I

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: would say. Okay. And with the appeals decision, is that for Exposa specifically or broadly speaking, the phosphate lowering drugs?

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: I think that’s going be up to the judges to determine.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Okay. Okay. Very helpful. And then in the last minute or two, maybe talk about BD. Yeah.

Because you guys have been communicating more or messaging more around doing more BD, doing clinical trials and things like that. So you have any updates there?

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: As we talked on this is, you know, my our collective objective is to build a sustainable enterprise. We have two remarkable products with its foes and Idorella. We have brought on a team led by Mike Kelleher to begin looking at how we build this company beyond. And they kiss a lot of frogs. They look at an awful lot of opportunities that are both in GI and renal and then associated spaces to make sure that we scour everywhere to find the products that we want.

So we will be looking across all stages of development and our objective is to find multiple products that we can bring in to our commercialization

we’re get priced fairly in the market. So unless you truly see something that no one else sees, you’re just going to pay the price of the market season. I don’t think you would give me much credit for that. So we need to be judicious in commercial opportunities and as well with non commercial to make sure that we’re paying the right price. But commercial ones have a little bit of a different hurdle in my mind because of those dynamics.

Dennis Niem, Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Okay. Very good. Well, I think that’s all the time that we have, Mike. But thank you so much

Mike Robb, CEO, Ardelix: your Dennis, thank you very much. That’s for Thank you.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.