Collegium at H.C. Wainwright: Strategic Growth and Financial Strength

On Tuesday, 09 September 2025, Collegium Pharmaceutical (NASDAQ:COLL) presented at the H.C. Wainwright 27th Annual Global Investment Conference. The company showcased its robust financial performance and strategic initiatives, highlighting its strengths in pain management and ADHD treatment. CEO Vikram Karnani discussed both the opportunities and challenges ahead, including managing generic competition and expanding market presence.

Key Takeaways

• Collegium projects net sales of $745 million to $760 million with an EBITDA margin nearing 60%.
• The company has authorized a new $150 million share repurchase program through 2026.
• Jornay PM, a unique ADHD medication, is gaining market share with sales guidance increased to $140-$145 million.
• The pain portfolio achieved a 7% growth in Q2, with strategies in place to maintain exclusivity against generics.
• The sales force for Jornay PM has expanded significantly to boost physician engagement and patient awareness.

Financial Results

• Net Sales Guidance: Collegium forecasts net sales between $745 million and $760 million.
• EBITDA Margin: The company reports an EBITDA margin approaching 60%.
• Share Repurchases: Over $220 million returned to shareholders since 2021, with a new $150 million program authorized.
• Debt Leverage: Net debt to EBITDA ratio is at 1.4x, projected to fall below 1x by year-end.
• Jornay PM Sales: Sales guidance increased to $140-$145 million, reflecting strong market performance.
• Pain Portfolio Sales: Approximately $600 million in net sales, with a 7% year-over-year growth in Q2.

Operational Updates

• Jornay PM Differentiation: Jornay PM is the only ADHD medication taken at night, offering unique benefits.
• Sales Force Expansion: Increased from 125 to 180 representatives, targeting 21,000 physicians.
• DTC Investment: Direct-to-consumer efforts are enhancing patient awareness and demand.
• Prescriber Base and Market Share: Over 26,000 physicians prescribed Jornay PM in Q2, with a 23% market share.
• Pain Portfolio Strategy: Focus on optimizing reimbursement and market access to drive growth.

Future Outlook

• Jornay PM Growth Drivers: Back-to-school seasonality and increased investments expected to fuel growth.
• Capital Allocation: Collegium remains open to acquisitions and committed to debt reduction and shareholder returns.
• Generic Competition: Strategies in place to maintain product exclusivity and mitigate generic impacts.

Q&A Highlights

• Physician Awareness: Efforts to increase awareness of Jornay PM’s benefits are ongoing.
• Pediatric vs. Adult Use: Over 50% of adults require morning efficacy, presenting growth opportunities.
• Reimbursement: Strong reimbursement structure with 65% commercial and 35% Medicaid coverage.

For a detailed discussion of Collegium’s strategic initiatives and financial performance, please refer to the full transcript.

Full transcript - H.C. Wainwright 27th Annual Global Investment Conference:

Brandon Folks, Biopharma Analyst, HC Wainwright: Everyone. My name is Brandon Folks. I’m one of the biopharma analysts here at HC Wainwright. Next up, we have a fireside chat with Collegium Pharmaceutical. And from Collegium, I have joining me Vikram Karnani, the CEO.

I have Colleen Tupper, the CFO, and I have Scott Drab, key chief commercial officer. Thank you to all three of you for joining me.

Vikram Karnani, CEO, Collegium Pharmaceutical: Thanks for having us.

Brandon Folks, Biopharma Analyst, HC Wainwright: I I guess, Vikram, one thing I’m guilty of maybe is just jumping a little bit too quickly in. So maybe do you wanna just give a sort of one, two minute overview of the Collegium today? Because, obviously, company’s been around for a lot a while, but, you know, a lot’s going on over the last few years.

Vikram Karnani, CEO, Collegium Pharmaceutical: Yep. Happy to do that. Thanks for having us. Collegium is a is a strong leading biopharmaceutical company. We are primarily in two areas.

The the company was built on a long legacy of responsible pain management. So we have a pain franchise, which has differentiated pain products addressing chronic pain. That’s roughly 600,000,000 in net sales, highly efficient, highly profitable, with a very modest, sales and marketing infrastructure. The second franchise is ADHD with a with a medicine called Jorn APM that was added into our portfolio with the acquisition of Ionshore Therapeutics last September, so about a year ago. And that medicine, we guided previously this year to about a 135,000,000 plus in net sales, and more recently, we raised that guidance to $1.40 to $1.45.

So at a high level, about our our most recent guidance is about 745 to $760,000,000 in net sales with a, you know, almost approaching 60% EBITDA margin. So highly profitable company, leading cash generating company. Outside of those two areas, I think something that is important to know about us, we have a very solid disciplined capital deployment strategy, which is a balance of continuing to add more differentiated products and building out a portfolio, and at the same time, returning value to our shareholders through share repurchase programs. Since 2021, we have returned, more than 220,000,000 in, share repurchases, or in value to our shareholders. And more recent just recently, our board authorized a new share repurchase program up to $150,000,000 that goes through the 2026.

And the final, prong or or or leg of the capital deployment, stool, if you will, is paying down debt. So given our cash generation profile and highly profitable profile, we find ourselves to be in a very fortunate position where we can leverage our strong balance sheet and our strong position to acquire products, build a portfolio, but at the same time, buying the balance and return value to our shareholders as well as strengthen the balance sheet by paying down debt.

Brandon Folks, Biopharma Analyst, HC Wainwright: Great. I appreciate that. And so just diving in, you touched on the guidance for the year. Mhmm. Maybe just digging down into Jornay guidance.

Yep. You know, so management’s guiding for a very strong back half of the year relative to the first half. Prescriptions look very good in sort of justifying that guidance. But can you just walk us through sort of some of the key drivers of the Jornay momentum we are seeing? And, you know, especially the drivers in the second half of the year.

Right? Is that just normal second half of the year dynamics that we see, or, you know, is there stuff you’re doing on the ground? Can you just walk us through sort of the pushes and pulls of that guidance and that strength we’ll we are expecting?

Vikram Karnani, CEO, Collegium Pharmaceutical: Yep. Happy to do so. So first of all, it’s important to know that Jorn APM is a highly differentiated medicine in a otherwise crowded ADHD category. And why I say that is Jornet PM is the only ADHD medicine that is taken at night. All of the products are taken in the day.

And the reason you take it at night is because it has a delayed and extended release profile. So when you take it at night, it sits in your system. It gets absorbed in the colon, releases in the colon about eight to ten hours later. So when you take it at night, it releases in the morning, addresses a very important issue for ADHD patients, which is morning transition. The the after that, the extended release takes over, and it releases throughout the day and gives efficacy throughout the the afternoon and into the evening, which has an another important property, and that is that the medicine, because of its profile, may alleviate the need for a booster or an add on therapy.

The this the profile of this medicine, frankly, Journey was just not well appreciated in the marketplace. The awareness just wasn’t there. When we took over remember back in the first part of the year when we guided, we said a 135,000,000 plus. What we saw in q one and q two in the first half of the year after we, yeah. In fact, even before we expanded, but even since the expansion of the Salesforce, we’ve seen tremendous momentum in q one and in the summer months, which gave us a lot of confidence into coming into the second half of the year, very important phenomenon, which is the back to school season.

And the back to school season begins right about now and extends into the next several months. K? If you just look at the seasonality of this category and the seasonality of Journee PM, that alone gives us a lot of confidence into the demand that we should expect to see in the back half of the year. K? In addition to demand, another, very important, metric to look at is gross to net.

Just very typically in these categories, gross to nets typically start out a bit on the high side in q one, and then they normalize and and, you know, continue to go down as the year goes by. So when you think about the two main drivers of what gives us confidence in our full year guide, It is the momentum that came with with with which we came into, the second half of the year, the seasonality, the back to school season, which we’re kind of experiencing right now, and the gross to net improvement. If you take all of that together, that’s what resulted in our confidence in giving or raising our guidance.

Brandon Folks, Biopharma Analyst, HC Wainwright: Fantastic. And you you touched on Johna’s differentiation. Can you maybe just elaborate there in terms of a few things? Right? One, how you use that differentiation to drive share gains and where prescribers may use that in their toolbox in what you mentioned was a crowded field, but where you have differentiation?

And then secondly, you know, maybe, Scott, this is for you over, Vikram. But given the differentiation, how much physician education is there around the differentiation? And, you know, sort of does that drive sort of does that put a multiyear tailwind behind the growth?

Scott Drab, Chief Commercial Officer, Collegium Pharmaceutical: I wanna take that. Alright. So, yes, so as Vikram mentioned, highly differentiated product. I think the biggest thing is there’s still unmet need in the marketplace. So despite the fact there’s so many products, there’s a lot of generics.

There’s a lot of churn. People are always looking for new options. So this unique product that’s the only one dose in the evening that works upon awakening and through the day is truly innovative and different, and that’s the main thing that we’re leaning into. When we look about future growth and where it fits in the toolbox, methylphenidate as a therapeutic category. Right?

So you’ve got stimulants. You’ve got methylphenidate. You’ve got amphetamines. Methylphenidate skews towards pediatrics. So a lot of people think, oh, is Jornay only gonna be used for pediatrics?

Right? So here’s the answer to that. One, huge value value proposition for kids and and pedato. Why physicians think of methylphenidate there is because often there’s a need for efficacy upon awakening. Your child gets up for school.

It’s a crazy time. So that’s the natural place methylphenidate and Jornay would be used. But we recently completed some market research with adults, and it was fascinating what we found out. We found out that over fifty percent of adult patients actually say, I need efficacy upon awakening in the morning. When you talk to a physician, they don’t talk about that at all.

They don’t think it’s a need for adults. So it’s another area where we expect growth for Join APM. The momentum Vikram started to speak about, if you look at the second quarter, over 26,000 physicians wrote join APM. So it’s not about we’re still raising awareness, but that breadth is getting pretty strong. Now it’s about increasing where they use the product.

That was up 23 year over year. And so as we enter the second half of the year, Vikram mentioned back to school season. It’s a critical time. Two key events happen during back to school season. One, you have children getting ready to go back, and so the physician talks about treatment changes or a need for therapy.

But in October, people get their report cards. They check-in with the teacher. That’s also often a time of a lot of chain change. And so that will lead to momentum for Jorn APM besides the momentum we already built in the first half of the year. And an early indicator that people can look at is in the month of August, if you look at weekly prescriptions, they’re up about 1,200 prescriptions versus July.

That’s higher than what was last last year, we were up about a thousand prescriptions. So the season’s beginning, but I always wanna remind people, it’s not a back to school in August and then it ends. It carries through the year, frankly, through the end.

Vikram Karnani, CEO, Collegium Pharmaceutical: Yeah. I think your your the second part of your question was around, tailwind into the into the future. Look. Just if if you just look at what’s happening this year, and we’re not even we’re just about halfway through the year, and we’re entering back to school, which, as Scott described, is a critical period for this. But even in the second quarter, both prescriptions and prescribers were up 23%.

Our share gain, right, were we’re we seem to like the number 23 because we’re we’re at about 23% market share, which is also substantial growth from from where we started. So there is real tailwinds behind this product. We have we have not, at this point, given peak sales guidance partly because we’re still in the mode of realizing and assessing the impact of the investments that we’re that we’re making. We expanded the Salesforce that happened in q two. A lot of the nonpersonal promotion type of, you know, investments are actually taking place right now in time for back to school.

So it it’ll be a little bit of time before we can fully assess what is the inflection that we get from these investments so we can talk about, you know, what what future peak sales might look like. But make no mistake. I think what we’re seeing is very, very strong momentum even before the impact of the investments take place.

Brandon Folks, Biopharma Analyst, HC Wainwright: And that leads to my next question, right, about those investments, investments in the sales force. You know, we’ve talked a lot about this morning on the differentiation and profile. But now sort of as you have this broader sales force, how can they help drive uptake right near term? And then sort of how do you feel about the commercial infrastructure now? Sort of where does that investment get you to conceptually?

Obviously, we’ll see how the growth continues to go. But can you just talk about sort of the the goal of those investments?

Scott Drab, Chief Commercial Officer, Collegium Pharmaceutical: Yeah. So when it I think it’s a point instead. I can say, why did we expand the Salesforce? Right? So the key lever that we saw when we talk about the profile of the product is the awareness among physicians was not where it should be for a product five years on the market.

Right? So to improve that awareness, we expanded the Salesforce from a 125 to a 180 sales representatives. That’s gonna do two things. It allowed us to increase our targets. We went from 17,000 to 21,000 targets.

We’re getting to a broader set, but also allows us to increase the frequency of engagement with physicians. We’re trying to change behavior. Right? Jornay is differentiated and unique, but it’s also the first one that’s dosed in the evening. Right?

And so that expansion allows us to raise awareness and move physicians along that continuum over where they use it. So so that’s a a big investment we’re excited about, and we think it’s gonna have real impact on expanding the use of the product. The second investment area was actually with patients directly when Vikram spoke to DTC. Why that’s so critical is if you think about the profile that we shared, that’s a profile that can make a difference that parents, caregivers were unaware of. In market research, we would show them product x, and they’d say, could I get that for my child?

There was zero awareness. So we’re making significant investments there because what we know is parents, caregivers are interested, and physician perceptions are strong. So when a parent or patient goes in and says, I’d like to try Jornay, the physician’s more than willing to honor that request. So those are the the two big investments we’re making to grow in the future. In terms of size of the Salesforce you alluded to, we did not take a stepwise approach.

We sized at a 180 representatives because that’s the right size for the business right now and for that target universe. And we have plenty of powder. We could afford to do more. And if we find that we need to do more because the market evolves, we’ll do that. But we’re sized exactly where we should be for now.

Brandon Folks, Biopharma Analyst, HC Wainwright: Fantastic. And and maybe just lastly on, Jornay, before we move to the rest of the business. Can you just talk about reimbursement levels? You know, Collegium as a company has been pretty innovative and nimble on the reimbursement side in the past. Product has been on the market for a while.

So, you know, how comfortable are you with sort of where you are with reimbursement?

Scott Drab, Chief Commercial Officer, Collegium Pharmaceutical: Yeah. It’s a great question. So one thing that was very nice is we acquired the product in a situation where there was strong reimbursement. Right? So very different than our pain business.

In this business, it’s 65% commercial, 35% Medicaid, full coverage in Medicaid. And then in commercial, really good coverage of about 75%. There’s a couple of plans that there isn’t coverage. But what’s different about this business is we have an aggressive co pay program where we’re able to offset cost for the patient. So what we try to do in a highly genericized category is ensure that even if the product’s not on formulary, we can help the patient have it at a cost that’s reasonable for out of pocket.

And so we’re good. We always will try to expand coverage for our products, but we’re only gonna do it in a way that economically works for our p and l.

Brandon Folks, Biopharma Analyst, HC Wainwright: Fantastic. And I I do wanna switch gears to the pain portfolio because it still generates a tremendous amount of revenue and cash flow. So when we think about overall growth there, as a portfolio continues to grow individually within the products, seems to be some growth. So can you just talk about how you achieve growth this sort of late in the product’s life cycle? And we’ll stop there for now because I don’t want to say late in the product’s life cycle because it’s not towards the end, but we’ll get to sort of the exclusivity.

It could be a long runway. But I guess, at this stage, so many years after launch, can you just talk about how some of these products still eke out growth?

Vikram Karnani, CEO, Collegium Pharmaceutical: Yep. Happy to. I think, you know, going back to what I started out with, about 600,000,000 in net sales comes from the pain portfolio, highly profitable. The company has done an amazing job over the last several years of continuing to find ways to grow net revenue even in the face of pressure on scripts, as an example. Right?

So we are able to balance script growth or script performance with profitability and and deliver single digit revenue growth for this pain franchise. As an example, we’ve talked about low single digits as as something that that should be expected in terms of growth. But in q two, this business delivered 7% growth year over year. So I, you know, I think I think as you said earlier, Collegium has been very good in terms of understanding the reimbursement dynamics and and market access, and we’re able to balance that phenomena with script growth to continue to deliver revenue growth for this business.

Brandon Folks, Biopharma Analyst, HC Wainwright: Fantastic. And staying on the port the pain portfolio, just moving to exclusivity. Right? I’m sure question you’ve been asked many times. But, you know, when we think about, call it, three key criteria, right, for a generic to launch, I guess, how confident are you in your exclusivity projections or exclusivity line of sight right now?

What line of sight do you have? And, you know, have any of the potential generics maybe satisfied two of those key requirements? How what is the latest update, I guess, because you probably get asked this every time you get in front of people on the generic situation?

Unidentified speaker: So I would make probably two broad comments across the entire pain portfolio, inclusive of Nucynta, Belguica, and Xtampza, which is no party has satisfied all three of those requirements. And I think what that will lead to is a longer and more robust tail than you otherwise would expect. Specifically for the Nucynta franchise, predominantly two of the three milestones have been met. It’s been fully litigated and most tentative approvals are in place. What the most significant barrier there is access to tapentadol.

There’s a limited number of DMFs approved in The US and only one of those is at commercial scale, that’s our exclusive supplier. To date, our understanding is that nobody invested to bring up to commercial scale. On the BELBUCA side, there is one potential entrant with a settlement date of January 2027. It really becomes a strategic question for that party on whether or not they will enter the market. There are numerous other adjacent products that they have not entered or they’ve withdrawn from the market for.

So we’re prudent. We plan base case to expect someone will arrive, but there’s so much there’s enough uncertainty there that we’re not going to make investment or market access decisions in advance of that. We’ll pull those levers when and if someone arrives.

Brandon Folks, Biopharma Analyst, HC Wainwright: And that is my next question. Can you just elaborate on those levers? You know, is multiple scenarios, how are you planning for potential different scenarios in case sort of, you know, one of these generics show up, you still have a pain portfolio with multiple branded products out there. Right? So can you just elaborate on sort of the levers you have and the planning that goes into these multiple scenarios?

Unidentified speaker: That’s right. An important point that you just said is if one shows up. So I think in any case, this is not going to be a multisource generic situation, particularly for BELBUCA because Xtampza and BELBUCA are sort of in that top detail position. If there is generic competition, first and foremost, we do have an authorized generic strategy in place. And then secondly, when and if that happens, we will make the appropriate changes to our cost structure.

Brandon Folks, Biopharma Analyst, HC Wainwright: Fantastic. And I want to bring this back to the beginning, Vikram. You talked about the capital deployment and the return to shareholders that you have made over the last few years. Combine that with an acquisitive strategy. Can you talk about the balance sheet today, how you view your capital allocation going forward and sort of maybe where you are in the Jornay last cycle in terms of getting to peak sales, are you still, you know, on the business development, capital deployment side of things?

Are you still looking at deploying that side? How do you think about capital allocation maybe near term and sort of mid to longer term?

Vikram Karnani, CEO, Collegium Pharmaceutical: Yep. So our objective is to deliver both near term and long term value to shareholders. Right? It’s a it in order to do that, we like I said before, we have we look at all three ways to generate value. We have been an acquisitive company.

We have previously talked about continuing to look for other assets to bring into the portfolio. They have to meet the financial criteria that that we’ve set for ourselves, and we’re we are pretty disciplined about that. But in lieu of that, in lieu of and we’re as you know, we’re a cash generating company. If we don’t have necessarily an asset to bring, we have previously demonstrated that we’re willing to return value to our shareholders through our share repurchase program. And then finally, and then Colleen is, you know, a a big steward of this, but we also look at ways to bring down or pay down debt and strengthen the balance sheet.

So we we continue to look at all three ways to deliver value, both near term and long term, to our shareholders, and that remains the case. I think one thing you asked about in terms of our our the strength of our balance sheet. Today, we’re you know, we talked at our at our q two earnings call. We’re about 1.4 times net debt over EBITDA, k, and we expect that leverage to go to below one by the end of the year, which again gives us, the strength and the flexibility of our balance sheet to, acquire the right asset for the company, without, you know, without overextending ourselves. So I think I think that disciplined business development, disciplined capital allocation strategy, and approach is what you should expect to continue to see from us.

Brandon Folks, Biopharma Analyst, HC Wainwright: Fantastic. We are out of time. So I do thank you all for joining us, and congrats on the success to date.

Vikram Karnani, CEO, Collegium Pharmaceutical: Thank you for having Brandon.

Unidentified speaker: Thank you.

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