Earnings call transcript: Botanix Pharma sees 65% sales boost in Q1 2026

Botanix Pharmaceuticals reported a robust start to fiscal year 2026 with a significant 65% increase in net sales for Q1, reaching $7.1 million. The company also reported improved operating cash flow of $13.1 million. Despite these strong financials, the stock saw a notable rise of 12.07%, reflecting positive investor sentiment. According to InvestingPro data, the company’s impressive revenue growth of 179.74% over the last twelve months suggests sustained momentum, though the stock remains significantly below its 52-week high of $0.35.

Key Takeaways

• Net sales surged 65% quarter-over-quarter to $7.1 million.
• Operating costs decreased by 29%, enhancing profit margins.
• The launch of Sofdra marks a major product innovation with FDA approval.
• Stock price increased by 12.07% following the earnings report.

Company Performance

Botanix Pharmaceuticals demonstrated strong performance in Q1 FY2026, driven by a 65% increase in net sales compared to the previous quarter. This growth can be attributed to the successful launch of Sofdra, a new treatment for hyperhidrosis, which has been well-received in the market. The company’s strategic expansion of its sales force and innovative product offerings have positioned it well within the competitive dermatology sector. InvestingPro analysis shows the company maintains a strong financial health score of 2.08 (FAIR), with a particularly robust relative value score of 3.04. For deeper insights into Botanix’s financial health and growth potential, access the comprehensive Pro Research Report, available exclusively to InvestingPro subscribers.

Financial Highlights

• Net sales: $7.1 million, a 65% increase quarter-over-quarter.
• Operating cash flow: $13.1 million.
• Product manufacturing costs: Reduced by 81% to $2.2 million.
• Operating costs: Decreased by 29% to $10.2 million.
• Gross-to-net yield: Improved to 23% from 21% in the previous quarter.

Outlook & Guidance

Botanix Pharmaceuticals is optimistic about its future prospects, projecting double-digit revenue growth and continued expansion of its sales force. The company aims to achieve profitability swiftly, with plans to enhance its product lifecycle management and explore new strengths and applicators for Sofdra. While development projects for its CBD platform are currently on hold, InvestingPro data reveals analyst consensus is strongly bullish, with a 1.67 recommendation score and projected revenue growth of 783% for FY2026. The company maintains a healthy balance sheet with more cash than debt, though InvestingPro Tips indicate rapid cash burn remains a concern.

Executive Commentary

Dr. Howie McKibbon, CEO of Botanix Pharmaceuticals, expressed enthusiasm about the company’s future, stating, "We’re excited to see what the new sales reps are going to do." He emphasized the company’s focus on maximizing Sofdra’s market potential and achieving profitability quickly. Dr. McKibbon also highlighted the rarity of new chemical entities, noting, "New chemical entities are rare. There were only 33 approved so far this year and we’re 10 months in."

Risks and Challenges

• Potential regulatory changes could impact market dynamics.
• Market saturation in the dermatology sector may pose growth challenges.
• Economic uncertainties and healthcare policy shifts could affect patient access and affordability.
• The delay in CBD platform development might limit diversification opportunities.

Botanix Pharmaceuticals’ Q1 FY2026 results reflect a strong start to the year, with significant sales growth and operational improvements. The company’s strategic initiatives and product innovations have bolstered its competitive position, while its stock price movement indicates positive investor confidence.

Full transcript - Botanix Pharmaceuticals Ltd (BOT) Q1 2026:

Vincent/Chris, CFO/Executive, Botanix: Vincent.

Vince Ippolito, Executive Chairman, Botanix: I’m Vince Ippolito, the Executive Chairman. I’m joining you from our U.S. headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona. Joining with me on this presentation this morning live from Australia are both our Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Howie McKibbon, and our Chief Financial Officer, Chris Lesovitz. We’ve got almost 350 participants that were pre-registered for this conference today. Following the presentation, we’re going to take some Q and A. Obviously, with that many people, we’ll take as many as we can in the time that is permitted here for it. David, would you advance to the next slide please? I’d like to point out in our investor update is an important notice and disclaimers that this presentation may contain certain forward-looking statements. I would encourage you to view our 4C quarterly cash report and this Q1 fiscal year 2026 investor update. More importantly, read our important notices and disclaimers.

With that, I’m going to turn the presentation over to Dr. Howie McKibbon. Howie?

Dr. Howie McKibbon, Chief Executive Officer, Botanix: Yeah. Thank you, Vince. And thank you all for joining the Botanix Q1 quarterly update. Chris and I are out here in Noosa for the Canaccord Wilson’s Drug and Device Conference, followed by a road show next week in Sydney and Mel. We’re going to do this a few times a year, typically following one of our filings. Today, we’ll provide a corporate overview. For those of you that are new to the Botanix story, we’re going to review our strong Q1 commercial performance, discuss our key financial highlights which leave us in a very strong financial position to support profitability, and then we’re going to preview our Q2 activity. Next slide please, David. Again, for those that are new, Botanix is a fast growing dermatology company. With the recent successful launch of our flagship product, Sofdra for hyperhidrosis, commonly referred to as excessive sweating.

Sofdra is the first and only new chemical entity for primary axillary hyperhidrosis, which affects over 10 million patients in the U.S. alone. To put that in perspective, the value of a new chemical entity, there’s only been 33 of those approved this year in the U.S. for all therapeutic categories combined. It costs about $250 million to get one approved. That doesn’t take into consideration any of the cost of the failures. What sets Botanix apart from other dermatology companies in the U.S. is the innovative platform that we have. It increases patient compliance, improves gross-to-net, provides dermatologists with an experience that gives them confidence that when they prescribe Sofdra, their patients are going to get it quickly with little or no friction coming back to their office staff. We’re in a strong capital position with cash of almost $50 million and another $15 million of undrawn debt.

Finally, we’re well positioned for growth. Sofdra is meeting an unmet need in a large marketplace. As of today, we’ve expanded to 50 sales representatives actively selling our compound. The fulfillment platform is performing at a very high level. It’s working extremely well for both physician and patient experience with refills, and we’ve scaled it so that you could add additional products to it as they become available. Now keep in mind before we go to the next slide, today we have 50 sales professionals. Everything that we’re going to review today was done with 27. We’re very excited about our future prospects of what Sofdra can do. Next slide please. We have a pretty experienced U.S.-based executive leadership team here that’s launched over 30 products in the dermatology space. When I say launch, they’ve developed, secured approval for, and commercialized each of those products.

They’ve also had a collection of successful exits from Anacor, Medicis, Dermavant, and Cassiopeia in multiple therapeutic areas. Next slide please, David. Now, what’s interesting about this category is that it’s the third largest category or therapeutic area in dermatology. We often think of psoriasis as a large therapeutic area and it’s done very well for the companies that are in that space. To put that in perspective, primary hyperhidrosis has twice the amount of patients that psoriasis has. When you think about that, from a U.S. population with the 300, now almost 350 million Americans that are out there, 16.1 million have some type of hyperhidrosis. 10 million have primary axillary hyperhidrosis or excessive sweating underneath the arms. 3.7 million of those patients are already in the doctor’s office.

That’s allowed us to expand our sales force to meet that demand, those patients’ need, and also to more physicians over time. Next slide please. Let’s talk a little bit about the product itself. Our FDA-approved indication is the treatment of primary axillary hyperhidrosis in adults and pediatric patients 9 years of age or older. We met our co-primary endpoints with high statistical significance on a patient-reported measure. In an objective measure, what’s unique about this product or unique about Sofdra is we’ve also hit on all key secondary endpoints. It was very safe and well tolerated in clinical trials. No serious treatment-emergent adverse events. What we really like about it is that in real-world data that we get back, it’s performing at or even better than the profile that we see here.

The proprietary drug delivery system allows patients to limit unwanted drug contact to hands during application and ensures consistent dosing. We believe this profile is directly related to the unique mechanism of action that Sofdra possesses. It binds selectively to the muscarinic 3 receptor of the sweat gland. It blocks acetylcholine to inhibit the sweat signal and, just as important, is rapidly metabolizing to a fairly inert molecule that’s excreted, rendering this clean side effect profile. Next slide. David, I want to talk briefly about our fulfillment platform. I said earlier that this really differentiates us from other dermatology companies in the United States. It does this because it provides seamless fulfillment for physicians and patients. We have an increase in reimbursed prescriptions because we shepherd those physicians’ offices through the prior author clearance process that’s required for many insurance companies.

We have adherence rates or refill rates that are two and a half times the industry standard. Just as important through all this, because we skip the wholesaler, we’re saving upwards of 18% to 20% over time in our gross-to-net. We’re able to get very good insights with the data we get from CindRx, which allow us to make faster decisions. One of those decisions was to expand the sales force because of the promotional sensitivity that we were able to identify much earlier than if we had to wait on the data. One of the quotes from one of our derms, there’s many like this, is that I’ve never used a specialty pharmacy that’s been as seamless as CindRx. Let me caveat this. This doesn’t happen every time, but this did in this case. I put prescription in on a Friday afternoon.

The patient had their medication by Saturday morning. It does happen, but within a few days, the vast majority of patients do get their medicine. Let’s turn to our strong commercial performance. Over the last quarter, total prescriptions grew by 50% over Q4. That was driven by our fulfillment platform and strong production from our sales team. 20,418 total prescriptions shipped. For the quarter, we had $7.1 million net sales, an increase of 65% quarter over quarter and a gross-to-net yield of 23%, which is 2 points higher than the 21% gross-to-net yield for the prior quarter. Next slide.

When we take a look at this over time, we’re seeing consistent growth in the volume of our total prescriptions shipped, which reflects on the production of the sales force, the activity of the sales force, and how well they’ve done to quickly get out to these physicians and get the right reach and frequency on our target base. Next slide please, David. As you would expect, you see similar growth here with regard to your net sales going from $4.3 million to $7.1 million quarter over quarter, and the quarterly average gross-to-net yield has improved quarter over quarter and we believe will continue to improve. You will see fluctuations in our gross-to-net. However, we’re seeing all the right indicators that this will continue in a pathway that’s positive for the company.

Now we’ll turn it over to Chris to talk about some of the financial highlights and the focus on the fiscal discipline that’s allowed us to yield the results that we’ve got. Chris? Perfect. Thank you, Howie.

Vincent/Chris, CFO/Executive, Botanix: I’m excited to share our Q1 fiscal year 2026 results and outlook. We’ve made meaningful progress this quarter. We’ve had strong revenue growth, disciplined cost management, and a solid liquidity position that sets us up for continued success. As you can see, our operating cash flow improved significantly to $13.1 million, down from the prior quarter of $28.4 million. This improvement reflects our lower operating and manufacturing cost combined with our higher receipts to product sales. Our inventory closed at approximately $29 million, giving us the capacity to support our planned Salesforce expansion in Q2 without any disruption. Most importantly, available funding stands at $64.4 million. This is inclusive of $49.2 million in cash and $15.2 million in undrawn debt facility. The strong liquidity position provides the runway to support Sofdra growth and other strategic initiatives we have planned. Next slide please, David.

On the cost side, we delivered substantial improvements. Product manufacturing costs dropped 81% from $11.2 million to $2.2 million. This quarter reflects no purchases of drug substance, commonly referred to as API. The costs during the quarter represent our steady state level when converting raw materials into finished goods without any API purchases. Our operating cost fell 29% from $14.4 million to $10.2 million. This was driven by the pre-launch activities around our marketing campaigns which occurred during fiscal year 2025 Q4. Our G&A cost declined 22%. This went from $2.4 million to $1.9 million. This decrease was also due to legal expenses associated with launch activities that occurred in Q4 fiscal year 2025. Our total net cash used in operating activities improved by 54% from $28.4 million to $13.1 million. Looking ahead, we are focused on growth and execution as Howie mentioned.

We plan to expand our sales force from 27 reps to 50 in the coming quarters. This investment will accelerate our revenue growth but will also increase sales and marketing expenses. Our manufacturing costs will remain at steady state levels when converting our raw materials into our finished goods, and again without any API purchases in the near term. We’re expecting double-digit revenue growth to continue with our expanded sales coverage and strong demand signals that we see ahead. With that said, next slide and send it back to Howie.

Dr. Howie McKibbon, Chief Executive Officer, Botanix: Thank you, Chris, and sorry about that, folks. We have landscapers coming by at the most inopportune time, so we’ll work through this as we move to fiscal year Q2. We’re encouraged by the fact that our sales team has averaged more prescriptions and more net revenue per rep in the first three quarters than any of the recent derm launches and some of the more successful derm launches that have occurred over the past few years. We’re encouraged because we’ve just expanded our sales force from 27 to 50. Let me just clarify here. What they’ve achieved so far was a sales force that wasn’t at 100%, meaning at 50 sales reps. This is just with the 27. We did hire six additional sales representatives back in July on our way to 50. However, we did take that opportunity to turn over some of the underperforming territories.

We had five vacancies. At any given point during the quarter, we had between 27 and 28 sales representatives. We’re very excited to see what the new sales reps are going to do. We were excited to see as the original sales reps’ territories continue to grow. We now have a blueprint for both the success and the predictability of what the additional 23 will do in their new territories where they’re calling on physicians who are naive to the Sofdra message. Next slide. You can see here February to June, 27 active sales professionals on our way to today actually being the first day where all 50 are going to be actively selling Sofdra.

Just to reiterate and clarify, and I’ve gotten this question a couple of times, 27 sales reps up until June, we hired six new sales reps, but during that time five of the original territories were vacant. Now we are going to add on the production of what was done by 27 or 28 sales representatives up until now, moving forward as we go into Q2. Next slide. I’d also like to note as we go on in Q2 that interest in Sofdra remains high amongst dermatologists, both key opinion leaders and practicing dermatologists. We’re having multiple presentations that were accepted and will be presented at leading dermatology conferences, both Fall Clinical and the Society of Dermatology Physician Associates in October and November.

Quite a bit of activity where first and foremost they’ve authored the posters with a number of their colleagues, second, they’ve taken part in the submission process, and third, they’ll be at these meetings and whether they’re discussing the data from the podium or in front of a poster, there’s additional conversations going on at a peer to peer level in the dermatology community. Next slide please. We’re very pleased with the output and success of this quarter, both with regard to what the sales representatives or sales professionals have done, how the fulfillment platform has operated, and where our finances came in with regard to spend. There’s a strong opportunity, as we’ve shown or discussed today, for Elite Asset Sofdra. I’ll just reiterate here, new chemical entities are rare. There were only 33 approved so far this year and we’re 10 months in.

Sofdra is performing as we might expect or better than we’ve expected with regard to the clinical and safety profile. Dermatologists are highly promotionally sensitive to the product and as we expand to 50 sales reps, we’re excited to see the numbers that will come along with it. We’ve discussed our differentiated platform, both what it’s doing now for patients, physicians, and refills, but also what it could do when and if other products become available. It’s scaled now to be able to perform at a high level with exponentially higher throughput. All those things give us a solid foundation for growth and a pathway to profitability and we’ll be focused on that and look forward to speaking to you again at our next filing. Thank you very much for your time, Vince.

Vince Ippolito, Executive Chairman, Botanix: Thank you very much. We’re going to now turn to the Q and A and we’ve got a number of questions here. What I’m going to attempt to do is try to put a few of these questions together here, those that have been repeated a number of times. I’m going to take these pretty much in the order that they came in. The first question is a culmination of a number of questions, Howie, and it’s on the Q1 gross-to-net that it was 23% and was the same as the last quarter. There was a number of other questions about, with the current performance that we have today, how do we expect to get to that 30% to 40% range that we’ve indicated now?

Dr. Howie McKibbon, Chief Executive Officer, Botanix: Thank you very much, Vince. The gross-to-net for last quarter was 21% and exited at 23%. Keep in mind, we’re going to see month-to-month fluctuations over time. The quarterly gross-to-net provides the actuals. When you see a monthly gross-to-net, we don’t know exactly what it is until the rebates come in from a managed care perspective. As I said earlier, the quarterly gross-to-net provides the actual. This is because as those rebates come in and align with quarters, they align with quarters and not months. Each time we report the 4C mid-year or full year, we’ll have the actual quarterly gross-to-nets. Now, that said, how do we get from what’s 23% over for this quarter, ultimately to 30% to 40%? A couple of drivers get us there. First and foremost, as prior auths are approved at an exceedingly positive rate, the gross-to-net improves.

There are a couple of components to that. The more they get approved, the better the gross-to-net. The more that are submitted, the more ultimately get approved. Those two levers, whether it be increased submission or increased approval rates, improve the gross-to-net over time. Number two, what we see is with each refill, the net selling price, the average net selling price of the fill goes up. It makes sense because you have time to get through the insurance clearance process, but it’s certainly something that we watch over time. Along those lines, with refill rates 2.5 times the industry standard, giving us so far five to six fills per patient in the time that’s elapsed, we’re confident that that trend will continue. I think that answers the question, Vince. There’s a part I didn’t touch upon. Let me know if there’s a follow-up that you see coming through.

Happy to address.

Vince Ippolito, Executive Chairman, Botanix: Yeah, I think that covers the gross-to-net question here as I’m just scrolling through right now. Let’s turn. There was about three or four questions on the new patient arrivals and a couple questions on reporting total prescriptions. What is the definition of total prescription? How do we think about that metric? Why aren’t we breaking out new patient arrivals and the refills anymore?

Dr. Howie McKibbon, Chief Executive Officer, Botanix: Yeah, that’s a good question. In my experience, in over, you know, personally, 20 launches, new patient arrivals are a good leading indicator for the first few months of launch. We utilize those prior to having actual metrics like total prescriptions shipped, gross-to-net yield, and net sales. We’ve discussed the reason why. Sometimes there’s a lag there until you understand those trends. We focus on those metrics internally to understand not only the direction of the business, but also to make adjustments in real time. TRXs or total prescriptions shipped are everything that goes out the door. That number encompasses a new prescription and a refill, so it’s the total prescriptions that go out. Obviously, that’s something that we measure and focus on. New patients and refills are both components of those new prescriptions that I spoke to earlier.

As an aside, you might continue to see in some cases, new patient arrivals are typically utilized in rare disease categories because there’s so few patients, and you’ll see that from time to time. With regard to small molecules, in my experience, it’s not something that we continue to report on. Rather, look at total prescriptions, gross-to-net yield, net sales.

Vince Ippolito, Executive Chairman, Botanix: Thank you, Howie. Let’s go to the next question here. There was a couple here on the growth of the prescriber base. The physicians who are prescribing Sofdra right now, what does that growth look like today?

Dr. Howie McKibbon, Chief Executive Officer, Botanix: I can address what it was. In Q1, there were almost 2,900 unique prescribers. That is going to, the rate and change of that is going to change or differ based on what our strategy is. Some quarters we will be focused on frequency or the number of calls sales professionals make on high potential targets. Other quarters we’ll be extending reach. That said, unique prescribers are going to grow organically because we just added 23 sales representatives in parts of the country where physicians haven’t been covered. It’s not a key metric we report on. Always happy to answer it. We consistently monitor that to ensure that quarterly goals are being met based on our strategy, whether it’s increased reach, meaning getting to more physicians, or increased frequency, getting to the most high value physicians.

Keep in mind those 2,900 unique prescribers, or roughly 2,900 unique prescribers, were hit with 27 sales representatives. You’ll see that number grow over time. In some quarters it will grow more than others based on the direction that we’re giving the sales force and how the incentive compensation plan is created to support that strategy.

Vince Ippolito, Executive Chairman, Botanix: Good, thank you. Another question just popped up, Howie, and I think you just answered it on what do you expect from the 50 reps that will be coming in? You expect the unique prescribers to grow as we get into these new territories. Thank you for that.

Dr. Howie McKibbon, Chief Executive Officer, Botanix: Sorry to interrupt here. I do think there’s a good blueprint here for what the new sales representatives will do because they’re not calling on territories that are already populated. They’re going to areas where for the most part the majority of the physicians haven’t seen a sales representative yet. I guess the difference would be they do have key learnings from the 27 initial territories. We believe there’s no reason to think the 23 wouldn’t behave with regard to their output as the original 27 did starting back in February on the same ramp.

Vince Ippolito, Executive Chairman, Botanix: Good, thank you. Chris, I think this one is for you. There were a few questions here about the G&A and operating cost, and the questions really centered around, compared to the last quarter, the significant drop that we had. Where did this drop really come from? Chris, you’re on mute.

Vincent/Chris, CFO/Executive, Botanix: All right, David, Vince, good question. Start with the operating cost first. As we mentioned during our last quarter, we’re going to take a strategic look at the marketing expenditures. Two areas that contributed to the degree square we transitioned to in-office programs. Prior, we were going down to traditional speaker programs. Moving from the traditional speaker program to in-office, it significantly lowered our event-related cost and it also enhanced our quality of interactions with healthcare providers. In addition, we had a reallocation of promotional spend, we shifted our direct-to-consumer campaigns and we went towards more of a targeted healthcare professional engagement. This also decreased our marketing expenditures. From a G&A perspective, lower legal and compliance-related cost this quarter compared to last quarter. A lot of this has to do with the launch activities like the speaker programs and compliance cost associated with those type of programs.

I’d like to jump on one other question I saw about the staff cost. The question I think was how did it decline with the new hiring of reps? Just to be clear with everybody on the call, the rep cost are included in the operating cost line item. Staff cost is internal corporate employees. You will see in the future operating cost increased with the additional hires from 27 to 50 reps. The decline in staff cost that we see currently in this current quarter was a one-time payment for an employee stock compensation exercise that we did in Q4, fiscal year 2025. The current quarter that we see in fiscal year 2026 is our current stable base staff cost. Back to you, Vince.

Vince Ippolito, Executive Chairman, Botanix: Yeah, Chris, a question just came up too as I’m seeing this around. Just an understanding of the API purchases that we make. Purchases from quarter to quarter here. You’re not anticipating any API purchases as you state upcoming quarter. How does that work? Can you maybe just talk a little bit about how we gate that and why are there periods when there’s no API purchases versus those that we have them, such as what we reported last year in fiscal 2025.

Vincent/Chris, CFO/Executive, Botanix: Sure. You see, last year we had a significant amount of API purchases sitting on our books. We have $29 million of inventory. Again, as I stated prior, that’s plenty of inventory for the additional reps and the future growth of Sofdra. The increase in inventory from year end to Q1 went up $1 million. This is the manufacturing cost that it takes to manufacture the raw material into a finished good. Every quarter you’ll see that when we convert raw materials to finished goods, the big fluctuations are when we go out and we purchase the API. That occurs during our supply chain processing based on demand, when we have to pull the trigger on future API purchases.

Vince Ippolito, Executive Chairman, Botanix: Okay, great. I know we’re running short on time here, but I do have a few more questions that I want to get out here that I’ve seen. Howie, this one’s for you. When do we expect to reach profitability?

Dr. Howie McKibbon, Chief Executive Officer, Botanix: All right. Can you hear me okay?

Vince Ippolito, Executive Chairman, Botanix: Yeah, yeah, we have you now. Thank you.

Dr. Howie McKibbon, Chief Executive Officer, Botanix: All right, perfect. Sorry about that. We haven’t given guidance, as you typically wouldn’t this early into a launch. That said, all the decisions that we’ve made with regard to cost shifting, right, from direct to consumer to additional sales representatives, are done with a focus on getting to profitability as quickly as possible in the most efficient way.

Vince Ippolito, Executive Chairman, Botanix: Right.

Dr. Howie McKibbon, Chief Executive Officer, Botanix: Without making any sacrifices to the brand, we’ve been able to do that based on promotional sensitivity and response from physicians, the data that we’re getting from Sendrx on a daily basis, and then an understanding of what the cash flow is going to be now that we have an idea of what the initial trends look like. Though we haven’t commented on that specifically as a company, that’s our number one goal, to maximize the opportunity for Sofdra and get the profitability as quickly as possible and be the fastest dermatology company in the U.S. to profitability. I know that doesn’t answer your question directly. We’re not trying to sidestep it. We just haven’t given that guidance yet. We will continue to provide the right metrics so that you can also make your estimates as to when the company will be there.

Vince Ippolito, Executive Chairman, Botanix: Okay, thank you. You know what, I’m going to take this next one here. There was about three questions on the CBD platform and what we’re doing with the acne programs, rosacea, the anti-infective programs. Currently those development projects are on hold right now. When we acquired Sofdra, all time and attention and every resource went to making Sofdra a great success. That is currently our focus today. Now those programs, we got some good results. Matter of fact, the rosacea programs, the anti-infective programs, we’re very pleased with the results. Those particular assets that we have sitting there in development right now, we’ve got long patent protection, so we’re comfortable not having to accelerate them through right now. At this time, every dollar that the company has is being poured into Sofdra to make it a success.

I hope we get back to a time where we could turn our attention back to development. The next phase of those particular clinical trials that would have to be done would be very costly and the company would have to make the decisions. Are those resources better used to accelerate sales of Sofdra, purchase additional assets, or begin to continue to move forward those development programs? Okay, Howie, there was a question about managed care and did we have any significant movements, meaning new insurance companies? Did anybody change their requirements significantly on the prior authorization process? What kind of occurred in the last quarter here relative to our commercial insurance?

Dr. Howie McKibbon, Chief Executive Officer, Botanix: As we discussed earlier, we’ve had contracts with the major pharmacy benefit managers or PBMs in place for quite some time now. There’s an opportunity for regional plans to sign up for rebates over time and some of them will take advantage of it and some of them will not. Why they do that one way or the other will depend on the requirements of the prior auth that the PBM puts out. That’s a long-winded, confusing way to say that a few regional plans have signed on that now get coverage or make coverage a little bit easier for Sofdra. However, on the flip side, you now pay a rebate for it, but not a major change in managed care. Medicaid, we go through state by state. Said another way, the vast majority of states are covering Medicaid patients.

Before we roll that out broadly to our physician base, we make sure that we test the process of getting the prescription for Medicaid patients through the prior authorization or clearance. We do that because the physicians are so happy with the way that Send Our X works right now we want to make sure that we give them the same experience with a Medicaid patient that they do with a commercial patient. As you may or may not know, we can’t buy down the co-pay or gap payment for Medicaid patients. We take that in a stepwise fashion. Just to summarize, minor shifts in managed care coverage, but not significant with regard to the number of lives, and Medicaid is currently being rolled out on a state-by-state basis. We haven’t taken full advantage of that yet. It’s part of the plan to do so.

It was part of the plan in our prelaunch activity to get coverage for Medicaid. More to come on that, but certainly excited about the future opportunities there for those Medicaid patients.

Vince Ippolito, Executive Chairman, Botanix: Great question here about Sofdra. The question came around the fact that they noticed Sofdra has a couple of different strengths. How are we thinking about different strengths of sofpironium bromide and any type of life cycle management at this time?

Dr. Howie McKibbon, Chief Executive Officer, Botanix: That’s a good question. You know, without saying too much from a competitive perspective, I’ll just start with we’re pleased with Catkins results. They continue to grow year over year with their total prescription count and to be four years past their launch and continuing growing at this rate is encouraging for us that the initial life cycle could be longer than other derm products. Very positive there. They’ve had a very good experience with their twist top applicator. Patients love it. They’re getting the majority of their patients to either start on their twist top applicator or switch to that. We’re exploring that as an opportunity in the United States as well. Of course, you can’t just assume that because it’s like there, they’ll like it here. There’s a little bit of market research that goes on with that.

We’re ensuring that we put the opportunity in place for us to potentially use their applicator with regard to strengths in the future. They’re out there with a 5% and potentially over time we could go out with a different concentration as well to elongate the product life cycle. Just keep in mind, first and foremost, this product goes out all the way to 2040. We’re excited about maximizing what we do have with the current product while ensuring that you have what we call a product or a pipeline in a product where you might have a new applicator, a new strength, and potentially someday it goes over the counter for a certain strength. Those are all things that we plan for.

I don’t think you look in the short term for this because to have a new chemical entity with IP or patent protection that goes out to 2040 is a rare opportunity. Our focus now in the next two years is just to continue on with this launch curve.

Vince Ippolito, Executive Chairman, Botanix: Great, thank you. I think the other thing that’s worth noting too about Kaken is now they’re in their fourth year of launch, and we’re very impressed still with their ability to be able to market the product and continue to grow the product. Uniquely, what we see is when they put investments into promotional programs there, the product is still very highly promotionally responsive, even in its fourth year. It’s great to have a partner like Kaken, most certainly with the experience being four years out. Howie and Chris, that is all the time we have for right now. I’d like to thank the two of you, and I’d like to thank all the panelists for their participation here, but most certainly all of you that have joined us here today. As I mentioned, we had over 350 people pre-registered for this webinar.

We greatly appreciate you spending time with us here on this update and look forward to speaking to you again. Thank you and have a good day.

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