Exelixis at Jefferies Conference: Strategic Moves for Growth

Published 04/06/2025, 14:12
Exelixis at Jefferies Conference: Strategic Moves for Growth

On Wednesday, 04 June 2025, Exelixis (NASDAQ:EXEL) participated in the Jefferies Global Healthcare Conference 2025, presenting a comprehensive update on its strategic initiatives. The company highlighted both its promising developments and challenges, focusing on its leading pipeline program, zanzalutinib (Zanza), and its differentiation from cabozantinib (Cabo). Exelixis emphasized its business-driven approach, aiming for efficient capital use and strategic partnerships to enhance patient outcomes.

Key Takeaways

  • Exelixis projects a $5 billion market opportunity for Zanza, driven by six pivotal studies.
  • The company is focusing on strategic partnerships, notably with Merck, to enhance drug development.
  • Cabozantinib (Cabo) continues to perform strongly in first-line RCC, supported by positive data.
  • Exelixis is committed to expanding its market presence through internal and external collaborations.
  • The recent ASCO presentation has been a positive period for Exelixis, bolstering investor confidence.

Financial Results

  • Zanza Market Opportunity: Exelixis estimates a $5 billion market potential for Zanza across multiple indications.
  • Market Breakdown: Opportunities are distributed as approximately 45% gastrointestinal, 45% genitourinary, and 10% head and neck.
  • CRC Market: The colorectal cancer market is valued at around $1 billion, equally divided between non-liver metastases and liver metastases.
  • NETs Market: The later-line NET market is estimated at $1 billion.

Operational Updates

  • Zanza Development: Six pivotal studies are underway, with two expected to report results later this year.
  • CRC Trial (303): Adjustments were made to the trial to better target distinct patient groups, increasing the likelihood of success.
  • Merck Partnership: Focuses on combining Zanza with belzutafan (HIF2alpha) in RCC, aiming to set a new standard of care.
  • Commercial Performance: Cabo remains strong in first-line RCC, thanks to robust data and a dedicated commercial team.
  • NETs Launch: Initial signs are positive, with physician familiarity aiding the uptake of the 40mg dose.

Future Outlook

  • Zanza Strategy: Exelixis aims to develop Zanza to establish new standards of care and maximize its market potential.
  • Partnerships: The company plans to replicate successful partnerships with firms like Merck and Bristol, focusing on cost-sharing and risk mitigation.
  • Market Expansion: Further studies are being considered to extend Zanza’s reach across more tumor types.
  • Guidance: No significant revenue surge is expected from the NETs launch due to the advanced-stage nature of the patient population.

Q&A Highlights

  • Dual Endpoint Change in CRC Trial: This strategic move aims to evaluate a larger patient population more quickly.
  • Zanza Differentiation: Efforts focus on distinguishing Zanza from existing treatments like regorafenib and sunitinib, beyond just comparing it to Cabo.
  • Head and Neck Strategy: Exelixis is exploring a combination of Zanza with pembrolizumab, aiming to replicate Cabo’s success.
  • Partnership Approach: Exelixis remains open to collaborations with other major players to explore various indications.

Exelixis’s strategic focus on partnerships and innovative drug development positions it for significant growth. For more details, readers are encouraged to consult the full conference transcript.

Full transcript - Jefferies Global Healthcare Conference 2025:

Akash Jawari, Farm and Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Good morning, everyone. Bright and early in Times Square. The Elmo’s have not come out to Times Square yet. They will be there in a couple hours. Do not engage with them.

That’s my only advice. My name is Akash Jawari. I am a farm and biotech analyst here at Jefferies. And it’s my pleasure to host Exelixis. And Andrew, thanks so much for joining us.

We are both fresh off our trip from Chicago at ASCO. It’s been a really great, probably one of the best stretches for Exelixis as a stock. Andrew, why don’t I hand it over for you for some brief opening remarks, and then we’ll get started with more Q and A?

Andrew, Executive, Exelixis: Yes, thanks. And I’d echo the sentiment kind of bright and early this morning, but candidly, excited to be here, excited for a great day of meetings and for the conversation. You know, as a reminder, we’ve been making some forward looking statements today, so please see relevant risks and disclosures in our regulatory filings. So, yeah, as you mentioned, coming off the heels of ASCO, which is always an exciting time for an oncology company, certainly exciting time for Exelixis, presented what we think some pretty interesting data for our lead pipeline program, zanzalutinib. But, you know, I think taking a step back, you know, Exelixis has kind of been on this cusp of a breakout for for quite some time.

You know, as you can appreciate, you know, prior to October 2024, we were a little bit of a holding pattern externally as a company as we kinda waited, you know, for some of the ongoing patent issues to to resolve. But really, kinda we came out of that October time frame with favorable, you know, outcome in that. We signed a big clinical collaboration with our, you know, partners and frankly biggest competitors, Merck, and really just found ourselves at the at the the point of about to break out. The underlying business of cabo is certainly doing well, kind of humming along, and we’re executing on all cylinders there. We have six pivotal studies up and running with or up and running or soon to be running with Zanza, and two of them actually expected to read out later this year, and then kind of the early pipeline progressing and just kind of everything from a capital allocation or from an investment from an Exelixis execution perspective, really a lot of momentum behind it.

So it’s an exciting time to be at Exelixis, it’s an exciting time to be in my seat where I have an opportunity to both look internally on kind of how we’re focused, whether it’s Cabo, Zanza, or the pipeline, but importantly externally as well. So I get to go to a conference like ASCO and just understand where is the future of oncology going, how do we play there, what are the sorts of things that we can do as a company to be opportunistic with our balance sheet, to be opportunistic as a big small company preferred partner for a lot of smaller biotechs, and really just understand how do we grow Exelixis. One of the things we talk about is drug you know, our business at the end of day is simple. The more patients you treat, the more patients you help, the more value you can create. So we think about it in drug one cabo is doing really well.

Drug two combo, Zanza, is really poised for, you know, the key readout. Drug three, four, five, whether it’s in our internal pipeline or external, that’s what we also need to focus on kind of going forward. So looking forward to the discussion today.

Akash Jawari, Farm and Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Awesome. As am I. Why don’t we start off with and I think this is probably where I get the most questions and what we’re working on. So CRC, obviously, you’re going against rogiratinib, not particularly the best. It’s a good comparator to go against.

It’s a very tough disease. Obviously, on the Q1 call, the dual endpoint changes, I think, a question people have. And the way I kind of see it is a company generally does not split their alpha if they’re worried about the powering for their trial. But then you also have kind of two distinct populations, liver mets and non liver mets, that might have two different event rates. So it’s a bit complicated, I think, for investors to understand.

I’d hand it off to you, Andrew, how should we think about that dual endpoint change? Is that a sign of confidence? Is that a sign of speed? Is that a sign of, well, we want to put this drug in the best position to be stat sig and we might be concerned about powering in certain populations?

Andrew, Executive, Exelixis: Yeah. So Amy talked a bit about this on the earnings call. I mean, you know, taking a step back, one of the things we always talk about is ultimately, we and everyone in our industry is in the business of p values. Right. We wanna run successful studies.

We don’t wanna run studies. And, you know, there’s an important distinction there that I think oftentimes a lot of companies, a lot of investors may miss. Yeah. And so we certainly have that kind of dynamic of we’re in the business of p values as a through line for every study we design, everything we do. And so when we were looking at the the three zero three study, we’ve actually amended that trial several times now.

If you recall, kind of that first amendment was when we got, a pretty significant kind of update for the industry about how IO TKI behaves in that later line colorectal population. And so we made certain changes to that trial to essentially, in our mind, maximize the probability of success, understand what are the really key drivers there, is it RAS status, as had been our hypothesis before, or was it more related to this emerging view in the colorectal clinical community that patients who have liver metastases and patients who don’t are functionally two different patient groups. And it actually makes a lot of sense. If you think about patients who unfortunately have tumors that have gone into their liver, you would expect compromised liver function and given the role physiologically of the liver, they tend to die faster, expire faster, and so you end up seeing kind of this difference in accrual of event rates. And so as we were seeing these events coming in on a blinded basis, one of the things that we realized is given the size of the study, given the, the number of patients that we had enrolled, we had the ability to, on a temporal basis, take an earlier look at a much bigger population.

And so any time that we’re able to do something which we think, one, increases the probability of success for the overall study and be able to look at a much larger population, we think that’s a good thing. And so, to me, the best way to think about it is more of a temporal shift than anything that allows us to also look at that broader ITT group as opposed to kind of the just the non liver mets, for example. So one of the things we have said is from a market opportunity perspective, CRC is probably about a billion dollars, you know, but it’s actually roughly split fiftyfifty between the NLM and the patients with liver metastases. That’s in part because the NLM patients tended a little bit longer, they tend to be on drug longer, The market opportunity is about the same.

But from our end, if we’re able to kind of left shift, get to market earlier in a bigger population, that’s a dynamic that we tend to favor.

Akash Jawari, Farm and Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: So bottom line, sign of confidence and speed rather than necessarily worry about how events are accruing. Would you agree with that or disagree

Andrew, Executive, Exelixis: with that? Yeah. I mean, ultimately, the cosmic truth always comes out Yeah. When that when that envelope is is read, so to speak. But I think it’s a change that we’re excited about and, again, tend to see it as more how do we do what’s best for patients.

Akash Jawari, Farm and Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Got it. I like the cosmic pun given that’s your side too. Okay, got it. Now maybe just stepping back and this is a conversation I have with investors. I’m like, I feel relatively confident on CRC given you probably know what the event rate on regoniratinib is.

So as events come in, can kind of figure out what the delta is. Non clear cell, again, I feel pretty confident there. To me, where our team’s doing the most work is really head and neck and then RCC. And it’s interesting, everyone’s like, Well, is CABO differentiated versus ANZA? And I look at your clinical development plan.

Where are you directly testing that? I don’t see those studies. What I do see is what you mentioned earlier, which is Zanza with novel targets and synergy where we maybe have not explored with VEGF TKIs and maybe potentially a better therapeutic window. That’s the case study in RCC. So why did you choose Merck as a partner, your biggest competitor?

What did you see with Wellerig, which intrigues you in terms of its potential in RCC? And can you give us at least some outline of what that study design looks like, given that could make ZANZA not just a plus one in indications where cabo didn’t work in, but really a full switch?

Andrew, Executive, Exelixis: Yeah. I think the best way to think about it is to maybe take a little bit of a step back because that cabozanza dynamic is, you know, probably one of the most frequent questions we get as a company as well. And I think you framed it appropriately is that we’ve been very thoughtful, we’ve been very strategic and specific about how we’ve thought about Zanza development. So given the original hypothesis around ZANZA or XL092 is that the main liability, so to speak, of cabo is its relatively long half life. And so what we sought to do with ZANZA is really to phenocopy the kinase inhibition, kind of that efficacy profile of cabo with a more combinable potentially safer version that we could say, okay, here’s all of the ten plus years of data that we’ve accumulated with cabo across these various indications.

Look across that landscape and say, okay, where are the areas that we can be pointed in the direction of where a drug like this would be active, but would be more favorable with a kind of more user friendly, more combinable drug? And so you mentioned the six studies that we have up and running, you know, 03/2003, ’3 zero ’4, ’3 zero ’5, frankly, all of them are certainly informed by our cabo experience. So we actually see that as a big point of value creation in that we’ve essentially enabled us to accelerate development because we can learn a lot from cabo and point us in the direction of Zanzib. So as it specifically relates to the HIF2alpha and the RCC space, We’ve agreed with our partners Merck, obviously, it’s a competitive area, not to get into the specifics of the design of the study until those are up and running later this year. But what I can say is there’s been a lot of intriguing early data of cabo and belzutafan that we can use as kind of a starting point to understand how those sorts of drugs behave in patients.

And importantly, the signal is clear, the combination is very active, and the combination is tolerable. And so if we think about ZANZA as a potentially best in class TKI, and we see the success that WILAREG has had as a monotherapy and in some of those early combinations, we and our partners have been intrigued about the potential for the combination of those two mechanisms being able to benefit patients. And so, again, the way we think about it, cabo will never have a label in combination with a HIF2 with bezlutefan. And so we want to develop ZANZIT in a way that maximizes its opportunity, but also has the potential to candidly establish a new standard of care. Because at the end of the day, drugs are successful because of that.

CABO is successful not because it’s approved, it’s successful because we were able to generate a data set with 9ER that establishes the standard of care in frontline RCC.

Akash Jawari, Farm and Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: What’s most interesting there because I think when those studies got announced, my head was like, Okay, you had those ipi, nivo, cabo studies, nice response rate, durability not there because the side effects weren’t working. Then I would thought, Okay, you can plug in HIF2 alpha. But it doesn’t necessarily seem like you guys think about this as a triplet. You think about this almost more like a doublet. Is that fair to say?

Andrew, Executive, Exelixis: Yes. Again, without kind of getting into the specifics of the trial design ahead of kind of the launch of those studies, I think the more important dynamic is to think about ZANZA in combination with the HIF-two alpha and kind of stay tuned on all of the specific details there.

Akash Jawari, Farm and Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Cool. Looking forward to it. Now, maybe just on ZANZA and differentiation, the way we kind of think about it is, it’s not like, okay, if you have a table and at any point did a patient have grade three proteinuria or did they have hypertension, Zanza’s a shorter half life drug. So I don’t think you’re going to have a patient not have a grade three adverse event. The point is once that grade three adverse event occurs, how quickly can you down dose a patient and keep them on a very high dose of VEGF inhibition while still being adherent on the medication?

So to me, this might be not a safety in terms of just absolute safety differentiation, it’s more about discontinuations and then a better translation from PFS to OS. Is that the right way to think about this? If ZANZA will differentiate in some of these indications, is that the angle you’re going after?

Andrew, Executive, Exelixis: Yeah. Mean, I think one of the dynamics there, you’re you’re kind of spot on. So imagine a patient who’s on Cabo Nivo for frontline RCC, and they develop an adverse event. And kind of the treatment algorithm, the AE management algorithm basically suggests dose hold to resolution of symptoms, down dose to a lower dose. But given cabo’s half life that I mentioned before is roughly one hundred hours, and given its accumulation in plasma over time at steady state, that washout period towards resolution of symptoms can often be ten days, two weeks, even longer.

So imagine you have a patient who has an adverse event, and all patients with TKIs get them, that has potential overlap with a checkpoint as well. And so as a physician and as a patient, you have to try and understand was this cabo related, is this nivo related, do I hold one, do I hold both? And if the patient is has metastatic cancer, it’s a challenging just dynamic to kind of work through. Obviously, cabo’s successful and it’s something that physicians have learned to kind of do. But our perspective was if you can impact that half life, that period of time where you’re kind of in that dose reduction, dose management, AE management phase, that’s the more important thing because simplistically, patients generally don’t benefit from drugs that they’re not on.

And so when we thought about why we wanted to develop ZANZA, it was really about that combinability, that dynamic around having a more user friendly and more patient and physician friendly TKI that acts as a backbone. And so that was really the dynamic that kind of shaped a lot of it. And so, you know, again, we’ll see in the the cosmic truth on how this reads out in phase three studies. But, you know, that ability to have a more kind of user friendly experience because of the shorter half life is something that we always sought out as kind of the core driver around development. All of the other stuff on the margin of maybe we’re seeing some differentiation in certain areas and safety, you know, certainly potentially intriguing signals.

But, you know, one of the the common themes I have is I look externally at a lot of these kind of smaller company assets. The caveats and challenges of interpreting small and unrandomized clinical data is significant. And so we got a lot of questions coming into this weekend around what’s going to be And we’re excited to share the data, really think that it shows that ZANZA is an active molecule. But at the end of the day, the much more derisking events for us as we think about ZANZA longer term are the Phase III studies.

So couple of two.

Akash Jawari, Farm and Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: One that sounded like head and neck, but number two, I just want to put a finer point on this. It seems like the safety differentiation should manifest in terms of efficacy because patients are going to be on a higher dose rate, a longer period of time. Again, if you’re just asking an investor, because it’s not like you don’t say When I talk with you, you don’t say XANZA is not differentiated, You’re just saying it’s too early. But is that fair to say it’s gonna be PFS and OS and discontinuations that we should be paying attention to, or is there something else?

Andrew, Executive, Exelixis: I I I certainly think there’s a a point of that dynamic. But, again, taking a step back, you know, to where we started, we again don’t really think about it as ZANZA versus cabo and the differentiation because it’s really about how is ZANZA different and or better than rego.

Akash Jawari, Farm and Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Got it.

Andrew, Executive, Exelixis: How is ZANZA different or better than Sutan? How is it better than pembro monotherapy in 03/2005? How is it better than everolimus in NET for 03/11? And so to me, that’s actually the much more relevant dynamic. Certainly, there’s gonna be a lot of comparisons across the you know, cross track comparisons, all of this stuff.

But when we, on the third quarter call, talked about Zanza having a $5,000,000,000 market opportunity across all of the six studies that we’re running, that’s actually in reference to, you know, all of these standards of care that we’re comparing it against and not, this

Akash Jawari, Farm and Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: That makes sense. Yeah. And by the way, for that $5,000,000,000 what are the is it fair to say the Merck studies are the two biggest contributors to that number? Or are we maybe underestimating ZANZA in NETs? How do you break down

Andrew, Executive, Exelixis: that Yes. So we think about it roughly as about 45% GI, 45% GU and 10% head and neck. So the GI piece, if you think about our business right now, it’s probably ninetyten, GUGI. Our aspirational goal over time, if we think about ZANZAN cabo growth in net, is a much more balanced dynamic between kind of those two categories. So the GU piece is obviously the three RCC studies.

It’s the two Merck studies and the non clear cell. Non clear cell is about 20% of all of RCC. Utilization right now is a little bit of a hodgepodge across all approved therapies in kidney cancer just because of the dynamic around labels are inclusive of that and then use is driven by kind of guidelines around unrandomized single arm data, things like that. But the GI piece is then kind of the 03/11 study in 03/2003. And so as I mentioned before, kind of a billion dollar opportunity across CRC, and we framed at least kind of that later line current net opportunity at around $1,000,000,000 And so as we think about moving earlier, tend to have more patients, tend to be on drug longer, that sort of dynamic.

So it’s kind of that fifty fifty balance or plus minus

Akash Jawari, Farm and Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: side. I think the most interesting thing about the breakdown you gave there is you would think head and neck would be bigger. Right? I mean, if you think about what are the darlings in oncology, and there are not that many, there’s a few of these bispecifics. And you guys have a frontline study you’re running, right?

And I’ve talked to Mike about this before, and he’s like, Look Akash, you talk about single arm uncontrolled data, you’ll often have sites enroll healthier patients. I mean, this is not just a comment on this line. And specifically, you see this on oncology across the board, you have a fifty three percent response rate with cabo and nivo, right? You have a lot of N in that indication. So when you think about the Merck partnership, it sounds like Zanza plus pembro.

So you kind of have the same two components, maybe version 1.5 version of some of these drugs. But when you’re seeing all these other data sets and they’re showing higher response rates, how as an investor can we feel like Exelixis has a plan to win in that head and neck arena? And it almost implies you’re going for subpopulations in head and neck, maybe not the whole pie. Help me understand that.

Andrew, Executive, Exelixis: Yeah. I actually think it’s not really about kind of that latter comment. If anything, when we look at that $5,000,000,000 market opportunity, it’s a good example of candidly us being public facing and passing the red face test. It’s kind of what when we talk internally about market opportunities or projections, what’s realistic? Does the model need to have 65%, seventy %, eighty % market share to kind of make the math work?

And so I think it’s a relatively believable, reasonable, conservative assumption as to say, the reality is that you can draw some comparisons between say RCC ten years ago and head and neck. The RCC pie has grown over time because there have been drugs and therapies to really help patients live longer. And so hopefully, we’re successful in growing that pie overall, but I’d much rather be in the position of say, we think it’s a 500,000,000 opportunity, but if we’re wrong on the upside, that’s great.

Akash Jawari, Farm and Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: Right.

Andrew, Executive, Exelixis: I’d rather not set an expectation that assumes very challenging kind of share or duration or pricing assumptions. I’d rather say, Okay, let’s start from a place that $500,000,000 is a reasonable large market, and hopefully, we’ll generate a data set to improve upon that. But, you know, it’s just But

Akash Jawari, Farm and Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: you’re talking about, like, 15% penetration then

Andrew, Executive, Exelixis: for something? Yeah. It’s something that, you know, we wanna make sure that we’re realistic in setting expectations. But getting back to your point on the pembrozanza piece, again, we looked at Merck’s prior dataset from LEAP-ten as a signal that clearly an IO TKI is active in this space. They saw robust benefit on response rates.

They saw robust benefit on PFS. And unfortunately, that didn’t translate to overall survival. So the question that we asked is basically using the lens of the prior cabo pembro data as a starting point. And I’d certainly you know, echo Mike’s comment that, you know, there’s inherent challenges in interpreting phase one data from here and here and here. You know, to us, they’re probably more similar than different.

Right. But we can look at that data as a starting point, layer in the learnings from LEAP o one o, and ask the question, can a potentially more user friendly TKI plus pembro, you know, replicate a lot of that benefit on responses in PFS, but also translate to survival? That’s really the question of three zero five. Again, we’ll find out, you know, the cosmic truth is gonna come out when that card flips, but it’s really using all of that information we have at our fingertips to drive investment in a market

Akash Jawari, Farm and Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: we think can couple of things just to wrap on that. Number one, there are two cuts in terms of head and neck where I feel like none of the companies are really thinking about, A, you’ve just seen pembro get approved in first line, so a lot of first line’s going change. It’s going to be basically post PD-one. It’s interesting, your data sets post PD-one might be much more comparable to some of these early bispecific data sets. So is there any appetite to run studies post pembro or given that the adjuvant approval is going to really change what first line looks like?

And then number two, we saw this with the Pfizer PD L1 ADC that had data at ASCO. The HPV positive and HPV negative, there’s different profiles that some of these treatments show in those populations. So post pembro and then HPV positive and negative, are those areas where you feel like a VEGF TKI combo could actually differentiate here?

Andrew, Executive, Exelixis: Yeah. I mean, a couple of dynamics within that. I think our experience with at least taking the learnings from LEAP-one point zero is probably HPV status is less relevant than, say, maybe the EGFR bispecifics are trying to frame that dynamic. Interesting. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.

But we haven’t seen as much of a clear difference, at least looking at the mechanisms that we’re evaluating. As it relates to other studies, other opportunities in head and neck, I think the way that we think about ZANZA is wave one is kind of the six studies that we’ve outlined right now. Expect a wave two, expect a wave three. We think that ZANZA has the potential to be a broadly active backbone therapy, so to speak, across a wide range of tumor types. Head and neck certainly is one of them, especially if we’re able to read out positive data in 03/2005.

The other dynamic that I’d kind of layer in there is that take the Merck Merck collaboration as a model, or even going back to 9ER in Bristol. One of the things that we’ve talked about is you know, there’s this through line or, you know, kind of tongue in cheek comment that we that we make sometimes is that we run Exelixis like a business and not a biotech. And so we’re particularly thoughtful about expense management, how we think about new studies, how we think about just running the company. And one of those dynamics is if you look at a lot of these studies that we’re running, they’re actually in combination with partners, where there’s risk sharing, where there’s cost sharing. Right.

So as an example, the nine ER study, we ran that with our partners, Bristol. Or Bristol ran it, we paid for half, they paid for half. But actually, Ipsen and Takeda, who have ex US and Japanese rights, paid for half of our half. And so that was a really capital efficient way to develop a large develop and run a large pivotal study. Similarly with Merck, functionally, we’re running three studies with them.

We’re each paying for roughly one and a half Yeah. And sharing free drug. And so I would say an important dynamic to look for going forward is we like that model and we want to replicate it. And so it allows us to have a broader ambition for Zanza for that next wave and that next wave and that next wave while remaining capital efficient and candidly just thinking about spend in a probably more disciplined way than many of our peers.

Akash Jawari, Farm and Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: So is it fair to say, in terms of potential partnerships going forward I mean, you’ve done mostly with large companies when we think about cabo development. The Merck deal does not exclude you partnering with other large cap players in the space when you’re exploring that kind of veg of signal across the board, because there’s certainly other indications. Yeah. Let’s just hit on commercial performance. I thought what was most surprising, last year, the management team was pretty clear.

First line RCC, we’re seeing uptake start to plateau. We shouldn’t expect that to grow much more come towards one year later. You’re actively taking share in first line. And so I want to understand, is that patients waterfalling, or is that actually new patient starts are now starting to trend the other way? How does that occur so late into a launch?

I think investors don’t understand.

Andrew, Executive, Exelixis: Yeah. Mean, again, a little bit tongue in cheek. Drugs are successful or drugs perform based on the data and based on the team. And the data, we obviously had a five year update to 9ER at ASCO GU earlier this year. And I think it’s a data set that frankly continues to resonate with that physician prescriber base.

And then on the team side, I think we certainly believe that we have a best in class commercial organization, not only in biotech, but across pharma as well in that kind of GU landscape. And we have the ability to do things from an analytics perspective that allow us to continue to kind of be very targeted and take share. And certainly, we see that stacking of patients of long duration over time. But our team continues to have their foot on the gas, continues to focus. And I think one of the challenges that our bigger competitors, bigger peers have is that we have the ability to just focus on Cabo.

Right. They don’t. And so having a team that is completely dedicated and focused to maximizing the value of Cabo, that’s an advantage.

Akash Jawari, Farm and Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: All right. I’m going to stick in one more question. I know we’re out of time. Nets launch, I think the big question is there is obviously use of cabo in that population already, but there’s something about getting it reimbursed, getting it on the label. And you guys were pretty clear, the increase in guidance was not necessarily Nets driven.

Is there going to be a bolus on the Nets population once that approval gets online?

Andrew, Executive, Exelixis: Yeah. So PJ talked a little bit about this on the 3Q call. So given the later line in more advanced stage of disease that these patients, Generally, don’t expect a bolus with these late line But what I can say is that the dynamic that we have talked about around cabo and NETs is that there’s this inherent familiarity with cabo that physicians have. And one of the things that we’ve seen early on that we’ve talked about is we’re seeing scripts for the forty milligram dose. So approval’s at sixty, but forty milligrams is indicative that these are physicians that use cabo for, say, 9ER, are familiar that that forty milligram dose is still very active, but more tolerable, And so it’s an early sign that I think is really positive that those kind of NET physicians have this familiarity.

And so we’ve said that we’ll update the Street when we have a better sense of that launch trajectory, but some of the early signs that we’re seeing on KPIs are really encouraging. Got it. Thank you so much.

Akash Jawari, Farm and Biotech Analyst, Jefferies: I really appreciate everyone for joining us early in the morning. And Andrew, thanks to Mitch. That’s awesome.

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Before deciding to trade in financial instrument or cryptocurrencies you should be fully informed of the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, carefully consider your investment objectives, level of experience, and risk appetite, and seek professional advice where needed.
Fusion Media would like to remind you that the data contained in this website is not necessarily real-time nor accurate. The data and prices on the website are not necessarily provided by any market or exchange, but may be provided by market makers, and so prices may not be accurate and may differ from the actual price at any given market, meaning prices are indicative and not appropriate for trading purposes. Fusion Media and any provider of the data contained in this website will not accept liability for any loss or damage as a result of your trading, or your reliance on the information contained within this website.
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