Supernus at Barclays Conference: Strategic Growth and Innovation

On Tuesday, 11 March 2025, Supernus Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: SUPN) presented at the Barclays 27th Annual Global Healthcare Conference, outlining its strategic direction and financial performance. The company highlighted its growth drivers and innovative treatments, while also addressing challenges such as legacy product transitions and market dynamics. CEO Jack Qutar expressed optimism about future opportunities in the CNS biopharmaceutical sector.

Key Takeaways

• Supernus reported 2024 revenues of approximately $660 million, demonstrating profitability.
• Calbri, a non-stimulant ADHD medication, showed strong sales of $241 million.
• The company plans to launch Onapco, an infusion device for Parkinson’s, in Q2 2025.
• Supernus is analyzing data from its SPN-820 depression program to determine future steps.
• The company is navigating a shift from legacy products to innovative treatments.

Financial Results

• 2024 revenue reached around $660 million.
• Calbri net sales were $241 million, with a market share of 10.8% in the non-stimulant segment.
• Supernus experienced a 25% growth in prescriptions, compared to a 9% growth in the overall ADHD market.
• Onapco’s peak sales potential is estimated between $200 million and $300 million.

Operational Updates

• Calbri is focusing on expanding its market penetration, with 32% of sales in adults and 68% in pediatrics, aiming to increase adult usage to 40-50%.
• Onapco, targeting advanced Parkinson’s patients, is expected to contribute significantly to 2025 revenue.
• SPN-817 for epilepsy has initiated Phase 2b data collection.
• SPN-820 is being evaluated for alternative dosing regimens after mixed Phase 2b results.

Future Outlook

• Supernus is concentrating on Calbri’s growth in both pediatric and adult markets.
• The successful launch of Onapco aims to establish a new market segment for Parkinson’s infusion devices.
• Ongoing evaluation of SPN-820 for depression could lead to further development based on promising open-label study results.

Q&A Highlights

• Some cannibalization of the Apokyn business is expected, potentially around 15%.
• Long-term goals for Calbri include capturing a significant share of the 100 million prescription ADHD market.
• GOCOVRI offers a unique advantage by managing dyskinesia without altering liver DOPA doses.

For those interested in more detailed insights, please refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - Barclays 27th Annual Global Healthcare Conference:

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Barclays: Good afternoon, everyone. So continuing our specialty pharmaceuticals track for the day, we have with us Jack Qatar, the CEO of Supernus Pharmaceuticals. Jack, it’s a pleasure having you here and thank you for joining us at the Barclays Healthcare Conference.

Jack Qutar, CEO, Supernus Pharmaceuticals: Thank you for having me. Yes. Good afternoon.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Barclays: Great. So Jack, maybe you recently reported your Q4 results and provided some ’25 outlook too. So maybe just to kick start the proceedings, would you like to start with some opening comments around that and then we could dig into some questions?

Jack Qutar, CEO, Supernus Pharmaceuticals: Yes, sure. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us. Before I get started just to make sure I remind everyone we’re making forward looking statements. So please check the risk factors in our SEC filings. So Supernus for those of you who may not be familiar with us, we are a CNS biopharmaceutical company.

We had revenues last year around $660,000,000 We are profitable. We’ve been going through a couple of years of transition here with our legacy products losing exclusivity and transitioning into new products. Our new products primarily Calbri, which is a novel non stimulant ADHD medication, Had a great year last year with very strong momentum, strong back to school season and that carried through the fourth quarter. And we had a great start in 2025 with some updates on the label for the product as well as very excited about the continued future of Calvary which is a fairly new product at this point early in its lifecycle. Also beginning of this year, we had the approval of the infusion Parkinson device.

It’s an apomorphine continuous infusion device and we’re looking to launch that product in the second quarter of this year. And we have also several pipeline assets primarily eight seventeen in the epilepsy space that we just started Phase 2b data on. We did have a negative study on our depression program and we also have a positive study. So we are in the midst of analyzing further the data to see what the next steps would be and that would be the SPN820 program.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Barclays: Thanks, Jack. So also as we think about your moving from your 2024 strong performance into 2025, why don’t we revisit your 2025 guidance and some of the key pushes and pulls to this guidance as you look at what will drive you towards the high end of the range versus the lower end of the range?

Jack Qutar, CEO, Supernus Pharmaceuticals: Yes, I mean the key things, the key catalyst for us in 2025 is really Calgary. Calgary is a primary driver here, has been for a few years now helping us through this transition that I mentioned about. So continued growth with Calgary which we’re obviously expecting. The market has been very healthy market. The ADHD market grew by 9% in prescriptions last year.

We grew by 25% in prescriptions. And we are yet to scratch the surface as far as our penetration of the marketplace. So we did about $241,000,000 in Calabrio last year in net sales. And we’re looking forward for much further growth. We have a lot to penetrate as far as pediatric and adult populations.

We have both indications and we’ve been pushing forward on both ends as far as the growth. Adult tend to be is the biggest segment in the marketplace. The market splits up 68% adults and 32% pediatric. Our business on the other hand is exactly the opposite. 32% of our business is in adult and 68% is pediatric.

And that’s because of the fact that we are a non stimulant while the market overall is majority of it 90% of it is stimulant. So we’ll probably never mirror exactly what the split is for the market, but we’ll be somewhat probably in the 40%, fifty %. We’ll see how far we can go with the stimulants. And then the second key driver for 2025 is of course our launch in the second quarter of this year. We’re very excited about the infusion device in Parkinson’s.

That is a product that pretty much along with our competitor, we’re pretty much creating a whole new segment in the market in Parkinson’s. Infusion devices although have been available in Europe for many years, they were never developed in The U. S. They are very important alternative options for folks who get very progressed in the disease become very advanced with a lot of off episodes. And therefore, instead of resorting to deep brain stimulation or invasive surgery, they can use the pump for continuous delivery for all day control.

And we’re pretty excited about the opportunity. Again, as I mentioned, the product has been in Europe for thirty some years and does extremely well. So a lot growth momentum in the Parkinson’s space. And actually that will be product number four for Supernus in Parkinson’s. So we have a major presence in the Parkinson’s space with four products.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Barclays: Got it. Maybe continuing on that last point as we think about that now that with our roll through with the label specifically for severe patients, do you have a better sense of what the market opportunity is and what might be the first allowing inputs for you to target in terms of this pump versus levodopa pump?

Jack Qutar, CEO, Supernus Pharmaceuticals: Yes. I mean, as far as the market opportunity, initially, both of these products, our product and the other product approved for advanced Parkinson’s. I mean, that’s what the label basically speaks about. However, when you talk to physicians, the word advanced in their mind could mean different things. For some physicians, advanced is a patient who’s been diagnosed probably for ten years now and they’re really struggling big time and therefore that would be a perfect candidate for these type of products.

And some other physician’s mind or perspective is advances maybe a patient has been diagnosed only three years ago or four years ago. And they’re starting to get a position where they have to add so many oral adjunctive medications. And in that situation, they might opt actually to use the pump earlier in the disease. So I tell folks all the time, I mean, the size of this opportunity is going to be completely and directly correlating to the fact as to what is the patient profile, who ends up being the best candidate for these products and where will the practice lead us as time goes on. If we take Europe as a good example because it’s been in Europe for many years, we see a lot of physicians using the pump earlier in the disease instead of waiting all the way till the end when the patient is desperate and they have to go to deep brain stimulation, then they use the pump.

So it will be an interesting progression to watch over time.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Barclays: Understood. So with that in mind, how does that influence your launch plans? And especially as you prepare to roll out the product into 2Q, how would the messaging be around the product?

Jack Qutar, CEO, Supernus Pharmaceuticals: I mean, clearly, our message is we stick to the label, advance Parkinson disease, clearly that’s the message, that’s the positioning and that’s how we will promote the product. Eventually a lot of it will be driven by the experienced physicians are having with the product. And as I mentioned with the way they approach the disease. Now the two products are very different, ours versus our competitors. The molecule is very different.

We have apomorphine as our drug on our pump. Apomorphine is a great actually dopamine agonist. There’s nothing like it from a dopamine agonist perspective activity. It doesn’t need to be converted in the synapse to dopamine. It just gets all the way directly and acts directly on the receptors.

So it’s a potent drug, very efficacious. It’s the same drug we have currently actually with Apoquine, which is an injection pen for acute treatment, for just one single acute injection for acute episodes.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Barclays: Got it. And so as we see the initial stages of launch and as analysts tend to model it for full disclosure, I did not cover the stock, but how should we think about the ramp up of this product and what could be the contribution in the initial stages?

Jack Qutar, CEO, Supernus Pharmaceuticals: Yes. I mean for this year in our guidance, we told folks probably somewhere in the single high digit. It’s a partial year. We don’t know exactly they’re going to be launched in April and May. So I mean it all makes a difference.

But as far as the projections overall moving forward, we did speak about $200,000,000 to $300,000,000 as far as potential peak for a product like this. That may prove to be conservative at some point if the medical practice does end up mimicking what happens in Europe, but that remains to be seen clearly. Our competitor talks about more like $1,000,000,000 but that’s more on a worldwide basis. We only have potential for the product in The U. S.

So we only talk about U. S. Opportunity. But certainly this can be a very sizable opportunity for us. I know firsthand a lot of patients have been waiting for it.

We had few hiccups from a regulatory perspective to get it approved. But I know the demand is there, certainly no question about that.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Barclays: Got it. And in your opening remarks, you mentioned about that this is your fourth product in Parkinson’s. So can you remind us how all of your various Parkinson’s products now fit together with this approval?

Jack Qutar, CEO, Supernus Pharmaceuticals: Yes, sure. Yes, we have first a small product, which is an oral adjunctive therapy to levodopa, that’s ZEDAGO. It’s an MAOI inhibitor. So it has a different mechanism. So that’s typically used earlier in the disease or earlier stages of the diseases.

Then we have GOCOVRI, which is one of our growth drivers in the portfolio actually. It’s a very unique product. It’s the only product in Parkinson’s that is approved to treat off episodes and at the same time treat dyskinesia. As we all know, as patients progress through the disease, as you continue to increase the levodopa, carbidopa doses to treat the OFF episodes that worsen over time, you end up bumping against dyskinesia. And a lot of times these dyskinesia symptoms are very troublesome and burdensome to a lot of patients.

With GOCOVRI, actually you don’t have to have a trade off between lowering the liver DOPA dose to get rid of the dyskinesia. You can keep that dose at the same level, but add GOCOVRI. And GOCOVRI will help you actually further with the off episodes as well as treat dyskinesia. So it has a very unique positioning. In addition to GOCOVRI, we have ApoGen.

ApoGen is our apomorphine pen injection that I referred to earlier. Actually, the product works fast. It works within minutes. So it’s typically used either early in the morning when a lot of the patients have stiffness, rigidness when they first wake up because their medication hasn’t kicked in yet. Typically, you have to take your oral medication in the morning and it takes quite a bit of time for it to kick in.

And therefore, a lot of times some patients would use an apokin injection and within a few minutes you can actually be mobile, you can get up, get ready in the morning. Also can be used as a rescue type of medication as needed during the day. If you see like you’re getting an off episode, you can use Apoquine. So that’s the third product. And then the fourth product is Onapco, which will be the same active ingredient, apomorphine, as Apokin.

However, that will be more for an all day control continuous infusion. So each one of these products have a very single unique positioning on its own for a different use and a different patient profile.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Barclays: Understood. Thank you. So with that kind of a profile though, Epikainen, they have the same diagonals properties. We should not really be concerned about or worried about cannibalization of Epokine with on APKAR? Ideally, there shouldn’t.

But we do have some patients who take Apokine actually up to four times a day. So they use it

Jack Qutar, CEO, Supernus Pharmaceuticals: because it helps folks pretty quickly with the off episodes. Now in those situations and if you’re a patient who is getting three or four injections a day, you might opt to put the pump instead. So I mean there is some potential for some overlap. Historically, we’ve talked about somewhere probably in the fifteen percent potential cannibalization of the Apoquine business. Remains to be seen, but will I mean that could happen for a patient that is taking it around four times a day.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Barclays: Got it. Maybe shifting to Calvary, I mean, clearly your flagship product. And can you also maybe comment on the variables which drive the strong pricing that we are seeing and the progression of the adult launch?

Jack Qutar, CEO, Supernus Pharmaceuticals: Yes. Initially when we launched KELVRI, we launched it in May 2021 in pediatrics and about a year exactly later in May 2022, we launched the adult because we got the adult indication. And given that KELVRI is a non stimulant, clearly in the pediatric population, you have several factors that play out that favor non stimulants. One of them is the fact that a lot of parents don’t like to give their kids controlled substances. And what’s happened historically over the years is, as a parent, you prefer a non stimulant, but the options we had for many years have been very limited.

Primarily, Strattera, which is the main non stimulant out there used to take sometimes up to eight weeks after initiation of therapy for it or for the parent to even find out whether it will work or it will not work. And that to a lot of parents, and I went through it, I know it could be like eternity when you have a child that is really struggling in school with bad reports from a grade perspective or suspension letters or socially having a lot of issues. And therefore, as a parent, you just give up on a lot of times and you say, you know what, I’ll put them on a stimulant because I know stimulants work, they work fast. But is that really my top choice? No.

However, today, it’s a very different story. Today, you do have a choice because Calvary is a non stimulant, but also Calvary within a week or two at the most will work. And you will find out whether it works for your child or not. So your downside is fairly limited. We even give people samples for two weeks because we are non stimulant, we can sample.

And therefore, you can try it and why put your trial on a controlled substance that potentially could be usable stimulant like side effects if you have a choice with a product like Calvary that is very well tolerant and could be very effective. So that’s been the main value proposition in the pediatric segment. On the adult side, it’s interesting different dynamic. Adults love their stimulants, especially their immediate release stimulants. And they do give them like a high, a buzz, whatever, every person likes it for a different reason.

But a lot of also adults supplement their day, although they might be taking extended release stimulants, they supplement their day with an immediate release later on late afternoon because the extended release has worn off and it’s not giving you the efficacy that you’re looking for. With Calvary, you don’t need to do any of this because Calvary truly covers you for twenty four hours. So it gives you full twenty four hour coverage. So what we’re seeing happening in the market right now is a lot of physicians don’t want to upset their patients and take them off suddenly or abruptly from the stimulant. Instead, what they do is they add Calvary, they titrate very slowly over time.

They add and increase the dose of Calvary, while at the same time tapering off the stimulant use with the goal eventually, of course, to take the stimulant out of the equation and end up with only Calvary. And we estimate about forty percent of Calvary’s usage or prescriptions in adults are actually combination use with a stimulant. So a lot of physicians are starting that way with adults to get them on Calvary. And actually a lot of adults when we get the feedback from consumers, I mean, they’re really excited about the fact they at the end of the day they can only use one product instead of having using two products that really gives them the full coverage for full 24. And clinically, medically the product works extremely well in both whether pediatric or adult.

The feedback has been the same as far as the efficacy of the product and so forth. About now thirty two percent of Calvary’s usage is first line treatment in a completely naive patients. So it’s really refreshing to see that Calbri is starting to be seen as a true first line choice instead of going all this to the stimulator.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Barclays: Got it. And Jack, what does all of these rolled up into rolled up together, what does it mean for the longer term outlook for Calvary and in terms of peak sales potential between adult and pediatric? You mean

Jack Qutar, CEO, Supernus Pharmaceuticals: the long term potential in general? Yes. Yes. I mean the market last year was about 100,000,000 prescriptions, the ADHD market. That’s in polo, pediatric and adult.

And we can do quick sensitivity. I mean, even if we get 3%, four %, five %, up to 10% market share, I mean that’s a very quick math. And then our net price last year for 2024 was around $310 So very quickly you can get to a multi hundred million dollar opportunity. As I said last year we did $240,000,000 So we think this product can be huge and we’re only in the initial innings, so to speak, at this point. We have about 10.8% market share of the non stimulant segment and about 0.8% or close to 1% market share of the total market.

So even we don’t need too much to really make this product a very big product for us.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Barclays: Got it. Shifting very quickly on to GOCOVRI, maybe some quick comments around the opportunity that you see for future growth potential with GOCOVRI and what is the market and key dynamics looking like?

Jack Qutar, CEO, Supernus Pharmaceuticals: Yes. With GOCOVRI, as I mentioned earlier, it has a very unique positioning in the Parkinson’s space as the only product that is indicated for both of episodes and dyskinesia. So the opportunity there for us is really to continue to highlight the dyskinesia issue. That’s an issue that doesn’t discuss unfortunately all the time between the patient and the physician. A lot of patients think that dyskinesia is just part of the disease.

The shaking, all that is really part of disease. They don’t realize that a lot of it is because of the medications that they are given. So they don’t talk about it. They don’t bring it up. And typically patients when they go and visit their patients, their physicians, they’re normally at their best time.

They want to present themselves at their best time as far as mobility, as far as so forth. Now the movement disorder specialists dig deeper typically in that conversation with the patient. They do talk about the education among the general neurologists, so to speak, to bring up this issue, encourage physicians to discuss the issue with patients. And sure enough, when they do, yes, patients do talk about it and it is something that is troublesome for a lot of them and it could cause falls, it could cause all kind of issues for them. And therefore when it is brought up GOCOVRI then could come in and could be part of that conversation.

So it will continue to grow clearly. I know this year we will be clearly emphasizing heavily the ONAPCO launch, the infusion device launch because it’s the same infrastructure that we’re using for the launch of ONAPCO that currently promotes GOCOVRI and Apoquine. So the emphasis in the sales force is going to be ONAPCO with the launch in the second quarter and GOCOVRI more like a second position and Apoquine more like a third position.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Barclays: Got it. We have a few minutes left. I do want to hit upon the pipeline for sure. So both SPN 08/20 and 08/17 starting with 08/20, I mean you had the top line data from Phase 2b And walk us through the key highlights of this data and what are the next steps that we need to look at further?

Jack Qutar, CEO, Supernus Pharmaceuticals: Yes. On SPN-eight twenty, which is for depression, we had two studies that were read out. The first one was an open label study that were read out last year, which was an MDD. On that study, we had a two thousand four hundred milligram that we gave once every three days. So it was an intermittent dosing that we went with based on some early studies that were done on that molecule.

So that was the So that was the basis of that design with the open label. So we did that study and the data was fairly phenomenal despite the fact that it’s of course open label. There was no placebo. But the magnitude of reduction in Madras was pretty profound, starting with about sixteen point reduction on day one and going all the way down to 24 or 23.9 reduction by day 10. In parallel, we had a Phase IIb study that was going on, which was a placebo control that studied sixteen hundred milligram daily.

So it was a very different dosing regimen. And that did not separate from placebo. Placebo response was around the 12 reduction. So it wasn’t outrageous. It wasn’t too low either, somewhere in the middle.

A lot of the things we looked at in the study were very normal. We had a lot of all the sites. We didn’t have like a lot of outliers. I mean, so the study was very well executed, very well managed. And the only difference we can see is really the dosing regimen between the two studies.

So it’s still an open question in our mind. Is this a biologic system, which is the mTORC1 activation, a system that perhaps needs to be reset and doesn’t need to be activated every single day with a single dose, which was exactly or would mimic the design we did in the open label. So the question now in our mind and that’s what we’re investigating and looking at it before we decide on what the next step is. Should we look at a two thousand four hundred milligram once every three days? And is that something we should pursue any further?

Because we have an answer now that the sixteen hundred milligram daily is not going to work. So we know that. Will it two thousand four hundred milligram? And scientifically, biologically, is this a system that maybe that’s the way to activate it? And that’s the way you get the response that we did in the open label.

So we’re going to take a few more weeks discussing this. We’ll let people know whether it will be another step because we don’t want to chase it just for the sake of chasing it. Clearly, the science has to be solid before we make another investment behind it. The thing is, it’s really hard to walk away from this because if this drug works and works like it did in the open label, that is a huge game changer in depression. It’s a phenomenally differentiate highly differentiating profile for an oral drug that works within two hours, at least that’s what we saw in the open label and has a very significant impact, even reduces suicides by eighty percent.

So it’s a very unique highly differentiated potential profile. And therefore before we just walk away from it, we want to make sure we do our homework well and look at every potential question here.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer, Barclays: Understood. Good luck with that, Jack. And we look forward to updates from it. We are out of time. And I want to thank you again for joining us for the conference.

And I wish you a very productive conference, Jack. Thank you.

Jack Qutar, CEO, Supernus Pharmaceuticals: Thank you.

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