Avadel Pharmaceuticals plc (NASDAQ:AVDL) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Unidentified Analyst: So that’s very helpful. And also can you talk about the IP, you mentioned that you have 13 patents now currently in these products, like what give you the confidence about the strengths of the IP position?

Greg Divis: Well, I think first and foremost we’re quite proud of the fact that we’re the first and only company to actually have innovated a once at bedtime or once nightly oxybate treatment option. And you would assume that we have and will continue to protect it to its fullest extent. The patent families that have been granted so far with many more to come, I would say we’re quite confident in. They’re generally directed to once nightly oxybate formulations which includes obviously our formulation but other types of formulations, pro drugs, polymers, alternate salts and whatnot as well as methods of treating patients in a manner that we believe is consistent with what our final label will be. So we’re quite confident in the robustness of our intellectual property, the 13 Orange Book listed patents we have so far, and the more to come.

Unidentified Analyst: Got it. That’s very helpful. Congrats again on a quarter.

Greg Divis: Thanks Rudy.

Operator: Our next question comes from Matt Kaplan with Ladenburg Thalmann.

Matt Kaplan: Hello. Good morning.

Greg Divis: Hi Matt.

Matt Kaplan: Hi. Just a couple of questions; in terms of maybe one to Richard, can you get €“ provide some more color on the sales organization in terms of number of sales reps and number of regions and kind of your go-to-market strategy with the sales team?

Richard Kim: Yes. Sure Matt. No problem. So our sizing for the sales force is based-off of the insight that there are less than 5,000 prescribers of oxybate in the last three years. Of that 1,600 makeup 80% of the volume in less than 500 make up, 50% of the total prescription volume. So we we’re sizing it around 50 to really sort of focus on those groups. But right out of the gate, we’re probably going to spend a little bit more time on the 1,600 that make up 80% of the prescription volume. Now for the €“ we will cover the entire group and also including a few high narcolepsy prescribers who don’t use oxybate. And also interesting for us, if we do get some other sort of people interested earlier on, our REMS is almost like an early detection signal, which will allow us to get out to those offices and really ensure that they’re set up well before that first prescription goes forward.

So we’re starting to focus where the oxybate experience is, and then from there we can expand over time.

Matt Kaplan: And then in terms of your patient support services center how will that function to help patient get reimbursement and get coverage?

Richard Kim: Yes. It’s one of the things that I would sort of see its going to be our secret sauce this launch. We know prescribing and fulfilling any specialty product in the United States is a challenge. It’s just not made easy for folks. So it’s beyond our patient. Our patient services center will be actually staffed with nurses, nurse care navigators, so they will understand more both the clinical and the reimbursement aspects. They’re actually going to be accredited in actually reimbursement services as well. So our goal there is each office will actually have a dedicated person that they can build a longer term relationship. It won’t be sort of mix-and-match in different nurse care navigators. But the other thing that we are also building out concurrently and have already made offers for field reimbursement team.