Halozyme Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:HALO) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And so, we’re obviously delighted with the very strong progress we’re seeing and the continuous growth to come as we get to that 50% overall conversion of the market. And I wouldn’t be surprised myself if it was able to go even further than that based on the value proposition that we’re seeing here and just to reiterate that, for breast cancer patients, many of them — many of them working instead of having to be an infusion center for the treatment which can take up to 1.5 hours. But then there is the observation that injection of Phesgo is given in just five minutes or so with a shorter observation time. That means a mum can go in before work at lunch time after work and not be able to take — have to take so much time. So it’s a strong value proposition, and I am expecting more growth to come.

The focus of the on-body which does include Phesgo so sometimes people ask is that ENHANZE in it. Yes, ENHANZE is an intrinsic part of Phesgo which also included Herceptin and Perjeta. The goal with that is to allow for more at-home therapy. And so I haven’t heard Roche comment if that, how much they think that will impact the growth and grow the market but based on patient population, we’ve just described. I think this is going to be a very nice option for certain segment of that population who that is fits better into their lifestyle.

Jason Butler: Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Vikram Purohit with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Vikram Purohit: Hi, good evening. Thanks for taking our questions. So we had two. One on capital allocation, one on the auto-injector. So going back to some of your prepared remarks, it sounded like there is a renewed focus on business development and M&A and so while we understand that you’re not anticipating any near-term M&A, could you speak generally about the profile of businesses and the profile of assets that you’d find additive to pulled into Halozyme. And then on the auto-injector just a clarification, are the economic terms associated with these potential initial contracts? Would they be in line with economics in terms associated with your current ENHANZE contracts? Thanks.

Helen Torley: All right. With regard to BD and M&A. As Nicole mentioned, we didn’t find any near-term opportunities, but we are continuing to look because that remains one of our three core pillars, which is to seek growth through deploying our capital for M&A. As a leader in drug delivery, we are looking for derisked broadly licensable assets where we can see a path to near-term accretion. So some form of drug delivery that is something major pharma, major biotech cannot do themselves and which they would be needing to license from a company that has that specific asset. There are assets out there to anticipate that question. It just has to fit a grid of criteria for us, including that has the near-term accretion. So we will keep looking, we spent a number of years looking for the Antares acquisition and so we will just keep focusing on that.

But also as Nicole mentioned the — what we consider to be the undervaluation of the Halozyme stock made the share repurchase, the right thing, we believe to return capital to shareholders, given the strong opportunity that that represented. With regard to the high volume auto-injector what we’re going to see it because the high volume auto-injector has to be used with ENHANZE, strategically, this is positioned to help us expand the number of current partner assets in the clinic and moving into the clinic, but also to allow us to sign more ENHANZE partnerships. So the HVI is always going to be associated with a royalty payments for the drug, but that is primarily going to be driven by ENHANZE and the model that most likely for the high volume auto-injector will be development down payment as it’s being created.

But — and then product sales. We are — we would make money on the number of devices that were purchased in the sale of created product.

Vikram Purohit: Got it. Thank you.