There were people in our organization, by the way, that were somewhat doubtful. But what I can tell you is at this point, because of the progress that we’ve made, there is no one in our organization, whether they’re an employee or a consultant who does not have a high degree of confidence that we’re going to have Triesence made successfully and very soon. We have a batch being produced, a PPQ batch, which is effectively a commercial batch that meets the production parameters, the performance specification that’s going to happen, as I said, in the middle of April. So we’ll produce two more batches if that first one is successful. And then within a period of a couple of months, we should be able to be back on track. There’s quite a bit more information, as I said in the letter to stockholders and also in our corporate presentation about Triesence, but it is a very high utility product.
It’s an unusual product with an unusual label. And the physician community, I can tell you, is very interested in seeing it back in the market, and we think it’s going to happen very soon. I can’t predict whether it’s going to happen by June or by August. What I can tell you is that we’re getting very strong help from our manufacturing partner, and our manufacturing partner as you can see on the box for the product is a very sophisticated organization. And we, as I said, have a high degree of confidence we’ll have Triesence back here very, very soon.
Aaron Wukmir: Great, that’s super helpful commentary. Thanks for taking the questions guys.
Operator: [Operator Instructions]. The next question comes from Jeffrey Cohen with Ladenburg Thalmann. Please go ahead.
Jeffrey Cohen: Oh hi there. Good morning. Thanks for taking our questions. I just have two for Mark and Andrew. Firstly, could you talk about perhaps the anticipated cadence on the top line for the year, should we expect something — somewhat linearly increasing as we did last year? And then secondly, could you touch upon anticipated margins for the year, inclusive of Triesence?
Mark L. Baum: Andrew, do you want to try and tackle that? I think we’re going to keep our numbers where we are, which is in over $180 million. And I think with — as I said, the news of this morning, our margins should increase, not decrease. But Andrew, do you want to add anything?
Andrew R. Boll: Yes. Jeff, just to reiterate what Mark said, from a revenue perspective, we’re sticking with what we said, which is more than $180 million this year. We feel that’s strongly intact. And then on EBITDA margins or operating margins, the approach is going to be kind of dependent upon revenue opportunity. And so we’re going to kind of temper revenue growth with EBITDA expectations. We mentioned the leverage ratio. So we want to be sure we’re coming in under four times levered at the end of the year. But outside of that, we’ll continue — if we see opportunities to invest in that revenue growth for the out years, especially thinking about VEVYE, thinking about IHEEZO and Triesence to an extent, we’ll do it. And so the actual margin percent may be different depending on the revenue numbers for the year, but certainly, we’ll keep the leverage ratio in mind as we make investments and plan for the future.
Jeffrey Cohen: Okay, got it. And then lastly, first, could you talk about pricing at all, did you take any pricing in 2023 or is there any anticipated pricing for 2024, and any comments there would be appreciated? Thank you.
Mark L. Baum: Andrew, do you want to touch on that. I’ll just say to start and that, to be clear, our philosophy on pricing of any product is focused on access and affordability. That is the cornerstone of our company. And there are products that we have raised prices on. There are also other products in our portfolio we’ve actually lowered prices on and made them even more accessible. But before we do anything, just philosophically, we always make sure that we have a patient assistance program in place that is aggressive, whether it’s a branded product or a compounded product to ensure access and affordability to one who can benefit from our product. Andrew, do you want to add anything on pricing?
Andrew R. Boll: Yes. Jeff, just more specifically in the corporate deck, we have some wholesale acquisition cost pricing for some of the products. Triesence probably being the most notable one, where WAC pricing for that product is going to be $944 at the time we relaunched the product in some market. But to Mark’s point, WAC is list price. There’s a gross-to-net element to that. You see that in the accounting and the footnotes. We talked a lot about the gross in our accounting which factors in the patient assistance programs, the co-pay assistance programs, making sure we’re living up to our mission, which is access and affordability for the patient. And so ultimately, we’re going to price the products to make sure we have a steady supply of the products that we can make money selling the products and getting them to the patients, but we’re also keeping in mind the patient element and the access element.
Mark L. Baum: A great example of that related to Triesence is related to Triesence. The price of Triesence had not seen any adjustment for 16 years since the product actually hit the market. And so one of the challenges is with a product that on the FDA’s drug shortage list that’s not being made — that has not been priced competitively. There’s just not a profit incentive to actually make the product available, and therefore, it ends up on the drug shortage list year after year after year. And so when we thought about pricing for TRIESENCE, which is as Andrew said, $944 a unit, we looked at the other preservative-free triamcinolone product that’s in the market. It’s not competitive with our product, but it is a preservative-free triamcinolone product, and it’s priced at more than $1,800 per unit.
