Matt Abernethy: You know, when you think about our Q4 results, it’s our first quarter ever of $500 million in sales, and we’re quite encouraged by what we saw. There’s always quarterly gyrations in terms of whether it’s timing of orders, timing of patients getting refills, etc., and so there’s choppiness to certain quarters. Q3 was a blowout quarter; Q4 was another great quarter, and I think we feel very good with how we’re positioned, headed into 2024. The gross-to-net dynamic that I commented on is very consistent with what we’ve had in previous years. There’s an accounting requirement where you have to take an incremental discount on your channel inventory, and so that’s something that put pressure on our numbers a bit in Q4.
The only other item that I’d call out as it relates to net revenue per script, we didn’t take our price increase until very late in the quarter, and in previous years there was some level of contribution in our Q4 numbers associated with the price increase. The improvement in this year’s net revenue per script comes down to price increases and then the contract decisions that we make, their trade-offs, and I think that overall, that’s what led to an improved net revenue per script, going from $5,600 in 2023 to something over $5,800 in 2024.
Uy Ear: Thanks.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from David Amsellem with Piper Sander. Please go ahead.
Schuyler van den Broek: Hi, this is Schuyler on for David. First, any thoughts on the potential pricing of crinecerfont and the discussions you’ve been having with payors, and do you expect the reimbursement landscape will be different between adults and pediatrics? Then second, could you provide any updates on the development plan for the M1 preferring agonist, and just talk mechanistically to the value proposition of just targeting M1 versus M4. Thanks.
Eric Benevich: Yes, so obviously we’re very enthusiastic about the clinical profile that emerged with crinecerfont. With regards to pricing, it’s a little bit premature to comment on that, other than to say that this is a rare disease and we would expect to have rare disease pricing. We’ve had initial conversations with payors and I’ve been quite pleased, and maybe a little bit surprised – pleasantly – that they seem to be acutely aware of the issues associated with chronic high dose steroid treatment, and so we’ve got a lot of work to do still in terms of understanding the value that’s emerging from the clinical data. Certainly we believe that the pricing will be in line with the value that we bring to market.
Todd Tushla: Let’s take one final question, please.
Operator: Our last question comes from Ami Fadia with Needham. Please go ahead. Ami, your line is open. Please go ahead with your question.
Todd Tushla: It sounds like I’ll follow-up with Ami later. Kevin?
Kevin Gorman: Thank you all this morning for your questions. Really appreciate this time to interact, and we’ll be talking a lot more at upcoming meetings. The only closing comments that I have is I hope that you–it’s come through our enthusiasm as we start 2024 here. We do expect to have another great year. The two things that I really want to point out the most as I close here, number one is probably starting three years ago, you saw our investment ramp up in Ingrezza, both with sales force expansions and with DTC efforts. You have now seen in the last two years what a difference that can make. We have a multi-billion dollar product on our hands here, so those investments have got a phenomenal ROI on them. They will continue.
Our focus with those investments is on the patient. It’s on building out this very early marketplace that is still–I know I’ve said it for six years, and I’m going to say it into a seventh year, this is just the tip of the iceberg for this. There are so many more patients that need this drug in order to be able to live fulfilling lives. With crinecerfont, it’s very much the same way. As Matt said, the amount of investment that we need within that marketplace is much smaller because the patient population is much smaller. But nevertheless, I’m very confident that what you will see is the investments that we’re making this year, next year, are going to be incredible for the lives of those patients, and also as a significant leg of growth for Neurocrine going forward.
Then finally, the investments that we’re making in our internal R&D efforts are definitely going to pay off. we get to see a lot more, unfortunately, than you get to see, but I can tell you that in the coming years, you’re going to see those efforts in small molecules, which has always been our strong point, but in all of the large molecules, whether you’re talking about peptides, proteins, antibodies and gene therapies – those will start rolling into the clinic, so we’re very excited here and we have a lot of work ahead of us. We look forward to talking to you more in the future. Thank you very much.
Operator: This does conclude the Neurocrine Biosciences year-end and fourth quarter results call. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day.
