PROCEPT BioRobotics Corporation (NASDAQ:PRCT) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Sham Shiblaq: Yes, I would say what this does for us is it validates the safety of our procedure. For many years, we’ve had to kind of defend the fact that our procedure is safe in the early years of commercialization. And like we’ve talked about multiple times on this call, surgeons would not be doing this procedure in an ASC setting, if it was not a safe procedure to do. And so you’ll see that the outcomes on the clinical side basically mirror the efficacy that you get in a hospital setting and the safety is obviously paramount, and that’s highlighted in this data as well.

Operator: Our next question comes from Ryan Zimmerman with BTIG.

Ryan Zimmerman: I hate to stay on the ASC topic I’m sure you’re sick of answering these questions. But I have to just ask is the goal with the ASC strategy to also bring in some of the non-resective cases that would otherwise be done alternatively to resective. And kind of — and I don’t know if you feel like you answered this, I apologize, but it’s not clear to me. When you think about market expansive, are you saying just those TURPs that are done in the ASC, or is the broader goal to expand into the non-resective segment?

Reza Zadno : Thanks, Ryan. Our goal is to treat men who have BPH. A lot of the impact, most of these men today are on medication, whether they go for resective or non-resective. So our goal is to treat all men and, yes, today, we get some of those patients who are wanted to get non-resective in a hospital setting. So we are not necessarily focusing that are the patients for non-resective or resective, these are patients who are looking for long-term durability and efficacy on the procedure.

Sham Shiblaq : Hi, Ryan, I would say that ultimately, we want to be where the surgeons are going to spend their time operating and that means that the hospital and ASC are both settings that we want to be in. There’s a huge opportunity currently with the over one million men in the US that have failed pharmaceuticals and have not done anything from a surgical option beyond that, we look at that as our ultimate opportunity when we talk about market expansion. It’s real, it’s there in front of us and so we don’t necessarily say we’re going to target to take this from one procedure or another. We’re looking at BPH patients that have failed medications, and taking those as the ASC is a real opportunity for us.

Brandon Vasquez: Okay. Two other questions. I just want to throw in here, one, any impact that you’ve seen thus far on the loss the past through payment in the hospital setting? And then my second question that I’ll squeeze in here is just I’m wondering if you could just talk to the dynamic and the discrepancy between kind of handpiece sales growth and the growth of utilization and kind of how to reconcile those two for investors that look at that and point to that as is something they’re concerned about.

Reza Zadno: I’ll take the TPT part of it. No, the short answer is no. We are not seeing that. In fact, we had started talking about the retirement of TPT more than a year ago, and the hospitals are buying our system for the clinical outcome and making the practice more efficient. In fact, as you saw, we had slight increase in our pricing last quarter, and we were very happy with utilization and felt. So the short answer is no, we are not seeing that impact.

Kevin Waters: To follow-up on your second question, just to reiterate to what Reza said, I mean, I think it is fantastic that we were able to raise handpiece ASPs in a quarter where the transitional pass through did some set itself, which we believe is a proof point that it’s not impactful to our business at all. And in fact, we saw very little pushback from the price increase that we implemented in the first quarter. Your second question, I think, are you trying to discuss any differences between handpiece shipped and procedures? Is that kind of the genesis of your question? My understanding?

Brandon Vasquez: I think that’s right, Kevin.

Kevin Waters: So, for us, our customers, we sell direct in the US so we don’t sell the distributors, and therefore our customers tend to order as they need a product, which is somewhere in the 5 to 10 range is a standard order size. We don’t have large stocking orders, we don’t have fulfillment houses. So for us, we don’t see that. I’d also suggest that our visibility in the procedures is, is very high. So we have the ability to see who’s doing our cases when procedures are performed. And we have a high degree of visibility there. So I don’t have any concern, or there hasn’t been any changes in trends between handpieces sold and procedures. And in fact, when we went public back in 2021, we told the investment community, if there ever was a change kind of between those dynamics that we would be proactive and we just haven’t seen anything there at all.

Operator: Our next question comes from Mike Kratky with Leerink Partners.

Mike Kratky: Maybe a couple of high-level ones from us just on the Prostate Cancer Developer program. First, how are you thinking about the size of this commercial opportunity and to what extent can this be TAM expansive? And then maybe just as a follow-up, can you provide an update on the timelines for your ongoing clinical trials and what a regulatory path forward in this indication could ultimately look like?