Matt Gline : I appreciate the question and they’re sort of exactly the right ones. From a competitive dynamics perspective, I think we still look narrowly versus the other novel topical agents in psoriasis. I think we still see patient — physicians choosing us, preferentially. The truth is as we’ve said, we’ve never been that focused on novel topical agents. We’ve always been focused on capturing share from topical corticosteroids. We’ve said historically is that continues to be work. The sort of high prescribing docs write the product all the time and are really excited about it. And then there’s a long tail who write it 4x a month and think that’s a lot and I think haven’t sort of come around to our view yet that they can write it 50x a month.
So we’re working through those dynamics and I’m optimistic that behavior is changing over time. Yes, there’s a couple other competitive events. Obviously one of our competitors recently launched a foam that doesn’t directly impact utilization of our product. We’re not being used a lot on the scalp anyway. I think that should be a good indication for them, but not something we’re focused on. We’ve obviously done some work ourselves on a foam and we’ll continue to think about expansion opportunities in that direction. As far as AD is concerned, it’s just — it’s a huge market. And we are excited for our product profile, which we think bluntly is even more differentiated in AD even in psoriasis. AD is also in many ways the less developed and potentially faster growing market.
And it’s also a market that is more primed for novel topicals than psoriasis was because there have been a few more on the market ahead of us. And so we can also look to take share not just from steroids there, but from maybe some competitors that have established themselves. I think what we will wind up focused most on for the sort of quarter of that launch that will happen during our next fiscal year. Again, we’ll get the approval kind of late this calendar year. And then we’ll be looking at sort of that next fiscal quarter. I think we’ll be looking at script volume uptake there and looking to see some real growth. We have said previously we expect to increase the number of reps from about a 100 to about 125. I don’t think there’s like a massive change to our commercial infrastructure, but we’re still thinking through in real-time as we learn from the psoriasis side what to do for DTC concurrent with that launch, et cetera.
That’s all sort of ongoing. The prescriber base is also a little bit different. It’s a little bit more dispersed. We’re given some thought to ways to reach docs beyond just the dermatologists. But stay tuned for potential ideas there. And then, sorry, you might’ve had all of GTN yeah, look, I think, it’s been sort of slow and steady-ish for us. There’s still a little bit of lumpy contracting stuff to get through just as some of the contracts have kind of turned over or changed, but in general, I’d say like slow and steady accretion over the course of the year, we may dip a little in the first quarter or be flat-ish in the first quarter for sort of normal reasons related to plan resets, et cetera. And then, my guess is the AD launch won’t like halt our progression, but it may momentarily slow it as we just need to make sure formulary sort of gets set up there quickly.
So I think, probably slow and steady is the right way to think about GTN through 2024.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Douglas Tsao with HC Wainwright.
Douglas Tsao : Matt, you indicated that you were sort of still sort of agnostic I guess in terms of therapeutic area after you did announce the Telavant transaction with Roche. You sort of said that having a much greater cash balance potentially positioned you to sort of take on big opportunities further into development. Does that influence where, or sort of certain therapeutic areas that you might favor? Because obviously you have could the outlines of such a strong I&I portfolio right now.
Matt Gline : I appreciate the question and thoughtful as always. I think first of all, we continue to appreciate the pleasing coherence we have in I&I, we think, but FcRn fits nicely with brepocitinib that namilumab and sarcoidosis is sort of hewing in the same directions. So look, I think to the extent that we see things in I&I that work for us, there’s something nice to that. I think in many ways what our capital base and frankly our history of development in, remember some of our first Phase 3 programs we’re in endometriosis and uterine fibroids and overactive bladder, which are not necessarily indications that we’re jumping up and down about literally right now for new programs. But they’re big studies and big indications and I think, we have a lot of history in that kind of disease state.
One of the things that I think frankly differentiates us from many biotech companies is that our capital base allows us to do larger studies for broader populations. And so I think we will potentially take advantage of that both because those can be big opportunities and because there are opportunities that will sort of necessarily get passed over by smaller folks who don’t have the capital position of the development experience take them on. So I think that is a competitive opportunity for us that we will be taking advantage of.
Douglas Tsao : And Matt, I guess as a follow-up, to the extent that you perhaps do pursue opportunities outside of I&I would you think about sort of new areas as ones in which you would want to start to build some scale? Meaning if you executed a new one single transaction as potential therapeutic area, would you be what likely looking to add to that?
Matt Gline : It’s a discussion that we have internally as we look at our pipeline. And again, there are things that we see where we see a program and it makes more sense as a part of our portfolio, then it does sort of on a standalone basis. So I think, it’s certainly possible as we build-out additional programs that they will become nexuses of scale. I think it’s important to know, though, we evaluate every program on its own merits. We evaluate every program based on the data we’ve got, and I think we’re going to pursue sort of value and risk over sort of therapeutic concentration per se. But, Mayukh, I’ll hand it over to you.
Mayukh Sukhatme: Yeah, I think, look, I think as you’ve, seen from us, typically when we bring in a new program, I mean, it’s sort of like by definition it’s got to have enough heft to kind of stand on its own. I think that’s the lens through which we look at it, that’s the lens through which we sort of hire a team to sort of prosecute around it, we typically call it a new vent, but that’s kind of how we think about it. And last night it’s, I guess like I would say, I can’t underscore the comment Matt made enough about capital being a major competitive advantage for us. Both in terms of I think like what that brings as a solution to a perspective pharma partner and that we have the sort of scale of capital that is meaningful to them. And that is unique to us. And so I think we view that as precious.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Robyn Karnauskas with Truist Securities.
Nishant Gandhi: This is Nishant. I’m on for Robyn. Maybe on VTAMA GTN. You mentioned you see a steady — slow and steady over a period of next year. You mentioned that last call, you see overall, you reach — to reach 50% at steady state, do you still believe that to be the number for GTN long-term to this 50% steady state? And in terms of big picture for the company, how many assets would you retain over the long-term?
Matt Gline: On the GTN question. Look, I think I have no real change for like the long-term steady-state guidance. I think it’s going to take time and scale, especially because remember, a meaningful portion of the remaining yield accretion comes from volume, which is really just going to take some time to build up to. So — but I think our guidance of 50% is sort of the same as let’s say, every other biotech launch program. And I think the trends that buffet us will be largely the same as the trends that buffet other programs. So no change to sort of long-term steady-state guidance per se. And then assets that we retain for the long term, I think the short answer is we bring in programs that we are excited to invest in, that we believe will be important commercially, that we believe we will generate important clinical data on.
And basically, everything we bring in, our plan is to retain it and develop it. And I think the thing that throws us off that trajectory is just the information we learn along the way, both in terms of the quality of the data that we generate and in terms of what other people think of the program and what their plans might be. But I think if you gave me a crystal ball, and it showed that we kept all of the programs in our pipeline, and they were sort of commercial opportunities for us down the line, I’d be pretty excited about that. I just — I think we will continue to be ruthlessly economic along the way. And some of the targets we’re working in a really attractive target, not just to us but to prospective partners. So I think that could — that’s the kind of thing that takes us off that path.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, I would like to turn the call back over to Matt for closing remarks.
Matt Gline: Thank you, everybody. Thanks for listening. Thank you, operator, for moderating. Thanks to all our analysts and obviously, to the — to all of our investors and to the entire team at Roivant. We appreciate another quarter with a lot for us to be proud of and a lot to look forward to in building year for 2024. So yes, looking forward to getting back on the phone. I’m sure we’ll do it multiple times to come, and I will speak to you all soon.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
