Royalty Pharma plc (NASDAQ:RPRX) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Royalty Pharma plc (NASDAQ:RPRX) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript May 9, 2024

Royalty Pharma plc misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.008 EPS, expectations were $0.96. RPRX isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Royalty Pharma First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. I would like now to turn the conference over to George Grofik, Senior Vice President, Head of Investor Relations and Communications. Please go ahead, sir.

George Grofik: Good morning and good afternoon to everyone on the call. Thank you for joining us to review Royalty Pharma’s first quarter 2024 results. You can find the press release with our earnings results and slides of this call on the Investors page of our website at royaltypharma.com. Moving to Slide 3. I would like to remind you that information presented in this call contains forward-looking statements that involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. I refer you to our 10-K on file with the SEC for a description of these risks. All forward-looking statements are based on information currently available to Royalty Pharma and we assume no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements.

Non-GAAP liquidity measures will be used to help you understand our financial performance. The reconciliation of these measures to our GAAP financials is provided in the earnings press release available on our website. And with that, please advance to Slide 4. Our speakers on the call today are Pablo Legorreta, Founder and Chief Executive Officer; Marshall Urist, EVP, Head of Research and Investments; Chris Hite, EVP, Vice Chairman; and Terry Coyne, EVP, Chief Financial Officer. Pablo will discuss the key highlights, after which Marshall will give a portfolio update. Next, Chris will discuss our [indiscernible] portfolio. Afterwards, Terry will review the financials. Following concluding remarks from Pablo, we will hold a Q&A session. With that, I’d like to turn the call over to Pablo.

Pablo Legorreta: Thank you, George and welcome to everyone on the call. I am delighted to report a successful start to 2024 as we execute against our vision to be the leading partner funding innovation in the life sciences. In terms of the financials, we delivered 14% growth in Royalty Receipts. This represents our recurring cash flows and the strong performance in our quarter reflects the quality of our diversified portfolio of more than 35 commercial products. Milestones and other contractual payment — receipts which are more variable decline [ph], reflecting the high base effect of the year-ago quarter from a nonrecurring Biohaven-related payment. As a result, Portfolio Receipts, our top line declined to $717 million which was in line with our expectations.

Turning to capital allocation. Today, we’re announcing an exciting transaction which is expected to take our capital deployment to approximately $670 million. Marshall will take you through the details. But in summary, we have agreed to acquire royalties and milestones on Sanofi’s frexalimab for approximately $525 million, including estimated transaction costs. This is an exciting development stage therapy with multi-blockbuster potential in multiple sclerosis and other immune indications. Following the 5% increase in our dividend in the first quarter, I’m also delighted to announce today a new commitment to grow our dividend by mid-single-digit percentage on an annual basis. Looking at our portfolio, we will have 15 development-stage therapies which we estimate have the combined potential to generate significantly greater than $1 billion in peak royalties.

Most of these therapies have blockbuster sales potential and are in development by premier global marketers. We believe our development stage portfolio is highly attractive and underappreciated by the market and Chris will expand on the multiple potential events we expect over the next year. Lastly, I am pleased to reconfirm our 2024 full year guidance. We continue to expect Portfolio Receipts to be between $2.6 billion and $2.7 billion. Based on expected growth in Royalty Receipts of around 5% to 9%. Consistent with our standard practice, our guidance is based on our current portfolio and does not include the benefit of any future transactions. Slide 7 shows our impressive track record of strong growth since our IPO. As I noted earlier, we delivered 14% growth in Royalty Receipts in our first quarter.

This is the highest quarter growth rate we have achieved since the first quarter of 2022 and sets us up well to deliver our full year guidance. The slide also illustrates the variable contribution from milestones and other contractual receipts when we look at the overall trend in Portfolio Receipts. Overall, this track record of strong growth speaks to our ability to execute successfully and consistently against our strategy in the growing market for biopharma royalties. With that, I will hand it over to Marshall to update you on our portfolio.

Marshall Urist: Thanks, Pablo. I want to focus today on the exciting transaction we just announced for Sanofi’s frexalimab. Slide 9 summarizes the details of the transaction and the scale of the opportunity. We have agreed to purchase a royalty interest in frexalimab from ImmuNext, a privately held biotech and expect to pay approximately $525 million, including estimated transaction costs. In return, we will be entitled to receive a royalty ranging from high-single to low-double digits on worldwide sales. Also, we will share a minority of the royalty with the former ImmuNext shareholders on sales above $2 billion. Importantly, the royalty is long duration running to 2041 which is central when we think about the returns. In addition to royalties, we will be entitled to receive significant potential milestones.

In terms of the commercial opportunity, Sanofi has stated that frexalimab has the potential to achieve nonrisk-adjusted peak sales of over €5 billion across multiple indications. In our view, the multiple sclerosis opportunity alone has the potential to generate over $3 billion in peak sales based on its differentiated profile. Should frexalimab generate $5 billion in peak sales, this would suggest peak annual Royalty Receipts to Royalty Pharma of over $400 million. Frexalimab is a first-in-class antibody with a novel mechanism of action targeting CD40 ligand. This pathway is thought to be involved in the development and progression of multiple sclerosis and may play a critical role in other immune diseases. Sanofi’s Phase II data was recently published in New England Journal of Medicine and highlights the clear potential of frexalimab as a high efficacy, non-lymphocyte depleting therapy for multiple sclerosis.

Frexalimab significantly reduced disease activity, as measured by MRI and the clinical relapse rate was close to zero at 48 weeks. Importantly, the treatment was well tolerated with no notable safety signals. Based on this compelling profile, Sanofi has initiated Phase III clinical development in multiple sclerosis, with results and regulatory submissions anticipated for 2027. Phase II studies are also underway in type 1 diabetes and lupus, 2 immune diseases in which a role for the CD40 pathway has also been implicated. Slide 11 provides an overview of the fundamental drivers of our excitement in the exceptional opportunity offered by frexalimab. On top of the compelling Phase II efficacy, the differentiated mechanism of action may provide a potential safety differentiator versus existing high-efficacy multiple sclerosis therapies.

We would also note that strong Phase II data in MS has historically been highly predictive of success in the Phase III setting. Furthermore, our statistical analysis confirm that Sanofi studies are well designed and powered for success. Commercially, our proprietary U.S. claims analysis suggests that nearly 100,000 patients will have discontinued anti-CD20 therapy by the time frexalimab launches in 2028, a large addressable market that alone supports blockbuster potential for frexalimab although we anticipate use in a broader set of MS patients, if approved. Moving to Slide 12. Frexalimab check all the boxes for us. Clearly aligning with our product selection framework, it’s a potential first-in-class therapy with strong scientific rationale and a clear commercial position.

It has very supportive Phase II clinical data and it will be marketed by a leading global immunology company. Frexalimab is, as Sanofi describes it, a pipeline and a product across several immunology indications and importantly, has the potential to contribute significantly to our growth in our Royalty Receipts with an attractive return profile and long duration. And with that, I’ll hand it over to Chris.

Chris Hite: Thanks, Marshall. I want to expand on the frexalimab transaction and highlight the broader potential of our growing development stage pipeline which we think is underappreciated by the market. A strong pipeline is central to our strategy. Instead of focusing on any one project in detail, we want to provide an overview of our current development stage portfolio. Slide 14 summarizes the key take-home messages. In short, since our IPO, we have assembled a portfolio that consists of 15 development stage therapies which we believe have the potential to contribute greater than $1 billion combined peak annual royalties. Most of these therapies in development are potential blockbusters and are in the hands of powerful marketers.

We have carefully managed the risk profile of this portfolio by selecting therapies which meet our product framework and that are primarily in late-stage development. We have also built in risk mitigating deal structures where possible. Lastly, we see the potential to begin unlocking the value of this exciting portfolio through multiple clinical and regulatory events which we expect over the next 12 to 18 months. These include the FDA action date for KarXT, FDA filings for aficamten and pelabresib and pivotal study results for seltorexant, TEV-‘749 and Tremfya in Crohn’s. And in 2025, we expect outcomes data for pelecarsen which has the potential to be a very significant royalty for our portfolio. Slide 15 highlights that we have deployed capital of close to $23 billion since 2012, with a healthy balance between approved and development stage therapies.

Over the period, the majority of our capital has been deployed to acquire royalties on approved products. And even with the expansion of our development stage pipeline I just referenced, this weighting towards approved products has remained the case since our IPO. However, when we look on an annual basis, there is considerable variability in this mix which reflects the opportunistic nature of our business. Slide 16 shows that our development stage pipeline has grown fivefold since our June 2020 IPO. The graphic on the right-hand side illustrates that our pipeline is nicely diversified by therapeutic area, including neurology, psychiatry, cardiology, cancer, rare disease and in immunology. When it comes to investing in development-stage therapies, we have a strong track record.

On Slide 17, you can see that we have invested around $9 billion in this category and that our success rate has been high. Approximately 70% of our development stage investments have gone on to receive regulatory approval. Around 20% are still in development and only 10% have not reached the market. This record reflects our diligence process, including the product selection framework Marshall spoke to. Our ability to identify therapies with unmet and underserved patient needs and our large opportunity set. To balance the higher inherent risk versus approved products, we target returns in the teens for development-stage investments. Expanding on my previous point, on Slide 18, we believe we have a unique and powerful approach to development-stage investing.

In terms of product selection, in addition to requiring strong proof-of-concept data, we often partner directly with the innovators so that we have access to additional insights into the clinical program and sales potential. Once we have made the product selection, we typically then structure the transaction to include risk mitigation strategies and also ensure we are strongly aligned with the interest of our partner. These strategies can include investing in post-pivotal study therapies, our deep due diligence supported by patient-level data and regulatory correspondence and receiving a portion of return through milestones and stage-investing, to name a few. You can see here a number of examples that illustrate our unique approach, including our investments in KarXT, aficamten, frexalimab and Merck-8189.

Slide 19 is my final slide. It shows our late-stage development pipeline by potential peak sales and the associated royalty we could receive — expect to receive. Importantly, these all have first or best-in-class potential and are supported by world-class marketers. The majority have multi-blockbuster potential. And in aggregate, we estimate the combined peak sales at over $25 billion on a nonrisk-adjusted basis. Based on the respective royalty rates, this could potentially translate to over $1.25 billion in annual peak royalty to Royalty Pharma, with frexalimab and olpasiran potentially the largest individual contributors. I would also add that we are pleased with the positive news announced by Teva that TEV-‘749, a long-acting injectable version of the antipsychotic olanzapine, achieved its primary efficacy endpoint in the Phase III study and continues to have an encouraging safety profile.

We look forward to additional updates in the second half of the year. As a reminder, in the fall of 2023, Royalty Pharma partnered with Teva to provide up to $125 million in R&D funding for the TEV-‘749 Phase III program. We will receive a milestone payment on FDA approval as well as low to mid-single-digit royalties on its sales. Given its emerging differentiated safety profile in a market with significant unmet need, we are excited about the commercial potential for TEV-‘749. This, once again, highlights our unique ability to identify attractive products across the biopharma industry and partner with innovators to accelerate development. As these products become commercial, they will contribute to our attractive compounding growth in the years ahead.

To close, we have an exciting development stage portfolio, with multiple expected upcoming events so you can see why we expect to continue to deliver attractive compounding growth in the years ahead. With that, I would like to hand it over to Terry.

Terrance Coyne: Thanks, Chris. Let’s move to Slide 21. Royalty Receipts grew by 14% in the first quarter, reflecting the strength of our diversified portfolio. The key drivers of growth were the strong performance of our base business, notably our cystic fibrosis franchise and Trelegy, as well as the acquisition of incremental Evrysdi royalties. Portfolio Receipts, our top line, declined by 37% reflecting the impact of nonrecurring items in milestones and other contractual receipts in the year ago quarter. Specifically, in the first quarter of 2023, we received a $475 million milestone payment following the FDA approval of Pfizer ZAVZPRET. As a result of this nonrecurring item, milestones and other contractual receipts declined to $12 million in the quarter.

This decline was entirely consistent with expectations and fully reflected in our full year 2024 guidance. Slide 22, a shows how our efficient business model generates substantial cash flow to be reinvested. Portfolio Receipts amounted to $717 million in the first quarter. As we move down the column, operating and professional costs equated to 8.4% of Portfolio Receipts. Net interest paid of $73 million reflected the semiannual timing of our interest payment schedule, with payments falling due in the first and third quarters. Moving further down the column, we have consistently stated that when we think of the cash generated by the business to then be redeployed into value-enhancing royalties, we look to adjusted EBITDA, less net interest paid, or as we call it, portfolio cash flow.

This amounted to $584 million in the quarter, equivalent to a margin of around 81%. High level of cash conversion, once again, highlights the efficiency of our business model. Capital deployment in the first quarter was a little under $100 million but will be approximately $670 million after we acquire the frexalimab royalty. Slide 23 shows that we continue to maintain significant financial capacity for future royalty acquisitions. In total, we have over $3.5 billion available through a combination of cash on our balance sheet, the cash our business generates and access to the debt markets. At the end of the first quarter, we had cash and equivalents of $843 million. Following the approximately $525 million of cash payments related to the ImmuNext transaction, this will take our cash and equivalents to approximately $320 million on a pro forma basis.

When we turn to our borrowing position, on top of our $6.3 billion of investment-grade bonds, we maintain significant leverage capacity which we can take up to 4x as the right opportunity arose. Furthermore, we have additional undrawn financial capacity from the $1.8 billion revolver. Taken together with our strong cash generation, we feel good about our ability to continue to execute transactions and create shareholder value. Slide 24 sets out our unchanged full year 2024 financial guidance. We expect Portfolio Receipts to be in the range of $2.6 billion to $2.7 billion. Let me walk you through our assumptions. First, within our overall top line guidance, we expect to deliver continued attractive growth in Royalty Receipts of around 5% to 9%.

We anticipate the strength of our diversified portfolio will more than offset Imbruvica and Tysabri headwinds. Second, we face a high base of comparison in 2023 as a result of the $525 million of Biohaven-related payments we received last year. As you have seen today, the largest element, the $475 million ZAVZPRET milestone was received in the first quarter of 2023. Milestones and other contractual receipts are, therefore, expected to decline from around $600 million in 2023 to approximately $30 million in 2024. Lastly, our guidance assumes a negligible foreign exchange impact. Importantly and consistent with our standard practice, this guidance is based on our portfolio as of today does not take into account the benefit of any future royalty acquisitions.

For the second quarter, we also anticipate Portfolio Receipts to grow in the high single digits compared to last year’s second quarter. Turning to operating costs. Payments for operating and professional costs are expected to be approximately 8% to 9% of Portfolio Receipts in 2024. We continue to believe that the degree of margin protection provided by our unique business model is impressive. Interest paid for full year 2024 is expected to be around $160 million, with de minimis amounts to be paid in Q2 and Q4. This does not take into account any interest received on our cash balance which was $6 million in the first quarter. With that, I would like to hand the call back to Pablo for his closing comments.

Pablo Legorreta: Thanks, Terry. Let me begin my concluding remarks by saying how delight I am with our start to 2024. We delivered double-digit growth in Royalty Receipts. We strengthened our exciting development-stage pipeline and we have announced a strong new commitment on our dividend growth. On my final slide, I want to highlight our incredible track record of consistently identifying exciting ways of biopharma innovation and finding ways to participate, from Rituxan, the first monoclonal antibody for cancer, to Gilead HIVS — HIV franchise to HUMIRA, where we invested in 2006 and it later became the industry’s biggest selling product to more recent life-changing therapies like Trikafta for cystic fibrosis and Evrysdi for spinal muscular atrophy.

And when we look ahead, we expect to see a number of the exciting development-stage therapies we talked about today joined this list, transforming the lives of patients with multiple sclerosis, cardiovascular disease and schizophrenia, among others. The ability to identify new waves of innovation and to constantly replenish our portfolio with life-changing therapies is our DNA and we’re confident that it can continue. With our simple but powerful business model, our deep access to capital, we’re confident we can continue to deliver attractive compounding growth over the remainder of this decade and beyond. With that we would be happy to take your questions.

Operator: And our first question comes from Chris Shibutani with Goldman Sachs.

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Q&A Session

Chris Shibutani: Congratulations on the deal with frexalimab. The opportunity that is at the forefront, clearly in MS but they’re also in advanced clinicals. Maybe, Marshall, can you help us how you risk assess and think about the potential in the other indications? I think there’s Sjogren’ as well as type 1 diabetes and lupus, the latter 2, in particular, historically quite challenging.

Marshall Urist: Chris, absolutely. We are really excited to be adding frexalimab to the portfolio. And as you correctly observed, our — the core of our thesis and our view was really based on MS, where very consistent and compelling set of Phase II data. As we mentioned, Sanofi is going forward in other indications, type 1 diabetes and lupus. Both are interesting. I think, certainly, we’ll wait to see how the Phase II data there works out. There’s not a lot of precedent data for CD40 in those areas but I think they would definitely add potential sources of upside to the transaction. And then just as a reminder, Sanofi has said that in Sjogren’s, they actually aren’t going forward there in Phase II. But I think — but as we said, based on MS was really the base of this investment and we’re really excited to have this as part of the portfolio.

Operator: Our next question comes from Geoff Meacham with Bank of America Securities.

Geoff Meacham: Just have a couple. The first, maybe for Marshall, another one on frexalimab. Just walk us through kind of the idea here of the MS market being — you kind of avoid to fill with respect to Tysabri. Is there a thought that maybe you had to ultimately replace the economics from Tysabri in the longer term. Obviously, the MS market can be a little challenged when it comes to generics today? And then the second question, maybe for Terry or Pablo, on capital deployment, when you think about the share buybacks, you guys didn’t do a lot share buybacks when that was first announced. And I just wanted to know the context for the commitment now to a dividend versus buyback. You guys generate a lot of cash and so I wanted to kind of get that perspective from you guys.

Pablo Legorreta: Thanks for the question, Jeff. And I think Marshall can definitely take the question on frexalimab. And then I think Terry will talk about capital deployment and our commitment to dividend growth.

Marshall Urist: Absolutely. Geoff, so just quickly on frexalimab. So no, the rationale behind frexalimab was not was not to fill any sort of void around Tysabri. It was the outcome of the strategy and our approach to building the portfolio that we talked about with everyone which is looking for really exciting quality products that have — that check all the boxes in our product selection framework that we talked about at the beginning of the call. And I think that was really the core of it in our approach and we are really excited to have it as part of the portfolio. And specifically on the commercial opportunity, the way we thought about it was, there are certainly — the dominance of the CD20 class today is really compelling and it’s been really important for patients.

But what we see is as this market develops, that there’s going to be a need for high efficacy alternative mechanisms of action and that’s exactly what frexalimab offers. And so that was really the core of our thesis and why we think this is going to be an exciting product for patients and for Royalty Pharma.

Pablo Legorreta: I mean one thing just to quickly add to what Marshall said is, there’s no question that Royalty Pharma has had great success investing in diseases like multiple sclerosis, with Tysabri and also remember that we had a royalty on Tecfidera. So in total, I think we had invested $3.4 billion in MS with great results. And now with this another $500 million or so, so it’s an area we like where we see still huge potential for improvement in current therapies.

Terrance Coyne: And then, Jeff, on your question on capital allocation. As we said in the past, our number 1 priority is buying new royalties. We think that’s how we can drive the most long-term value. We have been paying a dividend since our IPO and actually the 20 years prior to our IPO and been growing it consistently every year. Since the IPO, we’ve grown at mid-single digits or better. And so — and it was fully our plan to continue to grow at mid-single digits. So I think that the commitment today is simply a sort of a reflection of what our current — what our plans had already been. We thought it was important to sort of put that out there. So investors understood that aspect of our capital allocation. And then in terms of the share buyback, it’s certainly something that is — as we’ve said before, it’s a tool that we really like having.

I think when we think about the buyback, we also think about in the context of some of the opportunities that we’re seeing out there as well. And I would say that the team is extremely busy. We’re really excited about the overall opportunity set. We never know when transactions are going to happen but that, I think, is a factor when we think about deploying capital because, as I mentioned, our number 1 use of capital that we think is buying new royalties.

Operator: Next question comes from Chris Schott with JPMorgan.

Unidentified Analyst: This is Ethan [ph] on for Chris Schott. I just have 2 quick ones. So first off, with the 15 development stage assets that you noted, how do you think about the balance of Royalty’s portfolio at this point? And maybe more specifically, as the company becomes larger and more diversified going forward, is there an ability or desire to view capital deployment more towards the development stage where you might get greater potential returns? And then the second question is just how you think about the 2025 Medicare Part D Redesign and any estimate on the impact to your portfolio at this point?

Pablo Legorreta: Sure. So I’m going to ask Marshall and Chris to talk about the Medicare and other questions. But just the very top level, the business has been incredibly successful over many decades by — and actually really over a decade when we started to invest in unapproved. And we think that this balance that has been 60-40, approved and unapproved, is a good way to continue to grow our business. Could it be 50-50, sure. But what really happens in our business, that measurement of 60-40 is sort of the cumulative capital deployed in approved and unapproved. But in reality, what happens with our business is that, the $9 billion or so that we’ve invested and unapproved. So many of those got approved, as you saw on a slide, 70% or so [ph].