Antares: Impressive Xyosted Prescription Trends Continue (ATRS, Buy, $3.30)
Key Points:
- Xyosted prescription trends remain impressive and based on audit data for the last 11 weeks, there has been an acceleration in the trend line.
- My model has slightly increased its 2019 sales estimate from $18.8 million as shown in my August 27 report to $19.4 million and for 2020 from $53.9 to $56.8 million.
- For a company of Antares’s size, Xyosted looks to be a blockbuster success.
My Sales Model for Xyosted
This report is intended to provide a short update on my Xyosted sales and prescriptions projections. For a more complete discussion on how I build this model, you might want to look at my August 27 report. The key assumptions underlying my sales model for the balance of 2019 and all of 2020 are.
- The average sequential increase in weekly NRx is 18.
- The average sequential increase in weekly RRx is 21.
- 30% of NRx in the remainder of 2019 are not reimbursed because of sampling and other factors and in 2020 this drops to 20%.
- The average price of an NRx and RRx realized by Antares is $250.
- Because my raw model underestimated sales as reported by Antares by 15% in 1Q, 2019 and 83% in 2Q, I am using an adjustment in which I adjust the sales estimate calculated by model upward by 15% to arrive at my final sales projection. This 15% is just an outright guess but I think some adjustment is necessary.
Recent Prescription Trends
In the following table, I show the weekly prescription trends for the period from July 13 through September 20. You can see that the weekly numbers bounce around. As would be expected, there was a sharp drop in prescriptions for the week that included Labor Day which was followed by a sharp rebound. In this 11 week period the average sequential increase in NRx was 35 which is substantially higher than the 18 estimate I use in my model. Likewise, the average sequential increase in RRx was 36 which is also substantially higher than my estimate of 21.
Xyosted Sales Projections for 2019 and 2020
For the 11 week period ending September 20, we have seen an acceleration in the trend for Xyosted prescriptions. This is to be expected as the sales force broadens its reach and as physicians gain more experience. I should probably increase my estimates for sequential weekly increases in NRx of 18 and RRx of 21. For the time being, in the interest of conservatism, I am not increasing these estimates. My detailed weekly sales model appears in the appendix. The following table shows my quarterly prescription and sales trends for Xyosted.
My model has slightly increased its estimate for 2019 sales from $18.8 million as shown in my August 27 report to $19.4 million and for 2020 from $53.9 to $56.2 million.
Appendix
Here is my more complete worksheet for projecting weekly prescription sales trends through the end of 2020.
Tagged as Antares Pharma Inc., Xyosted prescription trends through September 20 + Categorized as Company Reports, LinkedIn