Belbuca return expected to push BDSI to profitability sooner
Feb 1, 2017, 3:09pm EST Updated Feb 1, 2017, 4:18pm EST
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Following the reacquisition of licensing rights to its pain management product Belbuca from Endo Pharmaceuticals last month, BioDelivery Sciences International anticipates profitability sooner than originally anticipated.
“On Jan. 6, we inherited a product on very favorable financial terms that ended the year with a $30 million gross sales run rate” BDSI President and CEO Mark Sirgo said Wednesday during an investor event in New York.
Pain treatment Belbuca, developed by Raleigh-based BioDelivery Sciences International (Nasdaq: BDSI) and its partner, Ireland-based Endo International (Nasdaq: ENDP)
“This added revenue growth will allow us to bring our commercial business to profitability by the end of the first quarter,” he said, noting that the company previously said it expected profitability by the end of the year with its opioid dependence drug Bunavail.”
He further noted that Belbuca is more than twice as profitable as Bunavail per prescription.
While Endo “primed the pump” in terms of Belbuca, Sirgo said at the event that BDSI’s commercialization efforts will need to be more focused going forward.
Scott Plesha, senior vice president of sales and marketing at BDSI, said at the event that the company has worked with the roughly 28 percent of current Belbuca prescribers that account for more than 40 percent of prescriptions to identify more similar and potential prescribers.
In addition to an existing BDSI sales force that knows the buprenorphine molecule, he said that BDSI had hired 14 sales representatives from Endo. BDSI began its field efforts for Belbuca last week, he said, and will dedicate about 80 percent of sales time to Belbuca.
In an interview in December, Sirgo said that, while its reacquisition from Endo wasn’t what the company had anticipated for Belbuca, it did present opportunities like an increased focus on selling Belbuca outside the U.S.
Endo placed “a heavy emphasis on the product in the [largest] U.S. market,” he said at the time.
In terms of raising additional capital in 2017, Sirgo said at the investor event that the company had “sufficient capital” through the end of the third quarter and possibly beyond given certain adjustments. He said the company would look to debt markets and potential licensing arrangements before considering an equity raise in the coming year.
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