Pozen Inc. Reports Operating Results (10-Q)

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Aug 05, 2010
Pozen Inc. (POZN, Financial) filed Quarterly Report for the period ended 2010-06-30.

Pozen Inc. has a market cap of $219.3 million; its shares were traded at around $7.34 with and P/S ratio of 6.8. POZN is in the portfolios of Jim Simons of Renaissance Technologies LLC.

Highlight of Business Operations:

There follows a brief discussion of the status of the development of our approved products and our product candidates, as well as the costs relating to our development activities. Our direct research and development expenses were $9.2 million for the six months ended June 30, 2009, and $8.3 million for the six months ended June 30, 2010. Our research and development expenses that are not direct development costs consist of personnel and other research and development departmental costs and are not allocated by product candidate. We generally do not maintain records that allocate our employees time by the projects on which they work and, therefore, are unable to identify costs related to the time that employees spend on research and development by product candidate. Total compensation and benefit costs for our personnel involved in research and development were $3.3 million for the six months ended June 30, 2009, and $2.6 million for the six months ended June 30, 2010. Total compensation for 2009 included a $0.8 million charge for non-cash compensation for stock option expense and a $0.6 million charge for non-cash compensation for stock option expense for 2010. Other research and development department costs were $0.1 million for the six months ended June 30, 2009, and $0.2 million for the six months ended June 30, 2010.

We incurred direct development costs associated with the development of MT 400 and Treximet programs of $34,000 for the six months ended June 30, 2010. We incurred total direct development costs of $26.0 million associated with the development of our

MT 400 and Treximet programs. We recorded in the six months ended June 30, 2010, $7.9 million of Treximet royalty revenue, of which $4.1 million is in accounts receivable at June 30, 2010. Our direct development costs do not include the cost of research and development personnel or any allocation of our overhead expenses.

In the third quarter of 2006, we began recruiting subjects for a six month comparative trial of PN 200 as compared to EC naproxen in patients requiring chronic NSAID therapy. The primary endpoint for the trial was the cumulative incidence of gastric ulcers over six months of treatment. Because we did not have final results until the fourth quarter of 2007, we, together with AstraZeneca reviewed the interim results of this trial prior to commencing Phase 3 studies of VIMOVO in September 2007. This study has now been completed and the results which have been presented publicly indicated significantly fewer endoscopically confirmed gastric ulcers during the six month treatment period in subjects on PN 200 compared to subjects receiving enteric-coated naproxen alone. On March 2, 2007, we filed an IND with the FDA for VIMOVO and in April 2007, the first Phase 1 study was initiated. We conducted two Phase 3 pivotal trials of VIMOVO in patients who are at risk for developing NSAID-associated gastric ulcers, the primary endpoint for which is the reduction in endoscopic gastric ulcers. In October 2008, the FDA informed us that it was conducting an internal review of the acceptability of using endoscopic gastric ulcers as a primary endpoint in clinical trials. In late January 2009, the FDA informed us that it had completed its internal discussions and that there was no change to previous agreements that gastric ulcer incidence was an acceptable primary endpoint for our clinical programs. The two pivotal trials have been completed and met their primary endpoints. In both trials, patients taking VIMOVO experienced significantly (p<0.001) fewer endoscopically confirmed gastric ulcers compared to subjects receiving enteric-coated naproxen during the six-month treatment period, with gastric ulcer incidence rates of 4.1 and 7.1% for VIMOVO and 23.1 and 24.3% for enteric-coated naproxen in studies 301 and 302, respectively. Data combined from both studies showed that in patients taking low dose aspirin (n=201), the incidence of gastric ulcers in the VIMOVO arm was 3.0% compared to 28.4% for those taking EC naproxen (p<0.001) and patients taking VIMOVO who were not taking low dose aspirin (n=653) experienced a 6.4% incidence of gastric ulcers compared to 22.2% among those taking EC naproxen (p<0.001). Additional analyses examined the incidence of endoscopically confirmed duodenal ulcers among patients taking VIMOVO. In study 301, patients taking VIMOVO experienced a 0.5% incidence of duodenal ulcers compared to 5.1% taking EC naproxen (p=0.003), and in study 302, patients taking VIMOVO experienced a 1.0% incidence of duodenal ulcers, compared to 5.7% incidence among patients taking EC naproxen (p=0.007). The most frequently reported adverse events among patients taking both VIMOVO and enteric coated naproxen in the pivotal trials were GI disorders, including dyspepsia, erosive esophagitis and erosive duodenitis. In addition, we conducted a long-term, open label safety study for VIMOVO. We also conducted additional studies at AstraZenecas expense. The NDA for VIMOVO was submitted on June 30, 2009 and was accepted for filing in August 2009. We received a $10.0 million milestone payment from AstraZeneca in September 2009 for the achievement of such milestone. On April 30, 2010, VIMOVO was approved by FDA for the relief of the signs and symptoms of osteoarthritis (OA), rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and to decrease the risk of developing gastric ulcers in patients at risk of developing NSAID-associated gastric ulcers. We received a $20.0 million milestone payment from AstraZeneca in May 2010 in connection with such approval. As required by the terms of our agreement with AstraZeneca, we transferred ownership of the NDA and other regulatory filings for VIMOVO to AstraZeneca on June 1, 2010, and AstraZeneca now has responsibility for all ongoing regulatory obligations for the product in the U.S., including post marketing clinical trial requirements, in addition to responsibility for all regulatory obligations outside the U.S.

We incurred direct development costs associated with the development of our PN program of $86,000 for the six months ended June 30, 2010, of which, $86,000 was funded by development revenue from AstraZeneca. We incurred total direct development cost of $95.8 million associated with the development of our PN program of which $57.0 million was funded by development revenue from AstraZeneca. Our direct development costs do not include the cost of research and development personnel or any allocation of our overhead expenses.

We incurred direct development costs associated with the development of our PA program of $7.9 million during the six months ended June 30, 2010. We incurred total direct development cost of $28.1 million associated with the development of our PA program. Our direct development costs do not include the cost of research and development personnel or any allocation of our overhead expenses.

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