There will be some redundancy here so sorry in advance. Here is my summary of the dinner with Mike and the ASM
Mannkind Annual Shareholder Meeting
Dinner highlights
The group had dinner at Grassini’s restaurant at Mike’s recommendation. I told him on the invitation it would be primarily a friendly group and we were. He said he would try to meet us there after his BOD meeting and he arrived around 9PM. We did a casual meet & greet and then dove into a great conversation about what was going on with MNKD.
The topic of the “lost” or unpublished studies was covered. Mike talked about a couple of contacts he personally made with the head of endocrinology at a major New York hospital. Mike asked the head of the program why they weren’t prescribing Afrezza. The response he got was (paraphrase) “there isn’t any information about Afrezza available. I’ve searched Pub Med and couldn’t find anything. Mike offered to send some of the study data that Dr. Kendall’s team had rediscovered and a meeting to go over it. Mike immediately flew to New York and met with the doctor who was amazed with the information provided.
Mike briefly covered the hiring of Dr. Kendall and how he contact him through a search firm to get some recommendations of candidates to fill the open medical officer position. Kendall was not looking for a job and had in fact been offered the CMO at Amgen!
Mike was drilled on guidance and if he still thinks he will make it. He stated that the slow beginning of 2018 tracked where we started 2017 and that the scrips would accelerate through the rest of the year. He said he was sticking to guidance.
The topic of scrip counts was covered and he went through the Friday counts from Symphony which always show the lowest, IMS which is usually higher and the report he gets from doctors (not sure of the source) which is often 50 rr so higher than the Symphony number. One the question of refills “if a patient gets a 90 refill from Express Scripts it only counts as 1 script”. He also said that insurance is improving and 80% of patients with insurance should now able to get Afrezza.
The question was asked at the dinner and the ASM about the number of patients that have tried Afrezza and dropped off and why along with what steps were being take to get them back. He said they have the contact information on those who used the discount cards and Mannkind Cares they would contacted to bring back to Afrezza. He also stated that ”like with any drug you are not going to retain 100%. Some did have a cough and other were not properly titrated and the dosing is now an easy fix.
The question was asked about Kaiser incorporating Afrezza into their plan. Mike said he has been in contact with Kaiser and has a lot of experience with them from his time with Amgen and that he was optimistic they would get it done.
Asked at the dinner and at the ASM was how long MNKD patents would be good for. Mike said that the patents are good for another 7-10 years and that the (paraphrase) TS delivery of Afrezza is incredibly complex and the performance is virtually impossible to duplicate by similar.
Question about RLS. Mike said something like “you tell me” and smiled.
On Locust walk he said that it would require MNKD to do studies for compatibility with potential partner’s drugs and there is nothing they are ready to spend the money on at this time.
ASM highlights
Kresa went though votes. 3M new shares to be set aside for compensation. I say give them all to Mike and Dr Kendall & Mike .
Kresa closed the business meeting and turned it over to Mike. Re stated guidance and briefly. Mike went through scrips again and a number of late developments including the new Advisory Board and efforts to raise awareness into organizations where the reps don’t get access.
Mike stated that there are now 1,400 new prescribers and that will accelerate scrips through the last 3 quarters.
“We are on track with Brazil and India” and are getting close to term sheets on other areas.
We have been in contact with a number of institutions in an effort to raise non dilutional cash to expand the business.
Steven Binder CFO went over things that were done to improve balance sheet and mentioned cash raises.
Patrick McCauley covered the sales team’s efforts and growth plans
The main event was when Dr. Kendall took the Mike. He explained the move from Lilly where he had great product launch experiences and his dialog with Mike before coming to MNKD.
We have been mining for and finding gold in the 60+ studies here at Mannkind and are getting them out to the medical community to raise awareness of Afrezza.
Afrezza is the first truly new technology in the 93 year history of insulin.
Other insulins are ancient, barbaric and unreliable. Yes he said that I am not making it up.
He has been contacted by the CMO (his predecessor) at the ADA to discuss Afrezza.
He has convened a group of 13 of the top doctors in the endocrinology field to review some of the gold.
He has mined from the existing MNKD studies to advise on how to improve awareness. “No new studies need to be done” we have what we need and don’t need to incur the cost of more studies. In addition to the STAT study the post for the hypoglycemic study that will be at ADA has 18K data points 10% of which match Afrezza against Novolog. (Please not that I was doing my best to follow and take notes so there may be some inaccuracies here). Dr. Kendall covers a lot of ground fast
He created a new Advisory Board which also includes top medical professionals.
He has created a group of 4 medical liaisons soon growing to 7 that will be working to get into institutions that won’t see sales reps.
When asked if he was buying MNKD stock he stated he would as soon as Stuart Tross gave him the OK.