Aerie Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Good afternoon. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the ARRI Pharmaceuticals First Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. Also, today's conference call will be recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to ARIES Director of Investor Relations, Ami Bhavishi. Please go ahead, Ami.

Thank you, Jeff. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. With us today are Vince Anito, ARIES Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Tom Mitro, ARIES President and Chief Operating Officer, Rich Rubino, ARIES Chief Financial Officer, David Hollander, ARIES Chief Research and Development Officer, and John LaRocca, ARIES General Counsel. Today's call is also being webcast live on our website, investors.arifarma.com, and it will be available for replay as indicated in our press release. Now for forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures. On this call, we will make certain forward-looking statements, including statements, forecasts, and observations regarding our future financial and operating performance impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, including our observations regarding ongoing operating expenses and net revenue per bottle. These statements will include observations associated with our commercialization of Vipressa and Roquigan in the United States, our collaboration in Japan, and prospects for a potential collaboration in Europe. They will also include plans and expectations regarding the success, timing, and cost of our clinical trials. Additionally, we will discuss progress regarding maintaining, requesting, or obtaining approvals from regulatory agencies of our products and product candidates, along with the associated business strategies regarding these products and product candidates. Finally, we will address our financial liquidity and other statements related to future events. These statements are based on the beliefs and expectations of management as of today. Our actual results may differ materially from our expectations. Investors should carefully read the risks and uncertainties described in today's press release, as well as the risk factors included in our filings with the SEC. We assume no obligation to revise or update forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Please note that we expect to file our 10-Q tomorrow. In addition, during this call, we'll be discussing certain adjusted or non-GAAP financial measures. For additional disclosures relating to these non-GAAP financial measures, including a reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, please see today's press release, which is posted on the investor relations section of our website. With that, I will turn the call over to Vince.

Thanks, Ami, and good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. Once again, I have quite a bit of exciting news to discuss, including our first quarter results, excellent progress with our recently broadened pipeline, and and a positive outlook across the global strategy. Now, let me start with the first quarter performance. Our Glicoma franchise unit sales into wholesalers, which are the basis of our recorded revenues, amounted to 257,000 units for Q1 of 21. This represented an 11% increase over the same quarter last year of 2020. This is very solid growth when you consider the fact that the first quarter of 2020 was the last pre-COVID quarter. It was a very strong one for us. Despite the impact of COVID-19, our franchise grew while the glaucoma market prescription in the United States actually declined 6% in Q1, and Tom will be discussing that further during his presentation. When comparing Q1 of 21 to fourth quarter of 2020, our wholesaler volume declined by around 16% with two primary drivers. We experienced a lower sequential volumes in Q1 of 2021, As the first quarter is typically the weakest quarter for our glaucoma franchise product, as seen with many pharmaceutical products, due largely to the patient insurance deductibles. The volumes for Q1 of 21 were also affected by inclement weather impacting the central region in the United States, particularly in the month of February, where we estimate we lost about two weeks of shipments. To the extent the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the pharmaceutical industry is improving, we would expect our volumes to increase for the remainder of 21. As Tom will discuss in a few minutes, our recent volumes in terms of sales out to pharmacies and the Acuvia prescriptions are now trending very positively. Our first quarter 21 net revenues of $23 million are up 13% over prior year and down 7% compared to the fourth quarter of 2020, driven by the volume points I made a little bit earlier. Now, as you saw in our earnings