Alkermes plc

Greetings, and welcome to the Alkermes Fourth Quarter 2020 Financial Results Conference Call. My name is Rob, and I'll be your operator for today's call. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero from your telephone keypad. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Sandra Coombs, Vice President of Investor Relations. Sandy, you may begin.

Thank you. Good morning. Welcome to the Alkermes PLC conference call to discuss our financial results and business update for the quarter and year-ended December 31st, 2020. With me today are Richard Potts, our CEO, Ian Brown, our Chief Financial Officer, and Todd Nichols, our Chief Commercial Officer. Before we begin, I encourage everyone to go to the Investor section of Alkermes.com to find our press release and related financial tables, including a reconciliation of the GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures that we'll discuss today. We believe the non-GAAP financial results, in conjunction with the GAAP results, are useful in understanding the ongoing economics of our business. Our discussions during this conference call will include forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Please see slide two of the accompanying presentation, our press release issued this morning, and our most recent annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC for important risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to update or revise the information provided on this call or in the accompanying presentation as a result of new information or future results or developments. After our prepared remarks, we'll open the call for Q&A, and now I'll turn the call over to Richard.

Thank you, Sandy. Good morning, everyone. I hope you're all well. Let me start by saying in 2020, We demonstrated the resiliency of our organization and our business in response to historic challenges. And we added new scientific, financial, and governance elements to the Alkermes story. Against the backdrop of a challenging and shifting environment, we identified our key strategic priorities and we held ourselves accountable to execute against them. We took pride in the fact that our work directly impacted people whose lives were even more challenged by the pandemic. And we were compelled to figure out ways to keep our medicines accessible. So job one was commercial execution for Vivitrol and Aristata to support patients and to protect the company's top line. As COVID emerged and access to physicians and treatment centers became restricted, we adapted our approach to maintain continuity with prescribers to help ensure continued access to treatment. We developed a hybrid promotional model tailored to each territory. combining in-person and digital interactions, and we expect these adaptations to endure. The second priority was to advance our R&D programs, keeping our most important programs on track by figuring out ways to continue to advance program activity despite limitations on access to our own laboratories and the impact of COVID-19 on clinical trial sites around the world. We were successful in doing that. We prepared for and completed the successful advisory committee meeting for LaValvie, our oral antipsychotic candidate for the treatment of adults with schizophrenia and adults with bipolar I disorder. We significantly advanced Nembomucan and hit key milestones for that program. And we met our goal of nominating our first clinical candidate from our HDAC inhibitor program. The third priority focused on the efficient management of the business from a financial and operational perspective. As the pandemic evolved, we modeled a range of potential revenue disruptions and made adaptations to our cost base throughout the year. In December, we announced our value enhancement plan, designed to drive growth, improve operational and financial performance, and enhance shareholder value. For 2021, we're similarly focused in three major areas, with an explicit goal of revealing and elaborating the value that's embedded in this distinctive company. First, we want to continue to grow our revenue base. We have a substantial and growing top line, driven by important medicines that serve patient needs in difficult-to-treat diseases. Vivitrol, Aristata, and Vumerity, each is a distinctive medicine with its own value proposition. We expect that, if approved, LaValvie will be another important product in our psychiatry portfolio and a new long-term revenue stream for the company. Second is to demonstrate the value of the R&D investments we've been making. After being relatively quiet in 2020, In 2021, we'll reveal more about our efforts in our focus areas of neuroscience and oncology. Later this quarter, we'll host an investor day to give you a better understanding of these programs and some insights into additional candidates that we expect to emerge. The third area of focus is on profitability, making good on the commitments we established in the context of our value enhancement plan. The plan includes a commitment to multi-year profitability targets, a focus on the company's cost structure, exploration of potential strategic opportunities, and continued governance enhancements. Ian will talk more about that in a minute, but we're excited about the plan, and we think it provides a solid foundation for future valuation growth. We also announced some important changes to the leadership team at the beginning of this year. Blair Jackson was appointed to the position of Chief Operating Officer, and Ian Brown was appointed to the role of Chief Financial Officer. They each bring a wealth of experience and institutional knowledge to their new positions. And I'm really pleased to have Blair and Ian assume these key leadership roles at this pivotal time as we position the company for our next stage of growth and advance our commitment to delivering value for all of our stakeholders. So with that as an introduction, I'll hand the call over to Ian for a review of the 2020 results and our 2021 expectations.