Assertio Holdings, Inc.

Gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Q4 2020 and Full Year Assertion Holdings Incorporated Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants' lines are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Max Nemers. Thank you. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Bojna. Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us today to discuss Assertio's fourth quarter and full year 2020 financial results. The news release covering our earnings for this period is now available on the investor page of our website at investor.assertiotx.com. I would encourage you to review the release as it's important to today's discussion. With me today are Dan Peysert, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Paul Schwichtenberg, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Dan will open the remarks and provide an overview of the business, followed by Paul, who will review our financial results. After that, we'll open the call for your questions. During this call, management will make projections and other forward-looking statements regarding our future performance. Such forward-looking statements are not guaranteed a future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, including those noted in this afternoon's press release, as well as the CERTIO's filings with the SEC. These and other risks are more fully described in the risk factor section and other sections of our annual report on Form 10-K. Our actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, and Assyria specifically disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements except as required by law. With that, I will now turn the call over to Dan.

Dan? Thank you, Max, and thank you, everyone, for joining us this afternoon. I trust you're all staying safe and healthy during these challenging times. I want to start by welcoming our long-term shareholders, new shareholders, and those that are considering investing in Asservio. I'm excited to share my priorities, our new strategy, and the results that position our company for future success. Since becoming CEO, I've taken some time to reflect upon the comments and concerns I've heard from investors over the past year. A few themes kept repeating, such as our ability to service our debt and reduce the cost of the debt, Our operating costs and how we could reduce expenses and how we could deliver on our $45 million of restructuring synergies, especially after having just delivered on $40 million of merger synergies. Understanding our legal challenges, their risks, and what management is doing to address them. Our ability and financial wherewithal to acquire new assets and refresh our portfolio. And finally, our ability to address the near-term impact of COVID-19. As I established my goals and priorities as the new CEO of Aservio, I wanted to make sure I addressed some historical investor concerns so we could put them to rest and pivot the discussions towards the progress we've made in the significant transformation of the company since I arrived in 2017. The priorities for 2021 are as follows. Build a strong and committed team with a culture of teamwork, inclusion, and results. Delivering on our 45 million of restructuring synergies. Ensuring the company generates strong operating cash flow ensuring our debt never becomes a constraint and running the business mitigate our lead legacy legal uncertainties and develop a sustainable business model that reflects a changing environment. it's been an incredibly busy 10 weeks of 2021 so far, and while we still have a lot to do, we have taken decisive action to make sure we are addressing these priorities. I'm incredibly proud of the progress you've made as a team, and I believe that as we continue to demonstrate further advances, we will unlock more value that you as shareholders will appreciate. Today, we announced the promotions of Paul Schwichtenberg to CFO, whom you'll hear from in a minute, and A.J. Patel to Chief Accounting Officer. In addition, we've made a number of promotions to our new executive team. Paul and A.J. have been instrumental in all the positive change happening at Assertio. and especially in fostering a culture we want to continue to improve upon. I'm excited to see what we can accomplish together with them in their new roles. The same goes for the rest of our new executive team. All are extremely talented leaders committed to common goals, and we all have the same mentality, that results speak louder than words. I trust this is already evident by what we've been able to accomplish so far early in 2021. In regard to the second priority of our synergies, I'm happy to say that we've already actioned everything we need to do in order to achieve the goal of 45 million in annualized synergies. As a result, we expect to realize 40 million in cost savings this year relative to our run rate from the second half of 2020. Combined with the previously achieved 40 million in merger-related synergies, we have rapidly and radically changed the operating cost structure of the business. As I will elaborate on later, we're evaluating the acceleration of some other long-term investments given our improved liquidity. Our previous merger-related synergies were largely duplicative costs that were no longer necessary for the combined organization. The restructuring synergies are largely in the form of headcount. Going forward, we will have a much smaller agile organization and rely more on outsourcing of resources to provide the right offerings to better match our business. Restrictions placed on face-to-face interactions due to COVID-19 accelerated a pre-existing trend toward reduced in-person access for field reps. As a result, the most significant of the changes we've taken is the prudent step to eliminate our in-house field force and all of the support costs associated with it. At the moment, very few debate the diminished value of in-person promotion. We believe that for products like ours in this market environment, there will be far more productive means of promotion. During the past year, we've learned a different way to do sales through non-traditional and hybrid models. We're rapidly accelerating our investments to further execute on digital and virtual promotion. We'll continue to see how our market and portfolio evolves and keep an open mind towards working collaboratively with others and going back in person ourselves where and when there is a benefit to the business. These synergies will ensure we achieve my third priority of being a strong cash flow positive business once we get past the cost of restructuring that will mostly be incurred prior to March 31st. We're also looking to cross our business to manage working capital and improve our cash management. Regarding my fourth priority concerning our debt, I'd like to remind you that the only covenant we have is pertaining to minimum liquidity. And with our recent equity raises, this issue is completely off the table. This enhanced liquidity is a major win for Assertio for three primary reasons. First, we're now evaluating accelerated investments in both Indison and our commercial model. This is extremely important for the long-term success of our business that we have the resources to make these investments sooner. Second, we've historically been active in business development, and we will continue to be so. However, having immediate access to capital allows us better positioning when opportunities arise. And third, we have significantly improved our ability to achieve better terms and costs if we were to refinance our remaining debt over the next 12 to 18 months. My fifth priority in how we manage our litigation challenges is, in my mind, one of the most important opportunities we have to remove a historical overhang that has colored the way investors and outside business partners have perceived Assertio. All of these challenges are old legacy depo-med issues, and if we're successful at mitigating them, it will have an enormous impact on our business and its reputation. We've created goals specifically targeted to each individual situation, and we will look to get each suit dismissed or settled where appropriate. When resolution is not possible, we will attempt to define what the potential outcomes may be, where the bare minimum result is lowering our ongoing external legal cost. Simply stated, our goal is to put these legacy legal issues where they belong, behind us. Our settlement and insurance litigation in February exemplifies this, as when approaching the situation with business judgment, it made the most sense to settle, and in this case, the result was great for the business. We put $5 million in the bank and lease open the potential claims against other insurers. Looking forward, we see a rapidly changing environment around us. This is far more evident and impactful with smaller companies like Asserdio. My last priority addresses this. We've made a strategic shift to get ahead of where our environment is headed. and we are looking at the best way to approach our markets. We want to build a platform of digital and virtual promotion fed by analytics that most effectively reaches the four P's that work together to make prescription decisions. Patients, prescribers, payers, and pharmacies. With our focus on profitability and growth, we've made this strategic decision quickly and decisively. We believe this shift represents the best way to create value moving forward And we are confident that we can turn this platform into a substantial, meaningful, competitive advantage that can be applied to other assets as well. COVID has had a profound impact on our society, and has, or will likely change all of our lives in some way. But what it has also done is taught us that we can interact digitally and virtually without detriment in many situations. And we're finding that it is a preferred mode of communication. I believe our industry could see a profound shift in how we commercialize products, and we are just at the beginning. We've already seen that some of our peers are already making small steps in this direction. Whether it is the success of virtual peer-to-peer educational meetings, on-demand information, more targeted engagement, or more personalized digital content, our industry is beginning to make this shift. Building upon our experience in the past year, we've begun our own first steps in this direction, by continuing with telesales, telesampling, and email campaigns. And we've seen that Assertio's products are excellent candidates to be promoted in this manner. Now I'll turn the call over to Paul, who will walk through the quarterly results. Thank you, Dan.