11/10/2020

speaker
Operator

Good afternoon and welcome to the Excision, Inc. Third Quarter 2020 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Mike Cavanaugh, Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

speaker
Mike Cavanaugh

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. Earlier today, Exogen, Inc. released financial results for the quarter-ended September 30, 2020. The release is currently available on the company's website at www.exogen.com. Ron Rocca, President and Chief Executive Officer of Kamala Dowie, Chief Financial Officer, and Mark Hazeltine, General Manager, will host this afternoon's call.

speaker
Exogen

Before we get started, I would like to remind everyone that management will be making statements during this call that include forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws, which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

speaker
Mike Cavanaugh

Any statements contained in this call that are not statements of historical facts should be deemed to be forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements, including without limitation, statements regarding our business strategy and future financial and operating performance, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business, our current and future product offerings, and reimbursement and coverage are based upon current estimates and various assumptions. These statements involve material risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated or implied by these forward-looking statements. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on these statements. For a list and description of risks and uncertainties associated with our business, please see our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Form 10-K and subsequent files. The information provided in this conference call speaks only to the live broadcast today, November 10, 2020. Exigen disclaims any intention or obligation, except as required by law, to update or revise any information, financial projections, or other forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events, or otherwise. I will now turn the call over to Ron Rocca, President and CEO of Exigen. Thanks, Mike, and thank you to everyone joining the call today. As always, we appreciate your continued support of Exogen. I'd like to take a moment to inform you that our colleague and friend, Chet Burrell, has decided to retire from the Exogen Board of Directors, effective December 31, 2020. Chet has been helpful in sharing his comprehensive knowledge and experience in managed markets with our entire team. During our dossier development, Chet's guidance allowed us to avoid unnecessary activities and focus us on the most meaningful actions that would resonate with the payer community. His ability to share his time and insights enables Exxon to be fully prepared for reimbursement and contracting meetings with major payers. We are very grateful to Chet for all he has done to assist us in being a driver for better care of autoimmune patients. We are delighted with the third quarter's exceptional results. Our testing franchise, despite continued disruptions of patient visits to rheumatologists, our flagship AdviseCTD testing volumes came in at 26,201, which is greater than 90% of the levels we have had experienced in the first quarter before COVID-19 profoundly affected our business. We believe this is a testament to both the seriousness of autoimmune disorders as well as the value patients and health care providers receive with Advise Suite of testing solutions. Due to the pandemic, patients must make additional efforts to visit their doctors and get their symptoms correctly diagnosed. Further, our specialized commercial team continues to support health care providers through an optimized combination of in-person and virtual calls. Along a similar vein, we achieved a record of 600 adopters in Q3 2020. 40% increase over Q2 2020, and stickiness of 99% was terrific given the circumstances. Stickiness is defined as an adopter that writes again in the following quarter. This further demonstrates the unique utility of the Advise franchise to rheumatologists challenged with clinically difficult to diagnose diseases. Additional value provided by our Advise CTD test during this pandemic is is the convenience and accuracy to cover multiple connective tissue disorders versus serial testing, which could take many doctor visits over numerous years. As we have said before, life-threatening diseases like lupus and chronic disorders like rheumatoid arthritis do not stop during a pandemic, and testing can't either. With the pandemic making it more challenging for patients to see their doctors for treatment, the necessity of testing that can speed up the diagnosis and prognosis of autoimmune diseases is apparent. We believe our advised brands can address the need better than anything currently on the market. For Symphony, we reported 1.3 million of revenue in the third quarter with 100% gross margin. Symphony's unique value proposition as the only once-per-month self-injected anti-TNF biologic for rheumatoid arthritis is well-positioned for today's environment. We believe our co-promotion agreement will continue to provide meaningful revenue to the top line as we leverage our DXRX model to provide differentiated value to healthcare providers. The third quarter was also a productive one on the reimbursement front. We are excited about our agreement signed in July with Humana Military, a managed care support contractor for TRICARE East, which makes available all of our advised testing as covered in-network benefits to 6 million lives. We are also pleased to announce an additional agreement in September with Provider Network of America, a large network of physicians, hospitals, and other healthcare providers which make advice testing available as an in-network benefit to approximately 8 million members served by the network. Additional reimbursement and coverage agreements remain a major strategic effort at Exigent, and we continue to negotiate with many large healthcare participants throughout the country. We recognize that the pandemic has redirected efforts of many payers to prioritize testing policy for COVID-19, delaying coverage negotiations. We continue to give reimbursement a top priority, and on the strength of our completed dossier, we are well-positioned to negotiate coverage. Exogen, in collaboration with leading healthcare economic experts, recently announced the first-ever peer-reviewed publication demonstrating economic impact of advised lupus compared to standard diagnostic laboratory tests. The Lupus Foundation of America recently shared that the Advise Lupus test can diagnose lupus patients earlier and result in significant savings in healthcare costs. Over a four-year period, Advise Lupus yields an estimated total direct cost savings of approximately $2 million or nearly $2,000 per person. Advice testing is known to be clinically meaningful to physicians and the challenging patients they manage. Now, we have peer-reviewed published data to support the economic value to payers as well. I'd like to say a few words on our R&D efforts. This is a key strategic focus as we continue to solidify Exogen's position as a premier autoimmune-focused company, providing an extensive range of test solutions to help rheumatologists diagnose treat, and monitor autoimmune diseases, which is notoriously difficult to do. We are focused on driving multiple sources of innovation and strengthening our intellectual proprietary portfolio. In August, we announced a collaboration with Hospital for Special Surgery, HSS, in New York City for a study of antiphospholipid syndrome, an autoimmune clotting disorder which most commonly increases the risk of blood clots and pregnancy complications as a result of antiphospholipid antibodies. This proof-of-concept clinical study will investigate complement activation markers and additional biomarkers in different subgroups of patients. In September, we launched a new test, advised vasculitis, for the diagnosis of ANCA-associated vasculitis. Healthcare providers have been asking us for this test, and we were able to deliver. We continue to advance the development of further tests to add to the advised franchise. including our test for fibromyalgia, a disease which has large addressable market. While not an autoimmune disease, it is often confused with connective tissue diseases and is therefore frequently diagnosed by rheumatologists. Adding an effective rule-in, rule-out test for fibromyalgia promises to be invaluable to healthcare providers. We believe that our advised tests are the most effective, complete, and differentiated series of tests for autoimmune diseases and we will remain focused on strategically enhancing that advantage. I would now like to turn over the call to Kamal to discuss our financial results.

speaker
Ron Rocca

Thank you, Ron, and good afternoon, everyone. Total revenues in Q3 2020 were $10.8 million, an increase of 20% over Q2 2020 and 3% over Q3 2019. Revenue growth was driven primarily by Abide CTD testing volumes of 26,201 compared with 18,552 for Q2 2020 and 27,159 for Q3 2019. The number of ordering healthcare providers was 1,665 for Q3 2020 compared with 1,442 for Q2 2020 and 1,591 for Q3 2019. was $7.4 million in the quarter, and other testing revenue was $2.1 million. Revenue for Symphony was $1.3 million, with 100% gross margins. Overall, we are pleased with the recovery of our testing business from the April bottom. As Ron mentioned, our test volumes in the quarter put us at greater than 90% of our pre-COVID volume trends, which is a strong indicator of our commercial executions. While the continued spread and impact of COVID-19 is highly uncertain, with our 56 sales territories, we're fully prepared to continue to support healthcare providers and patients. Cost of revenue was $4.3 million in Q3 2020, resulting in a gross margin of 60%, compared to 54% in Q3 2019. The improvement in gross margin was driven by higher symphony revenues coupled with a decrease in royalty costs associated with the expiration of a royalty on a proprietary CB-CAPS technology. Operating expenses in Q3 2020 were $14.6 million, compared with $12.6 million in Q3 2019. The increase was primarily due to employee-related expenses, including stock-based compensation associated with the overall increase in headcount as well as increased public company expenses. The net loss in Q3 2020 was $4.3 million, compared with $3.1 million in Q3 2019. Looking at our balance sheet, cash and cash equivalents as of September 30th were approximately $61.4 million. We remain well-capitalized to endure any economic uncertainty associated with the COVID-19 pandemic while we continue to invest in key R&D and commercial initiatives to grow the business. Regarding 2020 guidance, we do not believe that it is prudent to offer formal guidance at this time due to lack of visibility caused by the resurgence in COVID-19 activity. We will now open the call for questions.

speaker
Operator

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. One moment, please, while we pull for questions. Our first question comes from Chris Lynn with Cohen. Please go ahead.

speaker
Chris Lynn

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Ron, I believe you commented that payers are delaying coverage negotiations as they prioritize COVID-19 efforts. Could you just elaborate on the length of this delay and when do you expect this to be resolved?

speaker
Mike Cavanaugh

Sure, Chris. No problem at all. We've been holding virtual meetings with a lot of the payers and obviously exchanging back and forth through email and normal transitions of information. But they are definitely preoccupied with COVID, and many of the bigger payers have postponed meetings. The comments are always, we're going to get to you, but we have something in front of us we have to take care of right now, which is how we're going to deal with all the different COVID tests that are coming out and so forth. So they are preoccupied. The quick answer is we're still in queue for all these meetings. They obviously know that our dossier is out and moving forward. I anticipate that we'll get in there as soon as possible, but we will be prioritized after the COVID testing. They should be coming to the end of that, Chris, though. I mean, they've had plenty of time at this point to look at all the tests, so we're hoping that within the next couple weeks we start hearing that they're back on track with other things other than COVID testing.

speaker
Chris Lynn

Okay, great. And maybe for a related follow-up, could you just also talk about how the new health economic study is impacting your efforts with payers, and does Chet's retirement impact your reimbursement efforts at all going forward?

speaker
Mike Cavanaugh

Yeah. So first, we're very happy with what Chet was able to do to provide us information and guidance as a former Blue Cross president. But he has always indicated that he is looking to retire. He retired from Blue, and he's looking to settle in. So we wish him all the best and thank him for it. It doesn't really impact us going forward because we really got the value of this insight on how to develop the dossier to best address the issues for the payers. The healthcare economic study is impacting us in this way. We always knew we had the better test. And in fact, most physicians and even payers have said, we realize it's a better test. Keep in mind that What they were usually using, the ANA, anti-DSNA, anti-SMITH, they usually go back to the 50s and early 60s. So they recognized it was there as far as a better quality test to get a more accurate, timely diagnosis. But we didn't have the economic study. So what the Ann Clark study did was round out the information. Better test saves you money. It's part of our dossier now, and I think it's going to have great impact because how often do you get something better that actually saves you money?

speaker
Chris Lynn

Okay, got it. And for my last question, I believe you would know that the test volume is greater than 90% of pre-COVID trends. Has that held steady even in light of the recent resurgences? Thank you.

speaker
Mike Cavanaugh

It has, and I'll address that with the stickiness. We have achieved record levels of stickiness, and that's defined as an adopter that writes again in the next quarter. That's a testimony to the value we bring the physician. There's something else here, Chris, that's really important. Before COVID, what a lot of physicians would do is something called serial testing. I'll test your ANA. You come back in a couple weeks. I'll test your anti-DSDNA, your anti-Smith. And that's why, as the LFA says, it took six years to get correctly diagnosed with potentially a deadly disorder like lupus. Our test is not only better than what's out there, but it's also more convenient when you use our advised CTD because it combines not only the best lupus tests, but the 11 generic markers of those organisms that often overlap with lupus. So the convenience of one test up front during COVID is a perfect solution for that. So I like the fact that we're 90%. I think the doctor shows that they're going to stick with us, and there is no cure for lupus. So we feel like we're very well positioned during the pandemic and even after the pandemic as these bolus of patients come back.

speaker
Chris Lynn

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Thanks, Chris.

speaker
Operator

Our next question comes from Brian Weinstein with William Blair. Please go ahead.

speaker
Brian Weinstein

Hey, guys. Good afternoon. This is Griffin. I'm for Brian. Thank you for taking my questions. Maybe just want to start here. How should we be thinking about the baseline for Sympony heading into 21? And, you know, is there any update on the potential for renegotiation, that deal with Janssen?

speaker
Mike Cavanaugh

Yeah, good question, Griffin. So, we're fortunate because Mark Hazeltine is here with me. He's the one negotiating with Johnson & Johnson. So, Mark, why don't you address that?

speaker
Mark Hazeltine

Absolutely. Hi, Griffin. Nice to speak with you. Yeah, we're in negotiations with Janssen for the 2021 baseline. We committed in our 8K at the end of June to have that done by the end of November, and we're tracking to that date right now. We have a great relationship with Janssen. The Symphony product is performing well in the marketplace, and we're very pleased with our performance in Q3. So we're looking forward to 2021 to be another productive year for us with the RxDX model.

speaker
Brian Weinstein

Great. Thank you. And just maybe to follow up there, what kind of promoting are you doing for Symfony? Does the quarterly revenue cap impact how you're thinking about potential promotional efforts there?

speaker
Mike Cavanaugh

Yeah, that's a really good question. So we want to extract all the value we can out of all of our assets. So being that there is a cap in Q3 and Q4, we want to get all that cap, which, as you can tell from the numbers in Q3, we were right there. What it also did was allow us to put a little bit more energy in some of our secondary products as well, and we did that with the incentive comp, and by that I mean our monitoring products as well as prognostic products. So what it allowed us to do was continue to drive forward with our entire portfolio of assets. Keep in mind that Symfony doesn't distract us from Advise CTD. We're fully leveraged. All these assets are assets that our core audience rheumatologists use on a daily basis.

speaker
Brian Weinstein

Great. That's helpful. And just one more for me. Do you have any updated thoughts on Salesforce? They trimmed that a bit earlier in the pandemic. So where do you want to see that go in both the near and long term? Thank you.

speaker
Mike Cavanaugh

No problem. We believe it's good corporate hygiene to look at balancing the territories once a year, which is what we do. So we're in the process right now to look at reach and frequency of our target audiences throughout 2020, and we'll adjust accordingly in 2020-21. One of the good things about being well capitalized like we are, if we need to expand, it's not that big of an issue. What will probably happen as we look at this, we'll keep an eye on COVID to see if the states are still open. But we have no problem in expanding in areas where we need to extract more value, more reach and frequency with physicians. At this point, we're doing the alignment checks right now to make sure the balancing is correct.

speaker
Operator

So thanks for that question, Griffin. Our next question comes from Kyle Langston with Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead.

speaker
Exogen

Hi, guys. Thanks for the question. Nice quarter. But can you just elaborate on how by testing in the geographies that had those COVID spikes in 3Q kind of rebounded or progressed throughout the quarter? We're just trying to understand how to think about the volume recovery in areas that had these COVID surges. Is that generally like a four- or six-week cycle? I guess, in other words, how long did it take these test orders to kind of normalize in one of these markets?

speaker
Mike Cavanaugh

Yeah, that's a good question. So we actually saw a pretty interesting phenomenon and still seeing it now with New York. a lot of the New York State patients, and by a lot I don't mean all by any stretch, they're showing up in New Jersey and in Florida and in South Carolina. So those patients, because we have the monitoring product, we can track that. So I think one of the phenomenons on your question is that they may not be seeing them in a closed state, but patients that have the means are going outside of state to see their doctors and get their refills, for example, in our monitoring product. How long does it take to get back? That's a very good question. There is no cure for lupus and a lot of these autoimmune disorders that we treat. So we know those patients are out there waiting for an ability to see the doctors. As things tighten up, we do get phone calls in here saying, can you direct me to a physician and so forth. What's nice about some of these doctors, they've gotten really good with virtual calls. When you're diagnosing, you do need a clinical visit. But the virtual calls has given them ability to say whether or not we should send that patient directly a test kit or not, which is, again, a new phenomenon that came out of this. Did that address your question, Kyle?

speaker
Exogen

Yeah, that was perfect. Thanks a lot, Ron. And just kind of moving on here, so great to see that study you're doing with Brigham and Women's. But there has been some preliminary evidence that kind of suggests that a fairly large portion of COVID patients are actually developing autoantibodies, similar to those in lupus and LRA, obviously. So just wanted to kind of give you the opportunity to dive a bit deeper into how you intend to use the results of the study, and maybe the longer-term potential opportunity that you're seeing here as well. I know it's super early, but would appreciate any color you can provide there.

speaker
Mike Cavanaugh

Yeah, we are really happy to be partnering with Brigham Women, a major milestone, a keystone institution, really smart people working with our really smart scientists to do this. And it's exactly what you said. We're going to use our complement testing to see, you know, if these COVID patients exhibit autoimmune disorders at a faster rate or a more severe rate than those that didn't have COVID-19. The results of this is we're measuring our caps. We're going to measure EC and BC4D as well as PC4D. So we're going to be measuring caps on these patients. So the results of this, if it's what we think it is, which is the complement cascade from a virus, we'll be able to say that hopefully our test can predict whether or not the patient will get an autoimmune disease faster than if they didn't have COVID.

speaker
Exogen

All right, that's awesome. Thank you, Ron. And I know we're going to go on to the revenue line right now, but I want to ask about the other testing revenue. So I was wondering if you could speak to any specific tests that you're seeing perform especially well. How about the capillary tests, like a biased touch performed during COVID so far, and on a related kind of note? Does the televised service generally run faster or slower than the typical process of rheumatologists ordering tests?

speaker
Mike Cavanaugh

Yeah, I don't think there's anything as fast as a rheumatologist seeing you clinically and then deciding, rendering a decision to send the test. That's just, it's quick, it's efficient, it's traditional. But they have gone to these virtual type of meetings and I can't tell you with assurance whether it's quicker or slower, but I'm glad it's happening because these patients do need to see a doctor. So I can't imagine it's any faster, but I don't know if it's any slower than a clinical visit. Your first part of your question was as far as the secondary products. While we don't disclose these in the earning call, we know we have significant products here that are meaningful for the doctors. I also want to see if Kamal, my CFO, wants to comment on that.

speaker
Ron Rocca

Yeah, thank you, Ron. So in Q3, our other testing revenue did approach $2.1 million, which was significantly higher than we've seen in the past two quarters of $1.5 million in Q2 and $1.6 million in Q1. This was primarily driven by our prognostic testing and monitor testing, which have both been performing exceptionally well.

speaker
Exogen

Okay, thanks a lot, guys, for that. And I guess just sticking with you, Kamal, I wanted to ask about kind of the spending recently. It's good to see that you expanded the campus and you're taking off the hiring, but what areas are you guys looking to strengthen as you kind of grow the exigency now? And then, Kamal, can you just kind of walk through what we should be thinking about for 2021 and maybe 4Q operating expenses?

speaker
Ron Rocca

Sure. So our biggest area of focus on increasing the spend is going to come from the R&D department. We have a world-class R&D department, and Ron mentioned a lot of the projects that they're working on, and that's going to be our biggest percentage increase quarter over quarter and year over year. As Ron already mentioned with our sales force, that is something that we look at very often, and we do anticipate to add territories over the coming quarters. And then outside of OpEx in the laboratory, we do continue to make investments into automation to improve our gross margin.

speaker
Exogen

All right, got it. That's perfect. Thanks a lot, guys. I'll hop back in the FQ to talk to you later. Thanks, Kyle.

speaker
Operator

Our next question comes from Mark Cicero with BTIG. Please go ahead.

speaker
Mark Cicero

Hi, guys. This is Vivian on for Mark. Congrats on the portal.

speaker
Chris Lynn

Thank you.

speaker
Mark Cicero

So just an initial question for me. Given the pandemic, how much visibility do you have into your sales funnel relative to a year ago? And approximately what percent of your sales reps are in the field?

speaker
Mike Cavanaugh

Yeah, good question. Well, the stickiness, I think, is really something you've got to look at. The fact that 99% of the doctors that write our products, their doctors will write it again. And we hit a record level of adopters in Q3. 600 adopters was an all-time high for us. So that was a really important number. And I think that really shows you the value that this test brings. Again, serial testing versus one test with the best lupus markers inside is something that really appeals to rheumatologists. As far as reps in the field, we do have the 56 territories. Most of them are there, but we are very clear that if your state or zip code shuts down, that first and foremost you listen to the local laws that are in your community. But if you're not shut down, we do recommend that you follow the office policies, and they're all different throughout the country, and be able to go in there and see the doctors. The reason we're a little different than some other companies is we deliver a de-identified test report to engage the doctor, and we have to deliver the transportation kits. So we have reasons to be in there rather than just delivering a core message. And, of course, when we drop off the kits or the symphony samples or even talk about the capillary test that was mentioned earlier, that also opens up a window for our representatives to engage in a meaningful discussion of how one test that can do it all might be a perfect solution for the doctor under this current environment.

speaker
Mark Cicero

That's helpful. Thank you. And just another one, just to quickly follow up on the planning for the fibromyalgia dossier and the expectation of a potential launch timeline there.

speaker
Mike Cavanaugh

Yeah, we're very excited to be working with Ohio State on the fibromyalgia test. Our target is to have the first rule-in, rule-out fibro test. Nobody's ever done that. We always had the rule-in lupus test, which is often confused with fibro. But this will be the complete test we think the markets are looking for as well as the payers. While I can't give you a timeline, I can tell you I am pushing heavy to do whatever we need to get more sites, more equipment, whatever we need to do to get the product up and ready for the market. It's got a big TAM, and it's got a huge need. So we're excited about the product. I don't want to rush it to the point where I do anything that disrupts the scientists from building the quality test. that we're known for.

speaker
Mark Cicero

Okay, awesome. Thank you. And a final one from me. Do you anticipate any kind of pent-up demand or backlog due to COVID-19? And if you could just provide an update on the revenue from mobile lobotomies?

speaker
Mike Cavanaugh

Okay. I do expect the backup because there is no cure. So these patients, you know it's happening. And if you read the blogs for rheumatologists, you can see they're very frustrated not being able to see their doctors. They're all finding ways to do it. The one thing I'll say about these autoimmune patients are they are aggressive about making sure that they get their care taken care of, which is a good thing, as well as all patients should be. So I do expect that there are patients sitting on the sideline. If you're immunocompromised, do you want to go to an immunocompromised office with other immunocompromised patients? Probably not. but they're going to come back eventually. There are no cures for these disorders, and they have to be treated. My concern is by the time they come in, they're very severe, and I hope that isn't the case. That's why we encourage them to seek help as soon as possible. As far as revenue from the mobile phlebotomist, we do have a lot of agreements with mobile phlebotomists throughout the country. In fact, we have $1,200 mobile phlebotomy locations spread out throughout the country. They're all a little different, and we will probably need to add much more as time goes on.

speaker
Mark Cicero

Okay. Thank you for taking the question.

speaker
Mike Cavanaugh

Thanks, Vivian.

speaker
Operator

Our next question comes from Paul Knight with Janie Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead.

speaker
Paul Knight

Hey, Ron, could you talk to, are you done with the sales build-out? And then adding on to the question about ordering physicians, can you talk about, you know, we've talked that 4,000 is probably the active number. Do you think that's still based on, you know, the number of sales points you now have? Do you think that's still the number?

speaker
Mike Cavanaugh

Good question, Paul. The sales build-out we will look at. Our intent is to make sure we have the right reach and frequency to deliver our messages throughout the country. So we are looking at expanding, but we first have to do the work, and the work is to look at rebalancing. That process is underway even as we speak. We work with a very reputable company that takes a look at the number of doctors, the units, and so forth. So the build-out will continue as needed. We're not going to overstep. We're not going to understep. We want to get the right number. We feel that a targeted universe of roughly 90 to 100 targets per representative is handable. With the exception of the Midwest, where you have a lot of windshield time, you might go a little less. In cities like Chicago, you might have bigger territories because there's not as much windshield time. But that build-out is underway, at least evaluating where to, if to, build it out. 4,000 rheumatologists is the number that's always kicked out. I will iterate that even though the AMA says there's 4,000 and change rheumatologists, they don't always clean their list as accurately as we would like. So if you're dead, retired, work for academia, or work for institution, you're still considered part of that 4,000. We boiled that down to roughly 3,000, call it 800, that are meaningful doctors for us to target. Now, with that being said, that's the rheumatology base, but autoimmune doesn't only go there. There are some doctors in areas that are not rheumatologists but act like it. I'm thinking about a physician who's an internal medicine physician in Wyoming that the next nearest office is 400 miles away, but that doctor acts like a rheumatologist. But the key here is, if you think about it, our current structure will enable us to do what we have to with the rheumatologist. And if we need to step beyond that and pick up additional accounts, we have that capability to do so.

speaker
Paul Knight

And then regarding Sympony, do you believe that the COVID situation is making Sympony a more attractive option due to the self-administration once a month?

speaker
Mike Cavanaugh

I absolutely do. I mean, it just makes sense. Again, self-injecting at home once a month, how convenient could that be? Not having to go to an office with other immunocompromised patients. I mean, I can see a scared patient saying, I'd rather do this. The great thing about Symphony, besides its unique delivery system, is that they know anti-TNF. Doctors know it. They're familiar. It's been out for decades. So having them take an anti-TNF at home is not as risky as it might have been a couple decades ago since we're so familiar with how these work. Symphony is an ideal solution for the problems that we're facing today. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Paul.

speaker
Operator

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Ron Rocca for any closing remarks.

speaker
Mike Cavanaugh

Great. I want to thank everyone for joining the call today. I'd like to reiterate They are strong Q3 performance, which included a record number of adopters and 99% stickiness. That's important to know. They stick with it, and you only do that when there's a great product. And it's a second consecutive quarter with 60% or greater gross margins. We're honored to be able to continue to support the care of autoimmune patients during these challenging times. Thank you for your time and attention. Take care and have a wonderful day.

speaker
Operator

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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