Conference Transcript - CYTK 2026-03-11

Emily Field, Analyst — Barclays

Anyway, since we started a little bit, it was just totally on me. I'm Emily Fields, covering U.S. Biopharma here at Barclays. And we are, that's how we fished Cytocadai, because I was like, we've got the whole squad. So CEO, Robert Guam, and...

Fady Malik, Analyst — Other

EVP of R&D, Fatty Malik. Sung Lee, CFO.

Emily Field, Analyst — Barclays

Okay, great. Well, okay, so 20 minutes. So obviously, everyone's just really focused on marketing. My Corzo launch. And I think, you know, people are trying to get some sort of early metrics on what you're going to disclose versus not disclose. So, you know, now that, what, maybe three weeks in, four weeks in, what can you tell us about the launch thus far?

Robert Blum, CEO

So, to underscore, we only launched in late January. So, we're really only a month in. But the early signs are encouraging. And as we said on our earnings call, we're looking at a couple of key metrics. We'll get disciplined to repeating the same KPIs with our Q1 earnings call and afterwards. But ahead of that, what should we be focused to? So ahead of that, we're focused on the following. What's the awareness of Mycorzo? So as we went out and did some market research, there's over 90% awareness of Mycorzo amongst the high-volume prescribers for Camzyos, the other cardiac myosin inhibitors. So over 90% of the targeted cardiologists that we've been focused to are already aware of our studies, our product, and have been waiting. We were encouraged by the fact that many of them had already been warehousing patients awaiting the approval. And it was very soon after product was in channel that we already had over 700 cardiologists go through our REMS program and within days already dispensing Mycorzo to patients who were prescribed it. So that's a very good sign. We saw prescriptions coming not just from the currently 700 cardiologists accounting for over 80% of the CAM-ZIO scripts, but we saw prescriptions coming from cardiologists who had never written a prescription. So that's encouraging. And then I guess the other early indicator of interest is that we're already getting requests from our medical information hotline for how does one go about switching patients. So that's interesting. I wouldn't make more of that than that it's interesting, not yet compelling. We're certainly not going to move the needle for the overall picture of adoption based on switches. But it suggests to me that prescribers who are targets are already aware of differences and can be expected to switch patients who might not be performing at the most optimal levels on the existing cardiac myosin inhibitor, Camzyos. So maybe they're on the 2 to 5, 2.5 or 5 milligram dose strength of camzyos. They're still burdened with symptoms, and maybe that cardiologist may be looking to switch that patient.

Emily Field, Analyst — Barclays

Yeah, because at least the switch opportunity, I don't think, is something that you've emphasized as a near-term opportunity.

Robert Blum, CEO

And we won't. But we won't. It's not going to drive the business.

Emily Field, Analyst — Barclays

Well, I mean, what terms of feedback are you getting from prescribers? Because obviously there is a difference in the REMS, which is, you know, we can just look at full stop. But what sort of feedback are you getting in terms of the switch opportunity from initial prescribers?

Robert Blum, CEO

So, again, I don't want to make more of it than what I did, which is to say that people understand the differences. But I do believe that MyCorso offers a different experience for physicians from the standpoint of speed of onset of action, ability to get to target dose and steady state exposures more rapidly. That's enabling of a physician experience, a patient experience that we've been focused to for all the time we've been developing AfiCamp and MyCorso. Our promotion strategy is kind of pillared across safety and efficacy as translates into differentiated label and REMS. But also, how do we make this a physician and office experience that's unique to this opportunity and a patient experience and getting patients all the way through to reimbursement as promptly and easily as possible? And because this is all we do and this is what we built our commercial organization around, we think we can build something that's more tailored, custom to this opportunity and bespoke to the market opportunity.

Emily Field, Analyst — Barclays

Okay. Yeah. And then maybe kind of continuing with the launch story before getting into pipeline, maybe from a financial perspective, how are you thinking about investment in both the commercial organization and the U.S. and also in Europe, which I know takes – I just moved back, so I know that takes a lot of time. But, yeah, in terms of just sort of the pushes and pulls from a cash balance perspective versus now vegan revenue-generated company.

Robert Blum, CEO

So maybe I'll start and then I'll turn it over to Sung. So we're ambitious. When we think about mission and purpose, we think about bringing this science and medicine to patients globally. As such, we're now launched in the United States. We're approved in Europe, and we're going to be launching in Q2 in Germany. And our partner, Sanofi, is approved and launching in China. Soon afterwards, we expect our partner, Bayer, to be getting approval and launching in Japan. So if you think about our Vision 2030, it speaks to global access to this medicine for the benefit of patients globally. And we're committing to do that at least ourselves in North America and Europe. To that point, how we go about it, we have to be good students of what other companies in front of us have done and what they've learned. And we're investing in Europe on a gated basis, staged to reimbursement, as we learn more from Germany, France, Italy, UK, and Spain. So maybe with that, I'll ask Sung to elaborate.

Sung Lee, CFO

Yeah, so Emily, I would say well ahead of the launch in the U.S., we did some things on the finance side to really shore up our balance sheet in order to be able to launch in the U.S., but also in Europe, as Robert said. So going back to May of 2024, we expanded our strategic partnership with Royalty Pharma, which has provided some critical funds in terms of the commercial launch. And then September of last year, we had a very successful convertible notes offering. So we really started this year with a solid balance sheet. We have our capital allocation priorities. And it shouldn't be a surprise, the launch in the U.S. and Europe. But also, as Robert said, investing in our pipeline to advance our ongoing development programs. But also, we have a very productive research organization and expect us to do some things additionally in our pipeline in the future.

Emily Field, Analyst — Barclays

Okay, fantastic. It's like, well, yeah, maybe then to pivot about, you know, catalysts that investors are watching very closely, the Acacia readout, perhaps it would be helpful to talk about the setup into this. And, you know, obviously, the Odyssey trial was unsuccessful and how your trial is perhaps, you know, maybe just from like a structural perspective, tailored a little bit differently. And then we can, I guess, pivot into what are the most important points to look for when we do get that headline.

Robert Blum, CEO

Yeah, so Patty should speak to this in more detail, and I'll just start by saying this ACACIA study represents an opportunity for Afikampton, now called Mycorzo, to be potentially showing evidence of clinical safety and efficacy in a population of non-obstructive HCM, a population that, based on claims data, is roughly equivalent in size to the obstructive HCM population. But the difference being that there are no approved treatments in NHCM and for which you don't have a gradient, a pressure gradient to necessarily manage to. So it's a market for which there's high overlap in terms of high-volume prescribers, but for which the market dynamics are slightly different. We've designed a study. The same team that we've had in place for over five years that has designed and conducted sequoia, maple, forest, cedar, and now acacia is in place and lending oversight to the conduct of this trial. And under Faddy's supervision, we're quite hopeful for what it may read out in results in Q2. And with that, maybe I'll ask Faddy to speak to it in more detail.

Fady Malik, Analyst — Other

Sure. So we went about the process of examining the effect of apicamptin and non-obstructive HCM very deliberately. One of the challenges is how do you dose the drug in NHCM? In OHCM, you tend to dose to the minimum effective dose because as soon as the gradient comes below a certain threshold, you stop dose escalation. There is no gradient in NHCM. the strategy is one more of maximum tolerated dose. And so in that context, you need to understand what doses are well tolerated, you know, what's the right way to titrate dose, what are the right thresholds. And so in phase two, we piloted that very deliberately, testing doses of 5, 10, and 15 milligrams, escalating dose for ejection fraction of 60 or greater, holding dose steady if you're between 50 and 60 and decreasing dose, not interrupting dose for a yes of 40 to 50. And that strategy worked very well. We didn't see any treatment interruptions. We had a couple asymptomatic yes below 50, which responded immediately to down titration. And so going from, you know, 40 patient experience to now a 500 patient experience, we're pretty confident in the dosing paradigm. That shouldn't lead to treatment interruptions, and it shouldn't lead to, you know, kind of being stuck on low doses. You know, when you looked at the Odyssey data, that was one of the issues that they had in Odyssey. They had about a 20% treatment interruption rate, and there was some evidence that, you know, a sizable portion of the population were probably treated with the lowest doses of one, two and a half, or five milligrams, as opposed to being able to escalate to higher doses. So dosing, very important. I think we got it right. We'll know when we unblind the data. You know, secondly is conduct of the trial. You know, as Robert said, we've done six trials. We forgot Redwood in this area with the same team of experienced physicians that have expertise in HCM, myself included, and then a clinical operations team, core labs that have worked with us through this entire period. We've optimized over that time, how do you train sites in terms of the endpoints, KCCQ, peak VO2, echoes, acquiring echoes? How do you qualify patients for the study? You have entry criteria, but NACM is kind of a visual diagnosis. And so if you really want to know what you're getting in the trial, you have to look at the echoes, And we have a team that does that. So I think from terms of setup and the way the trial is conducted, we feel very confident that, you know, there are no methodological issues that should lead to results that are ambiguous. What we saw in terms of phase two data were encouraging. You know, we saw patients whose biomarkers improved, their ECHO's relaxation parameters improved, and their KCCQs and NYHA class improved. And we've seen that now, you know, for over two years in our open label extension. So we like the setup going into.

Emily Field, Analyst — Barclays

And just to confirm investor expectations, because you will hopefully want to present the full data side at a medical meeting, the press release that will come out in Q2 will be mostly qualitative.

Fady Malik, Analyst — Other

I think in general, that's what I would expect. We'll try to see what we can get into it, but it's a negotiation between us and, you know, people that hold the cards in terms of a medical meeting. It is important that we get these data out in front of a large medical audience. You know, there's a tremendous amount of press around these large medical meetings besides the people that are in the audience, which number in the thousands. And so the investment community is important. Obviously, the cardiology community, getting the message to them is also, in the long term, very important to us.

Emily Field, Analyst — Barclays

And then in terms of, like, from a commercial perspective, like a halo effect, if Acacia were to be successful, like, do you see that as having an impact on current microzoa sales?

Robert Blum, CEO

Yeah, I think it's legitimate to assume there's some form of halo effect that if we hit on Acacia, that'll bleed over to OHCM, just simply because it's reinforcing of the clinical safety and efficacy in an adjacent population. Again, I wouldn't put a lot of stock in that until such time as hopefully it's reflected in FDA-approved label and we can promote to it, and the guidelines will be updated to reflect the use of mycorso in that population. But I do know there's high-level interest in Acacia, and it might translate into some wider adoption, maybe even for the full category in OHCM.

Emily Field, Analyst — Barclays

Okay, great. Well, and maybe like taking a step back. So I used to cover Novartis, but obviously, and there was a lot written in the media, and I don't want to rewrite history. But so maybe now that you're in your first commercial launch, the huge catalyst coming up, maybe it would be helpful to just maybe take a step back and think about like from a strategic perspective, how you see cytokinetics, and also going it alone in Europe, which I thought was a very interesting decision just because a lot of your competitors that are launching cardio drugs choose a partner in Europe. So maybe it would be a good talking point just talking about like overall strategic vision and then pipeline beyond Mercurso.

Robert Blum, CEO

Yeah. So why did we go to Europe? We committed to Europe in part because we can. And I would argue most biopharma companies shouldn't because they don't have the redundancy in the pipeline or the business prospects where they can do that in a way that returns on investment the way we believe we do. So my Corzo, even as would be priced at 15 to 20 cents on the dollar relative to U.S. pricing, can be a profitable opportunity in Europe if we do it smartly. And that's an OHCM by itself. Add in NHCM, and it's even more so. But would we have gone to Europe if we hadn't built this company the following way? Fatty and I started this company 27-plus years ago, and we've always intended to be a commercial enterprise, always rooted in one area of science and biology that we pioneer and lead and better than anyone else, and for which we have a portfolio of programs, all directed to the same molecular target, all directed to the same concentrated customer segment, where we have the ability to build a specialty cardiology franchise the likes of which frankly don't otherwise exist in peer group companies so we're enabled to go forward and build a very valuable company for science medicine and patients and also shareholders and do that as an independent autonomous company because frankly it's a bit of a mature birth to commercialization As we go forward with mycorso in OHCM and hopefully soon afterwards in NHCM, right behind it, we have omicamptiv macarble being developed in a confirmatory phase 3 study in advanced heart failure, a very high unmet need, and eulocamptin, another cardiac myosin inhibitor in a subset of patients with advanced HEF-PEF. So this is, if you will, a somewhat uncommon situation of a franchise pipeline moving forward from clinical research through regulatory sciences and into the marketplace, and we think that can become a very impactful company, both for patients and shareholders.

Emily Field, Analyst — Barclays

Yeah, that's the problem. So maybe just to touch on the pipeline assets behind Avocamptin and when we might see additional clinical data on that.

Fady Malik, Analyst — Other

Sure. You know, the most advanced program is the Omocampin McCarble program. It's a drug that's a cardiac myosin activator. It's being studied in severely reduced ejection fraction, heart failure. So these are patients, the number in the hundreds of thousands in just the United States. They've kind of exhausted most medical therapies and are still hospitalized, have a very high risk of mortality. So we are executing Comet now, about 2,000 patient trial. It's enrolling this year. It'll enroll through the early part of 2027, event-driven with a clinical composite outcome of heart failure events and CV death and a couple other components. That trial, talk about setup, that trial was set up by a positive 8,000 patient trial in heart failure that met its end point, had an 8% reduction in heart failure events and CV death. And while it didn't lead to a drug approval, you know, it gave us very strong evidence for where the treatment effect was concentrated, and ultimately, we designed Comet in that population. So I think, you know, when you look at pipeline, we have acacia, and acacia potentially leading to label expansion for apicampin. Following that, we have oolocampin macarble and, again, what we might consider kind of a specialty cardiology population. Behind that, we have oolocampin, which is another cardiac, a different cardiac myosin inhibitor that we're examining in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, which we think is an adjacent population to some of the NHCM type of patients. And that's in phase two, kind of a dose-finding phase two study now called AMBER-HF.

Emily Field, Analyst — Barclays

Okay, well, great. I think we're just about at time. So, Robert, if you want to give any last words, just because it's such an exciting year for the company.

Robert Blum, CEO

Yeah, I'll just end by maybe the same way we started. You know, this is a team that's been in place together for a long time. We've committed to an area of biology we know better than anyone else, and it's yielding great clinical evidence to support therapeutic hypothesis across different specialty cardiology indications. As that translates to a business, we've now turned the page onto commercialization. We should be measured by how quickly we can grow the top line and do that in a responsible way to our fiduciary obligations, both with regard to the P&L and also shareholder value. And I think we're on our way. This year will be one where not only should we be assessed by how well we commercialize MyCorso in the U.S. and Europe, but how do we grow that opportunity and hopefully Acacia shines a light on a new opportunity

Emily Field, Analyst — Barclays

for NHCM. Great. Well, thank you so much for coming and thanks everybody. We'll keep going on with the conference.

Fady Malik, Analyst — Other

Thank you.