Amarin misses by $0.03, beats on revs; affirms outlook
- Reports Q4 (Dec) loss of $0.08 per share, $0.03 worse than the Capital IQ Consensus of ($0.05); revenues rose 39.2% year/year to $53.87 mln vs the $52.73 mln Capital IQ Consensus.
- REDUCE-IT, Amarin's potential landmark long-term cardiovascular outcomes study, is designed to provide data to support a significantly expanded market opportunity for Vascepa. An important step in completing this study is having all living patients in the study visit their clinical site for the final collection of data. In accordance with the previously defined schedule, such final patient visits are scheduled to commence March 1, 2018. The company anticipates reporting top-line results from this study by the end of the third quarter of 2018.
- Outlook: Amarin provided financial guidance for 2018 in its press release on January 4, 2018. That guidance is unchanged, except that Amarin's recently completed financing has firmed up its commitment to increase awareness of Vascepa through additional promotional efforts beginning in Q2 2018, including piloting multi-media awareness initiatives to assess the potential effectiveness of such communication for potential broader use after REDUCE-IT results, assuming study success. The incremental cost of this pilot promotion prior to REDUCE-IT results is estimated at between $15 and $20 million. The priority will be to establish brand awareness with consumers and healthcare professionals, most of whom are currently unfamiliar with Vascepa. The company believes that creating greater Vascepa awareness prior to REDUCE-IT results will help the value of REDUCE-IT results be better appreciated. Amarin has not done any promotion of this nature in the past.
- At December 31, 2017, Amarin had $73.6 million of cash and cash equivalents. In February 2018, Amarin received approximately $65.0 million of net proceeds from a registered offering of American Depositary Shares