“Just two and a half months into the FUROSCIX launch, we are pleased with our progress to date, particularly the early success of our commercial team in-service visits to educate top tier treating physicians and their staff on the many benefits of FUROSCIX for their heart failure patients,” said John Tucker, President and Chief Executive Officer of scPharmaceuticals. “And while it is still very early into the launch, the number of both unique prescribers and total written prescriptions suggests that FUROSCIX is being well received.
“At the same time, we continue to have productive discussions with both commercial and Medicare Part D payers in an effort to secure the broadest and most favorable coverage of FUROSCIX. Reflecting these efforts, we were recently notified by a top five national health plan that FUROSCIX would be placed in a preferred formulary status across all of its commercial plans effective June 1st. This is critical as we work to increase the percentage of heart failure patients who have access to FUROSCIX through a fixed-tier copay of $100 or less, currently 60%, toward our goal of 75% or more.
“We are well funded, with more than $116 million of cash, cash equivalents and investments as of March 31st, providing us with ample resources to continue to execute on our commercial plan and deliver FUROSCIX to the heart failure patients who stand to benefit from this novel outpatient treatment alternative,” Mr. Tucker concluded.
First Quarter 2023 Financial Results and Financial Guidance
Net product revenues were $2.1 million and cost of product revenues were $0.6 million for the first quarter of 2023. The Company commenced the launch of FUROSCIX in February 2023 and net revenue realized in the first quarter was comprised of initial stocking of its specialty pharmacies at seven locations. In addition, all inventory manufactured prior to U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval in October 2022 was expensed.
Research and development expenses were $2.1 million for the first quarter of 2023, compared to $4.3 million for the first quarter of 2022. The decrease in research and development expenses for the quarter ended March 31, 2023 was primarily due to a decrease in clinical study and medical affairs costs, employee related costs, device and pharmaceutical development costs, and quality and regulatory costs.
Selling, general and administrative expenses were $10.9 million for the first quarter of 2023, compared to $2.9 million for the first quarter of 2022. The increase in selling, general and administrative expenses for the quarter ended March 31, 2023 was primarily due to an increase in employee related costs, commercial costs and legal and professional service costs.
scPharmaceuticals reported a net loss of $11.2 million for the first quarter of 2023, compared to $7.7 million for the first quarter of 2022.
scPharmaceuticals ended the first quarter of 2023 with $116.1 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments, compared to $118.4 million as of December 31, 2022.
As of March 31, 2023, scPharmaceuticals’ total shares outstanding was 35,769,073.
Conference call and webcast information
scPharmaceuticals’ management will host a conference call and webcast to review the Company’s first quarter 2023 results today, Wednesday, May 10, at 4:30 p.m. ET. Participants should dial 1-877-407-9208 (domestic) or 1-201-493-6784 (international) with the conference code 13737717.
To access the Call me™ feature, which avoids having to wait for an operator, click here.
A link to the live webcast can be found here.
Following the live webcast, a replay of the event will be archived on scPharmaceuticals’ website for one year.