Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc. (NBIX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. Hello, and welcome, everybody, to the final day of the Goldman Sachs Healthcare Conference. As always, we like to save the best for last. We're super pleased to have Neurocrine join us. And we have the leadership, both the past, present and future. It sounds like the gods of Christmas or something like that at any rate, Kevin Gorman, foundational to this company, very much taking us to this incredible moment that the company is at right now is somewhat amplified by that incredible headquarters that's going up down California; and Kyle Gano, who has been a point person, and like many people very much dedicated so much of your professional career to Neurocrine. A lot that you bring to bear with the chops, so I'm going to ask you to unveil some of your background here, help on the credibility front, but named to be the successor CEO. So thank you both for joining us.

I think I was looking back at what consensus was when INGREZZA was first approved. And I think it was almost $500 million which is interesting because to start with, when you're a company going after things like neurologic disease, there's always some skepticism. And certainly with INGREZZA, I think you journey through a lot of that. And now what we have is 2024 guidance that is north of $2 billion. The journey has been one of a lot of tactical decisions. A lot of learning COVID was pretty rough, right? We came through that. Can you talk about you think the learnings from INGREZZA, reflect back and get ready to do this orderly transition over to Kyle, but in particular.

Sure. But first, thank you very much. for the opportunity to be here to speak. And second, we will be making forward-looking statements. So I'd like to direct you to our recent SEC filings and for all of you, there's still a couple of seats in the back. The rest of you can start standing along the sides of the room, I think we can fit in a few more people.

This qualifies for a defacto standing moment in American like and Todd can testify to that. Good haircut, Todd.

He lost the bet. So there's been a lot of learnings. I think when we started this, Eric Benevich, our Chief Commercial Officer, said to us and his entire team, this is going to be a learning launch that we're going to go through. There's never been a drug for tardive dyskinesia. There were a lot of initiatives put in place -- some of them worked really nicely. We doubled down on those. Others did not work at all. So we just left those by the wayside. His team came up with more initiatives to be in place. And that is kind of a theme that we did because what have they all centered around. They were all centered around being able to educate the physicians that the way that, number one, tardive dyskinesia existed, which it sounds funny to say that today, but 7 years ago, and you did market research or tried to do it, like everyone did, is you would bring in a half a dozen psychs and neurologists and say, how many TD patients do you have? And they all said [ rounding none ] doesn't exist anymore. They were actively taught not to see it or to ignore it. When they would be forced to come in contact with it, they did what we call the 3Rs. You either reduce the dose of their antipsychotic, you replace it with another antipsychotic, or if they're not a schizophrenic patient, they're a bipolar major depression pace, it just remove the antipsychotic altogether. None of those things have any effect in TD. And then all of a sudden here we come along and with a safe and effective -- highly effective treatment for TD. Actually, one that you can say, puts TD into remission, a complete remission of the disease. And that was a fundamental ground changing for the patient. The struggle was how does the patient get it because the doctor is not diagnosing it. Now because when we launched, there was maybe 3% of TD patients, and we estimated around 600,000 TD patients in the United States, maybe 30% had a diagnosis. Now we're up -- depending on how you want to count, it's a soft number, maybe 30%, 35% TD patients have a diagnosis. Wow, 7 years. And that's as far as we've gotten. This is a hard nut to crack, but it's growing each year. And even that, only half of those patients who've gotten the diagnoses are getting a VMAT2 inhibitor. So even if we were not able to get another patient diagnosed and we concentrated solely on that next hurdle in the journey with those physicians and with those patients to then actually get a prescription for a VMAT2 inhibitor, you would double the market as it exists now. If you look at the total market, it's about $4 billion. I mean who would have thought? You just said yourself that INGREZZA being the only one out there. The [ not ] guidance that we gave, but went forced to say, what do you think? We said, I don't know, about $300 million, $400 million at peak. We do better, much better than that almost doubled per quarter as it stands. Learnings also have to do with -- because you -- we stay fairly conservative within the company on trying to understand your market more before you invest in it more. We went through 2 increases in the sales force because, again, how do you -- you need data to be able to say how much more of an investment should you do? And each time we did those sales force expansions, you saw a remarkable increase in number of scripts and revenues that followed within 12 months of those. We then embarked on a learnings, we embarked on an unbranded direct-to-consumer advertising. That really helped. So we did that for over 2 years, and then we decided to take the jump into a branded DTC advertising. And again, you saw that -- we saw that the return on investment in that was very good and powerful. So that's why we've kept with it. We understood from the outset that where we went in originally was in the psychiatrists and neurologists offices. We knew that long-term care, there were a lot of patients there. It's still hard to tease out how many, but we didn't have the sophistication, the wherewithal, the resources to go into long-term care [ media. ] We did that 2 years ago. We dipped our toe as I put it into long-term care starting 2 years ago. And we're seeing that's the fastest-growing aspect that we have. fastest-growing from a percentage. I mean because it's still small compared to our sites. But it's equal, I would say, these days to our neurology sales force, which we've had out there since Day 1. So there's all these learnings that we've generated along the way, and these learnings shape our behaviors and our investment as we go forward. So there -- it's still an incredible opportunity, and it's an incredible opportunity because it's an incredible drug to be quite honest.

And it's interesting because the quarterly report, I think, about 2 years ago was a little bit of drama about the guidance and hitting and missing, and Matt and his kind of very [indiscernible] voice would always say, it's like I don't expect the first quarter to be a seasonally strong quarter for years. And then they do well and then the second quarter, this shouldn't have been thought of to roll over and stuff. There's kind of this ER cadence from the Winnie-the-Pooh series always with the way he's like giving us a down [ croton ] kind of view.

It's more of a -- I don't look at it as a dour or anything like it. It's a Shaquille O' Neal voice is what he has.

We'll go with that. So what are the -- are the other cards to play? I mean I feel like we step into the print each quarter, and it's not that controversial and that's kind of a relief because there's actually a lot of pipeline stuff that's very cool to talk about and think about there. But before moving on from Ingrezza. Are there other cards to turn over? Is there another channel like long-term care Part 2 or some other dimension that can keep things going as we were in 2024, we still have a bunch of years left under Kyle reading the prepared comments from Todd with this, thoughts about other tricks up your sleeve, which sounds majority, but you know what I mean, just like you've been creating crafting, educating doctors in the market. Is there something that you think?.

Well, I think what Kevin painted here is a picture that represents one that we're 7 years into the launch. If you want to look at what we did in Q1, $506 million in revenue, 23% year-to-year growth. That's just phenomenal being 7 years into the launch. We've guided to $2.1 billion, $2.2 billion this year, and the growth opportunity that we see here shows no signs of slowing down. So why is that? Well, at a high level, Tardive dyskinesia is a disease, as Kevin pointed out, it's not one that's reversible when you take away antipsychotic. So you start with what's happening with the antipsychotic market. You go back to INGREZZA was launched in 2017, it's still growing as a market as a psychotic space at about 3%, 3.5% per year. That's multiples above the growth rate of the general population. You've got an underlying disease that's outpacing how the general population is growing. So I think you got that one piece there. And looking at how we performed in terms of increasing the diagnosis rate a little bit differently. You could turn the card a little bit, turn the coin and say, well, if all that is correct, then we have 80% of at least 600,000 patients today that are not on a VMAT2 inhibitor. And that just tells you the upside, that's here, ultimately. Over time, us and our competitors in this space have done our homework, done our work. VMAT2 inhibitors are recognized by the APA as being the standard of care. And we've got a marketplace here that's promotionally sensitive. So I think we paint a picture of a lot of growth still left in this disease state, a lot of patients still to serve. But I think it also -- if you look at it in the negative way, we haven't done our part yet to completely serve the entire market. Market is still underserved. And I think for us, really, it is how can we accelerate the market development for the next 14 years because we've got an LOE goes out to 2038. And for us, INGREZZA, whether you're talking about our strategy or capital allocation, our next dollar spent is best on INGREZZA. So to help accelerate the market development of TD beyond what we've already had to help those 80% of the patients that don't have access to a VMAT2 inhibitor. We will be expanding our sales field force this year. And that's something that we'll be able to provide more details on in our Q2 call. But we've got a lot of conviction in INGREZZA. There's a lot of room left in this marketplace. In Q2, you saw that we got a different formulation of INGREZZA approved, the INGREZZA sprinkle that in combination with the LOE just a significant upside still here in the franchise. And we believe by expanding our commercial infrastructure really gives us the opportunity to double down on those areas of high growth. And ultimately, patients are going to win here. All of them are going to get a diagnosis hopefully, they'll get a treatment. Hopefully, that's going to be INGREZZA across the board for both TD and in Huntington's Chorea.

Now I'll say that as a -- given the scale of the revenues as a profitable company, no one's really running a PE multiple per se, but the margin progression is very important, and that you guys are doing some very meaningful and significant investments, plus you're going to be launching a product. So when I hear you say you're going to put more sort of hiring or on the SG&A aspect specifically targeting INGREZZA, I remember a couple of years ago when you guys were talking about doing more of the branded direct-to-consumer. And there was a little bit of a ground that I heard across the investor ecosystem in terms of, wow, this is a little bit late, not that any of us have ever manage these P&Ls or masterminded these. And yet you saw a return from that. I think when Eric has previously talked about adding feet on the street, so to speak, there were targeted specific ways where there was going down some of these channels. Can you provide a hint in terms of where the incremental headcount is going to be doing? What kind of musculature that particular member of the sales force is going to be trying to emphasize?

Well, I'll take a first crack, not exactly at that because we're going to get more into that on our Q2 earnings call. But I would go with well aware of the grounds that came right? There were grown that came from the -- from each of the 2 expansions that we did with the sales force over the 7 years. Questions like, well, is this defensive and all that went away because when you just saw the dramatic growth that kicked in each time that it was clear. No, there was nothing defensive about that. As is this time, there's nothing defensive about that. The same with the -- and the return on investment. You cannot beat the return on investment that we see with INGREZZA with the sales rep. It's enormous. When you -- the next one was like, wow, you're doing a DTC now. Brandon, that's like $90 million a year. But again, using all standard metrics to look at the return on investment of DTC, it beat all industry norms for what that does for us, which is why we go forward with it. So yes, I'm sure that there's going to be grown again, but in my way of looking at it, it's asked and answer twice already. It will be asked and it will be answered a third time. I have no doubt. So I'm hoping that the grown will be much less this time because this is a -- and each time we do it, as you saw in the last time, while we're not going to get into details here, how it's going to be rolled out. But the last time you saw that we broke the sales force up now from one-- each rep called on psychs and neuros. Now we have a site-specific sales force in neuro specific, and then we launched the LTC-specific sales force. So we do learn. We do know where to put that extra effort into. We know what we're going to be doing with it. Do you want to..

No, I think you covered everything. I would just add, over time, and Kevin mentioned this in his introduction, we've learned a lot about growth segments within TD, and we are calling on the psychiatric prescriber base as well as neurology and LTC. And obviously psychiatry is still going to be a big part of our growth story in the future. We also see a good opportunity in LTC, and that's becoming a big part of what we see as opportunity moving forward. I think overall, we'll have a lot more details to share in the coming months, but we're excited to roll this out later this year and get some additional boots on the ground and continue to develop this market. That's still, as I mentioned, quite underserved.

And the interesting thing here, is that one of the things I'm really proud of with neurocrine and Kyle is going to be pulling it forward, is, as he said, we're going to be launching these additional reps out into the field this year. And we look forward very shortly after that, launching an entirely new sales force for crinecerfont out in there. And Neurocrine can do that now. We can leverage the commercial infrastructure that's already in place for both of these things. So that -- it's a very exciting time for us.

Yes. No, it's an important achievement. We're just the peanut gallery of skeptics. You have demonstrated and you have the credibility of having made these investments before and watching these and this has been a multiyear arc and the journey there. So I think that makes sense. I opened with a question about learnings simply because, we certainly don't understand, but then just the decision community didn't really understand TD and the treatment and conditions, and we're seeing some elements metaphorically similar to that with crinecerfont and the opportunity there. Now you just came out of the Endo meeting in Boston, which was inconveniently overlapping with ASCO, and so we're all running around dealing with all sorts of radiopharmaceutical BS. But with Endo, and here we are again. How are you feeling in terms of the questions that the Street is asking, the numbers that the analysts are forecasting, are we just like all over the place in random, and 2 years from now, we're like, boy, did we get that wrong, i.e., when INGREZZA launched at 500, and we're talking $2 billion now year 5. Give us a sense of maybe a better sense of True North with that, from where we stand now, recognizing the store risks.

Yes. So we had data at Endo and then we've had the 2 New England Journal Medicine articles that were published as well. That's feedback that we've gotten has been very positive from the advocacy groups that we work with, the KOLs. On the outset, I guess I should take a step back. When we're talking about CAH is congenital adrenal hyperplasia. It's a rare [ orphan ] disease. There are about 30,000 patients here in the U.S. is a serious life-threatening disease. It's caused by a mutation on the SIP 182 gene, which leads to the formation synthesis of a very important enzyme in the body called 21 hydroxylase, whose responsibility is numerous, but the most important one for us when we talk about this is a synthesis of cortisol. So these patients have a really significant decrease of cortisol or absence of cortisol, and that can be like threatening at the time of birth. So in terms of what we've tried to do with crinecerfont [ CAH ] at the outset, and we've been working on this target Eric's earliest days. That's what Kevin founded the company on. But in CAH, we've been working on it for well over a decade. Our predecessor molecule that we were developing actually the chief proof of concept about 10 years ago, and we've been working on bringing up crinecerfont as a follow-on molecule given some of the early challenges that we had. In terms of the Phase III program, we ran 2 Phase III trials, one in adults, one in kids. These are the CATALYST studies and the design of these studies was based on the input that we received from patients, their parents, KOLs, advocacy groups and most importantly, regulators. And ultimately, we took the intersection of their feedback and with our goal, which is really to show the dynamic range of what a [ CRFR1 ] antagonist could do in these 2 patient populations, which was to reduce and control things like ACTH, androgens, glucocorticoids, that could all be done in a real-world setting. And that's a lot to ask for a first-time study in the CAH patient population. But for those of you that are familiar with orphan diseases, you don't have many opportunities to do multiple studies in orphan diseases. You got to try to do your best with what you have available to you because you just don't have the luxury of doing repeat studies. Ultimately, the end points that we landed on board, those that were guided to us by the FDA and EMA, and the results that stand for themselves much better than we anticipated. We showed good [ androgen ] reduction, 65% to 85% across the adult and pediatric patient population. We showed that the physicians that were part of the study could reduce glucocorticoids and control [ androgens, ] and we showed a nice safety and tolerability profile. And that led to the data last year. We got breakthrough designation at the end of last year right around our R&D Day, which was a nice thing to announce. And here we are today, we submitted 2 NDAs to the FDA in April. And with that breakthrough designation, we expect to hear back whether or not we'll have a priority review, which is a PDUFA data is. That kind of gives you kind of a flavor of where we are today with the program and the data that we have.

Another stage of the game, if we came up to you and said, do you think there will be an AdCom you would say?

I would say it's -- it would make sense that there is one. It's a first-in-class molecule for a disease state that has had a new medicine in 70 years. We said the same thing with INGREZZA. You mentioned similarities here on that. And if you recall, we did actually have an AdCom plant for INGREZZA, and it was canceled during the course of review by the agency. So we wouldn't be surprised if there is an AdCom, that's why we prepare first for there to be one, quite honest, I think it would be a good thing. Give patients their supporters, the opportunity to have a voice in the matter and also to display the data that we have, which is excellent.

And it's great to get a little bit nervous about documents and all the sort of stuff and write all these things in sort of [indiscernible] . But then my original question and the last one on crinecerfont now because there's some pipeline items I want to catch up on, how comfortable are you with how -- the Street is attempting to sketch out numbers and the trajectory of that growth there?

It feels an awful lot like INGREZZA, I think is how you said it best. A lot of the variability that we've seen in the forecast is just what is the price point that you're talking and speaking to, and that's something that we'll be able to share as we get further along. We see what the label looks like for crinecerfont later in the game, but there's a lot of data out there that you can lean on that shows you what the range of orphan medicines are for diseases that are being treated chronically in from the perspective of symptoms. And I think that's what we have disclosed and shared with you all and some of you have actually triangulated that to your yourself. So we're very confident that with the quality of the data and the safety that we have that will start with a broad label. So that helps, obviously, from that price point perspective. But ultimately, we're equally excited about having the opportunity to get this medicine to patients, hopefully as soon as early in 2025.

Sounds good. Let's talk about muscarinic, hot mechanism. Is there a little bit of a Greek mythology thing going on? I mean the previous schizophrenic agents were actually responsible for Tardive dyskinesia. And now this next generation of pipeline asset is actually -- the profile is one where the dimension of it is going to be quite different and almost solve for some of those things. And so it may [indiscernible] being as the heterogeneous disease and what you've already articulated in terms of like the vastness of the patient population, it's probably me being a little bit too zero-sum game. But certainly, it seems as if your approach includes a couple of different options. You can talk about Biology, M1 and M4, [ selectivity weighting, ] et cetera, what's the lead steer in your mind? What's the top athlete that you want to put forth in? What is essentially a race? We have a PDUFA coming in September for KarXT. We have [indiscernible] , some pretty important data coming up for them, hopefully, by the end of the year, where you guys, which is the lead asset, just bring us up to speed?

I'm going to start that one?

No. You're doing a good job in rolling

Well, our lead asset is NBI -568. It's our selective M4 agonist. It's actually the latest-stage agonist that we have a part of the muscarinic portfolio. We have 3 other muscarinic agonists, the earliest one being M1 selective agonists and different flavors of M1 and M4 in between. So to your point, we do have a data readout coming up. It's a Phase II study in the schizophrenia patient population. We're the only company has yet to deliver data that has our approach, which is using a selective orthosteric agonist approach. We have KarXT through Karuna now BMS that used an approach where they've combined a pan-muscarinicagonist with a pan-muscarinic antagonist to block peripheral target effects, but it does hit M1 and M4, and then with emraclidine, which is in [indiscernible] hands at the moment, they're using an M4 PAM and they got some nice data there early in a Phase Ib setting. No one's actually pursued the M4 orthosteric agonist angle solely, and that's where we come in here. It's one that we are familiar with as a company. We've been working in this target space ourselves prior to doing our collaboration with Sosei Heptares, now Nxera. So we like this approach. We think that this is the right one for the muscarinics. We think that we can achieve the same levels of efficacy that we see with the other muscarinics, but until we see our data, we have to deliver that ultimately that we can make those comments. So what we see on the muscarinic side of the equation in terms of placebo-adjusted scores range for about 8.5% to 12.5%. The lower bound is from the KarXT Phase IIIs and the upper bound for emraclidine in their Phase Ib trial. And a win for us if we could get a placebo adjusted score in that 8 and above range with a nice safety and tolerability profile, that will tell us, that will give us the confidence of the validation that our approach using an orthosteric agonist on M4 and M4 alone, is valid in psychosis. And schizophrenia, I'm sure other companies in the space will tell you the same thing, is that it's kind of your table stakes -- lets you get your foot in the door and diseases to have a psychosis angle. But most of the interest in being in a new class of medicines like this is can you expand to other disease states like we've seen with antipsychotics. And that's something that we all have to work on as a member of this new class of medicines.

Good general statement. What's your hypothesis in terms of where your mechanistic targets are emphasizing in terms of the ultimate clinical manifestation of where that will benefit. Is there going to be a cognitive benefit M1 M4 versus more the symptoms associated with schizophrenia, when we think about efficacy profiles and the slight variations on the theme, what's your hypothesis for your asset?

I think it's not just our hypothesis. I think others in general believe that M4 is more tied to psychosis and M1 is more tied to diseases of cognition. And there have been years ago work on [ xanomeline ] and even in M1 PAMS in the area of Alzheimer's that have shown utility or absence of utility, if you look at a PAM in that particular patient population. That gives you a reason to believe, but no one's really tested the hypothesis with specific molecules that have the desired pharmacology. And that's where Neurocrine comes in, with an M1 M4 dual, an M4 preferring compound, that being 569 that has some M1 activity. As we take these programs through Phase 1, we're going to pick the best ones in terms of overall safety tolerability profile, move in some -- move these into some of these diseases that range from cognition and other diseases of the psychosis and see what type of profile ultimately is the preferred one for these different disease states. But we don't want to lose focus on what we have right now, and that's [ 568 ] in schizophrenia. If that trial is positive and gives us the readouts that I mentioned that we're looking for, that's something that would move into a registration quality program in 2025, and we would be off to the races.

Yes. Phase II data, 3Q '24, I think, is theoretically timeline guidance there, other things in the clinic. Is it your playbook to have several assets in the clinic and ultimately conceive of -- if they should all succeed having multiple products, but with different profiles? Or we often -- I mean, everybody has a tool compound, this is just a question of what the gating factor is to make the investment to throw them into clinicals. And here, we have a sort of a Tableau where there's so many different indications, subset, even distinct patient populations, Alzheimer's disease psychosis could be quite different from schizophrenia. Is it your thinking to keep on pressing forward with multiple assets?

Well, consistent to what we've said previously, we do prioritize the M1 M4 dual that's NBI-570. And the reason for that is that if you're looking for potentially a medicine that can treat diseases of cognition psychosis, there could be one that does both. We also know that there is some experience out there where molecules that have multiple pharmacologies on a particular class of receptors can often deliver greater efficacy in a given disease state. We don't know that for sure. We also don't know the safety and tolerability of an M1 M4 versus some of our [ elective ] approaches. But that's where we are with the prioritization right now. The good thing is that we have these other 2 agonists and M1 selective and an M4 preferring agonist that are not far behind [ 570. ] They're all pretty much in replicate Phase I studies. We're going to be able to look at similar types of biomarkers in a healthy volunteer setting. We're going to be able to compare those effects, looked at safety and tolerability and then pick the best one or one to move forward into a Phase II study.

You also have to look at -- it's not just -- we've just been talking about our muscarinic franchise there. But you can't just look at Neurocrine like that when it comes to how we're going to allocate capital. We have a rich portfolio of both preclinical and in the clinic drugs. We have things that have validated mechanism of action. I can think of 2 right off the bat that are in the clinic with us. It's our [ NMDA ] [NR2B NAM ] that we have for major depressive disorder. You know that mechanism works. That's an enormous market that sits out there for us, and we're the only ones who have been able to achieve this kind of a profile with an orally active drug. So you put that in a mix of with all of your muscarinics, how are you going to attack the psychiatry market there, then go over to our next-generation VMAT2 inhibitor that we have in the clinic. As you know, we've been working on beating INGREZZA for a lot of years now. INGREZZA is a great drug. We think we have something that beats INGREZZA, that's going to be able to broaden the applicability there. We should be able to move rapidly on that. And obviously, it's a proven mechanism of action. So we have that to lay into there. And then you're going to start seeing -- and then we have later on this year, also [ luvadaxistat. ] That's going to read out for the cognitive impairment associated with schizophrenia. Again, that can be an enormous opportunity for us. Let's see if that one pans out. And then finally, I would say that we have that we're going to be seeing entering the clinic next year are going to be modalities in large molecules that are going to be coming into the clinic. And so we're going to enjoy the having to choose and pick what are we going to invest in? What makes then how do we extract value from everything, and you're going to hear well thought-out plans from him and the rest of the team as that goes forward.

Yes. No, point taken. Obviously, I think we get a little obsessional about the muscarinic opportunity because it's sort of like we love to be able to think about some of these arenas there. But certainly, the bench has broadened considerably. So just to touch upon some of the things you mentioned with 845, any updates on the -- we've turned over some cards. It looks like we're able to move forward. But one of the next gating factors was talking to the FDA. Has that happened?

We'll be talking with the FDA later this year. We don't have a time on that. I'm not sure we would share that we -- what the plans that come out of that meeting. But I think that if all goes well, the idea would be, we'd be starting a registration program next year in 2025 on that.

Great -- but...

Spectacular data in that program. That's another one that we would have to add as part of our capital allocation story is -- those are big trials we certainly want to take advantage of the good data that we have and move that forward as quickly as we can.

Luvadaxistat, you mentioned the data update. That's Phase II data, cognitive 3Q as well, another potential catalyst, correct?

Yes, that's right.

Okay. Great. Maybe in the closing moments here, Kyle, talk a little bit to your background, when you and I first started talking a bunch of years back, I was impressed by sort of your academic journey, how much time you spend the chops that you bring to bear into this role. And I'm a little bit curious because you've been kind of Prime Minister of Business Development, and you have this portfolio now as a CEO, will you continue to have a hard time of removing that hat, the responsibilities are somewhat different. And then you'll have a Chairman as an overlord and all these other things happening. But tell us about you and give us a lens to begin to critique you by?

Well, I'd have to say that Kevin and I share a lot of similarities. I think he's the only one that spent more time at UCLA than I did over the years. But he too came up through many different roles in the company in the '90s, 2000s, he led business development and he came into the CEO role. And as that transition occurred, the business development activities came to me. And we still have been attached to the hip over this same time frame, looking at, working on developing the strategic plan for the company, the direction, defining what we wanted the company to look like. Frankly, the strategy that we have today is a good one. It's the right one and it's one that we'll continue to execute against. But in terms of me specifically, I don't think I'll have any problem passing the baton down to my own lieutenant that will come in and be able to take over business development. But I'll tell you that Kevin has always had business development in his heart, and we've been close on a number of different things that we've worked on together over the years. And I still think that I'll have a hand in that still moving forward as well.

Okay. Terrific. We're out of time. I really appreciate the 2 of you being up here. I had very low probability of success odds of getting you to break out into a fight, which is which I usually enjoy trying to get people to do. Too much gentlemen behavior here. But Kevin, much to appreciate through your tenure. It's been absolute pleasure working together with you. I know the shareholders and investment community always believe that as well. And you will always have a seat at the Goldman Sachs Healthcare Conference, probably in the back with Todd, but you will always have a seat.

Chris, it's been wonderful working with you over our lease years. Thank you very much.

Okay. Thanks, everybody.

Thanks, everyone.