Zai Lab Limited (ZLAB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

June 16, 2022

NASDAQ US Health Care Biotechnology conference_presentation 36 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Ziyi Chen

analyst
#1

Great. Thank you for joining this session with Zai Lab. This is China healthcare analyst Ziyi Chen. And today's session is with Zai Lab CFO, Billy Cho. Thank you for joining.

Ziyi Chen

analyst
#2

Billy, let's get started with the Shanghai lockdown. So how that has been impacting your operations? Is everyone back to the office yet?

Ki Chul Cho

executive
#3

Yes. Thanks, Ziyi, and good morning, everyone. Yes, pretty much since June 1, so a little over 2 weeks now, everyone is back in the office and functioning normally. As some of you may be seeing in media, what they did was -- Shanghai to be specific -- really increased the testing capacity so that if there's any super-spreader events, they can quickly mobilize and -- so you may see an increase in the cadence of testing. But that's going to result in, hopefully, no more systematic lockdowns. So I think they're taking some cues from what Beijing has learned over the past 2-plus years, where -- it may not have been sort of widely spread in the U.S., but we had been working in a kind of, obviously, a COVID world over the past 2.5 years and there has been flare-ups throughout the period. So each city has different strategies. Companies like us, we've also adapted and created a lot of procedures and protocols to navigate and mitigate if there's any kind of flare-up issues. But any way to kind of wrap up here, Ziyi, yes, kind of basically kind of -- at least for our employees in our offices, it's been open for over 2 weeks and it's back to normal.

Ziyi Chen

analyst
#4

Great. In international commercialization, we do have the PARP, the ZEJULA in the market and Optune, Ripretinib. So talk about ZEJULA's commercialization for this year. Any specific target we should be targeting? And also towards the end of this year, there could be another round of NRDL negotiation. There's increasing discussion about whether we should be considering NRDL as one of the ultimate channel or ultimate payer for any of the new drug launches in the market. What do you think about that? Because that will definitely have a large pipeline, and over next few years, we're going to see more drugs come to the market.

Ki Chul Cho

executive
#5

Yes. So a lot to unpack there. You asked 3 questions in one. So let's peel back one by one, and I'll try to be punchy. So in terms of commercialization, yes, we are in commercial stage. We have 4 launch programs. And ZEJULA was one of the first ones out of the gate. It is reimbursed nationally. And that one -- last year was our first full year in China sales for ZEJULA and we did about $94 million, not too bad for the first 12 months. This year, we expect, of course, a pretty significant increase as well. We have not yet gotten to the cadence of giving product-specific revenue guidance. But Ziyi, I know what you have for your target. I'm comfortable with where you're at. I'm comfortable with where the Street is. And I'll just kind of stay there until we're ready to give more specific guidance in the future. Now your question about the NRDL, the national reimbursement scheme in China. Our view for the past few years for those of you who know us, we've been saying as back as like 3 years ago that the payer mix dynamics is going to change in China. So historically, there's always been a good chunk of just out-of-pocket private pay just out of legacy and behavior. Innovative therapeutics was just not available. And so if it is, payment is there. And then, of course, NRDL, the national reimbursement scheme, was very rarely updated. Last time it was updated up a couple of years ago, it was like 8 years prior to that. But then you saw that it's getting updated every year, the list. And the past strategy has been that you want to get on the list ASAP. But we said that, well, there could be a future, and we think there is a future where there's going to be the emergence of commercial insurance like in the U.S. and supplemental insurance scheme. And that's exactly what's unfolding right now. So we -- based on our estimates, a number of people who are covered under commercial and supplemental now about roughly doubled year-over-year to about 100 million corporate lives. And then we think that -- and you can also see some research reports from McKinsey, et cetera. It's probably headed to about 200 million and up to 300 million people within about 2.5 years. So it could be even the size of the United States, roughly within that ballpark. Now that's interesting because it gives us a lot of flexibility on the market access strategy, be a little more sophisticated. If you truly have differentiated assets, you can really sort of come out different ways to sort of -- from a financial point of view, drive adoption with a very good price point, and then you can elect to get on NRDL. And as a matter of fact, the Chinese government -- the National Health Commission came out and said that NRDL will be important, but do not solely rely on NRDL to drive adoption for innovative drugs. And that's their way of saying that there's going to be some support for supplemental insurance and commercial insurance, which is exactly what you're seeing. So for us, we're an early adopter, as you know, Ziyi. We're one of the first companies to really kind of use this as one of our market access strategies because we can. No one really has some of the drugs that we are working on. And we've made very good progress with whether it's Optune for tumor treating fields, which is a very fascinating new technology of kind of owning, class positioning, whether it's QINLOCK -- and you'll see some more of this -- we've been really able to leverage this channel to drive adoption at a pretty strong price point. Our pricing for Optune -- I think global prices in the U.S., Europe, et cetera, is around USD 10,000 per month. We're probably at about 25% discount to that, roughly. And QINLOCK is also -- or QINLOCK pricing in U.S. is spectacular. But we still have it in China around sort of $8,000, right, per month. So it's great that you can have this kind of strategy, and then you can make a decision on NRDL like we would. I think we publicly announced that we will have some NRDL negotiations happening this year. And one in particular -- we have a drug that we launched called NUZYRA. It's the only drug in our entire portfolio where you have to go out to the community, kind of primary care. And for us, all -- out of our 28 programs, basically all of them are very concentrated. But NUZYRA, we decided to obviously find a partner who has a built-in team of nearly 1,000 salespeople in that class, tetracycline class, and this is next generation. And that's great because that's just going to be cash flow coming in, right? So I'll take a quick pause there, so we can address other questions.

Ziyi Chen

analyst
#6

Yes, sure. And I think you mentioned about, for example, Optune, QINLOCK and, of course, for ZEJULA, you attributed your own team. And for another disease category, infection disease, you're actually looking for a partner. What about in the future? Because particularly at a time like this, everyone is talking about how they're going to prioritize their resources to do some of the core assets or core therapeutic areas they're going to be focusing on. So in terms of commercialization, what's going to be your strategy in the future?

Ki Chul Cho

executive
#7

Yes. So it's a good question, especially in today's day and age. We've always kind of prided ourselves on being rather efficient and productive, and BD has been a very powerful tool to very quickly scale with much better economics in terms of whether it's speed or whether the required R&D funding to even get to that stage. So I think it's going to continue to be a very powerful strategy for us. And we're arguably sort of the -- we have established ourselves as kind of a brand name as a go-to partner of choice that you can trust and work together for a long haul. Now if you look at the portfolio that we've assembled, it's very focused. And even when we enter into a new area, we make sure that, that anchor asset, we can actually have some operating leverage. So for example, we've already -- I think many people already know about the progress we made in oncology. And there's a portfolio within each of the areas that we focus on: gastric, lung, et cetera. And clearly, that's going to drive operating leverage, right, because you have the same development team working on multiple programs. You have -- and our development team is broken up by therapeutic areas. You have the same call point from the commercial team selling more than one product. So clearly, you can see operating leverage. And you can already see it like this year. Like ZEJULA, as an example, we expect that to be profitable this year, right? So it's a very focused, concentrated -- we know where the patients are. They're assembled -- a majority of the scripts are going to be concentrated towards sort of the larger hospitals in Tier 1 cities, et cetera. And then we cascade out as we get on NRDL, for an example. And we even have set up structures, where we do have individual teams by disease area. But -- for the most important cities, right? That's where the scripts are concentrated. But when you -- for the Tier 2, lower-tier cities, we can have the same team sell across the disease area. So that's something creative we're working on. It's working quite well. And we expect it to drive a lot of operating leverage. We got into neuroscience recently, right? So let me just give you an example there. So you may say, "Wow" -- "okay, that's a whole new therapeutic area." We agree with you that KarXT is very fascinating, and we have a very important event coming up in third quarter, EMERGENT-2 readout. Like many of you, we're very fascinated and waiting. We think that KarXT is a very important drug globally and in China as a result. So when we did our work around it, we were very comfortable and excited, because apart from all the things I mentioned before, we also have -- we can leverage what we built already. So in terms of neuroscience, you may know that efgartigimod, our partnership with argenx, when you're talking about gMG, CIDP, you're talking about neurology actually. Optune, that's in glioblastoma neurosurgery. So we're going to be able to leverage that even for KarXT launch, and a good element of that. So we're always looking for ways to really leverage the platform that we've already built. We spent a lot of effort and energy building what we have right now to scale, and now we're getting to the productivity mode. So hopefully, that kind of helps kind of our philosophy. And we've kind of always thought this way actually, but we're happy to see it in action and then be a little bit more vocal about it now.

Ziyi Chen

analyst
#8

Got it. Well, I captured one piece of information that you said probably for the first time, is ZEJULA is going to be profitable, right? So let's discuss a bit more about that. Because given the pricing environment in China, there has been some investor concerns about whether you can really make money in China for selling innovative drugs. And particularly, what kind of economics we should be looking at for those new product launches? So when you mentioned about profitable, it's a single product or it's going to be from the broader oncology franchise perspective?

Ki Chul Cho

executive
#9

Both, actually. So I'm just giving you a case study on ZEJULA because it's just launched. And we have real sort of data, right, to showcase and talk about. But that's what we expect also for the entire therapeutic area as well and for the company, right, for all the products that we launch. So hopefully, that gives you a good read-through in the possibility. It's not surprising to us. We've always kind of obviously -- we're a for-profit company, obviously, right? So it was a very important part of our strategy. I'll give you other examples where -- and Ziyi, you know this. Like there are some domestic pharma companies in China. They're not focused on 100% innovation. Mostly it's kind of incremental innovation, branded generics. But there are some companies that are generating profit margins sort of -- there's a pretty wide range. But on the higher end of the range, there's some companies that it gets pretty close to some companies in the U.S., biotech companies here. If you look at multinational companies -- and I won't name names, but some of the multinational companies -- big pharma has been quite successful in China, huge businesses. Some companies -- 2 multinational companies generating about 20%, right, of global revenue in China. Those are clearly profitable businesses. And they don't publish it. And I know what the profit margins are. It's pretty healthy, actually. So I guess the point that I'm trying to make is for those -- I've heard those comments also, Ziyi, that "Can you have a profitable business in China, a profitable biotech business in China?" And our view is a resounding yes. As a matter of fact, we're relying on the revenue and cash flow generated from China to fund our global ambitions, which is the step 2 of the company, more long term.

Ziyi Chen

analyst
#10

Yes, sure. Well, I think you mentioned about efgar several times, and this is definitely next major product for Zai Lab. So what is progress now? I think you guided "we're going to file the BLA in China pretty soon." And given the drug got approval in the U.S., does that really help in terms of getting approval in China?

Ki Chul Cho

executive
#11

Yes. Certainly, U.S. FDA approval and actions are -- it resonates quite favorably with the China FDA, as some of you may know. But I think FcRn therapy is going to be a very important -- it's a new MOA. We're spending a lot of time really building awareness for Efgar in China. It was great to see in U.S. and outside of China that there was good receptivity right out of the gate. That's a good read-through also in China as well. There's some similar dynamics in China. So that's great. And we're going to also work very closely with them to take their learnings and also apply to China as well. But our stated goals for efgar, you're right, that it's kind of keyed up in near term. It's a very important program for us. We're expected to file the BLA this summer. We feel pretty good about that, which means that we're going to be launching it next year. China doesn't give you a PDUFA date, so I can't give you a specific sort of like a month or quarter or anything like that. But I will say that we expect to launch it next year, subject to, of course, the press release that you hopefully will release on the successful submission and acceptance of the BLA this summer. So that's for gMG. And we're part of the global trials across many other registrational programs, so CIDP, ITP, pemphigus, all important indications in China as well. So we're part of the global trial for that one. We were not part of the global trial for gMG. We were too late, right? We did the deal last year, and that was already making very good progress. But that's a quick turnaround. We were not part of the global trial, but yet we were able to -- knock on wood, we expect to submit the BLA in, what, like kind of 2, 3 quarters -- less than 3 quarters from the approval last December to submission this summer. And then getting ready to launch. That's a pretty fast turnaround. And I suppose Zai Lab is known for very robust and fast development and regulatory, and now we're going to add commercial execution on top of that.

Ziyi Chen

analyst
#12

Yes. Sure. Well, another asset a lot of investors are being curious about is Adagrasib. Because this year at ASCO, Mirati...

Ki Chul Cho

executive
#13

Yes, it was a hot topic at ASCO, indeed.

Ziyi Chen

analyst
#14

So [ GI tox ] is becoming a new concern now. And also, there has been some domestic players in China that also put out their KRAS G12C inhibitors with potentially a much better safety profile. So how should we look at the potential future compound landscape in China for KRAS G12C inhibitors, particularly you are now the front runner in the space? And what kind of medical message you're going to deliver to the doctors? And of course, about the regulatory pathway in China?

Ki Chul Cho

executive
#15

Yes. So for us, whether it's Adagrasib or across all of our partners, and quite honestly, also internal work, we're really trying to be first-in-class, best-in-class. I know that's a very high bar. It really truly is. But it's -- we really mean it. We don't kind of throw that out there as a fodder that -- it's literally kind of like one of the key criteria which we focus on. So Adagrasib -- I know that LUMAKRAS already got approved in the U.S. But in China, we expect to be first-in-class, and that's obviously important. We are pretty excited about the recent updates for Adagrasib. You pointed out, maybe some kind of talks, questions, et cetera. We think that -- our interpretation is that -- I mean, it's consistent with sort of our expectations, even previous data readouts. The drop-off rate from the treatment TRAEs is around 7%. It's pretty -- it's exactly the same, actually, as LUMAKRAS. There was very interesting CNS data. There was interesting combo data. We'll see what Amgen combo data says in a few weeks. So there's still a lot of -- so far, we remain encouraged. And you should expect us to make some announcements this year on helping our partner speed up some of these global trials, whether the trials are in lung, the mono combo, whether in colorectal and beyond. So clearly, we have a -- we see clear strategic and clinical logic to support Adagrasib so far. And it's -- we're right now focusing on making it first-in-class. I think that's going to be key. And that's one of our stated goals.

Ziyi Chen

analyst
#16

Got it. And also, Zai Lab is known for picking the best assets, right? And what about the BD this year? Particularly now, I think if you look at the pipeline of Zai Lab, you guys already have a pretty in-depth pipeline. And the BD side is going to be more selective, it's more creative. What kind of therapeutic areas you will be focusing on? And what kind of new strategy will be deployed, particularly in years like this?

Ki Chul Cho

executive
#17

Yes. So our BD platform is -- I'll just say again, it's a very powerful platform that allows us to really drive efficiency and speed to scale. And if we do it right, it's at the heart of driving operating leverage, right, because we're creating portfolios around specific areas only and not just like spreading -- going after everything. And that's at the heart of it. And you'll see that. If we execute well, it will be quite self-evident over the coming years. Now I will say that, yes, the market condition right now is quite dislocated for everybody, including us. So theoretically, cost of capital just has gone up, right? So can we use this opportunity to perhaps even be more selective? Could we have used this opportunity to be a little more creative? So all I'll say is that we will continue to -- I don't want to use the word take advantage. But if there is an opportunity, we will -- I think we'll do the deal. You can expect us to do deals. And if we do a deal in this environment, we just have that much more confidence that it's very clearly going to add a lot of strategic value. It's very clear and quite visible. Now I will also say that it's not every day that you have an opportunity like last year, where we have argenx, Mirati, Karuna and even Blueprint, the 945, 701, we think they're pretty fascinating potential. So it's not every year you have like that lineup, that backlog. And they kind of have kind of a natural tempo sometimes. But there's definitely opportunities. There's good opportunities across the world: U.S., Europe and even parts of Asia, I would say. So we'll keep on evaluating. We have a pretty strong backlog. At the same time, we're obviously also. at the same time, focusing on productivity. So we want to be agile, strike that perfect balance. And I think, fortunately, all the investments that we've made, especially when the times were a little bit kind of go, go and a little bit robust, kind of led up to a point in our organization's lifestyle, where we're no longer like only a biotech mindset of go, go, go, but sort of like pharma style in many respects, like value pharma, like, "Okay, we have profitable a drug and drugs pretty soon. We have productivity drives coming in. And then" -- "but we can still grow." And we're going to be just a little more thoughtful in these elements.

Ziyi Chen

analyst
#18

And also in terms of -- well, I know you probably didn't talk that much about looking -- revisit our existing pipeline, right? And now a lot of biotech companies are talking about restructuring their pipeline, reprioritization. What about you guys?

Ki Chul Cho

executive
#19

Yes, we're absolutely -- we're not afraid to do that. We have a history of doing that actually. So if you look at sort of our past few quarters even, you'll see that we have the prioritizing programs. And that's good stewardship, right? And so just for example, the LAG-3, PD-1 bispecific, right, deprioritized. Margetuximab in gastric cancer, given the change in landscape. We can focus on other -- we have a great portfolio in gastric cancer. Let's, right, refocus and reprioritize on what can really move the needle, especially now, because we can revisit other things later. PD-1, admittedly, we're late to the party on monotherapy, right? So we've -- we're not afraid to definitely reprioritize our resources, whether it's capital or time. We're quite busy given the size of our portfolio already. And we'll continue to do that. We'll continue to just kind of challenge ourselves to be very -- even kind of be more selective and more productive.

Ziyi Chen

analyst
#20

Yes, sure.

Ki Chul Cho

executive
#21

Because we can, yes.

Ziyi Chen

analyst
#22

Yes, of course. On the other hand, you are attributing the in-house capability for discovery, research, early development. What about -- you start to disclose some of the data, IL-17, CDC7 and CD47. So what kind of target you're actually looking at? And in terms of that kind of capability, do you consider yourself also late to the game? Or it's still early to tell?

Ki Chul Cho

executive
#23

Yes. So we take an incremental approach. As you know, we focus on oncology and autoimmune. And we apply the same lens actually to our internal programs, global pipeline as well as our licensed and late-stage programs. So we're really looking for first-in-class, best-in-class opportunities, things that haven't been done before or it's really differentiated. And so you're right, we do have well-known areas like certain IO side, right? But our most advanced program is quite unique. The topical IL-17 has never been done. And we just had POC data, positive POC data last year. We're going to be presenting it at a medical conference this year. We're going to meet with the U.S. FDA pretty soon and launch a global Phase II. And that's quite interesting. The market opportunity is also quite interesting. So that's something that we want to still commit to resources on and make progress. In terms of oncology, we have a portfolio now, and some are in the clinic, some are not. And we'll need to make kind of those decisions pretty soon. Like is our -- like we just had at ACR some posters. And now we're going through the same disciplined sort of analysis now: Are these truly sort of differentiated? And if so, then they have to -- we're going to continue to support incrementally. If not, then we're not afraid to also deprioritize. And our portfolio has already gone to a decent size where we can do that. And then we're also kind of going back to the other question on BD. We have sort of an open mindset, open innovation philosophy. Innovation is so hard. You shouldn't have borders. You shouldn't be emotionally attached. So if there's somebody else -- if there's an area that's really interesting to us and there's somebody else who is doing some fascinating work, we should partner, right? And maybe we even get global rights. We don't like to take a whole lot of risks, right, as you know, for BD. We like to look at a lot of data, even POC and beyond. Sometimes, we partner up commercial stage programs, right, in tumor treating fields. But if we really have conviction on something, that's also -- especially, in this time -- in this day and age, it might be sensible to consider. So yes, there's a lot of -- the partnership strategy and our kind of capabilities around there gives us a lot of flexibility to be efficient and grow at the same time.

Ziyi Chen

analyst
#24

Right. Right. Well, I think this is also kind of related to your go global strategy, because Zai Lab at the start was a licensing -- pretty much China market focused. Last year, I think a lot of biotech companies were talking about go global, from China to global markets. But early this year, given there have been several complete response letter from the FDA, the sentiment is getting -- kind of cooling down in China. But what about you guys?

Ki Chul Cho

executive
#25

Yes. And we can drill down on each one of those and have some interesting takeaways, right? And I don't -- so I guess, without going to the rabbit hole, what I'll say is we completely support, and we have, the concept of a global multicenter trial. As a matter of fact, it's at the heart of the value proposition that we provide to all of our partners: "You partner with Zai Lab and you can quickly run your global development program. We can save you a lot of time and money." And that's very powerful -- you could actually calculate this and quantify it. It's highly accretive, as you can imagine. So for us, we're totally -- like we have -- we support -- we have all supported global multicenter trials. You do still have an option to -- unless it's registrational, you can run trials outside of the U.S., right? It's just -- we're talking about the registrational trial. But for us, we do it even before. Like for IL-17 program that we have, Phase Ib was done globally, right? And so we totally support that. And also, it's important to just constantly communicate -- whether you're at the China FDA or the U.S. FDA, you clearly want to have a lot of direct communication before you set forth on a registrational path. And we'll clearly do that.

Ziyi Chen

analyst
#26

Yes. Sure. Well, another question actually for -- particularly from the global investors is really about the ADR delisting issue, right? So you guys changed the auditors. Does that really remove all the risks in terms of meeting the requirements? Or is there going to be any overhang there?

Ki Chul Cho

executive
#27

Yes. So it's incredible how much accounting has captivated people's attention this year. But this is something that we've been actually working on for some time. It was sort of an open secret that this could be coming. And for a company like Zai Lab where it's really important for our future to have a liquid stock, a well-traded stock in New York as well as Hong Kong, for that matter, we were paying attention. So we're getting ready to address this issue and mitigate it. So obviously, there's -- we already have a Hong Kong listing, and we're going to convert to -- from secondary to dual primary on June 27 of this month. So it's pretty easy actually to take a few days to transfer ADRs to Hong Kong. But that's the insurance option and something that we won't need, in my opinion. That's more of a Hong Kong liquidity. We want to attract more investors in the region into Hong Kong trading. But we're overweight in New York. But let me come back to the actual question. So 2 things. One is we just announced that we've appointed a U.S. auditor to oversee and conduct and plan our global audit. They're going to be subject, obviously, to PCOB inspection. And we have -- we believe that we have very strong evidence and confidence that we're going to meet and satisfy all the requirements of HFCAA. So there's a 3-year grace period right now. But even if it gets accelerated to 2 year, that's fine, because the next cycle of this list, we expect to be off of it. Now the second part is the 2 governments are trying to resolve it wholesale, because there's over like 250 ADRs, right? So it would be lovely if the regulators can figure this out. From what I know, they are having very active discussions. On the China side, they have prioritized this to resolve it, as you know. It's been elevated to basically the highest level, right, something like this to figure out how to resolve. And then the SEC, on the U.S. side, I think -- as a matter of fact, the ball is in their court to respond. So I still remain hopeful that they'll resolve this as early as this year. Obviously, for us, we're not going to wait. This is the government that we're talking about. So for us, everything that we can do -- in this current world of macro uncertainties, everything we can do to basically mitigate or lower everything that's within our control, we're basically doing.

Ziyi Chen

analyst
#28

Got it. Got it. We've got probably 3 more minutes. So I'll pause here to see if any question is coming from the audience. Okay. I'll probably continue with my last 2 questions. Number one, as CFO, how do you think about the cash runway, and particularly, how you're going to -- looking at the potential financing plan for Zai Lab in the probably upcoming 18 months, 24 months?

Ki Chul Cho

executive
#29

Yes. So we have no current need of capital, fortunately. So our latest balance sheet shows $1.3 billion in cash, and that's as of end of March. And the prior quarter, we had $1.4 billion. So our cash burn for first quarter was sub-$100 million or $95 million in change, plus or minus. So I think it's great to be in a position where despite the stock dislocation, we have -- we're commercial stage and that's ramping this year. We have a strong balance sheet. And that goes back to the point of kind of balancing sort of the offense versus defense type of philosophy, right, the point. And so we have a runway even with doing deals ala the historical style, although the scope and nature could even change, right, in this environment. Assuming that we even do deals, I mean, we have runway kind of end of 2024 and even into 2025. So let's see how long this winter lasts. But it will end eventually, and we're confident that we can grind out of this. But we have no kind of need to raise in the near term, that's for sure.

Ziyi Chen

analyst
#30

Got it. Okay. Last one is just to wrap it up -- rev it up. What's going to be the next 6 months major catalyst for Zai Lab?

Ki Chul Cho

executive
#31

Yes, we have quite a bit, actually. So I spoke about our efgartigimod, a very important drug that we're going to submit the BLA this summer, and that teases up for launching next year. That's great. We have the readout from EMERGENT-2 data for KarXT. I think many people are expecting it late July, early August. So that's something that a lot of people are waiting on, including us. And then we have EMERGENT-3 in third quarter -- sorry, first quarter of next year. So there's actually 2 shots on goal here. But we're all waiting on EMERGENT-2, aren't we? And then the -- for tumor treating fields, we have the final Phase III readout for LUNAR. There's been a lot of debate on this for a while, and the debate ends effectively, right, later this year. And personally, whether it's positive or negative, when the debate ends, I think it's a positive. So -- but we're going to all wait for that data. And then just commercial execution, just to see that -- we're one of the first, I think, biotech companies in China to show commercial success and profitability, right -- although we're saying product profitability. To showcase that, I think, it's going to be -- so we're -- it's a pretty competitive space, too. We're up against AstraZeneca. They launched it 18 months before us, and they are very successful in China. And to come from behind as a smaller company -- and we have a stated target internally to overtake them and establish market share leadership no later than next year and, let's say, hopefully, even sooner, right? So to show that this year just month-over-month market share increase in execution, I think will give some investors some confidence: "Okay, okay, this kind of new company can do this with this program against these huge" -- "this competition. Let's actually take a look at the rest of the portfolio." And I think we look forward to having that discussion.

Ziyi Chen

analyst
#32

What does the market share look like now?

Ki Chul Cho

executive
#33

Yes. You can pull up IQVIA in China and follow it month by month. It's not -- as you know, IQVIA in China is not as accurate as the U.S. because they do a sampling of sort of the top hospitals. So you have to kind of gross up and what do you do -- what factor you use to gross up. But you can clearly directionally see market share, et cetera, like that. And so right now, it's above 30%. And month-over-month, you see that increase. And we expect that just to continue for this year, next year. And I think we can in the near term come back to the audience and say, "Okay, this is what we've done. We've" -- "as we've stated as our goal, we have achieved market share leadership." And I think that's going to resonate well.

Ziyi Chen

analyst
#34

Yes. Looking forward to that. Thank you, Billy. Thank you for joining us.

Ki Chul Cho

executive
#35

Thank you, Ziyi. Thank you, everyone.

For developers and AI pipelines

Programmatic access to Zai Lab Limited earnings transcripts and 32,000+ others is available through the EarningsCalls.dev REST API. Plans from $24.99/month — full transcripts, speaker segments, full-text search, and the recently-added /api/v1/transcripts/recent polling endpoint for ETL pipelines.