DURECT Corporation (NASDAQ:DRRX) Q2 2022 Earnings Conference Call August 4, 2022 4:30 PM ET

Company Participants

Tim Papp - Chief Financial Officer

Jim Brown - Chief Executive Officer

Norman Sussman - Chief Medical Officer

Conference Call Participants

Rick Miller - Cantor Fitzgerald

Thomas Yip - H.C. Wainwright

Operator

Greetings. And welcome to the DURECT Corporation Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions]

As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Tim Papp, Chief Financial Officer. Thank you, Mr. Papp. You may begin.

Tim Papp

Good afternoon. And welcome to our second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. This is Tim Papp, Chief Financial Officer of DURECT Corporation.

Before beginning I would like to remind you of our Safe Harbor statement. During the course of this call, we may make forward looking statements regarding DURECT’s product development, expected product benefits, our development plans, future clinical trials or projected financial results.

These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. Further information regarding these and other risks can be found in our SEC filings, including our 10-K and 10-Qs under the heading Risk Factors.

Let me now turn to our second quarter financials. Total revenue in the second quarter of 2022 was $2.1 million, compared to $2.3 million in the second quarter of 2021.

R&D expense was $8.8 million, as compared to $7.4 million for the prior year. The increase was primarily due to higher clinical trial expenses for AHFIRM and higher employee benefit costs which are partially offset by lower contract manufacturing costs for larsucosterol.

SG&A expenses were $4 million in the second quarter of 2022, as compared to $3.2 million for the prior year, primarily due to higher employee benefit costs, patent expenses and consulting expenses.

At June 30th, we had cash and investments of $54.3 million, as compared to $70 million at December 31, 2021, and our cash burn during Q2 was $10.1 million.

With that, let me turn the call over to Jim for an update on certain of our programs.

Jim Brown

Thank you, Tim. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our second quarter 2022 update. I want to take this opportunity to welcome Tim to the DURECT team. It’s a pleasure having Tim on board and he’s hit the ground running since joining as our CFO just last month. Tim brings more than 20 years of investment banking experience to DURECT, with more than 15 years of that focused in biotechnology.