Achieve Life Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:ACHV) Q2 2022 Earnings Conference Call August 11, 2022 4:30 PM ET

Company Participants

Cindy Jacobs - President, Chief Medical Officer & Director

Jerry Wan - Principal Accounting Officer

John Bencich - Chief Executive Officer

Conference Call Participants

Michael Higgins - Ladenburg Thalmann

François Brisebois - Oppenheimer

John Vandermosten - Zacks

Vernon Bernardino - H.C. Wainwright

Jim Molloy - Alliance Global Partners

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Achieve Life Science Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] At this time, it is my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Nicole Jones [ph]. Nicole, the floor is yours.

Unidentified Company Representative

Thank you, operator, and thank you to everyone for joining the call. Today on the call from Achieve, we have John Bencich, Chief Executive Officer; Dr. Cindy Jacobs, President and Chief Medical Officer; and Jerry Wan, Principal Accounting Officer. Achieve management will be available for Q&A after the prepared remarks.

I’d like to remind everyone that today’s conference call contains forward-looking statements based on current expectations. These statements are only predictions, and actual results may vary materially from those projected. Please refer to Achieve documents available on the website and filed with the SEC concerning factors that could affect the company.

I’ll now turn the call over to John.

John Bencich

Thank you, Nicole, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. The second quarter of 2022 has been one of the most exciting yet for Achieve. Not only did we announce successful efficacy and safety results from our Phase III ORCA-2 trial in April, but we also received grant funding from the NIH, allowing us to proceed with the initiation of the Phase II ORCA-V1 trial in adult users of e-cigarettes. These were 2 major milestones for us to reach in the first half of the year, and we are pleased to continue delivering on our commitments.

As you likely have heard or read recently, there is great attention and debate surrounding smoking and nicotine e-cigarettes in the U.S. political arena. Tobacco use continues to be the leading cause of preventable disease and death, resulting in more than 480,000 American lives lost each year. We are in agreement that action must be taken to save lives, to improve the health of smokers and to reverse the increasing youth nicotine addiction trend.

The potential restrictions to increase regulation over nicotine products such as lowering nicotine content and restricting flavors such as menthol are controversial and will likely take many years to be implemented if they end up proceeding at all. And while they may limit access to an increased scrutiny of available products, they do not solve the nicotine addiction problem at hand.