Rigel Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (RIGL)

RIGEL REPORTS SECOND QUARTER 2022 FINANCIAL RESULTS AND PROVIDES BUSINESS UPDATE

Q2 TAVALISSE NET PRODUCT SALES OF $18.6 MILLION AND TOTAL REVENUES OF $29.8 MILLION

Q2 LOSS PER SHARE $0.08

Q2 EARNINGS PER SHARE VIEW $-0.12, REVENUE VIEW $23.7 MILLION

One opportunity that Rigel hasn't made much mention of, but perhaps will end up being a key component to revenue growth, relates to milademetan. Rigel initially licensed this to Daiichi-Sankyo, which out-licensed it to Rain Therapeutics. These guys are clearly on the move, and have high expectations for the drug. Here is some info from today's press release from Rain Therapeutics: Rain Therapeutics Inc. (NasdaqGS: RAIN), (Rain), a late-stage biotechnology company developing precision oncology therapeutics, today announced completion of enrollment in its Phase 3 MANTRA randomized, global, registrational trial of its lead product candidate, milademetan, an oral, small molecule inhibitor of the MDM2-p53 complex that reactivates p53. The trial targeted an enrollment of160 patients and completed enrollment five months ahead of schedule with 175patients. The MANTRA trial is evaluating milademetan compared to an approved standard of care in patients with well-differentiated /dedifferentiated (WD/DD) liposarcoma (LPS) that have progressed on at least one prior systemic therapy including an anthracycline. MANTRA is an event-driven trial with progression-free survival (PFS) as the primary endpoint, which will be analyzed upon reaching 105 events. The MANTRA trial is powered to show a doubling of PFS versus the standard of care.

"We are excited to have achieved a milestone in our milademetan clinical program. We believe the rapid enrollment in MANTRA reflects a patient population in LPS that may be larger than expected, and that exhibits a significant unmet medical need,” said Avanish Vellanki, co-founder and chief executive officer of Rain.

Analysts are projecting EPS of -$0.12. It will be interesting to see if the company can beat this expectation, but it's hard to anticipate that they will, given how poorly the management team has run things thus far. In Q1, they shipped a total of 1824 bottles of Tavalisse, representing net product sales of $16.2 million. In Q2 2021, they shipped a total of 1905 bottles, representing net product sales of $17.1 million, so we will also learn how well they do Y/Y for Q2. I would assume they will need to say something about the Knight Therapeutics deal that was completed in Q2, but since they kept quiet about it, we will more than likely need to back into the amount of up-front cash Knight paid. Further, the company had cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments totaling $107.5 million as of March 31st, so we will want to keep our eye on the cash burn.

No confidence on my end, but since literally everything has gone wrong this year, perhaps shareholders are due for some form of good news on Tuesday. If the news is negative, the board of directors will need to get out of bed and start acting in the best interest of shareholders.

Barring something unforeseen, I guess the next order of business for Rigel is the Q2 earnings call in early August. The management team certainly hasn't instilled any confidence with investors, and I'm concerned about yet another dose of disappointing news. That said, perhaps the fact that Rigel deliberately tried to keep silent the deal with knight Therapeutics will allow us to 'back into' the approximate amount of up-front cash the company presumably received. Since nothing was announced about the deal, it was likely nothing substantial, but maybe it helped with some limitation on cash burn. It's hard to believe that the board of directors would sit back and continue to allow this team to fumble.