Exact Sciences released its fourth quarter and full year 2018 earnings yesterday, posting a 71 percent gain in full-year revenues.
SeekingAlpha transcribed the earnings call.
Note: Lightly edited for style and clarity.
What you should know:
1. CEO and Chairman Kevin Conroy on Cologuard's full-year growth: "The momentum we built in 2018 gives us greater confidence, will grow from 4 percent market share today to 40 percent, which is our long-term goal for Cologuard and we’ll continue delivering life changing innovations in early cancer detection."
2. Mr. Conroy on Exact's goals for 2019: "As we look to 2019 the Exact Sciences team is focused on three priorities: one, our partnership with Pfizer; two, enhance Cologuard; and three, advance our pipeline of liquid biopsy tests."
3. Mr. Conroy on the American Cancer Society's recommendation to begin screening at 45: "We want to make Cologuard available to younger Americans who are at an increasing risk for colorectal cancer. We met with the FDA in January to discuss the path forward for a Cologuard label expansion to age 45. We expect to submit our application in the first half of this year and hope to have a label expansion in the first half of 2020."
4. Mr. Conroy on Cologuard 2.0: "Working with Mayo Clinic, we discovered promising biomarkers for Cologuard 2.0 and are excited about the potential to make Cologuard an even better test. The goal of this program is to increase Cologuard performance, especially specificity. This would further improve the overall health economic case for Cologuard, which is already strong."
5. Mr. Conroy on Exact's liquid biopsy program: "Through our 10-year collaboration with Mayo Clinic, our pipeline is focused on developing test for the early detection, accurate diagnosis and recurrence of the top 15 cancers. … With Mayo Clinic contributing to early research and discovery, we have identified biomarkers for 13 of the top 15 cancers. Our teams then perform multiple studies to validate these markers using our highly sensitive and specific technology platform. Building off our success bringing Cologuard to patients, we believe this collaboration will be productive over the next decade. We are developing and plan to launch multiple tests that meet significant clinical needs."