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4cad4c26726b5a1ac7405114c9a684e4 | You mentioned the government orders in the spring, summer kind of inferred that you didn't see any kind of government orders in the fourth quarter. One, is that correct and was there anything exceptional on the pump side here in the fourth quarter. | That is correct. There was real no material government business really from August-September onward. Nothing we're very unusual in Q4 and pump business uptick, probably a bit due to acuity on some of the dedicated sets hard to triangulate exactly, and a little bit maybe accelerated had on expansion at a few customers but nothing out of the ordinary. | direct | [
"direct",
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"fully_evasive"
] | A |
2f4a6aa66f1c659c873a8ad23f684760 | Gross margin in the quarter to 39% was that negatively impacted by the plant shutdown. I'm just wondering, the impact of that. | Jayson. That's right. It was negative impact for Q4 and if you're comparing that to prior years, in prior years the shutdown was typically in the summer months.
We usually did it in June and it rolled in over the next two or three months of the summer quarter. If you went back on the scripts and with the pandemic kind of in full-flight, we made a call to keep producing and just delayed it till so I covered. | intermediate | [
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e41fe8877c6fc3cd20cc4b6f11cd7ad7 | And I don't want to be greedy with the question, is there a basis point impact of that or is there a way quantify on the 39 [Phonetic]. | Probably around a percentage point, somewhere in that neighborhood. | direct | [
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26536084205ae2c5207070a0ae120821 | Now that you guys are a consolidated company, we are wondering whatâs sort of our priorities for free cash flow moving forward and also maybe just any potential you guys see for M&A specifically in the logistics base, maybe to add to that portfolio? | As we've indicated before, our first priority is to continue to pay down debt and achieve our leverage target of less than three times, so that's the first priority. We indicated when we announced simplification that we would intend to begin a common dividend in the first full quarter after Simplification is complete. That remains the Board's intention. And as we've also indicated, we're going to now look aggressively towards opportunities both organic and through M&A to grow our business. Having said that we're now looking aggressively, you shouldn't take that to mean that we won't be extremely disciplined. So while we're working hard, both on organic and inorganic opportunities, we'll remain quite disciplined in that process.
So that's really the priority that we've laid out before and it continues to be our priority now that we've completed Simplification. | direct | [
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77a57f68103116a89d3de1494654a4ac | Today you mentioned that the SXCP bond indenture does, in fact have a requirement that a full 10-Q be filed later today. So will that basically be the reporting method going forward for SXCP, just a Q by itself and no real press release? | We plan on furnishing SXCP, stand-alone financial statements in accordance with the requirements of the indenture on our website later today. So you should look for full financials on the website later today. | intermediate | [
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f152ad1f96754dcdc4db30f5a3346ce0 | Real solid quarter on the Coke making side. I wanted to delve a little more into the logistics. And Fay you were talking about kind of changes in how the full year looked. I think what you said was you're now expecting 8 million tons of throughput, of which 1 million tons is non-coal. So that kind of ends up being 3 million tons below the take or pay levels. Am I thinking it the right way? | No, the take or pay levels are 10 million tons. So, that's kind of, you know, the base contracts on -- for our coal customers. So we're guiding right now to about 8 million tons of throughput. Inclusive, in that 8 million tons is 1 million tons of merchant volume, either aggregates or pet coke or other -- other -- other materials.
So that's kind of where we're shaking out based on kind of the current, you know, the current volumes that we're seeing through the facility. | direct | [
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c31d80ad82eff92deec7035aa0c40731 | Okay, sure. That's helpful. So that, I guess, the run rate year to date and your expectations for the back half of the year at current API 2 pricing would indicate that there's going to be another revenue shortfall in the third quarter that will be realized in the fourth quarter. Is that fair? | That's fair. | direct | [
"direct",
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] | A |
bc137c637e0d0bc89ecba814e1ba92df | And then a last question is, there is some distressed companies in the coal sector right now, including one in Illinois Basin. Have you had any pushbacks or attempts to renegotiate or anything on your take or pays? And if you could help me out also, what are the terms of that for next year and beyond for the take or pays? | We fully expect our customers to perform their obligations under any contract, take or pay or otherwise that we have.
Yeah, and the contract as, you know, the expiration of those contracts isnât until 2022. And so the volume commitments are the same in 2020 as they are in 2019. | intermediate | [
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6b52f3a46d6b70518e7dc9bd7658bf00 | I wanted to ask kind of a higher, bigger picture question on the steel making, coke making side. Obviously, there's been a lot of talk about new EAS capacity coming online over the next few years. And Mike, I was curious kind of how do you think this may play out in terms of market share for blast furnaces? And also, how do you think this will impact your business going forward? | Well, Lucas, this is really a better question, I think, for the steel makers to answer. You read and concern ourselves with the same things you do with regard to capacity additions. You know, those are announced capacity additions. I believe SDI now has more recently confirmed the sighting of their 3 million ton facility. But some of those other announcements are just that. Because something's announced doesn't mean it's built. The market for light flat roll continues to grow as it has historically, at kind of half the GDP. Infrastructure spending were to increase as it needs over the coming years. There will be greater demand than lesser. So there's room for demand to continue to grow given the fundamentals of our economy, which would absorb, of course, some of that capacity.
Also, as you're aware, during this run up that we saw rapid run up in hot roll prices last year, some capacity which had been idled came back on line. Some of that capacity, I use the word tertiary, it kind of comes and goes. So some of that capacity could come back off of line. I'm speculating now and again, it's a better question for the steel producers in terms of how they intend to defend and grow their market share in a market that's always seen new investment imports, clear our market. As you're well aware, the U.S. steel market is in structural deficit and is requiring of imports just to balance itself.
So I think you have to think about the presence of imports when you talk about additional capacity, it's not static, itâs rather quite elastic. So imports could be part of that. I think STI has in fact said that that they're well positioned to defend against imports with their new mill in Texas.
So it's a good question, but there's a lot more in play than simply adding announced capacity and concluding somehow that has to be surrendered by the existing market. I think our customers are very well positioned to serve the markets that they do. And again, that's a better question for them.
But they've been at it for a long time and I think their customers appreciate the support that they provide with product and innovation and a variety of other services. So -- well, good question. Let's wait and see, but we're not overly concerned at this point in time. We -- we believe our customers can compete well. | intermediate | [
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] | B |
9e704cab37598bf3d60d538dbd38c8ff | To follow up on one of the earlier questions, you now have more free cash flow to deploy. And with the backdrop from the prior question, kind of where does -- where do investments on the steel making side fit in that you kind of rank your priorities, logistics, steel making, maybe a new business line altogether?
Kind of if you could prioritize and order those potential areas of M&A, I would very much appreciate that. | We would rank them, on a variety of terms. Most importantly would be the risk adjusted return thatâs available to us for making an investment. So if I could make an investment in steel, which provided a risk adjusted return, that's higher than logistics, that's what we do. Quite similarly, if logistics was offering us a return which was higher on a risk adjusted basis in steel, that's where we put it. Historically, the highest returns have come from organic growth. You know, we're making an investment, as you know, now in the rebuild of the remaining 57 batteries, the B batteries at the Indiana Harbor works.
Our board approved that investment based on its return, the organic opportunities to incrementally grow your business tend to be high returning. So growing our foundation is something that more traditionally has appealed to us. The further we get from things that we know and understand, our requirement for return would grow quite materially. So things that are close to home we understand well. We have technologies, we have operating expertise, we know markets, we know customers. Those are the first places we're going to look, because we believe we can add the most value in those areas.
So it's on a return basis. You know, we're not looking at one opportunity, you raised logistics and steel investments more favorably or less than the other. | intermediate | [
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] | B |
3e28cdb280fd884c2ac7f6f400733aa6 | If international thermal prices continue to remain at these depressed levels and you know, export coal continues fall off, how are you guys thinking about having to back fill or augment that volume and the EBITDA once those take or pays do expire at the end of 2022? | So as you know, we've been actively working on optimizing our CMT facility for, you know, over the last year or so. And Mike mentioned the addition of -- of a new contract to move pet coke through the facility. And so we've been we've been constantly kind of working at getting new -- new volume through the facility.
Right now, you know that -- that facility has the ability to have throughput volumes of up to 15 million tons. And so we have an opportunity there actually to providing incremental EBITDA. It's something that we are incredibly focused on. And it's taken some time, though, actually, to secure that new business.
And so I think, you know, we are working on the diversification of products. We're working on the diversification of customers. And that's something that's top of mind for us. | intermediate | [
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c75b133395a55ed3da1e9337a7c8e4fe | Going back to April 2016, you guys sold some of your coke and coal assets to Revelation Energy, and I believe it's about $10.3 million to assume those mines and some reclamation liabilities, which were around $12 million. I guess, it's two questions around. Is Revelation Energy still producing and supplying coal to Jewell Coke? And then is there any risk that those reclamation liabilities ever return to SXC if something happens with Revelation? | So you're really testing my memory here, going all the way back to 2016. But I'll answer the reclamation liability. First, those reclamation liabilities are the responsibility of Revelation. That was part of the agreement when we divested of those assets. And then as far as coal supply, you know, we have the opportunity to strip coal from a number of vendors in order to supply Jewell coal. And we work with our coal procurement department to ensure that we have an adequate supply of the right types of coals to each of our locations to maintain the integrity of our coke making assets as well as to produce coke and spec with our -- for our customers. So, you know, we are, you know, we've got kind of the right coal right now for Jewell and the other facilities. | intermediate | [
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ae0c7af13a8dc9350a30ba7c9a9e0e2e | So is Revelation a part of that blend currently Fay or no then? And does it need to be, I guess, if something were to happen, if this comes my way? | You know, like I said, you know, we have--we have a variety of sources that we could procure from. And it doesn't necessarily need to be part of that coal blend in order for the facility to operate as intended. | intermediate | [
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] | B |
e5e698af5c14adda8e491dea246791de | Would it be more costly to move to a different product? | You know, there's -- there's specifics about kind of coal and â and -- and transportation costs and -- and the right type of coal. And, you know, if you're talking specifically about Jewell, Jewell coal is really kind of earmarked towards a recovery of that coal prices earmarked towards what Haverhill coal -- coal is procured at. So there's always a bit of differential. You know, in my prepared comments, I mentioned that, we, in the first kind of and you see this in the first quarter as well as in second quarter, that we've had kind of favorable recovery. We're dual coal versus kind of the benchmark price that Haver held for the first six months.
And you'll remember that one of the benefits of our technology is the ability to change coal blends almost on a continuous basis. And Fay remind me, but I think we had in our fleet last year over 50 blend changes. So we continue to look at coal pricing, the associated logistics cost of delivering that coal to our facility. So we're continuously rebalancing and optimizing our coal blends and we do that in conjunction with our customers. And you'll recall that most of all of our coal costs are passed directly through to our customers. So we continuously look at opportunities, again, with our customers in the marketplace to optimize the coal blend. So change is something that we do and we're pleased that our technology allows us to make these blend changes without jeopardy to the asset itself and that's not necessarily the case with all coke making technology. | intermediate | [
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55429adc037cc646512841854ab792f6 | Just a couple of questions if I may. The first one, really I guess on ICON and the disposition there. I think you mentioned, it won't have too much of an impact on the business going forward but it sounds like it's a pretty sizable revenue contributor given the fact that its impacting the disposition going forward. So I'm wondering, it must be -- is it much more of a low margin business. So maybe a positive for profitability longer-term now that you're no longer involved in that business. And then maybe if you can comment on margins in general, how we should think about them longer-term. I think you mentioned this year more of a baseline looking like 2019, but given the efficiencies, some of them might be permanent on the real estate side, should we think of maybe slightly higher margins longer-term? | Let me first talk about ICON. ICON was very low margin business for sure and it was a very large business. We had purchased ICON in 2000 and it grew rather nicely for the first 10 or 15 years and then for the last several years, it's actually -- it hasn't declined, but it hasn't grown and you take a large number with no growth -- it mutes the growth of the rest of the organization and the margins are such that we more than make it up for in our pursuit of more profit and EBIT and we took all that into consideration.
Took quite a long time to take the decision, but we finally did and the most important aspect, because we can cover the profits, it was a low margin business is that we are substantially complete with the exercise that we started three or four years ago of scrutinizing the portfolio and ridding ourselves of legacy companies that weren't going to contribute to our long-term growth. So we're very happy with the decision and that's where that stands.
I'll do quick thing on margins and Phil can add to both of my comments. With respect to margins, we've said all along that we think 2019 is really the benchmark that we're going to look at and then start to plan some growth from. Last year, you had the disruption of COVID in every single office around the company, you had the restructuring charges we had to take, and you had government subsidies in certain instances, but they certainly didn't cover the costs that we incurred.
We will get efficiencies for certain out of the real estate actions that we took and the agile workforce and hybrid workforce that will be impacted as we come back to work, but against that, what you have is you have some inflation in terms of wages and the resurgence of some of the addressable spend that when people weren't permitted to get on airplanes and visit offices, they will be hopefully in the near-term. I know I've been able to travel, but principally with regards to my position, I've been able to go wherever I want, but most people can't do that. So, Phil, you might want to add on both points.
I would echo what John said, I think as far as margins certainly going forward, we think '19 is the right baseline. We do expect or did expect that the first half certainly of '20 would be a little easier given the remote workforce impact on both the addressable spend that John just touched on and not having as many people back in the office reduces some of the operating costs associated with running those offices when people are back. Some of that's going to come back.
We're going to welcome a bunch of costs back when we're in growth mode like we are now. The challenge is going to be continuing to be disciplined about controlling those costs. So I think the goal is certainly to do a bit better than '19, but '19 is really the baseline for the business going forward and then striving to do better than it.
And my final comment on this is obviously there are challenges as you reopen, but there is a renewed energy which I think is going to contribute to both the topline and consistently to the bottom line. | direct | [
"direct",
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"fully_evasive"
] | A |
81b5381be6532e7ba879461619146ada | And John, just a follow-up if I may, on the overall environment. I think we've been I think most people can characterize it, while uneven and volatile, it's been a robust advertising recovery. Are you getting the sense you've got such great perspective with your relationship with advertisers, are you getting the sense that there is some beginning of hesitancy on the recovery or the spend given the delta variant or not at all, it still seems to be while uneven, it still seems to be pretty robust. | I think the delta variant is because of the headlines, it's somewhat an unknown and we can't predict illness. One of the things that gives me some comfort is that when you get past the headlines and you read the people that have been impacted, it's people who haven't been vaccinated, received only one shot of the two shot protocol and or already have an existing health problem of one form or another and have put themselves in a risky situation.
We're starting to bring back the vaccinated people that we have in earnest after Labor Day and I think people are encouraged to come back to the office. So, yes, there is hesitancy on the part of everyone, but as we don't know -- we can't predict the future, but we do know that we have lived through a hell of a past and we've done it successfully. So that gives us confidence.
And the other thing, which will be temporary I think is there is going to be certain industries where we're already seeing some concern about the adjustments that have had to be made to certain clients' supply lines and certain components, that they needing to delay in receiving them, but we see that as a temporary issue as do most of our clients or at least the ones that I've been speaking to. | intermediate | [
"direct",
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"fully_evasive"
] | B |
5b28d64e303c17d63b1459c1ca358699 | Even coming into COVID, before COVID, you guys were talking about returning to GDP type of growth levels which typically was your norm up until a few years ago. I wonder if you could give us an update now given the divestitures, given the state of the market. I know it's very much in flux right now, but just where do you see your longer-term growth rate settling out once we move through these COVID impacts.
And on the acquisition side, maybe a tack-on question, you mentioned kind of getting back on the acquisition trail. We've seen in the technology space, very high valuations. I'm just wondering if you could comment on pricing in the market and also noting your leverage is quite low right now if there might be any appetite to raise leverage to do more acquisitions. | There's a couple of questions there, right. In terms of the first one, not changing my tune 25 years later. It's GDP plus all right and without the burden of a non-growth large entity, makes it more achievable than it was the last time I said it. It doesn't mean it's going to happen next week, but we do know the quality of our businesses and the quality of our portfolio. We have the benefit of having always protecting the creative product, which is our ISP and while we have the technology and all the other systems, we can service a client like in the case of Philips as if we are one company Omnicom or if a client has individual needs, our brands are more than happy and excellent and excel at taking care of them. So that's all going to benefit that.
In terms of acquisition pricing, you're absolutely right. There is an insane amount of money chasing things that are out there. We've always looked for people who wanted to be partners on a longer-term and we've always looked to do accretive acquisitions. And when we haven't been able to find accretive acquisitions, we've borne the expense of taking -- of starting up companies and doing things ourselves.
I think as we -- I know -- I don't think as we go forward, there is one or two areas which I'm not going to tell you -- speak about it on the phone that I probably be willing to breakeven on if I had to pay the price to get the reputation and to use as a basis from which then to grow organically, but none do that at this point is going to result in the increase in our leverage and our capital program, which I typically have in my script and I didn't bother to mention this time is exactly the same, it's first to pay our dividends; Second, to do accretive acquisitions, and last but not least, for share buybacks. Again, Phil, you want to?
I don't think there's much to add but I think certainly from a capital allocation strategy perspective, we don't expect to change anything other than our goal is to spend more of our free cash flow on acquisitions in the areas that we think the opportunities for growth are the highest and we're going to be a little more active as we've indicated in the last few calls in pursuing those potential deals.
Just having said that, kind of on a humorous note, prior to getting on the call this morning, we saw the treasuries today were 1.16% [Phonetic] and Phil and I were just ruminating, damn it, we didn't need any more money because it's so cheap. | intermediate | [
"direct",
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] | B |
c0ad2ed408841acaa555c5c5b7797772 | On your revenue by industry chart here, what areas, maybe the two areas John you are the most optimistic about as you think out here over the next year? | Well, there's a couple of areas that I'm very optimistic about. I'm optimistic about our Precision Marketing Group. Very optimistic about our media operations and some of the changes we made there. I am optimistic that our experiential business which has suffered dearly during COVID but has returned in places like China. We'll come back and when it does, it will contribute to our growth significantly and healthcare continues and I think especially coming out of things like COVID and especially people have issues being more exposed than otherwise healthy people I think is a commitment that every person on the planet is going to be really focused on.
So I think we're in some great places and with all the confusion and noise and various medias that you can reach out to, I cannot understate our creativity. I can't understate how it's in every component our business and it's always been since the foundation by two creative leaders of Omnicom 30 years ago and it's not something that you can add to a technology-based company or add to an account service type of company. We're creative as a philosophy, it's not an individual. So I think yeah, I'm very bullish across the board about the things that we're able to do. | direct | [
"direct",
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] | A |
952f9f9d98707d9c4351eb85d4a56802 | And then, Phil, if I could ask on share buyback, I mean obviously your balance sheet is very strong here 0.4 net debt ratio. So it's good as it's been in many, many years. When should we start to expect share buybacks or would kick in, in a meaningful way so we could see the fully diluted share count number actually start going down. | I don't think you should expect much different in the second half of 2021 relative to what we've done in prior second half, Q3, Q4. I don't think we expect anything to dramatically change but I think if things progress as we expect and the business continues to grow and we don't have any setbacks from the outside that we can't control in terms of these COVID variants, which we don't expect currently, certainly 2022 I would expect that we'll be back to more normalized levels from a buyback perspective. And again, if we can do more, find more and close more acquisitions, we will adjust the share buyback number accordingly.
And this part, I can't overstate for you enough. I mean, in the month of July, since I was the one who could travel internationally most freely, I completed two transactions myself which I haven't yet closed, but will close in the coming weeks and months and our M&A groups are really beefed up and we're looking at quite a number. It's almost back to the early 2000s in terms of the number of companies we're actually looking at. So share buybacks will come back for certain, but I have some immediate needs in the next 90 days for Phil to fulfill. | direct | [
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e9837128bc64e559fd6b87b230387f86 | Coming back on Alexia's question on ICON, it looks like disposition are up 6 percentage point, 7 percentage point from your previous guidance. So ICON should have been $900 million of revenues in 2020 and if you assume being media fell a bit more than the overall business in 2020, say 25%, looks like it was about $1.2 billion in 2019. Are those in the right ballpark?
And then John, when you said ICON was low margin. What do you mean less than 5% or even less than that? And then last question is on media. What can you tell us about media performance in Q2. You didn't want to give us a number [Indecipherable]. So anything, any color on media, which you say was very good would be appreciated. | Sure. In terms of in terms of ICON, I think your ballpark for 2020 is certainly within the range in terms of size. I don't have a '19 number.
[Indecipherable].
Yeah, '19 is really kind of irrelevant at this point and as far as margins go I think, that's probably somewhat in the same neighborhood as well and when it comes to media, we've been through this before, we don't break out media because it's integrated within all our businesses and all our disciplines. We don't intend to break out the specific number because that's not how we look at it. | intermediate | [
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bf6f494a13a51a546cf502092086ccb4 | I wanted to ask about the commercial business. It looks like growth improved from last quarter, still below 20%, but I know there's a lot that you've been working on there, including the modularization of foundry and wanted to hear how that was resonating with customers. And then just the second part of the question would be around the customer add. It looks like you added 11 new customers on the commercial side in the quarter. Did most of this come from IBM or are those through your direct sales force? | Yeah, the commercial business is gaining more and more momentum. As we mentioned, it grew 72% in the U.S. So what we're seeing is where economies are opening, there's just incredible traction there. We've hired 50 sales folks in the last quarter. You're starting to see that translate through in terms of activity two and a half times the number of qualified opportunities in the U.S. and the U.K., double the number of commercial pilots, the product investments that we've made around modularization and archetypes, those are what are translating also into increased activity. It's what's fueling our ability to do substantially more pilots here. The channel strategy is also helping us source more customers. The IBM partnership generated its first deal within 16 days of being launched there. So lots of momentum there, a place that we'll continue investing in. Overall, we're quite excited. We continue to win deals in Europe. Pharencia, Lilium in Europe, Fuzhou, Engi, so a bunch of momentum there. And as Europe starts to open and manage through the pandemic, we're also expecting the same sort of tailwind that we've seen in the U.S. in Europe. | intermediate | [
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] | B |
e0d5c9f736954de63979ac021060418a | On the government business, there's a lot of questions about the sustainable strength post-COVID. And what you're seeing, I think you said in the past that COVID has opened the door to many conversations, but there's a considerable amount of long tail of that. If you could just talk to what you're seeing as you look out? | Thanks, Brent. That's absolutely right. There are a lot of things that got started as a result of COVID, but many of those things were not related to COVID response per se. It's really the fact that something had to be delivered, and it had to work in days, it showed many of the customers where their bespoke, custom-build approach was just never going to get there and allow them to mark-to-market whether a faster buy solution was going to work. And so we've seen that across the business, of course, the work with the National Nuclear Security Administration is not directly COVID related at all, but it's certainly accelerated by this. We've seen work across healthcare, DoD, civilian agencies, accelerate inside the U.S. and outside of the U.S. We've also seen that the pipeline is continuing to build there. We're expecting a lot of defense-related activity to build over the back half of the year and into next year. We participate in the global information dominance experiment with 11 combat command, that was not even visible during the contact that we build here. So quite excited about the pace at which these things are building. And if you think about Apollo for Edge AI, most of the capabilities we're looking at, they didn't even exist around the time of the listing, like the pace at which we are innovating on the product is probably one of the most exciting things and that is what is creating these opportunities that are compounding. | direct | [
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] | A |
e9c9e0e071d06a49626c9c1a32b4e6e2 | I had a question on kind of the margin side of the equation. And how we should be thinking about expense growth throughout the remainder of the year. So maybe to you, David. You did close to over $150 million of free cash flow in Q1. You're guiding for that figure for the full year. How should we use that to sort of guide our expectations on how that opex cost brand throughout the year? And how should we think about that on a go-forward basis? What's the investment philosophy if you will behind Palantir over the next couple of years as you look to sustain that 30% plus growth? | Absolutely, absolutely. So as you noted, we had a very strong quarter, 49% revenue growth, 44% adjusted free cash flow margin and 34% adjusted operating margin. There's nothing noteworthy to call out on the expense side. Top line being obviously a contributor there. Overall, super pleased with the results. It shows the underlying unit economics. Let's look ahead to Q2, very strong revenue guide of 43% growth, coupled out with 23% operating margin, while at the same time, we're really going to be investing into the business, investing in sales hires, investments around the sales team, continued investment in the product and R&D, a lot of what Shyam talked about. And we're going to be focused on reopening. We think it's really important to get the company back in the offices to get people together and focus on culture. | intermediate | [
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2ec4f2028172a563aebc735738d9ca74 | I wanted to ask clearly, the confidence in the commercial revenue growth is high given the rep hiring that you guys are putting up. Can you talk about the divergence in pilots in the commercial sector versus the stated revenue growth? And when will those pilots convert to revenues? How visible is that conversion time line, etc.? | Yes. We're quite excited by the teeth at which our hires are being accomplished, the ramp that we're seeing for those tires. We're also seeing just a kind of aggregate flywheel acceleration where the ramps are getting faster, the activity, converting into revenue is getting faster. So generally I would agree like we are feeling very bullish, and we're seeing that there. The pilots themselves are compressing in terms of how long they're taking because of the investments made in product modularization, archetypes, these allow us to structure the products in a way that something that would have taken three months to four is now a week or less. This is giving us a lot more capacity to cost efficiently distribute the product, accomplish these pilots and turn the revenue crank here. And so we're seeing very high returns to the sales force we're building. We want to keep doing more here. Look for that to accelerate even further in the back half of the year. And the conversion, we're really happy with it. I think when I just think about the two and a half x qualified pipeline that's been created since February 1, and then I think about the doubling of the pilot we're seeing about a third of those have already turned into something. And so as we build bigger and bigger pipeline here, we're feeling good about how that funnel is flowing through. And if you combine that with the additional product investments, the road map that we're executing on, we have every reason to believe that we're going to continue to see acceleration across all these dimensions. | intermediate | [
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e53263f1920d80250bd7eaf092b6c883 | Thank you. And I hope you're well Congrats on the results. So I remember you spoke to potentially enter the alcoholic segment the last time we were there at your headquarters in June last year. And since then, we have heard you're planning to launch a hard seltzer. So I understand that you have postponed some of these launches. So the question is, if you are indeed looking to launch a hard seltzer? And then if so, when are you hoping to be able to share more news with us? | Andrea, I think the issue is, there's been a lot of speculation about what we are going to do both in the nonalcoholic and alcoholic spaces. We are looking at a number of alternatives and opportunities. And we may well do something in both of those spaces and or one or the other, but we've not made any final decisions. We are actually analyzing it. We're looking at developing some products in both nonalcoholic and alcoholic spaces. We're testing products, but we haven't yet decided on which of those we're going to go into.
We have, for example, I know that some of the analysts have picked up that we've registered different names of products. Some of those names may be appropriate for one or more of these lines or may not be. We are looking obviously, as part of our planning, we are looking at availability of names that we think may be appropriate for lines or line extensions outside of the energy category. And in some cases, some of those names may well be used by us for an alternative brand within the energy space. I mean, it's a very broad spectrum that we are currently investigating. We've got the right to do quite a lot. We are looking at how do we do it, what's best? What do we think will have the most impact for the company in the short term, both in the U.S. and as well as internationally.
So there's been a lot of speculation, and we are definitely looking at it and evaluating it, but we've not made any decisions. So at this point, it is premature for us to give any indication to the market of what our plans are because we have not firmed up our plans internally ourselves yet. There's been no definitive decision on when to launch, what to launch and under what brand names. Obviously, we're getting there. We're quite close, but we haven't got to that decision yet. So I really can't give you an update other than to tell you that we are seriously looking at all those options. As I said, there are a lot of speculation about what we're going to do because of the names and the trademarks we've applied to register in the different classes, but that is something that we are currently evaluating.
So Andrea, the only thing I would add to that is that we have a very strong innovation pipeline with our existing business. So whatever we do, in addition to that, please rest assured that the company has a very interesting and very strong innovation pipeline. | intermediate | [
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72fcb44158b34888f1e3bdca124d0949 | Yeah, good afternoon, everyone.So I guess, kind of 1.5 questions. One question is on innovation. Just given how the resets have been kind of thrown off-kilter. I'm just and MAXX is now canceled. I'm just curious on how you're thinking about communicating new product ideas and how you think that flow will work as we kind of work into the fall and into the spring of next year. So that's just kind of get some general perspective. The real question is on CBD, what's the company's stance right now on that? I mean, is it you don't have enough clarity, so really don't want to enter that category? Or do you feel more comfortable now? I mean just any perspective around that would be helpful. | Okay. So on the first question, we have a sales organization who, in the U.S., call on every single major customer. And that's how we go about presenting new product ideas on a one-to-one basis. So rest assured that innovation can be handled within the framework of our existing organization. Outside and in particular, in Europe and in other parts of the world, the Coca-Cola bottlers present to customers with our attendance, and they're very capable, and they do display new products and new product innovations. On your second point, the environment is actually not clear as to where we are and where we should be with CBD. So at this time, we have products in development, but we it's something that we're looking at from the sidelines. And if things clear up and there are opportunities that will present themselves, it's something that we definitely will look at going forward, but not right now. | direct | [
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2c616720911503d7a8c75a2460eaa4a4 | Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Just wanted to ask on the July sales increase, Rodney, you mentioned that bottlers had taken down inventories pretty low in the second quarter. Just how should we look at that July increase, I guess, from an organic demand improvement standpoint versus bottlers may be reselling some of the pipeline after getting inventory down so low? | I don't think we've really had a good read yet on where the bottlers have when they're going to sort of get their inventory levels back to previous or pre-COVID levels, if they do. I mean, people are obviously looking at managing their inventory levels as tightly as they can. And by taking things down, they may end up being a little more aggressive. Obviously, we would like them to take some inventory levels up so that they just have more ability to react in the market and because of the for lead time reasons.
So I don't think that we've seen a major restocking in July. We've just again, I think people are still cautious and they're trying to manage inventories. And in some cases, they're trying to manage or reduce some of their or focus on, is a better way to put it, on their main SKUs. And so some of the smaller SKUs have perhaps suffered a little bit as well during this period. But we think those things will get back to normalizing. But I don't believe we've seen a substantial jump back in inventory levels in July. I think that's sort of reasonably normal trading for us. I don't know, Hilton, if you'd like to add something on that.
Yes. What I'd like to add is that depletions are tracking positive through July. So sales that our bottlers make to retailers are tracking positively. And sure, there will come a time when bottlers will revert to their prior inventories. But remember, they look at forecasts. Some bottlers have cash issues. The bigger bottlers look at sales forecasts that are generated both by their own forecasters and by their computer forecasting models. So they order inventories in accordance with those models. So you remember when we spoke about on the last call, we spoke, April was down, and we had a long and a robust discussion about that, and we spoke about depletions. And looking at this quarter, we've had a strong July, which is consistent with what's happened in the sequential improvement through May. So April, we had that dip that we spoke about on our call; and in May and June, we've had a sequential improvement and we're seeing that sequential improvement through July as well. | intermediate | [
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c9d052cb455f99ad74105f34c6315f63 | Hey guys, good afternoon all as well. I guess, I'm curious on the U.S., I don't know how to diplomatically ask the question, but maybe if you could touch on the engagement of the Coke system, both in terms of selling your legacy products and the new products, the innovation, including the shelf space for those, obviously, it was a little bit of a slower start, and we've seen Red Bull do very well. So maybe just touch on kind of where we are with reengagement, both in legacy as well as innovation, and how you think that should play out if things get back from a blocking and tackling standpoint, the share trends potentially improve and kind of how you think about that? | So Mark, remember, we're coming out of 100-year pandemic, and there's been the bottles have all been operating. And in some cases, the bottlers have been focused on selling the faster-selling items, I think, Rodney mentioned that earlier in the call, and they did not focus on the innovation and the SKUs that not don't move as fast as the faster-selling items. So we've seen that. We've seen some of the bottlers being affected by the employees by COVID. Our people remember who were out of the field until the last month, so they're now back in the field with the appropriate safety protocols. And our people are working our field people are working with the bottlers and the retailers to restore the innovation, that had not been taken place.
So Red Bull, it's interesting, we've been watching the growth of Red Bull as well. And Monster's growing, you've seen the numbers, and we've spoken about the numbers today. You've heard about the numbers in Nielsen. We are growing much faster than Red Bull in, for example, Amazon. They have their own sales force and their own distribution network. We've been able to execute pretty well in the trade. They had a really good innovation this year called Watermelon, which was pretty popular. So on balance, I think, they probably out-distributed us in terms of displays and other points of purchase on store shelves and on the floors of the stores. And that's something that we're working to pretty aggressively with our field people back in the stores to regain. So that's my kind of summary on where we are and the issue with Red Bull.
Perhaps I could just again, also just a little bit of color to because I think it's obviously, you've focused on it and some people have been seeing the numbers. I think it comes down to during this period of time, Red Bull really managed their own distribution system, and they have dedicated and very focused personnel. I think when most of the big companies took a step back, particularly with their personnel in the field and their core points and active being active in the market in the smaller markets, convenience and gas, etc. and independent. I think all the bigger companies took their foot off the pedal and looked at protecting their employees and trying to handle the situation.
Our belief is that Red Bull literally was probably the only company that didn't do that and actually had their teams in the fields merchandising and promoting. And when you combine that focus together and just their approach to the COVID pandemic as well as together with the fact that they did have a flavor that resonated and it did it was really well-executed, the introduction of it, and it has really given them that boost. That's really what we think has been the real difference. But those are things that with a bigger company, like the Coke system, where I think they did step back as most other consumer product companies did. I think that will start reversing and they're getting back into the field now. We're getting our team into the field. We also put some of our team out, as Hilton said. We've got to really understand that, and that's what I think has been one of the big reasons. We've got some innovation lined up for the second half of this year, including something in response to their watermelon product, and we will be launching that within the next few weeks. | direct | [
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7a589806e2c81d5a4ac27cfb197eb32f | Hey, good morning everyone and thanks for the question. So last time we spoke, I mean, you mentioned that because of COVID-19, I mean, retailers, and specifically, the convenience store retailers then reset for most part, I mean, their shelves for the summer. There was a clear focus for you, I mean, to make sure that you were able to implement your new innovation. So just curious, I mean, in all your retailers and convenience store retailers, are they all resetting their shelves and did you gain shelf space for the energy category or the performance energy? And or is there, any additional retailers that need to convert to larger shares? I mean, I know it's late in the summer, but because of COVID-19, I mean, there was some delay, so want to have your take on this. | Yes. A lot of the retailers are merchandised by the bottlers. So even though the space was allocated, they may not have got to merchandise the product at the start of the resets. So where we're at now, as I mentioned, Laurent, that our guys are back in the field, and they're working with the bottlers to ensure that all of our innovation gets the space that has been contractually allocated and just getting away from where we were in the early part of the pandemic, where it was hands-off. And if you look at how the convenience channel has grown and is continuing to grow, I think it's a far cry from where we were in March and April when all of this started.
But that being said, I think that it really is a work in progress. I don't think we've got to a point where we could say that it's all everything that was planned is back in line, and everything was achieved. I think it's because it's out of cycle and because of the difficulties just still being faced generally, it is a slower effort. It's being done. It's slow, but it is improving all the time. But I think it's still not where we would like to see it. But hopefully, we will continue to improve as we go through the next few months.
Yes. Sets are done for the most part, but it's the distribution actual physical distribution of the products on those sets, on those shelves that our field teams are working on. | intermediate | [
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887b2f189280fd8948606b3d7fd72468 | You're seeing some good green shoots as you put out some good innovation on product, improving CX, inventory growing, etc. But it still sounds like maybe some hesitation for merchants and even some of those larger merchants you've worked with in the past, they're some traffic trends. What does it take to get merchants to really jump in so that you can harvest some of this innovation improvements that you've put in place? | So when you asked about all the changes we're making on the merchant side and your question related to what's going to take it -- what's going to need to happen for them to jump in. If you look at the numbers, our merchant are taking advantage of this at a steady clip. It's just going to take a matter of time, especially when you have merchants who have been working with Groupon for one way for so long, it's a matter of introducing them to our new operating and how do you get familiar with it. So if you think about the key components of what we started to do with merchants, I'd say that foundational element is self-service. For over 10 years again merchants have been using Groupon in more manual way and now they have a chance to use with self-service. Something that starts with something simple like putting up a deal or deal at it. But as a self-service tool continues to engage with our merchants, there is so much more that we can do, adding sponsored listings, which is now integrated into our self-service tool and we'll begin ramping into the back half of this year and into 2002 is one of a number of things that our merchants can now take advantage of in a far easier way, and easier for them also means it's lower cost. So there is less staffing they can put on managing Groupon and that's what they can do so.
So for us, honestly, it's just a matter of time. The things that we're doing in the uptick that you see us getting is a testament to the fact that; one, we're hunting in the right direction. But also these are things that merchants have come to expect with any ad platform and when we put them out there, they're taking advantage of it. | direct | [
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646b676220af18bece8fccab64a9ce7f | I didn't hear any mention of the $250 million EBITDA if you were to reach 80% of 2019 GP levels. Is that still one of the milestones you're aiming toward or is there maybe a change in strategy a bit here that you're going to lean in non-spend more, whether it's R&D to drive innovation or maybe on the marketing side to drive merchant and customer adoption to get that flywheel going, now that you have some of the tools, the inventory and the interface addressed? | Regarding the $250 million and 80% recovery, that was intended to illustrate the power of our financial model on a significantly reduced fixed cost structure. We have not provided guidance for 2022 at this stage, but it's something that we'll look to do on our fourth quarter earnings conference call. I think what I would highlight is that we're really excited about the progress that we're making on our growth strategy and the foundation we're laying there, but more to come in terms of 2022, we'll look to provide clarity as we get closer or as we get to our Q4 call. | fully_evasive | [
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842db7ee65641adf0614646ae6e19c14 | It's been a year and a half since you took over as Interim CEO and I would say it was at the very beginning of the pandemic, I would say over the last year, the message and the strategy has been really as consistent as we've seen it from Groupon, the vision that you're laying out, the long-term strategy, and I think it's been the kind of really strong roadmap, its early part of the roadmap. I'm just wondering from your point of view or what investors should think of what the Board is kind of looking for to play out before you can kind of take over in a permanent role. I think from some investors that we speak to, there's always question marks around the really long-term vision and strategy that can potentially get changed under different leadership. | So first off, as it relates to -- you're asking about like the strategy, the consistency and related to the CEO search. So no update -- new update on the CEO search. But what's most important here is that the Board, our team, they are all aligned behind the strategy. This is something that we are working on together and the strategy is not changing. So I wouldn't -- I wouldn't have any concern with that. Now you can see that from the increasing level of execution that we're getting across the board. So this is very much our obsession.
Now I will say when you asked the question, you seemed a little nervous to me, so I appreciate that. Someone who recommend for you a reflexology Groupon, I just had it a couple weeks ago, it's only about a certain massage followed by some shoulder work and it great quarter and healthy to Wellness business and reached some volumes down. Now, what we are picking up on that. It is actually awesome. | intermediate | [
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2261e512fe3d745237cbc691b02064ef | What are the that you're looking for to feel like you're being successful in the marketing efforts? And you've talked a lot about the brand strategy. Is there a performance campaign around this too to drive more traffic to the app and drive more consumers to the product? | Now for your question on marketing. This is, think about the arc of what we're doing. We said and told everybody that we are going to change our merchant value proposition to get more better supply. Then we said we had to start to change our customer discovery experience and we've now rolled out our CX. That customer discovery experience is really the first part of our marketing effort because now it's more intuitively communicate what we want to be known for. I mean, if you pull up the old site, the flash -- the flash deal site that where you have the big episodic scroll oriented experience, we now have a destination oriented experience. When we put that in front of customers and we measured by the brand metrics and make sure that they understand the brand that we want to be known for on the reputation we want to have as a destination for the categories that we are just in and that's how we're seeing that performance that want, because the mission we're on is not about near-term performance marketing, which we're very good at and extremely great and always been to the execution, but it's about changing this experience so that we start to benefit from destination oriented traffic. Now that is now backed up by us launching our new marketing campaign, moving more to mid funnel, which we did in 2Q, we'll continue to do, and now upper funnel with our Grab Life by the Groupon campaign. So this long arc of our strategy very much works together. I know you're asking about the marketing portion of it. We're changing that perception for Groupon, is obviously quarter to strategy and it's something that we're working on across all components of our execution. | intermediate | [
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d2cd5f9521da94d44f73d7fc1517348f | I fully understand that $250 million at 80 was a guidance or intended to be guidance, but are you coming off of that view or should we no longer be thinking of if you get there that's the EBITDA level? | I think the point, you got to take away is that we've created a lot of leverage in our model and significantly higher flow through to EBITDA as the result of the significant reduction that we've made to our cost structure over the last year unchanged. So, I mean that's really I think the key takeaway there, where we aren't providing guidance on 2022. But I think the big takeaway is that we create a lot of leverage in the model. | intermediate | [
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32b92ab8b3381eaefedde43a42946da3 | Number one is just on the on the cadence of the gross profit and EBITDA. I guess so on first quarter, you kind of provided the cadence would be improving numbers quarter-on-quarter throughout the year. So, just as you highlighted on the the things to do issue, supply demand issues. So anything else that we need to read there? | Yeah, I think there -- as you think about the drivers of our outlook, there is a couple of things that I I'd highlight as you look at kind of quarterly as inflows. So first, we did have a larger-than-expected impact from variable consideration in the second quarter. So we did have a $10 million benefit come through related to prior period bookings. So that was something that we hadn't anticipated. The second point that I would call out as you mentioned, we did see a step down in our global good performance from the second quarter to July to around 30% of 2019 levels. We are assuming in our outlook that's a competitive headwinds that we've seen, we'll continue.
And then as you think about the EBITDA side, it is important to take into account our progression on marketing spend. So if you look at how that investment has progressed through the year, we stepped up investments in Q2 relative to Q1. And as we think about the second half, we expect to further step up our investment in marketing and we would expect marketing as a percentage of gross profit to be higher than it was in the second quarter. And as you think about that, you're seen local demand continues to return. But in addition to that, we are stepping up our investments in our brands repositioning. So that's what you'll really look to see from us in the second half is that higher level of marketing investment.
On the local side, we are encouraged by the recovery that we saw in the second quarter, but we do remain cautious in the near-term just in light of the spread of the Delta variant as well as the dynamics within our things to do category that we mentioned, where our supply is less recovered in that vertical relative to 2019. So those factors are taken into account into our guidance. And then as you think about seasonality, things to do category is an important category for us typically in the second and third quarter. So keep that in mind. And then I would say bigger picture on to the point that Aaron made, local is really where we're focused, that's where we're most differentiated to remain positive on our opportunities in local even as we face the transient headwinds that we're seeing now. | direct | [
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428cec156d9015e4e8c6d01e60fa8df1 | And number two would be on the goods business. You've kind of pointed out it's going to be close to 30% of 2019 levels. So how should we think about good business in the long-term? And how much are you putting forward in terms of marketing in terms of the goods business? | So as it relates to goods, the way to think about goods is pretty consistent with how we've talked about it. We have significantly reduced the cost structure of our goods business. Now winning for us is on the other side of winning in local and and so product now with the reduced cost structure in our goods business will get better EBITDA flow-through out of that business. Our focus though is on local and so you expect over time for goods to continue to kind of face the fact, but that really is just based on our focus on local and getting local growth. | intermediate | [
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3ca07966caa9412a68c3812021d848a4 | Yes, good morning, and thank you for taking the questions. So, I just wanted to see if you guys can give me -- give us a better sense as to the magnitude of the timing shift for shipments, especially Fishing and Camping, if we could just start with that, that will be great. | Well, given the pandemic and the fact that we shut down, and a lot of the retailers shut down for some time frame, it certainly has shifted because our key month is usually April. And so, we can see that everything is shifted, but predicting whether it's going to continue or how long that's going to go is really hard to say. So, all we can say is that right now demand is very strong, and we're working hard to keep up with it. And obviously it would be great if they continued the season, kept going longer than normal, but hard to predict at this time. | intermediate | [
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91511f4a2c4eb9c5e254ffbbf892101c | Sure, yeah. I understand that. Certainly there is a lot of unknowns with COVID. So, as you're seeing the strong demand beginning in May, just curious about the relationship between volume and pricing that you have seen. Obviously there is a great interest in people getting outdoors, but with the economy with high unemployment, just curious whether the people are willing to trade up to more expensive products or are they trading down? I'm just curious to get some color on that. | I think what we're seeing is, interest is so high in outdoors that across the board, our consumers are buying our products and we haven't seen the impact of that as of now, and the innovation we have seems to be driving interest. So, right now, things are going as we would hope. | intermediate | [
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5772cf65775130591fa3bc43691f1ccc | Okay. And then, as far as any way for you guys to distinguish as far as the benefit from the stimulus checks that the government obviously has been very active, and it's trying to stimulate the economy. And do you think that's been much of a benefit or do you think your customer -- the end consumer is really not affected by that? | Well, that's hard to say. But certainly our demand is still there, and there is still -- I think, the desire to get outdoors has put a significant value on outdoor activity, and they are willing to spend. And certainly a stimulus check contributes to that. But knowing how much it has is really, that's something we don't know. | intermediate | [
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5bab16e3a1a6788e40b9e17a860d8a63 | Okay, understood. And then -- and as far as with COVID, how should we think about the costs related to PPE or sanitation products whether -- as far as your productivity. I know you guys are working over time to keep up with the demand. But as far as your ability to maintain proper social distancing and so on, is that an issue that we should think about? | Yeah. We've -- I mean, we've had some incremental costs due to COVID. It hasn't been material. But to your point two, we're dealing with capacity basically with social distancing and protocols we're putting in place with our factories. So that's a bit of a challenge. I think we are overcoming that each month and figuring it out. So, yeah, we'll have to see how that plays out going into next season. But right now, as we said, we're just -- we're hoping to keep up with demand right now. | direct | [
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7dba4ad40c7b5b65ebe0b3e0cac25edc | Okay. Do you foresee anything else or is that you accrue already kind of ahead of what you think -- was this an actual one or is it more of a project kind of accrual? | Yeah. It's an actual bankruptcy with a retailer. We accrue to what we think is reasonable. Having said that, I think we'll have to see how this plays out with our retailer base. It just kind of depends on how the economy goes. I think everyone is kind of hanging in there right now. We're in pretty good shape really with our retailers, but a lot to see how it plays out over kind of the medium to long-term. | direct | [
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725be1c2ba67fc518a1024d9abefebc7 | Got it, OK. And then, last question from me. So, the tax rate was a little bit light versus prior quarters. Just wondering what that was and how should we think about the tax rate? | Yeah. I mean, it varies in the quarter pretty significantly. But I think the year-to-date one is more of a fair comparison, which is comparable to last year. We took some benefit from some tax positions we had reserves. So, as we filed our paperwork this year, we were able to take some tax positions off the table. So -- but I think, year-to-date is probably a more fair comparison. | direct | [
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6ba2c506606d321be122f8f0d3fc5f35 | Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I was just wondering, drill down on the end market demand you're seeing. Could you give us any color as to the retail sales or sell-through that you're seeing, particularly in Fishing, Camping and Watercraft? | Well, what we can say is that we have significant demand. And so, our feeling is that the retailers are light on inventory, because they got orders in that we are trying to keep up with. So, I think the sell-through is pretty good. And I think it's more that there is more demand than there is supply at this point. | intermediate | [
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27b772d89c3408ee23b87c838224a520 | Okay. But you can't provide any specifics of you're talking like up 20% or maybe can you give us a sense of what kind of order growth that you experienced maybe in June or here in July? | Well, all I can say is that the demand is continuing in that. So, at this point, it's a good thing. But it was -- through the quarter, it was very good, and obviously our projection starting the quarter were not good, given what was going on. So we're very -- feeling very good about the growth in demand. But we just got to keep up with it now. | intermediate | [
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67f5796d26df40d8c32b3eb8a1a72ce0 | Okay. It would seem like based on that demand and inventories being as low, it's what we are hearing from retailers that you could experience. If the productivity is at the plant, what you would like double-digit growth in the fourth quarter, which might bring the year flat year-over-year on a revenue standpoint. Is that unreasonable to think about it or is that reasonable? | I mean, right now, demand is strong. So, I mean, that's as far as we're going to go well on that. I mean, I think, we just kind of have to read the tea leaves. | fully_evasive | [
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40e8c4e47444a70f617f001fccb19c43 | Right. Okay. I understand. I mean, just trying to get us a little bit more color as it relates to the current interest. Just one last one then is, the Watercraft business obviously was up 18%, which you had some new products there. But it seemed a little bit less disrupted by the COVID relative to Fishing and Camping and Hiking. So, could you just talk a little bit about that difference in the performance? | Well, we pretty -- we feel that there is good demand across the board. I think the difference with Fishing and the Watercraft is that Camping was a little delayed because the parks were not open right away. And so that waterways were more open and accessible. And I do think in our [Indecipherable] product launch at both was, certainly it's Watercraft and Fishing, which was our Sportsman line and -- but also our base business was up as well. So, I think it's just reflecting that people want to get outside fresh air, what's accessible, what's easy, Fishing, Watercraft, they're safe. We've got automatic social distancing. So, all those things we have going for us. And I think Camping was just a function of when the camp crowd start opening up and people can start getting out there. So, I think the demand is good across the board. There is a little bit of differences, but I think fishing, water, camping, backyard, all those things are activities people are looking to do. So, It's all good, all healthy. Good stuff. | direct | [
"direct",
"intermediate",
"fully_evasive"
] | A |
dae9b6907ad35550552183614a04b1c8 | Hey, good afternoon, guys, thanks for taking my questions here. Maybe, I guess, either Rex or Robb, can you -- the NOG bookings in the quarter for -- basically $1.2 billion, can you just remind us what's included in there? And then as part of that booking, what was sort of contemplated for inflation and sort of hedging against whether it was a range of raw material costs, other sort of input costs? Do you expect to get the same margins that you historically had on future work here? | Yeah, Michael, let me start with that one, maybe flip it over to Robb for a little bit on the materials inflation aspects. That was an order that related to the prior pricing agreement, which, as you know, had four Virginias and now Colombia in it. So, we have some growth coming out of nuclear operations this year with Columbia feathering in and of course, continuing on the Virginia program. So, that was really just a funding -- that was a funding booking is what that was.
In terms of how we structure those pricing agreements, I think you know that we build escalation in for materials and labor and protect -- to some extent, protect against sort of hedge against inflation by use of firm quotes from our suppliers. And to some extent, what we plan in the pricing agreement with our government customer. Maybe, Robb, you could add some flavor.
Yeah, sure. On the supply side, we're monitoring all of what's going on as you are in terms of raw material pricing. As you know, we signed up these pricing agreements. We generally have very good visibility on how that schedule is going to play out over multiple years.
We have almost three-quarters of the materials sort of known when we're, you know, sizing up these pricing agreements. So, then we're sort of exposed to some extent on that remaining quarter. But we're constantly monitoring that. We have escalation in our agreements, and we try to get as much of that in the door as we can and then monitor that over time.
And of course, as we signed subsequent pricing agreements, if we actually see some sort of escalation that gets out of line, we'll try to bake that into the next pricing agreement to make sure we're protected adequately. | intermediate | [
"direct",
"intermediate",
"fully_evasive"
] | B |
a3a694795b26482054b91cf663f19731 | Got it. Got it. That makes sense. And then just shifting gears on the FDA submission to the Tech-99. I know you guys laid out more of a detailed road map at the Investor Day. But I guess, seemingly, the submission has probably slipped here, I think you said by end of first quarter, I mean, it seemingly slipped a good chunk, but should we kind of assume that everything you laid out in terms of the commercialization and ramp still on track? Or will this kind of call it, a 90-day delay have any sort of -- or create any sort of headwinds on that kind of plan you threw out there last year? | No, I feel really good about where we are, Michael. A few quarters ago, I said that we would expect to submit it by around the end of the year. I was deliberately hedging a little bit in my language because we were experiencing COVID things and supplier issues and in particular, we're having trouble getting tech in from Italy at that time because of COVID issue. Where it stands right now, radio cam is completely done, and we've been doing hot runs, as I said in the script here, radio pharm is completely done, and we're doing some integration testing and software testing over there.
And then the facility modifications are all completely done. So, we have this gleaming factory ready to go that we're running products through hot product and tagging it to cold kits. And so, I'm very well pleased with the progress and see very little schedule risk between now and the FDA submission. And even more so, more importantly, really, is I see no risk about the product quality, we've always suggested that there's no technological risk here.
It's really just about the industrialization of the technology, and I maintain that position. It's going to be a great product for the market, and we're very close to the finish line. | direct | [
"direct",
"intermediate",
"fully_evasive"
] | A |
039182195c90260cc39d0cf3d15427ab | Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to pick up just on the last comments on the FDA submission timeline. We are really excited to hear about the hot chemistry running and that kind of stuff. So, you mentioned you're seeking priority review from the FDA. Could you remind us what that means and then kind of the timeline for incremental questions from them and how it plays out? And what gives you confidence you know what the FDA is seeking in this submission, given that these things don't happen all the time, right? It's a rare event. It's big opportunity. But what kind of insights do you have as to what they are seeking and obviously what you're submitting? | Yeah, sure. So, I'd say there's a couple of answers to that, Bob. One is we've had a series of meetings with the FDA to update them on our progress and on our approach. And so, they have visibility all along as we go through this development, including this Type B meeting that I referred to in the script.
And so, they know what we're doing, and we know what their expectations are. So, that's one aspect of it. But the other sort of second aspect to it, and there's a couple of dimensions to this one is that we have some consultants who have been involved in the FDA approval of radiopharmaceutical medical devices for decades that know exactly what the FDA are looking for. And of course, we have our own experienced team.
Maybe the final point on all this is that there is a published pharmacopeia out there that has the parameters that the drug must satisfy from a quality control perspective for it to meet the FDA standards. And so, we have the pharmacopeia. We have experts on the outside experts on the inside, and we have this running dialogue with the FDA itself. And so, I don't think anybody is going to be surprised about what we submit, and we're certainly not going to be surprised about what expectations they have on the FDA side of the equation.
All that said, a priority review would typically get you an approval timeline in the range of six, seven months, something like that unless we get a complete response letter and they require additional information, which would extend the timeline. But certainly, we're hoping to avoid that by delivering a very comprehensive and complete package on the front end. | direct | [
"direct",
"intermediate",
"fully_evasive"
] | A |
34596103ee611d7703fbfb709819e154 | OK. That's very exciting. And then I think you may have touched on this at the Analyst Day, but I figure I just asked in this context as well. Obviously, a lot of time is passing originally thought you would be submitting. We're getting very close to the submission finish line, which is exciting. Can you talk about how the underlying markets developed during this time period? So, from your opportunity set and also from a -- you mentioned something about the Netherlands reactor. So, from a competitive supply standpoint, how the market has developed and how you are situated to fit in? | Yeah. Sure, Bob. I'll try to do that. So, there are other competitors that are developing molly for commercialization. SHINE is a name that you hear a lot, SHINE's in a different place in the value chain than we are. They're delivering the molly itself, we moved up the value chain and are delivering the generator product. It's kind of a generic offering in the sense that whatever customer could use their own cold kits with our offering. So, we're in a little different place in the value chain.
I think we're ahead of others that are competitors into the market. Obviously, there are already established players like Lantheus and Curium. And of course, they maintain their competitive position. But their product, as I've said from the beginning, is based around uranium targets, in some cases, weapons-grade uranium and no -- and at the very least, high-assay low-enriched uranium.
Ours uses industrial molly metals. So, we have a nonproliferation advantage. Since ours is produced on a commercial power reactor ultimately, we have a continuity of supply advantage. And then because it is industrial molly metal, very limited nuclear waste stream.
So, we have waste advantages, cost advantages continuity of supply advantages, and proliferation risk advantages. And all of that makes for a very compelling offering, and we believe that the market uptake for the product will be quite strong.
I might also add, just to touch on some of the other aspects of the broader BWXT Medical. As you know, in the Investor Day, we laid out, exactly as Rex said, that that part of our portfolio, the core product there in the diagnostics area, the market has gotten better in general, and we feel good about that. Overall, the business, as you know, has a couple of other exciting opportunities for it. We still have that exciting core Nordion portfolio, which includes a couple of key products there, as well as TheraSphere and that really is doing quite well for us.
That's the second sort of growth opportunity that really has panned out well within that portfolio. And then thirdly, I think we shared the therapeutics opportunity that we see, and the related contract drug manufacturing opportunity as it relates to therapeutics. And when you summarize those three markets, the diagnostics opportunity that Rex said, the Nordion portfolio, and then the therapeutics, we really stand to really have a pretty good outlook for that industry. It's really gotten better.
And as you know, it culminates in kind of those statistics that we put out there of getting to almost $200 million of revenue a couple of years out and $75 million of EBITDA across those three sort of business lines, if you will. | direct | [
"direct",
"intermediate",
"fully_evasive"
] | A |
af34b677eb5979eb80fe6d0aa8e4afe4 | Hi, guys. Good morning and congratulations on the quarter. A couple of questions. I mean first, on David's comments to anybody. Dividends picked up, obviously, in 2020. Is it identifiable how much of that was maybe, for lack of better terms, spillover from 2020 because businesses maybe did better than they expected earlier in the year versus kind of ongoing dividend kind of sustainable run rate? | Yeah, Robert. What I would say on the question about the dividends is as we identified in our comments and in our press release, there was one large dividend from a company that was related to an exit of our investment there that we would clearly say is nonrecurring since we exited that investment. But I think the other investments, while there may be some quarter-to-quarter volatility and some increases from time to time in the dividend income that comes from those companies, the other large dividend pairs we had in the quarter represented -- all represented long-term contributors to our dividend income. So while you do have some quarter-to-quarter volatility, we don't think it's nonrecurring or unusual. You do see it get elevated, but it's really hard to say how much of that would be spillover or carryover from the prior year. | intermediate | [
"direct",
"intermediate",
"fully_evasive"
] | B |
4cba4c9092217e624488f4f7295ab4f3 | Got it. Got it. Appreciate it. And then on the comment, the low middle market pipeline about average, is it another identifiable question? I mean there's the potential for tax changes, which you also mentioned in the prepared remarks. And historically, that does tend to drive greater activity. Is that all already showing up in the above-average pipeline? And if the potential tax changes firm up, what's the time scale that the potential sellers, entrepreneurs, etc., come to you one versus getting it closed before, so the end of the year if the tax has changed next year? | Yeah, Robert, what I would say on that question is when you look at the current pipeline, I would say that we don't think there's a lot of tax-related planning that's included in that pipeline. The current pipeline, as we said in our comments, includes a number of follow-on investment opportunities in existing companies, which, as you've heard us say in the past, we find very attractive. So we're excited about that activity, and that would be an elevated portion of our current pipeline when you look at the lower middle market activity. But I wouldn't say the other activity to date includes a lot of tax planning or tax strategies in relation to potential increases in tax rates going forward. Historically, when we look at other time periods where you've seen this type of a change in the administration and the tax changes that may come with that, it's typically going to be the second half of the year. So I think we're starting to see new investment activity that's coming at the front end or the top of our funnel that likely includes the beginnings of that tax planning, but I wouldn't say that it's in the existing pipeline that we expect to execute on over the next couple of months. | direct | [
"direct",
"intermediate",
"fully_evasive"
] | A |
c578ea4d4b004973111a784c2b5bf351 | Got it. Great. One more, if I can. On DNII, I mean, I appreciate the guidance you gave. Dwayne, you gave comments about eventual growth of the monthly dividend. I mean is there a rule of thumb on -- does DNII have to not only consistently exceed the dividend? But is there a margin you'd like to see before dividend increase would be, obviously, it's a board question, but you're on the board before the dividend increases would be potential or is it just -- if it can be sustainably covered, it's on the table. | Yeah, Robert, I would say it's the latter. It's more -- it's having a really high level of confidence about the sustainability of the DNII levels. I think we feel really good about the DNII that we've produced in Q4 and Q1. But as we said earlier, it does include some volatility, specifically on the dividend income side. So I think we really want to see that dividend income become more predictable and more consistent as its contribution to the DNII as well as you hope to have continued improvements or contributions on the interest income side from continued growth in our investment originations. And when we see those two items come into play, I think that's when you'll see us look at increasing the monthly dividend. Historically, we've always said that our goal was to have DNII cover the monthly dividend by 5%. That's kind of been a long-term goal we've had, but I think it's really, as we sit here today, it's really getting into a more consistent visibility or practice on the receipt of dividend income from our portfolio companies. It's going to be the biggest driver going forward. | direct | [
"direct",
"intermediate",
"fully_evasive"
] | A |
319ac5e436d11e80ca84fb0ca0c91088 | I just start with a little bit of drill down on COVID impact, everything you said about patients and sites obviously makes a lot of sense what's going on in the world today. But in your prepared remarks, Chip, you talked a little bit about the primary problem kind of being patients showing up for sites. And then in the press release, there's some additional discussions about site personnel, I guess, site personnel. I was wondering to what extent these two things are playing off relative to each other. I mean to me, and maybe I'm naive, it seems the patient interest in showing up is the most obvious to normalize with COVID and that site things may be more complicated, I could even be wrong about that. But just wondering if you could give a little bit more insight on the relative impact of those two things, which are both, in my mind, logically impacted by COVID. | Thanks for the question, Chad. I mean you are spot on. The two main issues that we are seeing is really the patient reluctance to participate in clinical trial, which actually may require more frequent visits to the hospital, right, than they would like to during COVID time. And the second one is really the availability of site personnel, which appear to be busy maintaining trials with, again, multiple procedures during COVID time. So it's really a mixture of these two variables. And it's -- we do expect that as we spoke as the COVID pandemic winds down and with the vaccination, hopefully, patients feel again comfortable to come to clinical -- to come to the clinic and participate in clinical trials. But those are the two key reasons. | intermediate | [
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] | B |
328a656e2b824849f2f3c2309f356af4 | So it's really interesting that -- especially when we hear about your ASH data and you talk about justifying OS as the OS benefit that you've seen, and I get it, it's single-arm, so that maybe the justification comes with kind of validating it in that context. But with things like spleen volume and symptom scores, in one way of thinking spleen volume and symptom score should be out there justifying their value in terms of OS, in my mind. So, I guess, that was the comment. And then the question, and you guys -- you touched on this a little bit. But I mean, talk a little bit more, and I know MF is such a unique disease in terms of the endpoints that are looked at for JAK inhibitors and other standard of care therapies, but why is it that where you have to work so hard here to convince people that OS benefit is important. | I'll take the first part, and then I think Aleksandra, again, would like to probably comment on this. I don't think we feel that there's any need to justify the OS benefit. I think it's plain and simple and incredibly obvious. I think we make the point and perhaps our continued commentary on this could be taken the wrong way. But I think we're trying to make the point that we're the only drug that we're aware of that is actively engaged in the phase three trial that will, in fact, use OS as an outcome. And it takes some courage to do that, right? These are long trials. You have heard the date, they require a fairly large number of patients. And it's breaking out of the mold. Most people just do a landmark analysis at a certain number of months after being treated with a combination, usually containing a JAK inhibitor and a new drug or simply new JAK inhibitor alone, and you're kind of done. But what you don't see are the real benefits of changing the course of the disease. And Chad, we think that that's the big news, big story and frankly, the big benefit of this drug. I don't think anybody else has any kind of data like we do in that regard. So that's been our primary focus on why we've tried to talk about OS more than anyone else because we -- and we also have the correlations of the changes in the course of the disease both clinical and more importantly, perhaps, in some ways, molecularly with the actual improvement in OS in our phase two study. So I hope that that puts it in some context. | direct | [
"direct",
"intermediate",
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] | A |
fdef0d3363ab0fcdb7a56ed2a0e505ac | Can you provide any color on feedback that you've received from your initial marketing research and outreach efforts? How either our MDS versus MF physicians and patients for new treatment options? And how they reacted to in the imetelstat's profile? | Right. Well, I'm going to let Aleksandra talk about the individual physicians that we've spoken to. We've done market research, and we're in the process of planning for additional market researches here that will really drive into those points, Justin. But I think that the benefits of MDS -- in MDS are really quite evident to a lot of physicians, particularly those who take care of more ill patients. Remember that all of our patients have very high transfusion burdens. And that's an area that can be particularly difficult for these physicians to get traction with. Now they've certainly adopted or they're in the process of adopting luspatercept. And we, again, we call that out, and we think that's good because prior to luspatercept coming on the market, there hasn't been anything new since the HMAs over 10, 12 years ago. So I think that the rapid uptake has been good, but there's a lot of room left for a drug like an imetelstat that does a bunch of things. One, we treat RS- patients, as well as RS+; two, we can treat patients with very high baseline transfusion burdens and still get excellent outcomes; three, the durability, repeat it, the durability, the durability of imetelstat's activity in these patients is really dramatic and far greater than anything we've seen, at least in print or at meetings from the folks studying luspatercept. So I think that those then factor into the underlying cause of all of this, which is when we see decreases in SF3B1 and decreases inside genetic abnormalities, it's pretty clear that we have disease-modifying activity going on. I won't characterize other products in low-risk MDS, but all of those are really powerful differentiating factors. And I think that they'll play very, very well. Sure. I can talk about that. I mean we obviously are in very close contact with participating PIs, as well as key opinion leaders. And I can just reiterate. There is really a great enthusiasm for a drug that works across different subtypes of low-risk MDS. That's to start with, right? So for them, there's just the fact that they don't need to subsize whether you RS+ or RS-, makes their clinical and every day work, very easy, right? I mean we were not subtyping for RS positivity prior to REBLOZYL's approval, let's put it that way. So this kind of is one convenience for that, right? And then, I mean, the fact that we have durability of 20 months versus seven months of our already approved drug that is doing very well on the market is really another convenience, if you will, for patients. You don't have to come back to the clinic for multiple transfusions to which they're used to prior to treatment. And I have to say something and really often discuss this internally. I mean, what really makes investigators excited is the molecular data. It's really -- and this was -- that's maybe even the best reason why the paper ended up in JCO. So it's really the decrease in not only SF3b1. SF3b1 is just an example that we are using here to illustrate the effect. But it's really multiple mutations that we've seen and also cytogenetic rate decrease in these patients that may believe our KOLs, NPIs that imetelstat is really altering the course of disease in low-risk MDS patients. Same goes, Chip, you answer for MDS. I don't know, Jason, if you wanted to cover for MS, but it is the same pretty much is really the molecular data. And I mean and Chad also a little bit to go to your question, right, about the OS. I mean data has been evolving and the agencies has been more receptive to different endpoints, right? We started with SVR as Jakafi was on the market for so long. But as new data with new compounds, right, show that we can improve anemia with one drug. We can improve symptoms, right? New endpoints has been established. And now we come with OS. We had a question, that the crown of the endpoint, I mean, the ultimate endpoint of every clinical trial, right? So when you show such data granted at the moment, it's just from two different doses of imetelstat, enthusiasm is high. I don't think we had leads to justify the OS as an endpoint to any of our investigators nor to regulators so far. So we remain enthusiastic. It's long, and that's what makes it a challenge. It's a long study, right? It's a different endpoint. But other than that, there's really no other reason to believe that we have any questions about the data. | direct | [
"direct",
"intermediate",
"fully_evasive"
] | A |
71bc8bd32aeb26d2b983aa35b86cbc0f | Maybe just a quick follow-up to that. So one, could you maybe quickly just remind us of how many of the low-risk MDS patients RS+ positive versus RS-? And do you think that there could be potential for patients to use luspatercept and imetelstat in sequence if they fail therapy with one or the other? | So typically, the numbers for RS+ patients in the literature range anywhere from 10to 25%, right? It depends which paper you take, right? So let's say most, it's a quarter of the patients are RS+, right? So major -- a lot of the patients are RS-. And again, as we've spoken multiple times, we work across both post subsides. So I think that was one quick question. So for RS+ patients, right, potentially, right, but for patients that are heavily transfused, no, I really don't know, right, what would be the clinical preference, I would say. | intermediate | [
"direct",
"intermediate",
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] | B |
deb91f81e6cd20d91072b63d44a41013 | So maybe just with respect to the IMpactMF guidance. So I'm just kind of curious as to there's obviously a lot of competitive happenings within the space. And I'm just kind of curious as to how the guidance if at all contemplates the competitive environment in terms of competition for some of these post-RUX patients? I guess specifically just given the number of trials we're kind of seeing within that setting. | Yes. That's a great question, Steve. I mean just since we announced the study, there had been three new trials -- phase three trials in MS, right, that had been started. So competition is really high. For us, at this moment, it's difficult to give a very precise guideline. But as you can imagine, we have conducted a study feasibility. And base -- and that visibility takes into account COVID, as well as competitive trials. So that's how -- based on the current knowledge we have, our current planning assumptions are that we will reach the full enrollment in 2024, which is a different guidance than what we've given so far. | direct | [
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] | A |
2938bb9de63c41f6ff364deaf5b33c89 | And then, maybe just going back to IMerge for a minute. And Chip, you had made the comment with respect to luspatercept availability potentially impacting patient enrollment into the study. So is there a scenario whereby IMerge maybe ends up representing kind of over enrichment of RS- patients? And do you think that there is any potential labeling or unifications as a result of that? I'm just kind of curious to get your opinion there. And just whether or not you have kind of real-time insight into the baseline characteristics of patients that are coming into the study if that's something that you're seeing? | Yes. So I'll start with the last one, Steve. I mean we have no insight into what type of patients are being enrolled in the study because it's a double-blind, placebo-controlled study, right? So it's very difficult to -- not very difficult, it's impossible to comment or to know what patients are enrolled. Now, your first question if luspatercept might or luspatercept approval might have the impact on luspatercept, right, might have impact in a way that we now enroll RS+ patients only -- sorry, RS- patients, the other way because they will be treating. I don't think so. Remember, luspatercept has just been approved. It will be used on patients, I assume, for the RS+ patients. They would initially be treated with luspatercept and [Inaudible]. So I honestly do not think, right, that we will end up in reaching for one or for another patient population. And therefore, I don't see a problem in the labeling I mean, at the moment. Yes. Yes, Steve, I think also we should comment that when we talk to investigators, their views on the -- these are really quite different drugs, right? I mean the effects of imetelstat in high-transfusion burden patients, greater than four units and especially greater than six units is quite dramatically different, at least if you look at sort of the phase two comparisons to phase three comparisons between the two drugs. So I think that there's probably so many different ways to cut this. I agree with Aleksandra. I think we'll be surprised to see a meaningful enrichment of one RS+ versus RS-. And I think we'll be surprised. But we don't know yet, and we'll see. And I would just -- as you were talking Chip, -- sorry, Steve, I just want to answer. I mean we involved about 50% on our trial before luspatercept became available or reimbursed in the European country, where most of our sites are. So I bet, we do have sufficient number in those stations that are RS+ as well RS-. | direct | [
"direct",
"intermediate",
"fully_evasive"
] | A |
c01853b2bb18cfb379cb77c5780663e5 | You kind of just talked about my question, but you see no reason to stratify for RS+ versus RS-. Kind of Chip to your point that these patients either physicians would know are going to get almost nothing out of luspatercept or probably did get almost nothing out of luspatercept. Is that accurate? And you just don't think it confounds your study much? | I think the question, if I understand it, Tom, is whether we're stratifying in the analysis for RS+ versus RS-, and stratification, in this case, usually, would mean if you were stratifying in the randomization. We're not stratifying at least in the randomization. Will we look at the effects of the subtypes? Absolutely, of course, we will. So we'll look at it, but we're not preferentially making sure that we take a specific group. I mean, I need to say this, we don't completely understand why luspatercept has this effect in -- and appears to have this effect, a big enough effect that Acceleron and Celgene decided to really restrict their phase three -- their initial phase three trial MEDALIST study to RS+. But what I can tell you is that when we look at our data, it doesn't really matter whether you're RS+, RS-, you get very similar results. So I think that's the real bottom line for us. And I think that will show equally good results in either group. | direct | [
"direct",
"intermediate",
"fully_evasive"
] | A |
afd5288983618e7f2bc9073efe74a7e7 | And then, there's kind of an interesting comment about a reasonable R&D build going forward. Is -- are you still looking -- looking for a way forward in AML? Is that still on the table? Are you looking for a subgroup that makes a lot of sense? Or am I misreading the -- | Yes. No. I mean let's just say this. I don't know that the R&D build necessarily reflects that. But what it does reflect is a maturing development organization for a drug that's going to be on the market and however many years. And one that we think has a very unique mechanism of action as well and has properties and capabilities that aren't shared by other products. So we'd be crazy not to try to take advantage of that. And I think that's kind of the real answer. I don't think we're prepared to talk today about the specifics of what the next indication would be or when it would come or how much it will cost or any of that or how many people will be required to support it. But we certainly have are going through the Asteria line of hematologic malignancies we're certainly interested in putting more in our plates and simply low-risk MDS and MF and relapsed/refractory MF, for that matter. So I think that you can assume that we have a very keen interest in that. But we'll just have to wait a little bit longer for us to really come out and do the -- have the commentary that I think you're looking, Tom. | intermediate | [
"direct",
"intermediate",
"fully_evasive"
] | B |
0cddd6aa196bc5908088a947e2a6de37 | Great. Well, yeah, I guess, first question is around the dividend, right? So in the fourth quarter of '19, the first quarter of '20, you paid dividends above, I guess, 70% of net income. Now for the second quarter, you reduced this to 50%. I think you mentioned part of it is because of the $60 million paid down back in April on that Hemen facility. So, I guess, is that the entire reason for it? Or are you kind of bridging to a weaker dividend next quarter? And then, should we expect at least 50% of net income going forward? | No, this is the entire reason for it. So if you add that on top, I guess, you will get to $0.80 dividend, which I guess, is probably what you assumed. | direct | [
"direct",
"intermediate",
"fully_evasive"
] | A |
3e1ab68f4f56061360fc812d3563a255 | If you include the Hemen $60 million, that was you're referring to? | Yeah. So that's the entire reason for that, the dividend is 50%. | direct | [
"direct",
"intermediate",
"fully_evasive"
] | A |
9fbad57aed839379aabf89cf5e292abf | OK. And then going forward, is a 50% net income a fair assumption? | Going forward, it's standard normal that we have in a way. It's not changed at all in a way. We just -- this quarter opted to repay the facility with $30 million, which is $60 million, [Inaudible], which is $0.30 per share. That's for [Inaudible] this quarter. | intermediate | [
"direct",
"intermediate",
"fully_evasive"
] | B |
ae682d4fbadd043bcce32dbdf5c25bc8 | Do you expect to repay the remainder of that here in the third quarter? | No, we don't know yet. We haven't really decided what to do with the remaining part of it in a way. It might be -- It might be that we can extend the facility, it might be that we'll repay it, we'll have to see. | direct | [
"direct",
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] | A |
32ea9e07eda8feb89cafe94970b9a686 | OK. And then I guess, last question around your scrubbers. You know, what's the status of those scrubber installations? I know you postponed a few, I think it was four. Any expectations on when those will be installed or kind of your plans going forward on remaining scrubbers? | So -- so, Randy, we've done that. We've got a couple of being installed as we speak, but the four that we postponed, we've not done anything further with. So what we'll do is that when these ships that was supposed to have the scrubbers installed, when they dry dock over the next coming quarters, then, we will prepare these ships. So all the underwater work will be done, which is a small cost. And then, the actual scrubbers can be fitted or retrofitted, and they are now stored at our production facilities in Indonesia. So, we'll see here. The spread is improving a little bit, but we have the optionality. And for the time being, they will remain in storage. | direct | [
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e6ed2ee4c6b5812189e2fe69b3c76838 | Thank you. Good afternoon, Inger and Robert. A couple of quick clarification questions first. You know, I think we're always here where the quarter-to-date bookings look very elevated, basically because of the load to discharge accounting. I know you guys really try to flush out the differences here. So maybe a way to ask it is, as you look at the rest of the quarter, the other 24%, let's say, for the VLCCs, is there any extreme or out of -- out of the ordinary uncontracted or contracted vessels where, let's call that stub part for the rest of the quarter would be higher or lower than the market averages? | So, it all depends, obviously, whether we fix the loading dates at the end of September or early October, that's what's going to determine. So it's -- but there's nothing -- to answer the second part of your question, there's nothing specific, there's nothing special. But what I would say about the earnings, it's important here to look at earnings over several quarters. So if I was to just say, if you ask me, how is Frontline down on VLCCs so far this year, then, might take is that we had a very good Q1. We outperformed our peers. We -- we're giving some of that back in Q2, as you see from the numbers. And my guess is that we're on the -- we're on a pretty good rate level and on a good percentage here for Q3. So I would say, outperform well in Q1, we know, slightly below in Q2. And then, I think we're looking quite good for Q3. | intermediate | [
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9eba479b06de378c8509f55c1d3751e1 | OK. And then just another clarification, Robert. I think you said that the long-term contracts are not included in the quarter-to-date rates. In the press release, it says the short-term charters are included in the forecast. So what is between the long-term and the short-term? I guess, you have two that are nine and a half months and one that's 12 months, and then, you have four that are just below six months. So just to be clear, that the ones -- the ones that are just below six months that is included in the quarter-to-date and then the longer ones or not? | Yeah, correct. So -- so basically, after the six-month charters, which are basically six months plus minus one, so it's a minimum period of five months. So those deals that we consider spot in the numbers and anything above, which then starts in the eight month deals and it's -- we have a couple of one year deals and we've got the five Suezmax on the three-year deals. So -- so anything above the six months, that is then considered longer -- longer-term and are not included. | direct | [
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21b2cacdfcb8daa5dd908989e0c81d66 | Got it. And then also, I noticed in the disclosures that you have seven ships chartered to affiliates of Hemen. I'm assuming those are the seven that you did in the second quarter. Just curious, is there any options associated with those? Or are those kind of strict on the uh -- on the timing? | There are no options at that. | direct | [
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1541e30a25fc763019044841fcd6567c | OK. Final question, Robert, is I think you've laid out a very balanced second half of the year outlook for the market. And clearly, given the start to third quarter, you will be cash flow positive and Inger has kind of laid out the dividend strategy. When you think about the cash going forward, do you think this period of, let's call it, choppiness or uncertainty provides you with an opportunity to add tonnage? Or do you think that you spend this next six months continuing to delever the balance sheet to position yourself for the favorable 2021, '22 outlook that you -- that you spoke of? | We're pretty happy with the -- with the size. We're very happy with the age. As I said in the intro, we -- the company's in a very good shape. But -- so I don't think we need to do anything. It's -- if opportunity come up, for example, something like the Trafigura deal we did, which we quite liked, then, maybe. But base case is to enjoy what we have and then harvest from that through having, hopefully, what is the best operation. | direct | [
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e5157cae0bf6b58282bdb8347e175a15 | Hi, good afternoon, Robert and Inger. How are you? | Good afternoon, we're fine. Thanks, how about you? | direct | [
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4266a1d91dc6556222ae8d63687e5c17 | Good, good. Thanks. I kind of wanted to just touch on the cash breakeven levels again. On Slide 6, I know Jon asked this earlier, too, but I guess, I'm asking it from a slightly different angle. So on Slide 6, the cash breakeven levels of like $19,000 on a fleet average. In the press release it says that the charter coverage are not included in the breakeven level. So I was wondering, would that mean the breakeven levels excluding the time charters, would show a slightly higher breakeven for the fleet? | No. I mean, the cash breakeven rates that we disclosed are the total cost that our fleet has divided by the different number of days for each segment and then shown on a gross basis. If you have contract coverage, above the breakeven rate, that would, obviously, take down the cash breakeven rate for the spot vessels. So it will not increase then. | direct | [
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6ef136162a3534443a1535f27f7d3cff | OK. All right. I just wanted to clarify. Thanks. And I kind of wanted to just ask about your investment in Clean Marine. I guess when the investment was made back in October of '19, I guess, it seemed like it would be a smart hedge for IMO 2020 in scrubbers in general. And fast forward, you know, 10, 11 months now, COVID, OPEC, and market vol, what are your plans for this investment going forward? | We will see how they -- how this develops. We're now -- we own about 17% and the company uh -- the company has a production facility, which is owned in Indonesia, it's got its stocks and so forth. And we have -- we only -- our investment is now -- we only have a very small loan to the company. So we don't really have any risks there. We don't see the need to put any money into the company and I think there will be some positive news, at some point, going uh -- going down the road. It's not turning out to be uh -- to be as aloof to this -- what we were hoping, of course, but the downside was -- so the risk in that was always controlled and limited. | intermediate | [
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3d718e31cbafc1db57ff44cc336c5a73 | Right. I see, OK. Makes sense. And -- and last question. Just given the news about the voluntary cuts from several key OPEC members, the congestion that's happening around Chinese ports, and Hurricane Laura in the U.S. Gulf. I'm just curious in terms of how you guys choosing to position your fleet in the near-term? | What we're doing now is that it's an extremely difficult market to predict and that is the easy obvious thing to say because it's -- I've been doing this for a few years and my sort of gut feel is that we are going toward a more normal market. We're well, well down on volumes, as we know. It looks from the last patch that we're seeing, then the world production is 3 million to 4 million barrels lower than the consumption, which is, obviously, hurting freight, but it could build -- it could build a better case as we move toward winter and Q4 is normally a strong quarter. So my -- well, [Inaudible] with no sort of high conviction, I got a feel that things will get better as we -- we move toward the end of the year and what we're doing with the fleet is that we are trying to reposition in the Suezmax in the Atlantic Basin. And if we have the choice between the long voyage at current rates or a shorter one, we opt for the shorter one. There are some potential triggers out there so we're watching it all very closely, and we've got a feel that things uh -- things might get better. At the same time, the volumes remain low. So it all depends on the cargo account. What we've seen in the Middle East over the summer, where basically one out of three cargos has disappeared. Has uh -- has, obviously, dented the earnings. But hopefully, something -- demand will steadily come back and there could be some better times ahead. But I'm very cautious. I'm not going to put on the bullish hat just yet. | direct | [
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809cd8d633d03582136b220153ca3d7f | Thanks for taking my questions. | Hi, J. How are you doing? | fully_evasive | [
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8ec62030cdbf8692165d5b74fdc78d9c | Hi, doing excellent. Thanks. So first of all, congrats on a good quarter. As we're looking toward the shifting interest rate environment, I know you've done a few swaps and hedges in the past on some of your debt profiles. I know you also have a new debt profile coming up with the new builds. Is there any plans to expand or extend those interest rate swaps? Is any of that in the works? Or are you going to maintain some floating exposure? | Uh, so we do have entered into quite a lot of the interest rate hedges now recently. So I guess, at the moment, we have no further plans for entering into even further interest rate interest. But also we had on -- we have $550 million of hedges now at the moment. And also as short as an additional portion of about $100 million, which is very soon going to mature. But at the moment, I think we're happy with that. | direct | [
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96b192aa2cabd05b9f4d984e146ba935 | OK. Makes sense. Yeah. I was tracking, you had about one-third or so hedged. I was wondering if that -- those plans have changed. You know, Jon asked earlier about kind of your cash plans and if you looked at maybe expanding or new builds or second hands or anything like that. Sort of a related question, Frontline carries a nice premium to some of your tanker peers, I think Frontline is probably the only -- one of the only tanker companies that carries what you could say is like a respectable valuation in today's market. Is there any opportunity out there for Frontline to become a equity consolidator? I know there's some peers in the Norwegian market, for example, we won't name names today, but they're trading at a significant discount NAVs. Is there some opportunity for consolidation there? Or is that sort of off the table? | No, there are opportunities. And as you say, we have the pricing. We're well below where the premium we normally are at and that premium is there for the obvious reasons. We do -- do have a main shareholder who remains hugely supportive and that will remain so. But in terms of consolidation, yes, we are a potential consolidator, but we are happy with what we have now. We will keep tracking opportunities though, so let's see what comes up and what makes sense. But with the size we already have, then our earning potential, it's already there and which you can clearly see from the Q2 numbers. | direct | [
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8fe372dd037795db14fcd70bdba3b4ed | Excellent. Excellent. You'll have to forgive me for this one, Robert, the parting question here, but you know, we talked back in April and you had kind of a fun bet gamble about if rates would come back down, unsurprisingly, that you'd be walking across Norway. So I just wanted to check in on that and see when the trips are planned. And maybe it's after COVID, we can get a group together. | I'd tell you what, you would probably enjoy the walk. Of course, It's a beautiful walk. As long as you start from the East side and then walk toward my home town and it's the right -- you're going the right way. But J, we have actually settled the bet, so it ends up being a -- being a dinner. And -- but I must say, with the confidence I had a bet was high and it did came -- did come very, very close. But fortunate enough, I got away with it. | direct | [
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399a7a1e5f66b78fee6de84c64a625fa | Hello, Robert and Inger. The -- hey, I'm calling from Pittsburgh, which is the home of the steel industry that a good Scotsman named Andrew Carnegie had made famous. And I was curious, what effect does scrap steel rates have on the retirement of vessels? | Interesting question. And the fact is, yes, yes it does. And to give you an example, so our larger ships. So by the way, our older ship now is 2009, so we don't have really any candidates. But uh, if you look at that market, as I mentioned in the introduction, there are a growing number of older ships, and looking at the last 18 months, then, the value -- the steel value has fluctuated between $11 million and $18 million. So it's -- now it's at the lower end of that scale. So it's is part of the decision-making here, whether to scrap or not is, obviously, then linked to this price. It is -- it is a good portion of the value of the contract. | direct | [
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81762d544be8c95c636901a190fac59d | Well, maybe you could talk some shipbuilders into offering bonuses to the scrappers to tie in a sale of the new vessel to scrapping a ship. | Yeah. That could be a way of doing it or combining making a pool of all the old ships and get the balance back quicker that way. | intermediate | [
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] | B |
fc27158fe32c4b8fac184418c371a95a | Hey, guys, good afternoon. This is Griffin on for Brian. Thanks for taking my questions here. Just first on the Manta, AZOVA partnerships. Can you give us a sense of the size of those and maybe in dollar terms or volumes? Are there any committed volumes moving forward? And then just more broadly on partnerships like this and I'll call it the institutional settings, employers, schools, entertainment, etc. What are the -- what kind of duration are you talking with clients in these opportunities? | Yes. I would say, Griffin, that we won't get into necessary specifics around those partnerships. But I think that they're fairly representative of a lot of the deals that we're seeing today. Kevin and his team have done a great job of bringing in a lot of contracts that have durability, forecasted volumes, I would say, greater than the majority of what we're seeing now are contracts and purchase orders that have forecasted amounts that range anywhere between three to 12 months. | intermediate | [
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b42eb03ced67be0db25feace128f0a0d | Got it. That's helpful. Thank you. And then just on the manufacturing ramp, I heard the comment reaching full capacity in the first half of '22. Can you just give us a sense of your current capacity in relation to that $1 million per month? | Yes. So, Griffin, we're in the single-digit -- we're in hundreds of thousands of units at this point, and we're looking at a fairly linear trajectory up to the million. Yes. I might catch one through a little bit of color there that we kicked off the Dominican Republic facility here in the Q2 time frame. We're just producing commercial units out of that DR facility now. So as we gain experience with the DR, our capacity will grow. And I would expect to see, call it, over time, 80% to 90% of our unit production will be derived from that facility. | direct | [
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] | A |
ef425f5878bc21f6f699a4432b361264 | OK. And then the decision to pull the online distribution channel. First, is it fair to say that current demand is exceeding supply? And then if you could quantify that, any sense of just how much demand is outstripping current supply? | Well, I would say that demand is robust right now. We made the decision -- we didn't want to partially fulfill that channel, and we had larger commercial orders that we decided to prioritize. So we felt that that was the prudent move to make, especially considering that those distributors have a better opportunity to meet the demands of the public than we would just through our website or through Amazon. | intermediate | [
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ea8ff65b79a3b3b8013d414345410b4c | Hi. This is John on for Derik. That's a very interesting agreement you guys struck. I wanted to ask about how much volume you guys are getting from the Olympics deal. And more generally, could you break out the OTC of the new channel versus the app home volumes? Thank you. | Yes. We won't necessarily speak about the specifics around our deal with Manta. It's more to be illustrated by the type of arrangements that were -- deals that we're striking today. Most definitely getting the OTC indication had a fairly dramatic impact on our demand, as you can imagine, as once we receive the OTC indication, the rate limiters around receiving the script are going into a physician to actually get the product we removed. So with those inhibitors being removed, we were able to expand our reach. And I would say, from an OTC perspective, we're looking at 70%-plus of our total revenue is derived from that OTC channel versus the existing Rx at-home channel. | intermediate | [
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218a03fc2d5f5f258047f44ee7fe8ff0 | Gotcha. Gotcha. That's helpful. And in terms of the competitive landscape, could you provide an update as you and others pushed into the at-home market? | Yes. So it's a very -- I mean, compliments to them on the very nice product. This is a very different product that we have. In that, there's no instrument -- additional instrument required. The instrument is effectively built into our test at very low cost. And what that does is it makes the Lucira Test extremely easy to use. We're as proud of the consumer usability as we are the clinical results. So we're seeing, at least for Lucira that we're growing off such a small base initially for Lucira into such a large ocean of opportunity that we're not, at this time, feeling impacts of competitive threats. | direct | [
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9fabf7422311879ddb6d71cdec95c596 | Just a quick one for me. In terms of -- you guys are bringing back the online sales through Amazon and through your own website. I know you touched on this a little bit, maybe help us understand what the demand, I guess, exactly looks like in the past? And then how do you kind of expect that to be a contributor looking ahead through the rest of this year and coming into next year? | Maybe I'll just comment qualitatively and then turn it over to Dan. But we intend to bring back online ordering in the second half of the year, whether that's on Amazon or on our website or both to be determined. But, Dan, I don't know if you want to -- Yes. I mean, we see the business as primarily B2B going forward. Of course, we're going to offer the product at a consumer level as well. But I think our sales team has done a great job of qualifying customers, and we've had inbound interest from very sophisticated customers who really understand the importance of molecular testing and understand the requirements and needs for testing proactively. So we see that being predominantly making up the lion's share of our demand for the foreseeable future. | intermediate | [
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768c8b500345e1ad269ba04644194c80 | Got it. OK. I appreciate that. And then I guess maybe just one more. In terms of manufacturing, and maybe you could just provide a little bit more color on what's happening and what needs to happen between now and then to get to that optimal point for the manufacturing capacity? | Absolutely. We're delighted, by the way, with the partnership with Jabil. That was the right partnership for Lucira. And it's a working relationship collaboratively, particularly -- well, both in Michigan, where we started and had impressive start-up work, and then later in the Dominican Republic with a great team in the DR. So very happy with that. It's just your standard ramp-up of a new manufacturing process. It's going extremely well. We're very pleased with it. If we could wave a magic wand and make it go faster, we would. But these things go at a certain rate. And the good news is we're applying the right teams to this and are very happy with the way it's going. | intermediate | [
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4b15a4534a035978a87ad5784a4816e7 | Hey, thanks for getting me back in. I know you guys mentioned the sequential growth in the revenues for the rest of the year, but I was wondering what the outlook for the COVID testing looks like from what you see for 2022. | I mean, we're not necessarily going -- talking about 2022 right now, but we see robust demand, and we see the majority of the world not being inoculated, being impacted by variance, and testing becoming more and more important every day. So although COVID's [Inaudible], we're optimistic, and we see that we don't see any signs of slowing down demand for our product anytime in the near future. I mean, what we've been saying since the time of the IPO that COVID will remain endemic and we're seeing reinforcement of that for better or for worse for society. And that testing will continue to play a very important role going forward. You can imagine that it's going to take somehow controlling this over the entire planet to be able to significantly bring it under control. And as the virus replicates in places where there's not vaccination, not mask wearing, for example, then the virus throws up variants, and those variants can challenge existing control measures. So for all of the above, testing remains important. And it's particularly important to be able to identify asymptomatic positives. And for that, at least from what we can see today, the only way to effectively do that is with a test like Lucira's that's molecular and very accurate. | intermediate | [
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99b188be682ece58cbc3ef7263cf865e | I was wondering if you're seeing the same amount of refractory/relapsed patients that you had originally assumed? And then what is the screen failure rate, drop-out rate? Any color would be helpful. | The Phase 3 trial, we are enrolling a population that is a high-risk population, including both the refractory and the relapse group. We are in the context that this trial, seeing a population that is similarly high risk to the Phase 2 trial. We did refine the eligibility criteria for this trial, slightly, in order to focus on those patients most likely to respond to the selection antagonism approach. And we do see a balance, I think, and a good distribution so far in patients enrolled. | intermediate | [
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53d059b10953c67d2ac7881ace678996 | Did you guys see any side effects in healthy volunteer study in your Phase 1 for sickle cell? Like increased white blood cells, which might have gotten missed in the Phase 2 because of its small size. Should we watch out for something mechanistically in the Phase 3 data readout? | The Phase 1 studies in sickle cell disease demonstrated a safe profile -- benign profile for rivipansel. There were some biomarkers of activity that were recognized in healthy volunteer studies, and then further assessed and observed in the early studies in patients, that -- those have been very consistent throughout a program and are also being assessed in the Phase 3 program. There is -- so there's nothing identified as a concern from a safety perspective early in the program that would have any impact on the Phase 3 readout. In terms of the question about white blood cells. There is a variability of white blood cell levels in patients with sickle cell disease. That variability was present in our Phase 1 trial. We did not observe any differences in that, either concerning or otherwise in the Phase 1 trial, and we would expect that to be similar with the remainder of the program. I would add that the safety profile in the Phase 2 was encouraging enough that the FDA did agree that we were able to enroll down to H6 in the Phase 3. And I would add one comment in terms of addressing any potential safety risk for the program level. As with any pivotal program, Pfizer has independent oversight of the program for a safety review. Hence, so a DMC or a DSMB is standard in that process, and Pfizer has followed standard procedure. If there was any concern about safety, we would expect that to have been identified. I think simply proceeding with the trial throughout the trial to closure is a signal that there is no untoward concern observed by the independent oversight group. | direct | [
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ad52cc60a9164ba3b3aec03f08045d34 | Rachel, just on data readouts for the next year or so. Are there any ISTs that we should be looking at and thinking about that could potentially have data over the next 12 months? | We haven't disclosed any ISTs. I will say that we are current -- we are continuing to look for additional opportunities for expanding the use of uproleselan. And we will share those with you as they become -- as they advance, but we've not announced any current ISTs. | direct | [
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48f40ca3ce8100f720319edbc0e9f2b6 | And then, Rachel, just your thoughts on the potential impact from Novartis' crizanlizumab on the uptake of -- or potential use of rivipansel. Any thoughts around that would be appreciated. | Yes. I'll make -- I have two comments about crizanlizumab. One is that, first of all, I think it's worth noting that it is also a selectin antagonist. And actually, the selectins, I believe, are the only target in sickle cell disease, where there are multiple clinical trials that have been randomized and controlled. And that have targeted the selectins and showed clinical benefit that would be their criz trial and our Phase 2. So I think we can feel confident that the target, at least, has been -- the importance of the target in sickle cell disease has been well established. With respect to uptake, we don't expect that there could be -- that there's going to be significant impact on the market for rivipansel. It's possible that there could be a slight reduction in the number of patients who present with crisis as a result of the use of crizanlizumab. But at the same time, we think that there could be an increase in the number of patients seeking care if rivipansel becomes available. And I think if the acute setting is one in which the treatments are more adequate to address the patient's needs, I think the bar goes up for patients on chronic therapy. I'd also add that I think if you look back at the data from crizanlizumab, at hydroxyurea, you'd see that they both had, actually, comparable impact on reduction of crisis. And since hydroxyurea has been on the market, there's been virtually no impact on the presentation of patients to the emergency room for occurrence of -- for hospitalization for vaso-occlusive crisis. So I think that our market is going to remain intact and important for the treatment of crisis. | direct | [
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dc6eff350bfe4686aab86068148832fd | Rachel, I know you said you're coordinating plans around disclosure of the rivipansel data. Just curious when you last communicated with your counterparts, how much is Pfizer and how much of a heads up you're expecting before the results are released? And also, we've been getting a lot of questions from investors about the recent failure of Modus' sevuparin. Curious to hear your take on this, and whether you see there's a risk for rivipansel? | Sure. Sure. Yes, as far as communication with Pfizer, I would say, it's the normal type of communication you'd expect between partners in a situation like this, and we expect to be coordinated. And things are proceeding with an open communication channel, again, as I would say, in the normal course of things as you might expect in a good partnership. As far as sevuparin is concerned, that -- yes, that did recently fail. That was actually a heparin analogue, which importantly targets P-selectin and possibly L-selectin through what we believe is a charged effect, but does not target E-selectin. And I think that's a really important point because rivipansel as a pan-selectin antagonist, of course, targets all three, but in particular, is potent -- is targeting E-selectin. And there's actually a lot in the literature, independent of work conducted by GlycoMimetics. But in the hands of other investigators and through other observations, it's been made clear, in our view, that actually E-selectin is key in the development and the exacerbation of a crisis itself. So sevuparin does not target E and rivipansel does. So we don't think that, that has any read-through to rivipansel and it's actually not unexpected in our view that a compound that fails to target E-selectin would have no impact in crisis. | intermediate | [
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] | B |
eabafe67f6e712f33ff838877124b6d6 | Maybe for Rachel, just curious if it's your expectation that if rivipansel does succeed its Phase 3, if it would receive a genotype-specific label? And if so, how that may impact utilization among some of the other genotype patients are responsible for I think about 20% to 30% of some of the crisis? | Yes. Actually, no, we don't expect there could be any limitation by genotype. | direct | [
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0016b2638eaaa94399f910398422dd24 | OK. And can you just remind us what the current DRG payment is for sickle cell patient in crisis? | Actually, I don't know what the current DRG payment is. As you know, Pfizer is commercializing the drug, and so they're in the process of handling all of the reimbursement issues. I do know they are actively engaged as you'd expect they would be, around all of the issues associated with marketing, launch and reimbursement, etc. | fully_evasive | [
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d10b7582225ccba757504186577f0297 | OK. And then, I guess, you've introduced 1687 to us at ASH. Just curious how far away from the clinic is that asset? And do you actually move that into a Phase 1 prior to a Phase 3 AML readout? | Yes, we could, actually. And in fact, we're continuing to advance that. And we've not given specific guidance as to when we're going to take that into the clinic but we are continuing to work toward that objective. And we do think that could go into the clinic prior to the Phase 3 readout. That actually is -- I didn't mention that in my prepared comments, but we are actually quite excited about that as a potential follow on. It is in our preclinical models, 500 to 1,000 times more potent than uproleselan or than rivipansel with respect to the E-selectin binding. And we've seen activity in a number of different animal models that suggest that that could really be an exciting follow-on product for us. | intermediate | [
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"fully_evasive"
] | B |
a306927ed2cdafc6e115f686bc7f19cc | And then just one last clarification question. So in the Phase 3 AML study, I know you're allowing for consolidation with uproleselan. Is -- are the number of cycles a patient can receive in consolidation capped? Is it 3? | Yes. Consolidation is often given for one, two, sometimes three cycles in standard therapy, especially in patients who are eligible for transplants to get them to the point of readiness for transplant. In the protocol, we do allow up to three cycles of the consolidation. It's not expected that patients would necessarily use all three cycles, and often, patients will go to transplant prior to that. I would add that it is really exciting to us that we have the opportunity to have these extra cycles of consolidation on protocol. So as a reminder, in our Phase 2 study, almost all of the patients were treated with only one cycle of therapy, with uproleselan. And we were very encouraged by the results that we saw in that trial. So we think that the opportunity for multiple cycles continuing on protocol could potentially add to the differentiation between the treatment and the placebo group. So we're actually quite excited about that aspect of the study design. | direct | [
"direct",
"intermediate",
"fully_evasive"
] | A |
4f51fc77a1ebd5ca1f85564e376c73d9 | Just on the rivipansel Phase 3, Rachel. How much data are we going to expect to receive from the top-line press release that -- when Pfizer announces that data? | So I think you can expect to see something fairly similar to what companies typically do in the situation, which would be some kind of meaningful information around the top line and some comment that further details would be available at a scientific meeting or in a publication. So I think you can expect something fairly typical in that regard. | intermediate | [
"direct",
"intermediate",
"fully_evasive"
] | B |
cffa8fe1af14e9f05a3341036772be18 | Got it. And then, I guess, just on the Phase 3 analysis. Is it going to be based on ITT or is there just going to be a modified ITT on the primary endpoint? | So I can't describe right now what exactly will be disclosed initially. And I don't know if Helen can say more about that, but we're going to -- I think the initial disclosure would be fairly high level. Yes, and I don't think we can answer that specifically, but I could say that, generally, a pivotal trial would be based on an ITT analysis. | fully_evasive | [
"direct",
"intermediate",
"fully_evasive"
] | C |
0715f1483197976c412ab010f8fdd776 | Got it. And then, on 1359, what type of patients are you enrolling in terms of breast cancer study? Can you just give us -- provide more detail on that trial? | So that study is assessing for proof of mechanism. And for pharmacodynamic markers, for that, we are enrolling -- we'll be enrolling patients with breast cancer and with bone metastasis -- stable bone metastasis, in order to assess the impact of antagonism of E-selectin and CXCR4 on the disease, including on the bony metastases. We think that, that is a particularly important aspect of the potential use for GMI-1359. And well, so pharmacodynamic data around effect on bony metastases, including things like the ability to detect and perhaps increase circulating tumor cell counts under the -- well, in the setting of therapy. And also assessing other markers of disruptions of the bony metastatic process. We'll then be looking for things like that. We also know that, that mechanism is one that can affect hematopoietic stem cells, and we'd be looking for markers of that. It might also inform other aspects of program later on. | direct | [
"direct",
"intermediate",
"fully_evasive"
] | A |
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