I'm Scott Henry, Healthcare Analyst at Alliance Global Partners. Our next fireside chat is with Journey Medical, ticker DERM, with a market cap of approximately $175 million. Journey Medical is a dermatology company with on-market products and an emerging pipeline. We cover the company here at AGP with a buy rating and a price target of $16 a share. Currently trades around $6.25. Presenting for the company is Chief Executive Officer, Claude Maraoui. Claude, would you like to take a few minutes to tell our audience a bit about yourself and Journey Medical? Thank you again for presenting here today.
Absolutely. Hello, Scott, and thank you to A.G.P. for having me here today. My name's Claude Maraoui, and I'm the President, CEO of the company. Journey Medical is a small emerging growth company. We are in dermatology 100%. We started a little bit over 10 years ago and our strategy in terms of growth and building a company from the ground floor is getting a good, strong portfolio of products. We've been able to do that by a business development strategy of really looking at FDA already approved products and either acquiring them or licensing them, and we've done that. We have now eight prescription products in our portfolio, and most notably, Scott, we just, a little over a year ago, launched EMROSI, which is the only product that we really took through the FDA pathway. We did phase III clinical trials and got that approved.
The one-year anniversary just happened. I'm glad to say we're off to a very strong start with EMROSI. It's a minocycline modified-release formulation, and it's 40 mg. It's 25% immediate release, 75% delayed release. We call it modified minocycline, and it's been working astoundingly well, and I could get into some of our growth numbers, and other parameters. We have a company now that has 35 sales representatives across the country. We have over 60 full-time employees. We contract manufacture, and we are really focused in the dermatology space, and we want to continue to grow in what we believe is a fantastic market.
Okay, great. Thank you, Claude. One of the things that excites us about Journey Medical is you have this combination of a company that is cashflow neutral at this point and has a new product launch in EMROSI, gives you the cashflow neutrality to cover the downside, gives you the product launch to bring about the upsides. We think that's an ideal company for microcap investors, small cap investors to look at. Certainly glad to have you here today. Before we get into EMROSI, and we will talk about that, let's talk a little bit about the background of Journey Medical and yourself. I recall, I think you came from Medicis. If you could just kind of give us a little of that and how you know this sector, and how you're positioned in the market, with your current dermatology portfolio.
Sure, yeah. I actually spent a lot of time at Medicis, and it was a dermatology company. I spent about 22 years there. Started out as a sales representative, then a frontline manager, key account person, and then moved into vice president of sales as well as marketing. I really learned the landscape, understood the dermatology needs, and really got to know major key opinion leaders. When we started Journey Medical, we didn't have any technology, we didn't have any particular products in mind, but we knew the customers, and I knew the people at Journey. When Journey was acquired for $2.6 billion, that's when I started the company, and I brought on people from Medicis, with a strong legacy from Medicis that I knew, that I trusted, that have great talent, and we put together the organization and the commercial platform allowing us to start selling commercially.
We've been doing that now for approximately 10 years, Scott. We have products, like I mentioned, EMROSI, but we have Qbrexza, Accutane, AMZEEQ, ZILXI, all in the three drug disease states of rosacea, of acne, as well as hyperhidrosis. We've really focused in that area, and we continue to search for other products in terms of development stage as well as commercial products already approved. The markets are all large. They're well over $1 billion in each disease state. To make us successful, we just want to try to become the leaders in each of those markets with our portfolio.
Okay, great. I used to cover Medicis years ago, certainly very well respected and dominant within the dermatology sector. Let's get right into it about EMROSI. I believe it launched last April. Prescription trends have quickly risen. Obviously some chop along the way, a very good trend upwards. Can you talk about, has that launch, has it met your expectations? Is it ahead of your expectations? How do you think about it relative to where we were a year ago?
Yeah, I think as a company and our most important growth driver, EMROSI, we launched it very strongly right out of the gates. In terms of market acceptance, our proposition value with dermatologists, our phase III clinical trials have just been phenomenal. We've shown superiority in both our primary endpoints as well as our five secondary endpoints. With that great scientific background, the message is very clear. We work in less than half the time that it takes the, what used to be the gold standard, Oracea, we work in half the time, and we work in as little as two weeks. That part is really playing out nicely. In terms of numbers, in the first year, first nine months, we did 52,000 prescriptions, over that a little bit, and now we are at 100,000 prescriptions already with this brand.
Last year, we did approximately $15 million in revenue in just a short three-quarter span. We believe we're going to continue to grow that and really take EMROSI as becoming one of the leading dermatology brands in dermatology. We like where we're at. Just to give you an idea, we ended the year with 3,200 prescribers that have tried EMROSI, and we just came out with our Q1 earnings last week. We're well over 3,700 HCPs now that are utilizing EMROSI. Those numbers really show good trajectory and good utilization. The patient experience with this brand is really giving us momentum, and when that feedback comes back to the dermatologist or the PAs, that reinforces what we're doing out there. I'd also like to tell you, Scott, that there really isn't anybody else, no other company right now that's making a play in the rosacea sector.
Definitely not on the oral side, really not even on the topical side. There's no other companies going against our messaging or anything like that. Again, I think that gives us greater momentum as we go.
Okay. That's great, Claude. Clearly, product attributes are very important to a drug launch. The other thing people talk a lot about is reimbursement. How easy is it for the patient to get paid? Could you give us an update on the reimbursement coverage for EMROSI?
Sure. Dermatology brands, if you take a look over the last four or five years, all the different launches, now including EMROSI here in the last year, we're coming off to a very good start in prescription numbers and HCP prescribers, and we want to continue with that demand and continue to increase it. We're not going to have coverage right from the beginning. Coverage takes time. It'll take anywhere between 18-24 months to get fully optimized. What we have, Scott, is a great bridging program, a great co-pay bridging program. We want to have the path of least resistance for physicians to prescribe EMROSI, for patients to get EMROSI.
Right now, when you take a look at it, we signed the three largest GPOs in the first 12 months that really control all of the U.S., giving us the ability and the framework to really work with the downstream healthcare plans to get on formulary. Right now, we're about 35% or so getting covered. For every three to four patients out of 10, they're getting covered on EMROSI. The other six are being taken care of through our bridging program. As we continue to grow scripts, and as now the one-year mark is over, we have a lot of shots on goal that are happening, and our market access team's strategy is very sound. We expect and believe that we will continue to pick up more and more coverage with the regional plans as well as the health plans.
As the year progresses, less dependency on our bridging co-pay program and more profitable reimbursed scripts from the managed care. It's a time game, it's a patience game, and I think we've seen some good rise in our ASP from, let's say, Q4 to Q1, and we expect that to continue as the year progresses.
Okay, great. A couple follow-up questions there. I think you mentioned that around 3.5 patients out of 10 are getting covered right now, and the others you're getting through your programs. Where do you think you can get that number to? Like at peak, what percent of the patients do you believe could get covered?
Yeah. I mean, the easy answer and the best answer I could think of is 100%, but that is just not really realistic in the system that we have. We believe we can get up to 60%-75% in terms of coverage, which really would be right in line with expectations for us. We can grow that even further, but again, that's going to take further time, further negotiations.
Okay. It is an upside lever that could double from where it is, so that's helpful. The other question is, I know you mentioned the group purchasing organizations, the GPOs, and you added the third largest that now cover 85% of covered lives. I believe that third one came in in April, perhaps mid-April. When you sign that GPO, how long does it take from the signing of the documents to actually seeing the benefits of that agreement? Is there a lag? How does that play out?
Just remember that there's many plans that block products for at least one year, and allowing us to reach our one year of launch opens up more doors for us. Opening this third GPO, how long does that take after specifically? There's going to be different time points, but I think from quarter to quarter, you'll see natural increases, but all of that really takes time. It could be anywhere from six months to one year and even further out than that. There's gradual increases. If we're able to be successful and negotiate good deals on national formulary plans, which we believe we're going to get to, that's when doors really open up for us, Scott.
Okay. When you have such a material key new drug launch at a small company, investors are really at a heightened interest level for any information, any metrics to track this launch. We put out the EMROSI tracker every week to follow total prescriptions. Are there any other key metrics that investors should focus on to get an idea of how it's progressing and the potential, when we think about that launch curve and the slope of that line?
Yeah, I'm glad that you do that tracker. I think it's showing really some good growth here as we've entered Q2. We've got momentum there. Outside of total prescriptions, I think you really need to look at HCP prescribers. As long as we're gaining more prescribers, I think that's certainly a good metric to look at. Also, when you think of rosacea, this is a chronic condition, and there's 17 million patients that suffer from rosacea. As we get new patients on it, they're going to get the benefits of EMROSI, they're going to get rosacea under control, but they will eventually, because it's chronic, have a flare up or have another episode. They're going to have to go back to it. It could be six months from when they got better to, let's say, a year. Those patients are going to come back.
When they come back, I think there's going to be just a snowball effect here of how we can really start to see the prescription total growth for the year 2026 and 2027, for example. We're already starting to see that.
Okay. A lot of good things going on with EMROSI. Now as we kind of spread the umbrella out over more of the company, perhaps including EMROSI, perhaps focusing on the other products, you mentioned that you're adding about five to six sales reps in the coming months. Can you talk about what triggered that decision to hire more reps and how that could impact revenues going forward? What kind of timeline that should take?
Yeah. We did about $61 million in revenue last year, last year, in 2025, we had 35 sales reps. It is about $1.7 million, $1.8 million a representative. We waited, we did not hire any additional representatives in 2025. We are hiring here for the second half of 2026. One of the reasons is we wanted better managed care coverage. We wanted to get coverage where there is more profitable scripts to take advantage of bringing on more salespeople. We believe the second half we will start to see that is why we have waited until this particular time.
I think our reasoning is very sound, very rational, and we expect these new territories, which will be in expansion territories, as well as in some other key territories that we're going to split to get better frequency because we're seeing really tremendous uptake with the brand, as well as our other products, QBREXZA and Accutane, for example. We expect a lot out of these new territories. As far as SG&A and what they're going to bring in in terms of expense, we have that number in our budget. We expect these reps to obviously do $1 million+ moving forward as they come in. Expenses will certainly be a lot lower than the top-line revenue results.
Okay, great. When I talk to a lot of small cap companies and almost to a company, they're always looking to increase scale so that they can leverage those fixed costs and drive more margin, more profit to the company. Can you talk to where you are in that process of margin expansion? Looks like gross margins continue to increase, do you expect to get more to increasing net margins as you start to achieve these higher revenue numbers?
Yeah. We're really proud of what's happening with the gross margin. It continues to increase. When we IPO'd about four years ago or so, we were in the mid-50s in gross margin percentage. Low to mid-50s. Now we're hovering now into the high 60s, and we expect the gross margin to continue to grow, especially as we start to leverage and continue to see EMROSI, which is a low-cost product for us to become more of a weight in the whole entire portfolio. Same thing with better margins with a product like QBREXZA as well.
Okay. We are starting to run towards the end of our allotted time. A couple of the kind of bigger picture questions that I think help investors think about where the company is going. Can you talk about your business development strategy? Are you comfortable with the assets you have? Most specialty pharma companies are either rolling up assets or they're being rolled up. How do you think about that?
Yeah. I think it's really important, the business development on our end here. Having now EMROSI gives us a great patent life all the way through 2039, so we've got a long runway with that. In Qbrexza, we're going all the way through about the middle of 2030. The benefits of what Accutane's been able to do for us because it has a REMS program, really acts and behaves like a branded product. With that all being said, we continue to be very aggressive and very opportunistic, looking at products that are late-stage assets going into phase III, for example. We're also looking at products that aren't necessarily the focus of other companies that already are FDA approved to bring and acquire those or license those into the company. It's real important that we do that.
Right now, we're good to go for many years with our current portfolio, but at the same time, we want to continue to feed the engine of growth, if you will, by looking at other products.
Okay. We're down to the final two questions, which are the same two I ask almost every company.
Yeah.
We like to end with the balance sheet. Can you talk about your current cash balance and how comfortable you are with the runway you have to grow and develop the business?
Yeah. Look, we're looking very healthy. We closed out 2025 with approximately $24 million in cash. We closed out Q1 here with about $27 million. I think we're sitting in a good position there. Like you mentioned earlier, our gross margins continue to increase and are becoming more solid on a consistent basis. Our top-line revenue should be growing nicely as well. Again, $61 million last year. This year, we're going to get the benefit of EMROSI for four full quarters, for example. We have two additional potential products that we'll be launching in the second half of 2026. We certainly will be doing one. Hopefully, we'll have two additional ones. That's additional incremental value. Our base business is firm, it's solid. All indicators look good. Some good growth happening. I think the financials, we're liquid, we're in a good position.
All right, Claude. I think I hear the music playing. I believe we're out of time. The final question was going to be catalysts. You just hit on a lot of that. As well, the prescriptions, the growth of EMROSI is certainly going to drive the stock in the next 6 - 12 months. Claude, thank you for participating. We really look forward to watching the company grow over the coming years.
Great. My pleasure. Thank you, Scott. Appreciate the time.