Hey, everybody. I'm Hardik Parikh at JPMorgan, covering large-cap pharmaceuticals. I am pleased to have Frank Lee here, CEO of Pacira. He's going to start off with a presentation, and then we'll end up doing a little Q&A afterwards. Thank you.
All right. Thank you, Hardik, for the invitation. Good morning, all here at JPMorgan and those of you following us online, so let me just kick this off with some forward-looking statements and start out with a quick overview of Pacira. You know, our mission is to deliver innovative, non-opioid pain management therapies to transform lives, and we do that by following some simple guiding principles, like keeping the patient at the center of following the science and treating our people well. 10+ years of leadership in this space. Last year, we reported, actually early this year for last year, unaudited sales of $726 million, 800+ employees that are highly engaged around our mission, and to date, 18 million-plus patients that we've helped.
Three products that are in line, in market, in our portfolio: EXPAREL is our flagship product in nerve block, ZILRETTA, a long-acting corticosteroid for osteoarthritis pain, and iovera, a medical device that uses cryoneurolysis to deliver pain management solutions. And we're transforming lives, lives like Leah, a Division I soccer player who injured herself, needed surgery, and because of her family's issues with opioid abuse, wanted to make sure she had a non-opioid solution. And she got it and really recovered well. Folks like Dr. Beshai, who is an orthopedic surgeon who has used EXPAREL in so many different cases and actually utilized it for his own surgery, and again, recovered well with little to no opioids. So many stories about how we're helping patients and transforming their lives and helping with their recovery with little to no opioids.
So I sat here or stood here about a year ago, and so much has changed. And the headline here is that the next chapter of growth is really coming into focus for Pacira. So if I take you back to January of 2025, where were we? Well, we were more near-term focused, a narrow focus on pain, slow top-line growth, inconsistent margins with suboptimal inventory levels, uncertain EXPAREL runway. Recall at the time we didn't have clarity on the settlement on EXPAREL, limited pipeline and partnerships, and finally, volatile stock price performance. So where are we now? 5x30 strategy with the broader focus on musculoskeletal pain and adjacencies. We built a powerhouse commercial medical market access organization that is now delivering growth, and we'll talk about here shortly. We reached a volume-limited settlement with the first filer, Fresenius and Hengrui, that gives us visibility out to 2039.
We have a very strong IP estate, a very different place than we were with the first Paragraph IV filer, and that includes 21 patents, two different families to defend against any future Paragraph IV filers. More robust top-line growth and the highest historical margins that we've had in this company. Our manufacturing team has done a tremendous job of improving our manufacturing efficiency and robustness of that process. Since January, between the period of January 2nd and December 28th, we saw a 40+ % increase in our stock price. We've got an engaged group of people who are very much committed to this mission of transforming lives. Importantly, this year, it's not just about our core business that's in line, but this year we're entering a period that's data-rich from a pipeline perspective. So I want to talk a little bit about that.
We've got three data catalysts coming up that'll be very important in addition to the in-line sales growth. 5x30. We unveiled 5x30 a year ago at this meeting, and what does it say? What are the five things that we want to accomplish by year 2030? First and most importantly, we want to help more than three million patients by year 2030. In that year, and last year, we ended the year helping 2.5 million patients. We also want to achieve a double-digit top-line growth rate, and we'll talk about how we're doing there. Profitability, five-point expansion in margin. We're well on our way based on our performance. Pipeline, adding five new programs into the pipeline, and we've made very good progress there.
Finally, partnerships, five partnerships, because we know that the things that we want to get accomplished, there are places in the world, parts of development, et cetera, et cetera, that are better done with partners than by ourselves. Here's how we've done. Going back to number one, our goal of three million, we're at 2.5. We ended last year with $726 million unaudited sales. Profitability, we guided to 80%-82% margin. We'll have the final results in February when we provide guidance, but you can see the baseline is at 72%, I'm sorry, 76%, sorry. Pipeline, PCRX-201, our local gene therapy for the masses. This is very different than systemic gene therapy for rare populations. I'll talk more about why this is going to be very, very important and potentially transformative for patients here shortly.
We in-licensed PCRX-2002, previously called AmacaThera 143, and this is going to be complementary to our flagship product, EXPAREL. It's going to be an easy-to-use, longer-lasting solution that's instilled into the surgical site as opposed to a nerve block. Partnerships. We signed a very important partnership with Johnson & Johnson Medical last year to help support the sale process for ZILRETTA, and what that effectively does is it triples our reach, so it triples the number of physicians that we can reach with ZILRETTA. Last year, they were trained, and this year they're going to hit the ground running. Recently, a couple of days ago, we announced an important partnership with LG Chem. And for those of you that don't know LG Chem, they're a major player in Asia-Pacific. They are a leader in orthopedic and pain management solutions.
They have revenues over $1 billion, and they're a very important organization in the Asia-Pacific region. They'll start selling EXPAREL. They have commercial rights to EXPAREL in that region, and they are also considering selling ZILRETTA in that region as well. So a very important partnership. You can see here that we've partnered with industry-leading companies, which I feel very, very good about. Okay? Some other items that we haven't touched on on 5x30. Number one, down at the bottom here, you can see that we acquired a company called GQ Bio. And GQ Bio is a company that has the platform, the HCAd platform that is the basis for PCRX-201. So we felt very good about PCRX-201 and thought, you know what, the platform's going to be very important.
And in fact, at the third-quarter earnings call, we reported that we have started three preclinical programs using that platform, again, locally delivered HCAd, and three different areas. Number one, dry eye. Number two, degenerative disc disease. And number three, a canine program for IL-1Ra . We've also had a very disciplined approach to capital deployment. So in addition to investing in our commercial medical market access infrastructure, we also bought back $150 million worth of stock, which is quite substantial. We're now down to 41 million shares of outstanding stock. And finally, I mentioned it before, we solidified our EXPAREL runway by not only settling with Fresenius in a volume-limited way, which is very important, that gives us visibility out to 2039, but also now we're up to 21 patents. When the first filer filed, we had one patent.
We had 21 across two different families, and that first patent was also re-examined by the USPTO office. So quite the year for the team, very proud of the team. Every part of this organization contributed to our progress this year. And what I'd like to say is, I don't know if you believe in zodiac signs or not, but this year, I believe, is the year of Pacira. And specifically, if you follow this, it's a year of the Fire Horse. You know what that means is you've got a lot of energy, you're going to make some bold moves and make some things happen. So this is what we're going to do. Year of Pacira, look for the firehorse T-shirts. I mentioned LG Chem, tremendous partner, long-standing leadership and expertise in orthopedics and pain.
They'll represent us in the first wave in South Korea and Thailand, and you can see the second wave of countries here. These are meaningful markets, and in terms of what it means to Pacira, outside of having a very strong partner, is we'll get an upfront payment, we'll benefit from a transfer price, and we will get tiered royalties going forward, so we've talked a lot about no pain. And as you might recall, NOPAIN was something that this company championed for seven years to get passed, and it was passed this time last year, and so what are some insights one year into no pain? What are some insights? First is we have engaged a robust and broad group of stakeholders to change behavior. That's what it takes, so no pain was an initial catalyst, which is important.
And as you might recall, NOPAIN provides separate reimbursement for 11 products, EXPAREL included, as well as iovera, at ASP plus 6 for Medicare patients in the outpatient setting. So that's a good spark, but it's not sufficient. What we have to do is pull that through by making sure that commercial payers adopt. Commercial payers adopt so that it becomes the majority of patients that are covered by this kind of reimbursement, not the minority. Then once that happens, we've got to make sure that product acquisition is easy, effective, and that incentives are aligned. Read into that GPOs. Then there's a process of really educating the stakeholders involved that, hey, you know what, you can utilize this product like you want to for the benefit of patients. So it's never been about the product. It's always been about the financial barriers, and we're knocking those things down.
Okay? So what does that mean? That means we're going to have a steady cadence of growth going forward on EXPAREL. It doesn't mean we're going to have an explosive cadence of growth on EXPAREL. And I think we've demonstrated that. You take a look at our second half, and remember this time last year, I said, hey, it's going to be the second half of the year before we see the growth starting to happen. And in fact, that did, and we'll get into some of that here shortly. Some important results. We recently surveyed almost 750 stakeholders, physicians, pharmacy directors, et cetera. And we've got a long survey here, a lot of detailed results, but I want to share two important highlights. First is that 82% view no pain as important for advancing non-opioid stewardship. And about half have said they've taken action to a certain extent.
What does that mean? That means that they made some changes to the protocols. That means adding some products to the formulary. That means changing prescribing patterns. So they've taken some action. So we're making headway, but there's more work to do. But this next slide, when I first saw it, really made me pause, I have to tell you. 92% believe no pain contributes to reducing opioid prescribing in the U.S. And when you take a deeper look into that, you can see that they believe, this is reported data now, so we're going to confirm it with actual claims data, that before surgery, during surgery, and at discharge, they're using less opioids. They're using less opioids. So we're making a difference. If you think about what was behind the no pain legislation, fundamentally, we said, hey, we've got an opioid crisis out there.
Part of what's contributing to it are these surgeries where patients are being prescribed opioids when they don't need to be prescribed opioids. There are other innovative solutions like EXPAREL and the other 11 products that can help. And we're seeing the difference. Okay? We're seeing the difference. So I really want to thank not only our stakeholders out there, healthcare professionals and payers, but our team for making this happen. Again, there's more work to do. This is reported data. We're going to validate it with claims data, but we're on the right track. Okay? So let's talk more detail. I talked about no pain as being important, initial spark and a catalyst, but we've got to really pull that through with commercial coverage.
So we set out last year to say, hey, can we get to 100 million lives covered total that's CMS and commercial by end of the year? We actually exceeded that. We ended the year at 102 million covered lives, which is really good for a product that's been out there a very long time to change payer mindsets. And we're starting to get to the tipping point in these top five states where the majority of patients are being covered by NOPAIN-like policies as opposed to the minority, which is very important in driving utilization change. We also said, hey, where is the early uptake happening and where is there more work to do? Early uptake took place in the ASCs and the smaller hospitals, as you can see here on the left. In the bigger hospitals, it takes a little bit more time.
There's a lot more stakeholders to educate and pull through. In terms of product acquisition now, we've got over 90% of our business that's contracted. And as you can see here, all of this is starting to make a difference because when you look at 2024 growth rates and you look at 2025 year-over-year growth rates, you see a big difference. You see that in 2025, we started out at a baseline of about 3% in terms of volume growth. And as we talked about, second half is going to be very important, and it was. And we steadily saw an increase in year-over-year growth. And you can see this is meaningful. So when I think about top-line growth, it first starts with volume growth, and we're starting to see that. In addition, the question is, how do we further expand market access?
One of the keys to that is not only driving the idea of no pain, but also driving health economics and outcomes data because sometimes the clinical data is not sufficient to convince stakeholders that they should, in fact, cover like a no pain policy. What are we doing here? We have the largest database of its kind. This is a patient registry. We're following the patient through the patient journey in osteoarthritis, over 3,100 patients, and a number of other health economic studies that you're going to see being published throughout the course of this year and next year. This provides great information for not only thinking about wider access, but in some cases, thinking about how do we think about shaping labels. Okay? It provides tremendous insight along that patient journey as well for other products and initiatives that we think about.
I mentioned earlier that this year is differentiated by the fact that we're data-rich from a pipeline perspective, and I want to call out three. Number one, ZILRETTA, OA of the shoulder. We're going to have that interim readout. That's a registrational study. iovera Spasticity will have that readout first half of this year. And that's important because, as you know, spasticity is largely treated by toxins right now. You can only use so much of that. So that's very important. And finally, PCRX-201, part A of the Phase II study will read out at the end of this year. And I'll go into detail on some of these. iovera Spasticity, you can see here, the clinical trial design. Primary endpoint here is change from baseline in the MAS score. And this one, as you know, with iovera, the effect is immediate.
So we look forward to seeing the interim analysis and the final results, which will happen first half of this year. PCRX-201, as I mentioned earlier, this is gene therapy for the masses, not gene therapy for the few. This is gene therapy for the masses, locally administered. As you might recall, the phase one data of 72 patients followed for three years showed very good efficacy and a very good safety profile. And so what's different here? This one now has a control group. You can see three different groups. And the control group is getting an active control. So that's a corticosteroid. And the other two groups are two different doses of PCRX-201 in addition to the steroids, so 10 to the 10 and 10 to the 11 doses. And this will read out at the end of this year, 52-week endpoint. Primary endpoint being safety.
This is a phase two study. We will certainly get some trends in terms of efficacy on the WOMAC and KOOS. Okay? Now, in the meantime, we're working very quickly to stand up a commercially viable manufacturing process, and as you know, in cell and gene therapies, it's very important, and so we will have that process up and running, so much so that part B of the study that will include twice the number of patients in a same design will kick off and start enrolling patients mid this year. Okay? And so just to remind you, from a mechanism of action perspective, this is de-risked in a lot of ways. As you may well know, this goes after IL-1. Blocking IL-1 is important in the inflammation cascade. There's already a product approved to block IL-1. It's called anakinra.
All we're doing here with this locally administered gene therapy is instructing the cells to produce IL-1RA receptor antagonist when there's inflammation. It doesn't integrate into the genome. It stays in the knee capsule. So this is de-risked from an MOA standpoint, de-risked from a local administration standpoint. And so we look forward to the results. In addition to PCRX-201, I mentioned earlier that we acquired a product from AmacaThera. And this is a product that's going to be complementary to EXPAREL. So you might recall EXPAREL is a nerve block, so it prevents pain. This one is not a nerve block. It's actually instilled into the surgical site. And so it's differentiated by both ease of use and also durability. So in healthy volunteers, this shows an effect out to 14 days. So quite simply, what is it? It's ropivacaine. So it's not bupivacaine.
It's ropivacaine with two different polymers that, once instilled and it gets to body temperature, it turns into a gel and it slowly releases ropivacaine over the course of 14 days. So again, this could be a very good complement to EXPAREL for situations where there may not be someone who can administer a block or a particular surgical situation that requires this kind of approach. Okay. So let's talk about expanding our leadership in musculoskeletal pain and adjacencies. Right now, if you take a look at our business, we've got an acute care business that is EXPAREL. We live in the hospital, community hospitals, ASCs. And we also have a musculoskeletal health business. So this is out in the orthopedic offices, sports medicine, physiatry, rheumatology. And so what I'd love to see over time is that we sort of balance these out a bit.
So as we think about where we deploy capital going forward, we've certainly invested in the commercial medical market access infrastructure, and we'd expect that to stabilize so we can leverage that over time. We've bought back some stock, and that's been important, and we'll continue to monitor that. But going forward, I think building this portfolio, some things that can be bolt-on in the acute care setting, a bolt-on in musculoskeletal health, and also some important pipeline additions to where the mechanism of action has been de-risked, and it's actually in phase II or, let's say, later. Okay? So let me wrap up with this. Let me wrap up with this. I want to say that a year, the team has done a phenomenal job of getting us here. What a year. What a difference a year makes.
And like I said, I believe this is a year of Pacira. And I noted the differences between January of last year and January of this year. And I'm excited. I'm excited by the momentum that we're generating in our core business. We focused on EXPAREL, and we were delivering on EXPAREL in terms of growth. And we'll continue to focus on ZILRETTA and iovera. We prioritized EXPAREL over those two products. So those two products did have some disruption this past year, but we're going to get some footing on ZILRETTA and iovera going forward. And this year now, we're going to get some pipeline reads, and very important pipeline reads.
And so that, combined with all the other things that we're doing around our manufacturing efficiencies and other areas, really contributes to, I think, an opportunity here with Pacira, as I mentioned, that the next chapter of growth is really coming into focus. So with that, let me close, and thanks for your attention, and we'll go to Q&A. Yeah? All right. Thanks, guys.
All right. So I know you've covered our, I'll start off with some high-level ones, but I know you covered this in your presentation. But just looking back at 2025, I want to know what you thought were the biggest accomplishments for Pacira, and then what are your biggest priorities kind of looking into 2026?
Yeah. Well, thanks for that, Hardik. I have to tell you, I'm very proud of the team and the organization that we've developed here. It shows up in our engagement surveys, and it's always about people overachieving, and they're doing that across the company. Now, that said, very proud that we're able to stand up a powerhouse commercial medical market access organization that showed up through the number of covered lives, that showed up to volume growth, that showed up to signing GPO contracts, showed up in so many ways. Very proud of that. And now we can leverage it, add some additional products going forward. Very proud. Second is the progress that we've made in our pipeline. So bringing products in as well as advancing the products that we have. Meaningful progress.
So bringing in AmacaThera, now PCRX-2002, and advancing PCRX-201, our local gene therapy, not only in phase III, but also getting our manufacturing processes up and running. And finally, take a look at what we've done around partnerships. So I'm a big believer that A's do business with A's. And J&J is a tremendous partner, and so is LG Chem. And so those are some of the things. And I step back, and when we talked about 5x30 and we rolled it out last year at this meeting, I believe there was a very strong positive response to that. And you can see by the talk that I just gave that we've made meaningful progress. And that progress is made by a really talented group of people who are super engaged about our mission.
All of this is adding up to us making a difference in how pain is managed and the decrease in opioid utilization.
Right. So in the last kind of year or so, the stock's been kind of in that tight range in the mid-20s. What do you think kind of makes it kind of come out of that range? What do you think people want to see? What do you want to see that would kind of boost that stock price?
Good question, Hardik. I think it's two parts. One is I think there was a lot of uncertainty about what kind of impact NOPAIN would have. Is it a spark? Is it a wildfire? Is it something in between? And we know that from our experience now, it takes a lot of effort to drive behavior change, but it's worth it. And we're starting to see the results. So I think that number one, we've got to demonstrate that we can continue this growth momentum. And when we do, I believe we'll get some credit for that. Okay? Number two, as I mentioned, for the first time now, we're in a data-rich period. We've got spasticity reading out for iovera. We've got OA of the shoulder reading out for ZILRETTA, which could be the first to be labeled that way.
And importantly now, we've got PCRX-201, which could be truly transformational for patients. And as you know, we've done a lot of market research. The current view is that current treatments help patients for about three, maybe six months. But if we can get patients to a year, that's considered transformational. And certainly, we're encouraged by the Phase I results, and we'll see what the Phase II part A delivers for us. So I think it's a combination of two things. One is let's continue that momentum to drive growth, particularly on EXPAREL. And that's where we focused our efforts in some ways, causing some disruption to ZILRETTA and iovera. And secondly, let's start to flip over some data cards that'll be important for our future.
Okay. And you talked about the 201 asset. I know you have the phase II going on right now, but when you think about longer-term potential, what do you think could be kind of additional indications or kind of the broader use of 201?
That's a great question. So 201's exciting because fundamentally, you think about this and it makes sense. Hey, if you want to minimize safety impact and have a safety profile that's amenable to patients, local is good because we know the product stays there. If you want to minimize clinical risk, you go after pathways that are validated. And this one's IL-1. We're blocking IL-1. It's been validated. There's a product approved. So I think we're on the right track here. And OA is a huge market with huge unmet need. I mean, just OA of the knee alone is 14 million patients, never mind the other joints. And as you know, current products have been out there for a very long time. In fact, ZILRETTA was the last product approved in the space a very long time ago. And so we're on the right track.
Some of the other areas that we think about would be, gosh, could this be redosed? If we get patients out to a year, could this be redosed in the index knee? And so what would give us at least some insight into whether that's possible? When we took a careful look at our phase I data, it turns out that the level of initial baseline neutralizing antibodies did not make a difference in terms of safety nor efficacy. So that gives us at least a hint that that's possible. We also think about, what about the other joints? Most people, if they have OA in one knee, they'll have it in the other knee. And so if they have it in the other knee, they might have it in the hand or the shoulder. And so we think about that in terms of development plan.
But the first step is let's really investigate this for OA of the knee, and then we'll expand it into, let's say, repeat dosing in other joints. And of course, this platform, as I mentioned, is an interesting platform because it's a high-capacity platform, 30,000 base pairs. And so as you know, AAVs aren't as big as that, right? So we can accommodate large genes. We can accommodate multiple small genes. And this idea of local delivery minimizes not only untoward safety events, but also helps with cost of goods. And so this will be able to be market-priced as opposed to read into it. Typical gene therapies might be the really big numbers that we're all aware of.
So last year, first year of no pain, you were able to kind of achieve good acceleration in EXPAREL growth. You mentioned kind of challenges with kind of some pockets where being bigger hospital chains and what do you see as kind of the biggest variables for 2026, one way or the other, when you kind of look at it more granular level?
Yeah. That's a good question. So in a launch year, sometimes you have these one-time events that you're not quite sure exactly when they're going to hit, right? And so we've gone through most of that already now. If you think about when are certain payers going to come online, okay? When are certain GPOs going to be signed? So those are some questions that were up in the air at the start of the year. And now we're largely through a lot of that. So of course, we'll continue to build on the momentum we've generated from a payer standpoint and drive that. And we're going to anniversary the third and final GPO mid this year. So that's going to be important, right?
And so I think we're set up for a good year going forward, recognizing that, look, quarter three was about 9% volume growth, quarter four was 7% volume growth. So we could debate on could it have been higher or lower, but I want to come back to in a launch year, you have some timing events that sometimes you can't predict exactly. And of course, we're trying to change behavior of a product that's been out there for over a decade, right? And so kudos to the team. And in my experience, there haven't been very many products mid to late life cycle that have been able to go back to growth again. If you know of one, let me know. And EXPAREL will be the first.
You talked about being on the. Sorry.
Can you talk maybe about ways to make the procedure easier for the physician, either administration, less shots, easier shots, just other ways to either get surgeons to do more or to bring new surgeons on?
You're talking about EXPAREL?
Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. Education is super important, both for anesthesiologists who oftentimes are doing the blocks and also on certain occasions for surgeons. What we're doing there, we have a very talented group of professional education folks that can educate on site at our Tampa facility, educational facility, or one of our other facilities. And we also send out clinical educators to help with that. So it's not an insignificant effort, but it's an important one. In addition, we're engaging early on with fellows so that they're very much apprised of how to do these kinds of blocks. So it's really down to education, and we spend a lot of time and effort around that.
Just ways to make it faster or easier to do?
Faster?
Just administration. Is that a challenge for some physicians?
We haven't heard that. No. We haven't heard that. It's really about the technique and making sure one's comfortable with the technique.
Great. So you mentioned about the product's been in the market for over a decade now, right? So is there a process of having to kind of re-educate? And you talked about starting with fellows, getting them early. Is there a process of having to re-educate the broader community on the benefits of EXPAREL and using it and how to kind of get the best out of it?
Yeah. So it's a good question. I think there are some who've always believed in EXPAREL. And as I mentioned earlier, there's been a financial barrier that, for example, perhaps it wasn't supported by the pharmacy or other leaders in that institution. And so we're knocking down those barriers in the ways that we just talked about with broader payer access, with better acquisition price that's performance-driven, and better education. So we're doing that. For some, they needed additional data to convince themselves. And so that's why we believe in investing in iGOR, this patient registry, which is a super high quality, as well as doing other health economic analysis to show that there are benefits not only financially, but there are also other benefits that aren't quite captured by clinical studies in terms of how they sleep, their mood.
There's a lot of things there that are important to patients that often are not captured by clinical studies, but are important in clinical decision-making. So we've done that. And we've also started to educate patients in a very targeted way to say, "Hey, there are opioid-sparing and opioid-free options that you should ask your physician about." Whether you're having a surgery for your knee or other parts where you're having third molar surgery, etc., ask your physician. And certainly, we get a lot of inbounds around that too.
Okay. And so I know in 2024 and much of 2025, a lot of your sales force was kind of focused on making sure that hospital administration was aware of how NOPAIN works, how the reimbursement process works. Looking at 2026, what are those efforts? Are they more still around educating around NOPAIN, or is it more what you just talked about, educating the doctors, or more patient-targeted?
Yeah. It's a good question. So let me give you a little context here. When I talked about investing in our commercial medical market access capabilities, previously, we had one field force selling all three products. Now, we took that one field force, and so that we really focused on EXPAREL, we said, "Hey, focus on EXPAREL." We stood up two separate sales forces, one for ZILRETTA, one for iovera. Why does that make sense? Well, you want medical device folks selling a medical device, not pharma folks selling a medical device. And so that's starting to show signs of benefit. With ZILRETTA, we knew that that effort, that size, wouldn't be sufficient. So we got a great partner in Johnson & Johnson. So from a purely promotional standpoint, that was important for focus on EXPAREL.
And like I said, I think we had some disruption on ZILRETTA and iovera because of that. Okay? And so then it's really about making sure we're educating pharmacy as well as the leadership, as well as the physician stakeholders, the billers and coders. So there are a number of stakeholders, and we're on, I would say, a good trajectory here. We know that it can be done, but the work is not done. And so we'll continue. We're on the right track in terms of how we spend our time with certain stakeholders. And so we'll continue to do that. And I think what to look at going forward would be, how are we doing around market access and commercial lives covered? And how are we doing now on really changing behavior at that local institution?
And so, because from a GPO standpoint, the contracts are in place that are volume and performance-driven. So I think it's really about that. I don't think it's about any sort of course correction. So when I come back to, I think this is really a year of Pacira. We've done a lot of heavy lifting here and put things in place. We're starting to see some early signs that we're on the right track. And it's a matter of sticking to it and executing on it. And so that's what we intend to do, not only for EXPAREL, but ZILRETTA and iovera. And as I mentioned earlier, what a great opportunity this year to build on the data catalysts that we have for the first time and add to our portfolio.
Those bolt-on things that could be accretive right out of the gate, maybe small things that could be put into the bag, and also de-risk clinical assets that are sort of in our wheelhouse, right? So that'll be our focus. So no changes, no big changes in strategy. We've done a lot of that heavy lifting over the last two years. And as I mentioned, we're in a very different place from where we were just a year ago.
Gotcha. One last quick question. We have 30 seconds left, but you had a very favorable kind of settlement with Hengrui. I was just wondering how you were approaching it, at least at a high level, with these two new ANDAs that you've seen?
Yeah. Let me just first say that we're in a very different place now than we were with the first Paragraph IV filer. Believe it or not, we only had one patent in that first Paragraph IV filer. We now have 21 across two different families. And actually, that first patent has recently been re-examined and strengthened for the feedback that we got at the New Jersey court. So we feel very confident about our IP estate. Nothing's going to happen in the near term. And I think that we're in a very good position to have visibility for EXPAREL for a very long time. And we're very pleased with the volume-limited settlement that we have with Fresenius that gets us out to 2039.
Bottom line is this franchise will throw off a lot of cash going forward, and we're going to be very disciplined about how we invest it to drive shareholder value.
Great. Thanks, Frank. We're out of time, but I really appreciate you being here.