Good afternoon, welcome to the Trevi Therapeutics first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. Various remarks that management makes during this conference call about the company's future expectations, plans, and prospects constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those discussed in the Risk Factors section of the company's most recent annual report on Form 10-K, which the company filed with the SEC on March 17th, 2026, as updated by our subsequent filings. In addition, any forward-looking statements represent the company's views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representing the company's views as of any subsequent date. While the company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so even if its views change. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Jennifer Good, Trevi's President and CEO. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2026 earnings call and business update. Joining me today on this call are my colleagues, Dr. James Cassella, our Chief Development Officer, Farrell Simon, our Chief Commercial Officer, and David Hastings, our Chief Financial Officer. Dave and I will make some initial comments but are going to keep them brief as we have a robust presentation this Thursday at our Investor and Analyst Day. After our comments on the quarter, the team is happy to answer any questions you may have. 2026 is an important year of execution for the company, and the team is focused on delivering.
Following our positive FDA meeting in the first quarter to align on our IPF-related chronic cough program, the team has finalized the study protocols for our phase III trials and has been busy identifying global sites for both pivotal studies. We expect to initiate the first of those two studies this quarter, followed by the second study in the second half of this year. After gaining alignment with the FDA in our end-of-phase II meeting, we now intend to submit a meeting request and protocol to the FDA to discuss our non-IPF interstitial lung disease or non-IPF ILD-related chronic cough program. We intend to propose an adaptive phase II/III study to confirm dose and powering assumptions in the phase II study prior to rolling into one pivotal phase III study for approval.
If all goes as proposed to the FDA, we expect to initiate this trial in the second half of the year. This non-IPF ILD population will mimic the patient profile of patients in our IPF trial as it will include patients who have established lung fibrosis and chronic cough. There are a lot of synergies with our IPF studies as these patients with non-IPF ILD are seen in the same care centers by the same pulmonologist. As we negotiate CDAs, contracts, and budgets for the initiation of our IPF-related chronic cough trials, we have this trial in the scope so that we can act quickly once we have alignment with the FDA on the protocol. Finally, for refractory chronic cough, we also expect to initiate a phase II-B parallel arm dose-ranging trial with three doses and placebo this quarter as well.
The protocol is finalized and has been submitted to regulatory authorities. We are actively qualifying sites for this trial. This trial includes a sample size re-estimation or SSRE, which will read out when 50% of the patients complete the trial and is in place to confirm powering assumptions and adjust the sample size if necessary. We expect the SSRE readout in the fourth quarter of this year. One final update I would like to give is on the advancement of our intellectual property portfolio. We own the worldwide rights for our drug and are acutely focused on prosecuting incremental patent coverage in addition to the patents that have already been issued. This quarter, we had our core method of treatment patent issued for IPF-related chronic cough in Europe as well. This patent had already been issued in the U.S. and provides protection through 2039.
We filed additional applications this year in the U.S. which, if issued, would extend the patent coverage through 2046. We will keep you updated as incremental IP evolves. Before I close, I want to note there are two important meetings this month where we hope to see many of you. The first is our Investor and Analyst Day this Thursday, May 7th, from 10:00 A.M. to 12:00 P.M. Eastern Time, followed by an optional lunch in New York City. At this event, we plan to lay out details for the next clinical trials, the projected timelines for each of our chronic cough programs, and discuss incremental data we have developed as we continue to analyze our existing clinical trial data. We also will share commercial learnings based on recent market research and hear from KOLs on their perspective. It should be an informative event.
We will post the webcast and slides after the event for those of you that are unable to join us. Second, we will also be very active at the American Thoracic Society or ATS meeting this year, with all six of our submissions being accepted for either presentations or posters. We will also be holding an investor analyst event at ATS, where Jim and Dr. Philip Molyneaux, the lead investigator on our CORAL trial, will summarize and share the various data being presented at the conference. This event will be a lunch meeting being held on Monday, May 18 th. If you plan to attend ATS, please reach out to us as we would love to have you join.
In closing, we are focused on executing against our plan of becoming the leader in chronic cough, providing therapy for these patients where there are no good options, and in the process, creating meaningful value for patients and our shareholders. I will now turn it over to Dave for his remarks, and then we are happy to answer your questions. Dave?
Thanks, Jennifer, and good afternoon, everybody. My brief remarks today will focus on our most important financial metric, which is our cash position and the runway it provides. We ended the first quarter of 2026 with approximately $172 million in cash equivalents and marketable securities. This balance does not include the $162 million in net proceeds from our underwritten common stock offering completed in April 2026. The offering was well-received. We appreciated the strong support and participation we got from our current shareholders, and we are grateful that we were able to attract new investors to Trevi. Additionally, with the completion of this offering, we accomplished two major objectives. One. We removed any financial overhang when we reach critical high-value clinical endpoints. Two. We extended our cash runway into 2030.
Included in this runway guidance is the funding of our development program in patients with IPF-related chronic cough, potentially through FDA approval. We also expect these cash resources will enable the company to fund and report top-line data from the planned phase II-B clinical trial and potentially a subsequent phase III trial for the treatment of patients with non-IPF ILD-related chronic cough. It funds the planned phase II-B trial for the treatment of patients with RCC. The planned spending of these resources also include pre-commercial activities but does not include any expenses related to the commercial launch of Haduvio or any other clinical trials. With that, I believe we are now well-positioned to execute our clinical trials with funding through critical value inflection points. Operator, we can now open the call for questions.
Thank you. We will now conduct the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from the line of Roanna Ruiz of Leerink Partners. Your line is now open.
Great. Afternoon, everyone. A couple from me. First one, I was curious, what are your goals for the upcoming meeting with the FDA to talk about the protocol for your phase II-B in non-IPF ILD chronic cough? If you could elaborate, like, anything you expect that might be up for discussion with the FDA versus more straightforward questions.
Hey, Roanna. This is Jim. Thanks for the question. Basically, that meeting is designed to discuss our intention for the ILD program. We will be submitting the full phase II-B/III protocol with that for discussion and really talk about our intentions on using that in an sNDA strategy so that we would support approval with that adaptive phase II/III design. There's going to be details about our patient population, how we're going to use the phase II for our dose selection confirmation and defining the dose for going into phase III and then pulling up the, you know, the results from the phase II part of that study with the interim analysis to confirm our power assumptions and for the phase III component.
Makes sense. A quick follow-up. Thinking about RCC phase II-B potentially ramping up as well, and moving forward in a non-IPF ILD, can you talk a bit about how you plan to balance resources and prioritize things, as you have many really interesting things going on and, moving forward?
Yeah. We don't like a lot of sleep. We have things under control. You know, this is not my first time running multiple programs with a small team. You know, we use our internal expertise. We have leveraged very experienced CRO, one that I've worked with from my last NDA, have a lot of years of experience with them. It's a really tight team. Our vendors that we've selected are really here to support us across all of our programs. I think we're in a good position to be able to do these things. I have no questions that we have the capabilities and the intellectual horsepower to get these things done. I've been working with small companies for almost 40 years now. We know how to manage the resources to get these things done.
I would add, too, Jim, Roanna, we have added probably 10 people since getting our phase II-B results. We added a really experienced pulmonologist. We've added several clinical people. You know, 10 people for us is a lot of hiring. We have tried to scale appropriately to address the busyness of these trials.
Yeah. Yep. Sounds good. Thanks a lot.
Thank you for the question.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Judah Frommer of Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.
Yeah. Hi, guys. Thanks for the update, and thanks for taking the questions. Two for us. I guess just from a competitive standpoint in RCC, we have a P2X3 readout coming mid-year. Just curious how you think the landscape evolves for Haduvio if kind of along the spectrum of possible outcomes for that P2X3 readout. I guess if results are unexpectedly strong, what does that do for your opportunity in RCC? What does it do maybe for enrollment in the RCC trial? Thanks.
Farrell, why don't you answer the competitive landscape, and Jim can talk about enrollment.
Judah, thank you for the question. You know, when we look at the competitive landscape, especially camlipixant, which will be reading out soon in the next couple of weeks, you know, we're hoping that they are successful here, right? This is a large unmet need patient population with no approved therapies and definitely a category that can support multiple modalities. We have strong differentiation with our central and peripheral mechanism of action, and I think what we'll take you through on Thursday in the Investor Day is exactly how that positions us for success. I'll turn it over.
You know, I'll just say on the flip side if camlipixant is unsuccessful within that space, I think we'll have to take a look at, you know, what is our competitive positioning. We have a really strong efficacy and see what the phase II-B results say and see what the commercial opportunity lies ahead. It's still a large unmet need. Patients are waiting for us. I'll turn it to Jim.
Yeah. I mean, on the enrollment side, you know, we have our investigators signed up for that study. There's a lot of excitement. There's a lot of patients available to us. Irregardless of what happens in that environment, we're strongly supported by the investigators that we have for the study who really talk about a lot of patients being available and interested in being in our study. I think our different mechanism, the data that we've shown, the strength of the data that we have out there, still is really the absolute driving force for the interest in being in our study.
Our phase II-B will be done by the time they ever got approval. It might be a phase III issue t o deal with. Yeah, thanks for the question.
Great. Just maybe more high level philosophical just on the ILDs. With kind of more inhaled formulation drugs kind of entering or late stage in kind of the IPF and PPF space, right, a common AE in a lot of those trials is cough. Just curious how you think, you know, the opportunity for Haduvio could be impacted by maybe more inhaled therapeutics in the IPF and PPF space. Thanks.
Judah, we get this question a lot. I think obviously we're treating more of a chronic cough that's more systemic. Whether the hypersensitization's intertwined with them taking these inhaled products and you might be able to settle that down, that's something that's gonna have to be learned over time. I do think, you know, these different therapies are helpful. They'll define the market. They create options. We can lay alongside all of these. That's why Jim's been busy doing these DDI studies. Whether we can sort of help with the cough due to their delivery system, I think that'll have to be discovered.
Thanks.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alexa Deemer of Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is now open.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question, and congrats on the great quarter. For the guidance for the data readouts for the upcoming program, this begins in the second half of 2027. I just wanted to ask if there are any other data updates planned that we can expect before that. Thanks.
I mean, we have the SSRE, the sample size re-estimation at the halfway point of the RCC trial. We should get that in by the fourth quarter of this year. We'll have to see how enrollment unfolds, that's what we're working towards. That's a pretty insightful readout on the RCC trial, I think. Otherwise, our current plan is second half of 2027. I wanna echo what Jim said. I've been going to a lot of these investigator meetings as well. There's a lot of interest and attention on our programs. The team is, I think, setting us up for success here. We'll continue to update you guys as we move through the trials, we are definitely moving along nicely.
Awesome. Thank you.
Thanks, Alexa.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Serge Belanger of Needham & Company. Your line is now open.
Hi. Good afternoon. This is John on for Serge today. Thanks for taking our questions. Just a couple from us. First, I might be jumping the gun here a little bit, on the SSRE and RCC coming up later this year, curious what some of the key checkpoints will be that you're looking for during this analysis. I would imagine it might look somewhat similar to the IPF one done during the phase II. In the event of requiring additional patients, just curious how you might expect that to look. Secondly, on the IP front, I believe you have patents issued through 2039. Curious if and where you'd look to expand that portfolio ahead of the potential commercialization of Haduvio. Thanks.
Yeah. Jim, you wanna do the SSRE?
Yeah. The SSRE is exactly what we did with CORAL. It'll be at the halfway point, looking for conditional power of 80%. If the numbers are below that, if the conditional power at that point is below 80%, we will upsize proportionately and, like we had in the CORAL design, if there's, y ou know, futility, you know, it will be recognized too. That's gonna be down in that 30%-40% range. I think, you know, conditional power. It's really what you expected from CORAL is gonna be carried over to here and we'll be reporting whether or not we have to stay the same or upsize.
Yeah. Your second question, John, about IP. We are in an interesting position now. We've got the base core patents issued in IPF, and now we have a good view of what our label's gonna look like. Now we are starting to prosecute the different sort of label enablement patents. Things that we're zeroing in on the label, like the final titration schedule, like how you dose adjust it with food or hepatic impairment. Jim's running a lot of different phase I studies. Those tend to be quite rich for IP. Our goal at this point, now that we've got a nice broad sort of method of treatment patent around treating cough and these indications, now we'll start building around the label.
We'll keep patents, applications open, so as we complete development work and learn new things, we're able to file incremental IP around them. Our goal would be when this drug actually launches, that we've got multiple patents around the original base patent.
Great. Thanks so much for the color.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ryan Deschner of Raymond James. Your line is now open.
Thanks for the question. You have some very interesting dyspnea data coming up at ATS later this month in Orlando. How impactful do you think dyspnea is as a quality of life metric for IPF chronic cough patients, and how relevant is potential modulation of dyspnea for the RCC and non-IPF ILD indications? We'll follow up.
Yeah, Ryan, this is Farrell. Thank you for the question. We've actually done a lot of research with physicians and with payers around this point. You know, when you look at the top three most common complaints from these patients, whether it's IPF or ILD, dyspnea is in that top three. It's cough, dyspnea, and fatigue at the top three. It, it doesn't change our commercial thesis, but what it can do is definitely complement the speed of uptake of the product and also I think just the adoption from patients 'cause it's gonna be helping them across more than one of the experiences that they have and impacts.
And payer conversations, right?
Payer conversations. It will help in payer conversations. It'll help justify additional value.
Got it. How do you plan to try to minimize placebo in the RCC clinical program? Is high potential placebo as much of a concern in the IPF chronic cough and non-IPF ILD indications?
Hey, Ryan, it's Jim. You know, I think, you know, we have solid data from our CORAL study in the IPF population. You know, came in with under 20% placebo response. I think that was expected. I also think that that's probably in the world of chronic cough, that's probably one of the more well-behaved populations and expect to see something like that going forward. I think there's precedent here in the RCC world that the placebo response could be a little bit more variable and a little bit more ranging. We are doing everything in this trial to really control for things that can contribute to a placebo response. I think a lot of it is having an extremely well-controlled trial, so we're doing our best there.
I think, you know, we are incorporating, at the advice of some of the experts in the RCC space, you know, a placebo run-in period to try to mitigate any of the response there. The idea there is to look for, you know, stability around lower end of cough response. You know, we are incorporating those things and, of course, just sort of the rules of thumbs that I'm bringing in from my CNS background where placebo response is always a big concern, is really about, you know, trial conduct and making sure that you don't set false expectations, that you don't overpromise and things like that can help contribute to the overall placebo response.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Debanjana Chatterjee of JonesTrading. Your line is now open.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Congrats on all the progress. Looking forward to ATS, what are some of the most exciting developments we should look forward to? I have a quick follow-up.
Jim and I will both be there. We're looking at each other. Jim, you go ahead. You're the author on a bunch of them.
Hi, Deb. It's I think we have some exciting updates in the oral presentation that'll be given by Dr. Phil Molyneaux. I mean, that's gonna be some new sub-analyses from our CORAL study. I think there's also gonna be some interesting presentations and posters on cough bouts, our analysis of the cough bouts for both CORAL and RIVER. It was brought up earlier, but I think our breathlessness data, you know, being presented by Don Mahler, who is really one of the key experts in this space, is really gonna be exciting poster to get out that initial analysis that really shows some benefit here on the breathlessness piece of things. I think, you know, those are highlights, I think that really add some new information into the data flow for us.
Appreciate the color. Just a quick follow-up. I know, of course, FVC is not an endpoint that you are pursuing, but, like, given that you'll be following the IPF patients, like 52 weeks, at least, right, in the phase III program, do you expect to see some trends there? Even if that's kind of like a safety endpoint?
We are following FVC. We have it at baseline. We have it throughout the 52-week time period. We will be able to look to see what's there. Our ends are very different than what you expect from an IPF trial because FVC is highly variable, and I think that drives the size of those trials. All I can promise you is that we will see what we see and report it out.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of William Wood, B. Riley Securities. Your line is now open.
Thanks for taking our questions, and congrats on a nice quarter. Just curious more thinking about the peers P2X3 readout coming up. I was curious if there's anything specific that you might be looking for in that trial, regardless of whether it's positive or negative, in terms of, you know, taking forward to the FDA that you think, you know, they could really improve your learnings on your own trials.
I mean, I'm just gonna jump in, Jim, you add any color. Thanks for the question, William. I don't think so. You know, P2X3s have had to kind of chase this path of the highest level of coughers and placebo run-ins and highly adjudicate the indication. You know, we've shown data that our drug works broadly in IPF chronic cough and refractory chronic cough across different cough counts. I think that we have to be a lot less fussy with who goes into the trial and how we get results. We'll obviously be interested in the placebo effect and how they've controlled that, but those trials were upsized. The bigger trial was upsized twice, and that's always tricky, I think. They're also managing a much tighter response. We'll look at it. We're interested. I agree with Farrell.
I hope they see some results for patients. They are guiding towards about a 15%-20% placebo-adjusted change in their calls. We would expect much better performance of our drug. We really are looking to be best in class in the most refractory patients for our drug. You know, it's more, as Farrell mentioned, just how we position the drug and where we go, but I would say nothing that really impacts our program. We'll learn more from our phase II-B than we'll probably learn from their phase III data.
Got it.
Yep.
That's helpful. One brief, quick add-on. Just in terms of, you know, sort of setting our expectations for your KOL event coming up, as well as at ATS, you know, is there anything specific that the FDA may be looking for in terms of guiding for your non-IPF ILD-related chronic cough trials that you may be highlighting at these that really sort of bolster moving into this and/or certain subsets of populations as you, as you look to meet with them in the second half? Thank you for taking our questions.
We are having an ILD expert in the U.S., Dr. Toby Maher, who runs a big ILD center. He's gonna speak there. He's gotta join us by Zoom 'cause he has clinic. One of the topics we've asked him to cover is why, in his judgment, an IPF and an ILD patient is the same or not the same as it relates to cough. You'll hear straight from one of the experts here. Toby's been involved in our program from the beginning. He knows our drug quite well. He actually sat on our FDA call with us. You'll get some independent insights from really one of the leading voices in the ILD space on Thursday.
That's helpful. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, William.
Thank you. Again, if you have questions, please press star one one. Our next question comes from the line of Kaveri Pohlman of Clear Street. Your line is now open.
Okay. Yes, good evening. Thanks for taking my questions. Just to like a follow-up on the previous comments you made on the phase II-B RCC trial design. I was wondering how you were thinking about enrolling a truly addressable patient population to fully de-risk the program, particularly given the expectations that many patients may be P2X3 antagonist experience in real world. For broadly, just like on a high level, there appears to be an increasing focus on the development progress in IPF and non-IPF ILD, obviously alongside continued efforts in RCC. How do you think about, you know, the relative opportunity across these indications in the context of the evolving treatment landscape? What key challenges in RCC will need to be addressed to fully realize its potential? Thank you.
There were a lot of questions there to disentangle. I'll just kind of start from a strategy perspective. Trevi has always been led as an IPF sort of and then adding an ILD-led strategy, primarily because of our commercial strategy. Specialty, high pricing, specialty sales force. That was always our focus. I think as the RCC competitive landscape sort of fell away and really there wasn't much left, some of the experts came to us asking us to please try our drug in RCC. We did and got very strong data. I think definitely a commitment to RCC, but it is sort of the third leg of the stool here. With regard to the variability in the program and P2X3 responders, anything, Jim, on that?
I think are you asking, there's gonna be people who have experience with P2X3 that may be entering in our trial? I mean, I think, you know, the key there is if they meet the eligibility requirements and they've been off their P2X3 for an appropriate period of time, they still have, you know, the requirements to get into the study, you know, they're fair game for coming in. I mean, we want people with various experiences. We know, you know, this is a refractory condition, and people have tried a lot of different things and they may or may not have succeeded on a P2X3, but if they meet our entry criteria, they'll be coming into the trial. I don't think it really differentiates from any other type of therapy that they've tried in the past.
They will meet the eligibility requirements for being off of the P2X3 for a certain amount of time.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you, Kaveri.
Thank you. I am showing no further questions at this time. This concludes our question and answer session. I would now like to turn the conference back to Jennifer Good for closing remarks.
We appreciate you joining us for today's call and look forward to hopefully seeing many of you later this week and this month. Thank you.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.