Verrica Pharmaceuticals Inc. (VRCA)
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24th Annual Needham Virtual Healthcare Conference

Apr 8, 2025

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

Good afternoon. I'm Serge Belanger, one of the healthcare analysts at Needham & Company . I want to welcome you to day two of our 24th annual healthcare conference. For our next fireside chat, we're happy to have Verrica Pharmaceuticals with us. The company's President and CEO, Jayson Rieger, will be speaking with us and giving us an overview of the company. Before we get going, I just want to highlight to those listening in that you do have the option to submit questions via the portal that you're watching on. We'll be taking those as they come in. Maybe before we start to questions, Jayson Rieger, I'll ask you to just give an overview of the company for those who aren't familiar with Verrica and your product.

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

Sure, very much. Thank you, Serge Belanger , for letting us be here and look forward to the conversation. Name is Jayson Rieger, CEO and President of Verrica Pharmaceuticals. Verrica Pharmaceuticals is a dermatology-focused company where we provide treatments in-office administered products for clinicians to treat their patients. We have an FDA-approved product in Ycanth for the treatment of molluscum contagiosum. That is a predominant childhood skin disorder where the children have small bumps on their skin. These can often last up to 13 months for resolution and for which there were no other commercially available FDA-approved products. This product was launched about a year or so ago, a little over a year now, and was a little bit of a struggle launch. My team and I have come in late last year and restructured the business.

We're working on a relaunch of the product to really address the unmet need and the 6 million prevalence of molluscum across the country in the U.S., alone. We also have a robust pipeline of programs, including a program in common warts with our Japanese partner, Torii Pharmaceutical, as well as a late-stage development program for basal cell carcinoma, which I'm sure we'll speak about today.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

All right. Maybe before we jump to questions, you know, one of the topic du jour is tariffs. I know pharmaceutical products have been exempted so far, but I think most people believe that's temporary. Just curious if we were to see pharmaceutical tariffs, obviously don't know what they would look like, but what could kind of be the exposure for Verrica and for Ycanth?

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

I think we're very fortunate while we do have some raw material that was sourced from China. We do have adequate supplies that should sustain beyond this administration and into the future. I would say that most of us trying to prognosticate longer than that is way too long in the future. I think we're very confident in our supply chain and minimal interruptions, if any, based on tariffs. I would say that's not one of the things that keeps me up at night, but I'm pleased that we've built our industry and our program on a U.S.-centric manufacturing program.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

Okay. That sounds like a lot of beetle material if you can outlast the administration.

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

It goes a long way.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

I'm sure. Like you mentioned in your opening comments, the company underwent a pretty significant restructuring at the management level as well as the operational level. Maybe just highlight where you are and if there's still some changes that need to be done right now.

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

I think we reevaluated the business in an entrepreneurial operator-centric way. What we realized was the prior team had had lofty goals and a lofty plan. Unfortunately, there were circumstances that did not allow that to occur. Like any prudent business, we evaluated the resources we had. We restructured the business and cut about 50% of the expenses of the business and did that just prior to raising capital, a $42 million financing in November of last year to give us capital in a non-GAAP accounting perspective, cash runway into next year. We have made significant changes throughout the executive team. We have a new CEO, a new CFO, a head of commercial, brought in a new chief operating officer in a position that had not existed in quite some time, and even recently brought in another chief medical officer.

Our former Chief Medical Officer was a practicing dermatologist as well. He still remains aligned with the company in providing advice, guidance, and strategy and consulting support while our new Chief Medical Officer also has more experience in day-to-day pharma development activities, but in an entrepreneurial way. We are bringing in an additional thought leader who can help us with our development stage programs in common warts, basal cell carcinoma, et cetera, as well as sort of the medical affairs focus of the business for supporting our commercial team.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

Okay. What is the state of the commercial team right now in terms of sales reps and the territories you can cover?

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

We had about 85 people in the commercial organization and reduced that down to low to mid-30s at the time of the restructuring. We've since then had a few people come and go, as is often the case in a commercial organization. Ultimately, I think we'll settle out in the 35-40 range, but we're going to bring that staff either upsize or as appropriate when the territories warrant it. Right now, we're focusing on territories where we have excellent coverage and demand for the product. We're expanding our demand and determining where territories should be based on use of white space and inside sales teams. When that demand starts to surface or we have inbound interest from those territories, either through conferences, engagement with our KOLs, or other various advertising means, we'll then bring in the appropriate sales teams to help.

I'm very proud of the sales teams we have now. Our team has significantly increased the productivity per rep compared to where we were just six months ago. That team is really starting to understand the best way to engage with healthcare providers, whether it be primarily dermatologists, but also other healthcare providers, pediatricians, general practitioners, primary care, et cetera, who see and want to treat molluscum patients.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

You're able to report early signs of a turnaround in the recent Q4 earnings. Maybe just describe where you've been able to see some success and what was it driven by.

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

Yeah, so it's very, very exciting. We started in November, right around the election, as a great time to start in as a new CEO, raised capital just before Thanksgiving, and then had a few short weeks before people really started taking the holiday season into last year. We ended up showing quarter-over-quarter growth in Q4 versus Q3, which was a testament to the team really working hard, rolling up their sleeves. Just yesterday, we actually released additional insight into our Q1 uptake of our product. We showed a significant quarter-over-quarter growth in dispensed units as well. Dispensed units are units that come from our distributor and go out to our customers, whether it be the clinicians, whether it be the hospitals, whether it be the independent pharmacies that are also working to sell the product directly to clinicians through that channel as well.

I think as we've thought through the business and understood what the customers need, i.e., the clinicians, and how their practice treats patients, we've tried to adapt our commercial and distribution model and our sales model to meet that goal. One of the big changes we brought in as opposed to the business, which began as a buy-and-bill model predominantly, which is where the clinician would buy the product and then treat the patient and get reimbursed directly, we've introduced a specialty pharmacy route where instead of them having to buy the product and carry it in the office, the patient would come in, they would be diagnosed with molluscum, they would write the prescription, it would go to either a local independent regional specialty pharmacy or one of our more national specialty pharmacies.

They would handle the insurance, the copay adjudication, and ship the product directly to the doctor's office. The patient would come back later that week or the following week, depending on scheduling for that treatment and for any additional treatment cycles that needed.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

Okay. Maybe if you can just describe molluscum, the market opportunity.

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

Sure. Molluscum contagiosum is a pox-based virus typically found in children. Unlike chicken pox, which can resolve in the order of days to weeks, the median timeframe for resolution can be as long as 13 months and sometimes longer. The interesting reason why it persists that way is if you scratch the lesions or the small pustules, they can incubate on your skin and often take two to three weeks to show up again. As you think about a child scratching their arms, their legs, and spreading it throughout their body, you can end up with it persisting for quite some time. Our product sort of does two things. It destroys the lesions directly by forming a very small blister. That also results in stimulation of the immune system to recognize and help clear the virus.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

Who treats molluscum? Is it largely a derm-focused indication or pediatric because it affects children?

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

Historically, it was treated predominantly by the dermatologist, oftentimes by a compounded product or a variety of other unofficially approved products and mechanisms. Some of those mechanisms had side effects or were painful for the child. For example, liquid nitrogen, which is like freezing it off, does work for young children. That tends to be more painful, can lead to scarring or discoloration. As most of the diagnoses, I think, believe are historically made by a pediatrician. Parent wakes up, they see their child has these bumps or what looks like a rash or something else on their skin. The fastest person they can get into is a pediatrician who often have same-day visits available. The pediatricians would diagnose it. Unfortunately, there was not an FDA-approved product for the pediatrician to use. They had sort of two options for advising the patient.

One, watch and wait, see if it goes away on its own. Oftentimes, it would be months to a year or to refer to a dermatologist. Sometimes they could get in dermatologist. Sometimes it would take a longer period of time to get in. Now what Verrica is able to do is make the product both available to the pediatrician if they want to treat. Otherwise, they can refer to the dermatologist who now has access to the product as well. There is a tag team effort to sort of combat molluscum between primary care, pediatric, and the dermatologists. We are finding many of our dermatologists, especially the pediatric dermatologists, are often also amenable to educating the community and educating the pediatricians and other clinicians in their community on how to treat molluscum because they are so busy.

They are certainly the front line for us, but we've seen an expansion of our business into that pediatric community of pediatricians who can use the product.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

Is this largely a buy-and-bill product? I know the prior management team had what they call it the white coat service where there was kind of a specialty distribution within certain centers.

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

Sure. I would say buy-and-bill was the predominant distribution model early in the launch. We are now shifting probably in the 60-40, plus or minus 40-60 range, depending on the month and what is going on in our distribution between that and the specialty pharmacy route. That is white glove delivery. The drug is available and shipped directly to the clinician as it is an HCP-administered product that any medical professional in the doctor's office can apply the product, but it is not designed for the patient to administer at home.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

Yeah. So it's white glove, not white coat?

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

Yes.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

That's close. I had the right color. In terms of formulary coverage and access, is there still a lot of work to be done there?

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

Yeah, the company started with a medical benefit-focused coverage plan and had both commercial coverage across the country. As we started going down the pathway of the specialty pharmacy and the white glove delivery, that requires a pharmacy benefit, which is a distinct avenue of coverage. The company has now worked very hard to get both medical and pharmacy benefit available across the country for commercial payers. Furthermore, the other interesting part about this treatment and being a pediatric disease predominantly is there's a large Medicaid population as well. We have also begun to engage and have made significant traction in getting on the state and local Medicaid plans for those children to also have available access and coverage as well. There's clearly a large number of children who benefit from that.

We want to make sure that they're also able to access the product and the clinicians can also treat them.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

Okay. What is the process right now for somebody that gets diagnosed with molluscum? They get diagnosed and they have to come back a couple of days later to begin treatment, or you can begin right away?

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

It really depends on, I would say it's on the doctor, the patient, and the insurance that patient has and the state they live in. One of the things that has evolved in our business and to why I think we're seeing a significant amount of growth is because, A, as clinicians get more experience with the payers in their area and the type of coverage, they can make different decisions as to the best way to treat that patient, both from a risk of reimbursement and a time to reimbursement, as well as a time to treatment. Many of our buy-and-bill customers can treat that same day. There's been a lot of comment historically on prior authorizations, and that has sort of a bad ring to it in terms of how much hurdle is that, how much difficulty is it.

For this product, it's predominantly confirmation of a molluscum diagnosis and age two and above. It's not necessarily step edits or other step therapy because there really aren't a lot of other FDA-approved products. I think from that perspective, that gets done. For clinicians, where that's the case, they can step through that. Other places, they're not required. As we work with our clinicians, we want to make sure they don't have financial risk. They have the opportunity to treat their patients quickly and get access to the product. It also reduces the risk to the patient when they go through the specialty pharmacy because the insurance gets adjudicated before the drug is shipped. The copay is collected. We've worked hard to reduce the copay to a maximum out-of-pocket of $25 for any patient.

Each prescription can be written for up to two applicators based on the number of lesions that the patient has. I think that presents a cost-effective opportunity for the patient and an easy access for the clinician in the pediatric setting, getting a follow-up appointment a day or two later or that same day, depending on timing of access to the product and whether it is available in a local pharmacy that can be couriered over or through the mail order. I think what we have done is try and make it as flexible as possible for the clinician and the parent so that they can get the treatment done as efficiently as possible.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

And typically.

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

I'm sorry, just let me add that there's always a big question of it has to be same-day treatment immediate. That was always a concern that people try to focus on and solve for. What we realized is it's also only for that first treatment. Typically, molluscum in our clinical studies, it took three to four, between two and four treatments to get completely clear, depending on the number of lesions the patient had and their disease, their immune system, etc. We ran our study with only up to four treatments. What we've seen is typically patients are getting two to three. Sometimes it takes more to clear them. It's only that first visit where they would have to reschedule. The other visits are typically spread out, three weeks spread out. There's ample time for the drug to arrive as well.

We're finding the inconvenience factor is not nearly as concerning as it once was feared to be. Primarily focusing on making sure the insurance experience is favorable and that nobody ends up with a bill that is a surprise.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

Are parents, mothers aware of this product and asking doctors for it when upon a molluscum diagnosis, or is it typically just suggested by the dermatologist or the pediatrician?

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

I think it's a little bit of both now. We have received endorsement from the AAP, the Society for Pediatrics, their Red Book, as cantharidin being a destructive modality as a therapeutic for molluscum. We are seeing more endorsement in that support of the treatment for molluscum with our active ingredient. There's some education going on for pediatricians when they diagnose that they can treat. Obviously, parents look on the internet. When they see a diagnosis, they're becoming aware and Ycanth shows up as a viable option for them to treat molluscum as well. We have seen inbound inquiries and requests. Sometimes that's when we get a phone call from a doctor who wants to be a prescriber, be trained on Ycanth and how to use it and learn how to get access.

We do spend a fair amount of time marketing directly to the clinicians so they know it's available and how to access it. We've gotten far more streamlined and efficient in our social media, our email campaigns, and our overall web-based marketing in addition to our boots on the ground salesforce. We're leveraging both to gain awareness, both as well as at conferences. I think we have a number of advocates who do speaker programs and speak about it at national and local conferences.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

Got it. For those of us who have to try to model this product, the product sales, I think you said in the last quarterly update that inventory levels had normalized. Units and sales would now be more directly correlated going forward?

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

That is our expectation as well. I mean, obviously, there will be some slight shifts one quarter over in the next in terms of the ordering. We have transitioned most of our primary distributors to be more just in time ordering. Stocking up to what they need on a shorter timeframe rather than on longer extended months or quarters. They can do multiple orderings in a quarter based on what the demand pull-through is. We can also then put the product where it needs to be. Otherwise, we end up with stranded product that does not get pulled through a distributor. We are trying to keep the inventory centrally managed and then bring it to our distributors when they want it and they need it for the demand they are seeing in the pull-through. I would expect over this first quarter should be pretty close.

Going forward, those numbers should match more closely related to each other. Obviously, the gross to net adjustment will sort of impact what the recognized revenue number will be. In terms of the units being used to calculate that, they should start to mirror each other pretty well.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

Okay. In terms of seasonality, this is an indication that sees more diagnoses over the summer months. Is that?

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

I would say the spring and summer start to see ramp up. Winter is probably the slower in addition to sort of the reset of deductible season in January, February. As we saw through this business running through the first quarter as our first real quarter operating as a new management team, we were very pleased to see our quarter-over-quarter growth and the uptick in demand that we showed in our report yesterday. We are excited to see sort of how this goes and how we can help the children who get diagnosed with molluscum as we enter the spring and people start being more outdoors and engaging in outdoor sports and things of that nature.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

Okay. In terms of, I know there were efforts by the former management team to kind of curb the supply of compounded cantharidin product. Where are those efforts currently? I guess that would be something that could be a benefit for you in terms of tariffs.

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

Yes.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

Because I think a lot of the supply was coming from outside the country. Just curious what you've been able to do so far.

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

I think the prior team did a very solid job in addressing the compounding nature. They went after and got removed from some major 340B or 503B distributors. Now we've got some of the smaller local compounders that still provide some product. What we're hearing by our field force and in context with these doctors is supply is more difficult to get. Is it gone? No. Are we continuing to do efforts to reduce or minimize the supply? Of course. We're also trying to make sure that the patients are treated with high-quality product. You can't really compare an FDA-approved GMP product that's got certifications, testing, stability, etc., to a compounded product, especially at the 503As where there's not the kind of stability testing and formulation and robustness that exists.

I think as the doctors are becoming more familiar and more aware of our product and that supply has diminished, I think that we're seeing a lot more inbound interest in addition to our outbound interest for our product for the use in molluscum.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

Okay. One of the potential label expansions for Ycanth is common warts. You do have a collaboration that's ongoing with your Japanese partner, Torii. Do you have any update on when that program is expected to get underway?

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

Sure. We are very, very excited about our collaboration with Torii. I mean, last year, late last year, they actually filed for their regulatory approval in Japan, which hopefully should be on track for this year. They have not released their formal update on exactly when they expect it yet. For a typical review cycle, that would be late this year. We also are entitled to a—so what happened late last year was the Verrica team negotiated with Torii to figure out a way to launch a global common warts program rather than each company running their own, which allows for a far more synergistic effect for both capital deployment and time for completion of the study. As you would imagine, getting two regulatory bodies to agree on the design of a pivotal phase 3 program can take a little bit of time and back and forth.

When one body, you do it serially, one body makes a change, then you have to go back and get buy-in, etc. I think the final throes of that exercise, then finalizing ultimate protocol and execution of the common warts program. Upon initiating that study and the first patient dose to sort of support registration of a Japanese regulatory approval, that would lead to an $8 million milestone to the company. That would be cash paid to the company that would augment our balance sheet. Torii has agreed that we would share in the cost of the trial 50/50, but they would front Verrica's portion of that capital and take that out of future milestones and royalties that are due from the Japan license.

Importantly to that, it's a very unique circumstance for Verrica that we also still retain the rights to all jurisdictions outside of Japan.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

Got it.

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

It's a great opportunity for us to expand to a market that's about 20 million prevalence versus 6 million in molluscum. All the work we're doing today for establishing relationships with the pediatricians and with the dermatologists and primary care and all the clinicians who can use Ycanth, they're the same ones that also see common warts. They'll have familiarity with the product, and it would simply be a label expansion opportunity for them, as well as we'll be able to have the same dialogues with the payers as well. All the work we're doing now in the foundation of building this business, building the customer base and the experience with the product will be supported as we get that label expansion should we get FDA approval and a successful phase 3 trial.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

Okay. Just curious to phase 3 trial here. Obviously, we can't give timelines until it gets going, but I would imagine the endpoint is warts clearance at 60 days or so.

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

Yes. It'll be similar to our phase two studies with a primary endpoint around 12 weeks and then some follow-up for recurrence. One of the things with warts, you really want to make sure is how often do they recur? They can come back and forth. What is the robustness of the therapy and how long does that clearance persist? The FDA also typically wants a long-term follow-up to make sure if they recurred, how much did you retreat and what does that look like? As soon as we get that finalized, we'll disclose sort of what that protocol design is and anticipated completion date.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

Okay. Obviously, this is an indication that it's treated by derms, PCPs, basically everybody and anybody.

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

Correct. I think that's why as we've thought about our commercialization efforts and engaging with all the HCPs that can treat molluscum, there'll be a substantial overlap with the common wart treaters. Those relationships and existing will exist already. Whether they like specialty pharmacy, whether they like buy-and-bill, it should be the same type of process and learning experience. It's the same applicator and the same concentration. It's the same exact product that would be used for either indication. It's interchangeable. They did buy-and-bill. Once it's on label, they could use it for either.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

Okay. When physicians were using compounded products out of jars of cantharidin, was it mostly to treat common warts?

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

There was a mixture of both. Some molluscum, some common warts. A lot of the formulations for treat in the compounded world would also have other additives. The concern, particularly for treating common, if you were treating a common wart and a molluscum with the same bottle, you did have a risk because common warts could sometimes take a different concentration or a different product, and it was less predictable. They really didn't know how much to put on. With Ycanth, the way we designed it to be a consistent formulation that's stable and the concentration is well known and it's stable shelf life for two years, you know when you're treating day one or day one year or day two years, you know what to expect. That really helps the clinician sort of guide the patient to manage both the efficacy and safety of the product.

That is one of the things we are really excited about, what Ycanth brings to the market is more of that predictability that really helps the clinician to treat the patients versus, I like to call it, the art of treating using compounded product where you look at the bottle, make a judgment on how thick it is, how old it is, and how concentrated it might be, and then decide how much to put on, where to put it on, and when to help the patient wash it off. That introduces a lot of risk that either you are going to leave it on too long, leave it on too short, get minimal efficacy, extra efficacy, but increase safety profile risk, etc. There are a lot of those things that make it more difficult.

That is why I think we'll ultimately expand to the derms, but also to other healthcare professionals because that predictability, even for the clinician who sees it less frequently, is a better option than having a jar that you don't really know what you're treating with.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

Yeah. You also have a basal cell carcinoma program. You reported phase two data back in, was it August or September?

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

Correct.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

I think there were other things going on, so I don't think it got the full attention of investors. Maybe just give us a quick overview of what that program is and where you are in the development stage.

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

Excellent. Yeah. We're very excited about that program. It's an oncolytic peptide. In the world today of chemotherapeutic and other agents, you hear about viruses, you hear about gene therapies and cell therapies. This is an oncolytic peptide, but has a lot of the hallmarks of those same mechanisms of action. This product is an in-office administered product. It's stable in an lyophilized form. Doctor simply takes the vial out, resuspends it, and injects into the tumor. For the basal cell, in our initial studies, we treated tumors of 2 cm or lower. You inject the treatment. It takes about 15 minutes or so for the procedure to inject. The drug has two mechanisms of action. One, it actually destroys the lesion upon injection. You get apoptosis and necrosis of that lesion.

It also does it in a way that stimulates your immune system to recognize your own cancer and the special antigens that are hallmarks of your cancer. Unlike other immune therapies that require a targeted therapy or a targeted marker on those tumor cells, this uses your own body's tumor to create an immune response to that. You can ideally seek out and kill those tumor cells both in the injection lesion that you treated or perhaps other lesions down the road that either were untreated or have not even surfaced. The data was this program was originally developed by a company in Norway called Lytix Biopharma. They spent a decade understanding the science behind the program and really got some robust early development stage data program.

They're looking at developing it for other types of metastatic tumors, etc., or people who failed Pembro or other programs and in neoadjuvant setting. What we've done is licensed for non-metastatic lesions, basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, etc., and ran a phase two study to design what does the treatment regimen look like, what does the dose look like. Like you said, it was a challenging time when the data was released based on some of the commercial execution. The program really got overlooked. I've been spending some time talking to investors and other parties about the program. We did report over 50% of the lesions that were treated had complete histological clearance with two or three injections. Of those lesions that did not get completely clear, they were on average more than two-thirds smaller.

When you think about going for surgery, if the lesion is two-thirds smaller, the potential for scar, the potential for complications, and the size of excision and the degree of healing is much simpler if the lesion is much smaller. We also supplemented that data in Q4 with a calculated objective response rate. That is the combination of all patients that either the tumor was 30% reduced in size or more or completely clear and did not get worse. That was 97%. For those who have covered a lot of oncology programs, there are not a lot of products that can say they had 97% impact for the patients treated and the lesions treated with their product. We are very excited about the robustness and the ability of this product to really work across patients.

It was reported with a very favorable safety profile with no serious adverse events reported in the study. We are planning to meet with the FDA this quarter and report back to the market on the design of what a phase 3 program would look like. Additionally, we will be able to report some additional genomic and immunohistochemistry data from the completed study to understand more about the mechanism of action and the potential robustness of the therapy.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

Okay. We only have a few minutes left. If you can just highlight financials in terms of cash balance, runway, and all that fun stuff.

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

Yeah. We reported we had $46.3 million at the end of last year in the bank. We'd cut our burn. We will report sort of the update through Q1 of sort of where that was. We did make a material impact in cutting their burn and recognizing those savings in Q4. From a non-GAAP perspective, I think we'd have adequate cash to get us into next year. There are some covenants in our debt that require going concern language, etc., as well as minimum cash balances. Depending on how we work with our lenders, it may or may not allow us to say we have cash balance under GAAP to get into next year. That right now would end in Q3, but we're working to solve that problem under a number of circumstances.

We also can't under GAAP account for potential $25 million in exercise of warrants that are outstanding part of the last financing. I can't count the $8 million milestone for Torii. And I can only count but so much of our projected revenue growth from additional sales of Ycanth. We like to say that we have a lot of flexibility, a lot of dynamic nature in the financials here, but we're working very hard every day to manage our costs and to increase our cash runway.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

Okay. Just to wrap up, the company hit the reset button late last year. At this point here, where do you see as the most underappreciated part or aspect of the Verrica story and what should investors keep their eyes on for 2025?

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

I would say that you've got a team that their goal is to execute, execute, execute. I mean, it's operational excellence in the business, operational excellence in treatment and handling of our customers, and making sure they get what they need to allow for our product to treat their patients. We focused on that as the mindset. I think every day about what is the journey of the patient, what is the journey of the product, and what is the journey of the reimbursement payment for the product. It takes all three of those things to be lined up to execute and have a viable product. Now we're seeing the results and fruits of our labor making those things happen. We feel like we have a great investor base.

We have a great partner with our Japanese partner in Torii Pharmaceutical that allows us to have a fully funded phase 3 common warts program to expand our market beyond molluscum, which in and of itself has very large potential to be a profitable product for us and sustain our cash operating business. We have a basal cell program in our pipeline as well. For small cap companies, often they require lots of capital. They require they're early in development with no commercial product. We feel like we're in a unique spot as a commercially executing company who's now finally turned the corner on our execution. We're seeing the growth that we'd always hoped to see. We hope to continue to deliver to investors, shareholders, and our customers the execution of our business and availability of our product.

We're very excited, like-minded people on the team trying to get it done every day and very much alignment across the organization from the sales team to the commercial team to the operators in the business, whether it's finance, regulatory development. Everyone's rowing in the same direction. I think that's really nice to see. I'm very, very proud of the team for doing so.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

All right. I have to end it here. Thanks for joining us this afternoon, Jayson Rieger. We appreciate it. It is great learning more about Verrica and the changes that have been done.

Jayson Rieger
President and CEO, Verrica Pharmaceuticals

Really appreciate the time and effort. Like I said, always like to continue to be available to share feedback and answer questions. Thanks very much and have a great day.

Serge Belanger
Analyst, Needham & Company

You too.

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