Switzerland's Idorsia says it has cash to launch main drugs despite losses

[October 23, 2018]  By John Miller

ZURICH (Reuters) - Drugmaker Idorsia is confident its cash reserves are large enough to complete development of its late-stage pipeline, it said on Tuesday, despite losing more than a quarter of a billion Swiss francs in the first nine months of the year.

The company's third-quarter net loss was 119 million Swiss francs ($119.41 million), it said in a statement, giving a nine-month loss of 278 million francs.

Idorsia, which was spun out of Actelion after that drugmaker's $30 billion sale last year to Johnson & Johnson, raised 505 million francs in July through a share and bond sale.

With total liquidity of 1.35 billion francs on Sept. 30, finance chief Andre C. Muller said the company has enough cash to develop key assets including experimental drugs for insomnia, hypertension, rare Fabry disease and brain bleeding.

"I am confident that we can develop our late-stage pipeline through to completion," Muller said.

Even so, analysts have said the Swiss company is still likely to need more money to get to breakeven. It currently has no medicines on the market.

As the company progresses with late-stage studies of its drugs, it also hired Simon Jose as its chief commercial officer. Jose is a British national most recently with GlaxoSmithKline, where he led combined commercial and medical teams for respiratory, immuno-inflammation, oncology, and infectious diseases operations.

Jean-Paul Clozel, Idorsia's billionaire founder, said that Jose's seven years spent in the United States would be key to helping the Swiss company gain market traction once its products are approved.

"Simon brings a wealth of experience and broad expertise covering the general practitioner market as well as specialty care," Clozel said in a statement.

"He also brings the necessary understanding of the U.S. environment."

(Reporting by John Miller; Editing by David Goodman)

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