LENZ - NASDAQ

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the LEN

Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. My name is Dan Chevallard, Chief Financial Officer of LEN

Thank you, Dan. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. This is an incredibly exciting time at LEN

Thank you, Ev and good morning, everyone. As a quick reminder, presbyopia is the largest unmet vision condition in the United States. It affects approximately 128 million people, population nearly 4x larger than those of dry eye. In fact, presbyopia affects more Americans than dry eye, demodex, child myopia, macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma combined. Our commercial organization remains fully focused on one clear objective in Q4 and the first pillar of our commercial strategy, driving doctors to recommend VI

Thank you, Shawn, and good morning. As has been mentioned, the third quarter of 2025 and recent period has been an extremely productive and exciting time at LEN

Thanks, Dan. To conclude, I'm exceptionally proud of the LEN

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Stacy Ku from TD Cowen.

Thanks so much for providing such a fulsome update. So, first question is on the speaker-led bureaus and maybe some of the other approaches you are all taking to appropriately set expectations. Could you maybe talk further about how the commercial team is working with these KOLs to maximize discussion and expectation setting on the VI

Thanks, Stacy. Good questions in there. We'll pick them up one by one and tag team on it. So, on your first one, I think importantly, just to highlight that what we're not hearing is this product doesn't work. So, the discussion actually usually focuses on that, that people realize and doctors realize that as soon as you put a drop in somebody eyes, but in and totally 10, 15 minutes, your vision improves. That's very important to realize, and that's what we continue to hear back. And like we said, what we're also hearing is that people notice that also the distance vision in many instances approves. That's always the center of the discussion. Now no different than when we launched this product and how we prepare for it. Like with every product, it's important to set expectations and tell patients that these are the positive things that you are going to likely experience and you may be one of the patients that experiences one of the side effects that is on the label. That's setting up expectations was always and continue to be a focus of our sales force and are doing that extremely well. What we've seen is, as I highlighted in the call is that I think like most miotics, we were in our trial and in preparation for launch, most focused on potential headaches in a small subset of the population, and that doesn't appear to be happening a lot. So, one of the few almost minor changes that we've made there is that as the sales force talks about some of those potential side effects, the focus has now shifted away from this potential headache more to the potential redness. Our trend here is I think that's important to highlight as well and that with a few days of use, that's something that for most patients no longer happens. And again, there, it's important to realize that this is nothing new for an eye doctor. If they fit somebody with bifocal lenses, they tell them to use it for a couple of weeks to get used to it. Same for many other products. So, this truly is not a big thing. What we're hearing from doctors and for many of them is if this really is something that allows patients, they immediately offer up some eye whitening agent to use in those first couple of days. So, that's what we're doing on the sales force end in those 13,000 calls that they're doing on a 4-week basis. Maybe Shawn can talk about what we're doing on the KOL side on the speaker bureau.

Yes. Absolutely. So, thanks for the question, Stacy. So, when you think of all these speaker bureau events, we're running over 140 this quarter alone, and that will continue on in 2026. So, obviously, in our speaker bureau, we lay out the expectation setting for patients in there as well as how to introduce it to the patient. In that section specifically, we've now updated our speaker bureau deck, and we actually lead with highlighting the discussion around eye redness and how its transient goes away. I think that's very important. We've also incorporated actual real-life photos of the before and after every -- at 5 minutes, 15 minutes and 30 minutes, so people can see the transient nature on it, as well as the pictures of the eyes from day 1 and day 4. And so it can contextualize for the doctors. Again, this is something they're used to. This is a item that really focuses on near vision and it does a great job restoring your vision quickly and long versus the transient nature of the redness.

Thanks, Shawn. And real quick, and I'll combine your next 2 questions on trends in script data and [indiscernible]. Important again is that we really look at this fourth quarter as getting that experience of VI

Your next question comes from the line of Yigal Nochomovitz from Citigroup.

Congrats on the early launch process. I had a few. I guess with regard to the 5,000 or over 5,000 paid scripts, I wonder if you could contextualize that in the context of what we saw with VUITY and how you compare in the early days there. And then obviously, you're essentially flooding the market with samples. And so could you just comment on the conversion from samples to paid scripts and how you expect that to evolve over time? And then lastly, if you could briefly just comment on the choice of the spokesperson in SJP, how did you arrive at her? Has she used the product yet?

Thanks, Yigal. Great questions. Like I said, we're very encouraged by what we're seeing in our launch. I think different than VUITY this is very much focused on driving that experience. So, getting to the amount of scripts that we've just shared, again, like I said earlier, not the full channels firing just yet is something that we think bodes really well and compares really well to what we saw there. I see the second part of your question there, the sample conversion?

Yes.

Yes, sorry. The sample conversion is something that I know is something that people look at for maybe more traditional launch. Remember that this sample is just a 5 pack, and it's all about making sure that whoever wants to try the product has access. So, definitely just early in the launch. We're not as focused on what that conversion is, but much more focused on making sure that really every meaningful doctor's office in the country has availability of samples. Also, what we're seeing is that the very first thing that happens as our reps deliver the samples is the doctor reps open a pack, product in their own nice and the staff. So again, I think early on, it's not really a metric that we're focused on also from a cost of goods perspective. This is not a very meaningful part of our P&L. So, in short, we'll continue to float the market with samples. We think it's a great tool that will drive patient uptake.

And then the last question on the choice of spokesperson. So, when we're evaluating the spokesperson for VI

Your next question comes from the line of Biren Amin from Piper Sandler.

And thanks for sharing a lot of the metrics around the launch. I had a question around that. So, you highlighted how you detailed the 17,000 unique eye care professionals. And of those, I think about 7,000 ECP offices have been sampled and then 2,500 ECPs are now unique prescribing. So maybe just talking through that funnel, is the expectation in the next few months that the remainder of the 10,000 ECP detailed that haven't been sampled will be sampled. And then the conversion rate from sample to prescribing ECP, what characteristics are you seeing on that? And is the expectation that, that number will grow given the samples across the 7,000 ECPs?

Thanks, Biren. Shawn, I will again tag team him on this one. So, as we think about providing samples to these offices, again, the call rate at the moment, and we've got no reason to believe that this is going to change is about 13,000 visits every 4 weeks by our sales force, which again is a tremendous achievement and want to highlight the great work that they're doing out there. If we say 7,000 sample or 70,000 samples delivered, that's 7,000 offices. What we know and what you see is that many of these offices have more than one doctor in it. So, the actual amount of doctors that have samples will be slightly higher than the 7,000. But ultimately, as I mentioned earlier, the aim is indeed to have samples available at every office that wants it. So, we'll continue to push for that. The current focus is really to get our sales force to those targeted doctors, doctors that are prescribing doctors that have maybe previously prescribed VUITY. But what we are seeing, and I mentioned that in my prepared remarks as well, is that there's a lot of interest from offices outside of those initial 12,000 to 15,000 that we're focused on. So, we're definitely putting mechanisms in place to ensure that we can provide them with our background and samples for the product as well. And definitely, that number continues to grow. And we see that, frankly, on a daily basis on the numbers that we see coming in. So, maybe Shawn can talk a little bit more on what we see in doctors that are -- those first ones that are converting into being less.

Yes. So, we'll continue to roll out these samples over the next few months. Our samples, as a reminder, will be always ongoing. We want the patients to try the product before they actually move into a script. When we look at these writers, what we're seeing is, again, general trends as expected, right? When we look at the VUITY launch, we saw that the early adopters are those in metropolitan areas, those that are predominantly optometrists, and we continue to see that, and we continue to focus on those people in terms of our call cycles and continued rollout of samples.

Your next question comes from the line of Marc Goodman from Leerink Partners.

Two questions. First, for the patients who've gotten prescriptions, can you give us any sense of like what are they like? Are they men? Are they women? Do they tend to be your typical early presbyopes? Are they a little bit later? Just anything you can tell us about them and what would be unique about them? And then second, on the DTC, just how extensive will this be? Is this going to be like analog where you're watching 6:30 news on television like the old days? Or is it digital only?

Yes. Great question, Marc. Thanks for that. So, if we look at the filled prescriptions to date, because this is coming through our e-pharmacy, we do have a lot of information on the demographics of patient. And again, it's in line with what we expected, right? So, we see the prescriptions. It's mostly people in that 45 to 65-year-old age group, right, still gainfully employed. We are seeing a bias towards female over male, again, as expected, and we're seeing it in those metropolitan areas. So right, really those more developed areas along with what we saw with VUITY and being the biggest space in markets. This is great confirmation before I move on to what your second question is your DTC. These are the areas the adopters expected and that we're seeing and our DTC has targeted them as well. And what we find in these early adopters is they're not necessarily on analog TV or linear TV is the other common name for it. What we see is they're spending time on a more digital environment, which is your Instagram, your Facebook, your YouTube and your Pinterest. And so that's where the majority of our DTC will be focused. So, it is predominantly digital and hitting on where they spend the time. The great news is with our already market research that told us the early patients are as well as the confirmation of what we're seeing in early patients, we can further target them through where they live, what they research online, what their annual income is to have a successful DTC campaign.

Your next question comes from the line of Jason Gerberry from Bank of America.

This is Pavan Patel on for Jason. First is, can you maybe help us break down the use of e-pharmacy versus traditional retail pharmacies within those initial 5,000 scripts? Just trying to get a sense of how closely we're going to be able to track those patients and get a sense of expected refills. And I think Ev may have mentioned that there's some supply that's being available on e-pharmacies that is different versus retail pharmacies. Just if you could clarify those comments. And then my second question is with regards to the SG&A run rate for 4Q. I guess, how should we be thinking about that? And then as we look towards 1Q of 2026, can you just help us quantify the expected step-up in spend associated with the new DTC campaign with the spokesperson? Thank you.

I'll take the first one and Dan will talk about the SG&A. So, like I explained earlier, currently in these first weeks of launch, initially, the product was only available through e-pharmacy. And only in the last couple of weeks, slowly, the retail pharmacy has come online. So, whatever that split at the moment is, it will not be representative of how this will go forward. So, I think it's too early to give any call on what that split is. What we are seeing, and I think that's expected is that Symphony and IQVIA as it comes online will have a good sense, we expect of the product that's flowing through retail, less so on the e-pharmacy side, although as I mentioned earlier, we're surprised to see that Symphony is tracking the e-pharmacy side to a degree. And then I think your question was around the difference in availability of product through e-pharmacy. I think as we mentioned a lot, there's a 3 pack that's available for consumers to buy at a discounted rate of $198 per pack. That $66 that could translate into $66 a pack, which obviously compares to the $79 if you do a one pack. Importantly, from a bottom line perspective, it's the same to us, but obviously gives that advantage to the patient. That pack is only available through e-pharmacy. So that's the difference there. And then on the SG&A side, I'll hand it over to Dan.

Thanks, Ev. And Pavan, thanks for the question. So just to break down the OpEx overall, what we talked about this year were 2 trends. One was you should expect SG&A to ramp into the second half, which I'll characterize for you. And then you also should expect R&D to do the opposite, which also has done. So, R&D of $9.1 million in the second quarter down to $3.8 million in the third quarter, you should expect that to continue to taper. And on the SG&A side, having spent $12.8 million in Q2 for SG&A and that bumping to $27.6 million in Q3, that trend is what you could reasonably expect. Now Q3 did include some one-timers you would expect around the moment of launch. There were some onetime costs. But what we've always said for 2026 was assume a commercial spend of $80 million to $100 million per year, inclusive of the DTC. And then layer on top of that, the G&A spend on the order of $20 million to $25 million. That kind of 4:1 ratio we've consistently talked about of sales and marketing versus G&A. I would just reiterate that at this point in time. So, if you take those assumptions and model them into 2026, we would be comfortable with that and are continuing to guide in that way.

Your next question comes from the line of Lachlan Hanbury-Brown from William Blair.

Congrats on the progress. I guess, you mentioned that there's been a decent amount of nontarget doctors that have expressed interest and you're putting mechanisms in place to support them. Can you just elaborate on what that is? I mean are you going to need more sales reps to support what looks like thousands more doctors than the current target list? And then maybe a quick second one. Any comments on the sort of average time to fill at the moment that you're seeing in the e-pharmacy so far?

Great question as well, thanks. So, on the non-targets, one of the mechanisms that is in place is that we also have an inside sales force of 10 people that are available to connect with those offices. And we do have a mechanism where we can actually ship samples to them. What you also see is that for sales force, and we definitely again want them to continue to focus on our target accounts even in the same literally street as an untargeted one that is prescribing and that's obviously data that's all available. That's an easy stuff for them to make as well. But some of the things we've always spoken about, and you guys know that, that over time, we may increase the sales force. We have no plans to do that any earlier, but it is obviously something that we'll continue to look at. And as soon as that makes sense, we will pull that, that trigger. So that's on those 2 mechanisms. And then time to fill can be very quickly. We see and that's what's in place on the e-pharmacy side that you leave the office with a script in hand, you fill it out on your phone and just normal shipping is in most instances, 2 to 5 days. If you really want the product earlier, that's a priority shipping in place as well. And we see that work well on the retail side, similar timelines at the moment. So, we don't think that there's like a hurdle or a delay in filling the script.

Okay. And then maybe another one. You mentioned in the press release, I think there are about 9,000 ECPs have opted into the find a doctor tool on.vizz.com, which seems like a great number so far, but that's obviously not the whole target universe. So, I was just wondering what is sort of the barrier to getting the rest of the targets to opt in? Is it that they want experience or you just haven't got to them yet to talk about it?

No. Thanks for actually bringing that question up. I think it's an important distinction that unlike different companies or what we often see is where you just buy a data set, but in our case, eye care professionals, we want this to go very differently. It's an opt-in process. So, doctors have actively one BD their own, 2 have samples and then 3 opt in to find a doc, it's a bottoms-up fill. And again, I think the number that you're seeing there highlights the enthusiasm that doctors have for the products. Anything you want to add, Shawn?

I say again, it's early in the launch. We're already continuing to see that grow very rapidly. And the great thing is by making sure it's this bottom-up build, it's people that we know that we've spoken to multiple times, they're understanding the MOA differences, they believe in the product, and then we're bringing them on to this process of our money back.

Your next question comes from the line of Gary Nachman from Raymond James.

So, back to the initial people using VI

Great question, Gary. Thanks for that. So, when we look at the initial users, we can't see a lot of data. What I can tell you on these initial users is there are people that are already in the practice because we haven't turned on DTC yet, it's really doctors speaking to patients that are already coming through their practice. So, it's mostly those. We can't break it out into which bucket yet of are they post LASIK or not. We'll be able to get better insight in that after we turn on our DTC and we've targeted those groups. But it does appear to be those already in the practice would then lend itself more towards like the contact lens users or people that are just going in for random checks more than the other groups. In terms of pricing, we're not hearing much pushback at all on pricing, which is great. I think the biggest feedback we're hearing is, hey, this product works, it works fast and it works long. And so, we really see that as promising and haven't seen pushback on pricing.

Okay. And then just one more for Ev. The distance benefit that you're hearing pretty consistently, it sounds like in addition to the near vision benefit. How important is that for VI

Thanks, Gary. So, we are indeed hearing it, and that's great and something, obviously, in our Phase III data, we saw that some 41% of people in the study show if we measure the distance vision improvement there. That's clearly something that in practice translates. So that's great. It's all anecdotal at the moment. It's not key in our mind to make this successful as a near vision improvement drug. But obviously, it's a nice added benefit. We're hearing doctors experiment with it in that way and maybe experiment is not the right word, but they see again highly anecdotally that people that are minus half, minus 1, minus 1.5 are able to go without their distance correction. Highly anecdotal, something that we are obviously following, something that we are thinking of maybe ultimately do a different study on because that could be a group of patients that you can actually serve with our product as well. So again, great to see encouraging, not a make or break for the success of this as a presbyopia drop, but obviously very nice benefit.

Your final question comes from the line of Matthew Caufield from H.C. Wainwright.

And obviously very excited for the launch. You had mentioned the focus on optometrists compared to ophthalmologists. And I was just curious how you anticipate that specific split playing out in the near term regarding the sales force targeting for driving the launch and how that might evolve in the coming quarters?