NovoCure (NASDAQ:NVCR) released first-quarter financial results and hosted an earnings call on Thursday. Read the complete transcript below.
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Summary
NovoCure reported a strong start to 2026 with double-digit growth in both active patients and net revenues year-over-year.
The FDA approval and U.S. launch of Optune Pax for locally advanced pancreatic cancer were significant highlights, with promising early adoption metrics.
NovoCure updated its full-year revenue guidance to $690 million to $710 million, reflecting 5-8% growth.
The company is making advancements in its GBM and lung cancer programs, with expectations for further insights from the Phase 3 Trident trial in the next quarter.
NovoCure’s strategic focus includes expanding adoption in GBM, maintaining momentum with Optune Pax, and achieving double-digit revenue growth and profitability.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Nova Q1 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentations there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session you will need to press star *1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising that your hand is raised to withdraw your question. Please press star *1 again. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Adam Dainey. Please go ahead.
Adam Dainey
Good morning and thank you for joining us to review NovoCure’s first quarter 2026 financial performance. I’m joined on the phone today by our Executive Chairman Bill Doyle, CEO Frank Leonard, Chief Innovation and Medical Officer Ori Weinberg and CFO Christoph Brockman. Other members of our Executive leadership team will be available for Q and A for your reference slides accompanying this earnings release can be found on our website novacure.com on the investor Relations page under Quarterly Reports. Before we start, I would like to remind you that our discussions during this conference call will include forward looking statements and actual results could differ materially from those projected in these statements. These statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties, some of which are beyond our control and are described from time to time in our SEC filings. We do not intend to update publicly any forward looking statement except as required by law. Where appropriate, we will refer to non-GAAP financial measures to evaluate our business. Specifically adjusted EBITDA, a measure of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and share based compensation. We believe adjusted EBITDA is an important metric as it removes the impact of earnings attributable to our capital structure, tax rate and material noncash items and best reflects the financial value generated by our business. We do not provide forward looking guidance for adjusted EBITDA on a GAAP basis due to the inability to predict share based compensation expenses contained in the reconciled GAAP measure net income without reasonable efforts. Reconciliations of non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures are included in the press release, earnings slides, and in our Form 10Q filed with the SEC today. These materials can all be accessed from the Investor Relations page on our website. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the line for your questions. I will now turn the call over to our Executive Chairman Bill Doyle.
Bill Doyle (Executive Chairman)
Thank you Adam. This morning we reported results for the first quarter of 2026 and I am pleased to say we’ve had a strong start to the year. Both active patients and net revenues grew with double digits rates year over year. Our launch in pancreatic cancer is off to a promising start and we are making progress on our journey to profitability with a number of additional catalysts expected this year. We look forward to building on this strong first quarter. On today’s call, we will begin with a review of our pancreatic cancer program. Frank will then provide an update on our GBM and lung cancer programs. Christoph will conclude with a review of our first quarter financial performance before we open the line for questions. The leading news in the quarter was the FDA approval and subsequent US Launch of Optune PACS for patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer. Physician feedback has been positive since the PANOVA-3 data were presented and published at ASCO last year. There is broad recognition of the importance of the outcomes observed, including extensions in overall survival and time to pain progression. We believe Optune PACS can play a significant role in the treatment of pancreatic cancer and we are pleased to be bringing Optune PACS to pancreatic cancer patients. The early days of our Optune PACS commercial launch have been encouraging. We received FDA approval on February 11th. In the seven weeks between the approval and quarter end, we certified 868 healthcare providers, 27 of whom are prescribers in academic centers, an exciting development as historically we’ve seen slower adoption of TT fields therapy in academic centers. Through March 31, we’ve received 169 prescriptions and completed 90 patient starts. We ended the quarter with 83 patients on therapy and a backlog of starts in the funnel. We are also pleased to report our first major payer coverage policy for Optimpax. With Elevance Health covering over 30 million lives, it will take a few quarters to fully understand the Optune PACS, adoption curve and reimbursement dynamics, but again, the early signals are very encouraging. During the quarter we also announced top line Data from the Phase 2 PANOVA-4 trial evaluating TT fields therapy together with atezolizumab and gemibraxane in metastatic pancreatic cancer. PANOVA-4 met its primary endpoint with a disease control rate of 74% compared to 48% in the historical control. Median duration of therapy was 25.6 weeks, a strong indication that TT fields therapy is feasible for use in the metastatic population. As the pancreatic cancer treatment landscape evolves, we will evolve with it. After years of limited clinical success in pancreatic cancer, the medical community has seen positive outcomes in the Panova3 and Panova4 trials and positive data from a trial testing the KRAS inhibitor Duraxon racib in second line metastatic pancreatic cancer. RAS inhibitors are likely to be an important backbone therapy in pancreatic cancer in the future and we are working to understand the benefits of their concomitant use with tumor treating fields. Earlier this month, at the American association of Cancer Research or AACR Annual Congress, two posters were presented which evaluated in vitro and in vivo use of TT fields with Diraxone RASIB in pancreatic cancer models. The data presented show that KRAS inhibition, which blocks upstream oncogenic signaling and the DOWN regulation of the c-Myc protein caused by TT fields, produce greater antitumor activity when used together compared to either therapy used alone. These data are promising, warrant clinical investigation and will be important inputs as we consider the next steps in our pancreatic cancer program. Finally, a quick update on our product development initiatives. Over the last year we’ve launched a number of product enhancements aimed at making TT fields therapy easier for patients and prescribers. This includes an HCP portal which simplifies the prescription process. Lighter, more flexible, more comfortable HFE Arrays for optunegia, a mobile app to help patients and caregivers navigate their TT fields experience. We are starting to see the fruits of these enhancements in our 90 day persistent rate which hovered below 70% as recently as 2024. In 2025 we have seen quarterly persistent rates tick up to 73%. Our next major product improvement will be a new array for the torso. We are now finalizing the design which will be compatible with Optune PACS and Optune LUA. The new arrays are designed to make major improvements in comfort and usability. We also expect these arrays to be more cost effective to manufacture. We have completed usability testing in healthy volunteers and are evaluating performance in non small cell lung cancer patients. Our next aim is to have the new arrays available for use in future pancreatic and lung cancer clinical trials by year end. I’ll now pass the call over to Frank for an update on our GBM and lung cancer programs.
Frank Leonard (Chief Executive Officer)
Thank you Bill. Our Optune GEO business remains the core driver of our commercial portfolio. We are off to a strong start to the year with 9% year over year growth in active patients globally. We saw our strongest growth in Japan, Germany and France which contributed 20%, 12% and 9% year over year active patient growth respectively. Our global market segment also had an outstanding quarter with 17% active patient growth driven by a promising launch in Spain. We believe we can maintain low to mid single digit active patient growth in our mature markets and even higher growth in new markets like Spain and Czechia. The next major catalyst in our Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) program will be top line data from the Phase three Trident trial expected in the second quarter. The Trident results will provide us with a better understanding of how TT fields can work with radiation therapy. The Trident moves the start of optunegeo earlier in the Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) treatment journey, beginning with chemoradiation rather than following chemo radiation. In Trident, the patient population eligible for inclusion is broader than our EF14 trial. In the EF14 trial, patients who progressed in the short time between chemo radiation and screening were not eligible for randomization. In the Trident trial, where randomization occurs prior to the start of chemo radiation, we are able to assess the use of TT fields in this previously ineligible cohort. We expect Trident to give further insight into whether earlier use of TT fields therapy can drive additional survival benefit to a broader population of eligible patients. Turning now to Optune LUA In March we received national reimbursement in Japan and began treating commercial patients. Japan provides a promising market for Optune LUA as our LUNAR clinical Trial data more closely reflect the standard of care in Japan. On March 15th we hosted a symposium with approximately 250 Japanese lung cancer physicians in attendance, including a number of leading key opinion leaders. We are in the early stages of our launch, but we’re encouraged by the physician interest and engagement thus far on the clinical trial front. As I have said from the beginning of my tenure as CEO, we need to update our strategy for the LUNAR 2 trial. We are exploring options now to modify the trial with the goals of compressing the timeline to completion and significantly reducing the cost. We look forward to engaging with regulators to discuss the potential changes and providing a full update later this year. Overall, this was a very strong quarter and we are pleased with our progress. Our commercial focus is on expanding adoption in gbm, maintaining the momentum of our Optune pacs launch, and capturing value in the markets where Optune LUA potential is greatest. We’ve reached a number of exciting commercial and clinical milestones in the first quarter and look forward to sharing more information on additional catalysts throughout the year. Christoph will now walk through our financial results from Q1.
Christoph Brockman (Chief Financial Officer)
Thank you Frank and thank you all for joining us this morning. We had a strong start to the year, continuing our momentum from 2025. Net revenue in the first quarter was $174 million, an increase of 12% year over year. The increase was driven primarily by continued growth in our markets outside the US including increases of 6 million and 5 million dollars from Germany and France respectively. Germany benefited from increased approval rates which provided a one time benefit of $2.5 million and France benefited from contract performance improvement which provided a one …
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