Shares in MannKind Corp. (NSDQ:MNKD) fell this week after the biopharmaceutical company missed expectations on Wall Street with its 1st quarter results.
The Valencia, Calif.-based company pared its losses to -$16.3 million on sales of $3 million for the 3 months ended March 31, for bottom-line growth of 53% compared with the same period last year.
Adjusted to exclude 1-time items, earnings per share were -11¢, behind consensus on The Street, where analysts were looking for sales of $17.5 million.
“Well, clearly, the focus in the 1st quarter has been on increasing our sales, rehashing our sales efforts and putting out an enhanced and enlarged sales force and many new marketing efforts,” CEO Matt Pfeffer said in a call to investors. “But at the same time, we continue to focus on various savings initiatives and spending reductions.”
“We decreased our cash burn rate from roughly $10 million a month down to $7.4 million in the first quarter of 2017 in spite of having built out a fully formed commercial infrastructure over the past year,” Pfeffer added. “In fact, if you look at our financial position versus the time last year, we have significantly more cash and less debt than we had at that time.”
MNKD shares were trading at $1.22 apiece today in mid-morning activity, down -4.3%.