NRX Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:NRXP) released second-quarter financial results and hosted an earnings call on Monday. Read the complete transcript below.
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Summary
NRX Pharmaceuticals reported a net loss of $18.0 million for the first half of 2026, an improvement from a net loss of $23.1 million in the same period last year, primarily due to non-recurring charges in 2025.
The company has advanced several strategic initiatives, including progressing FDA reviews and trials for their drugs, such as the ANDA for preservative-free ketamine and the SPARC TMS trial for NRX101.
NRX Pharmaceuticals completed the acquisition of GeNeuro assets, aiming to develop new treatments for ALS and other diseases, with potential non-dilutive funding from military and government sources.
The company increased its cash reserves to $26.7 million as of June 30, 2026, primarily from a public offering, and anticipates sufficient resources for operations for at least a year.
Management expressed optimism about the expanded market opportunities for NRX101, potential military partnerships, and the international implications of their drug developments.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the NRX Pharmaceuticals second quarter 2026 results conference call. At this time all lines are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation we will conduct a question and answer session. If you require any operator assistance, you may press star zero. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Sebastian Gomez of Astar Partners. Please go ahead.
Sebastian Gomez, Astar Partners
Thank you, operator, and welcome everyone. Before we proceed with the call, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements made during this call are forward-looking statements under U.S. federal securities law. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from historical experience or present expectations. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ from statements made on this call is contained in our periodic reports filed with the SEC.
The forward-looking statements made during this call speak only as of the date hereof and the company undertakes no obligation to update or revise the forward-looking statements. Information presented on this call is contained in the press release issued today and in the company's Form 10-Q, which may be accessed from the investor page of the NRX Pharmaceuticals website. Joining me on today's call is Dr. Jonathan Javitt, our founder, chairman and CEO, and Michael Abrams, our chief financial officer.
Dr. Javitt will provide an overview of the company's progress during both the first half of the year and second quarter, following which Michael Abrams will review our financial results. Following their prepared remarks, we will address investor questions. I will now turn the call over to Jonathan.
Jonathan Javitt, Founder, Chairman and CEO
Thank you, Sebastian. Good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us. The second quarter of 2026 was a major inflection point for our company across multiple key objectives as we advanced our mission to bring HOPE to valuable patients battling depression and suicidal ideation. We continue to drive forward toward those key objectives with quarterly results that include completing the first-cycle FDA review of our ANDA for preservative-free ketamine, with only a single remaining major deficiency to resolve; with FDA advancing the path to approval for NRX100 supported by White House and Congress guidance to the FDA for the use of real-world evidence to establish comparable or superior efficacy; working in concert with the U.S. military as the prime contractor that's been identified for the SPARC TMS trial—that's an FDA-approved phase 2/3 trial of NRX101 with robotic TMS—that we expect will include 240 patients in our HOPE clinics and at Harvard McLean, together with another 160 patients at military treatment facilities, all funded through the military, and we're still in the contracting process for that; completing the acquisition of the GeNeuro assets and the resulting partnership with NIH to potentially develop the first disease-modifying drug to treat ALS; and finally continuing growth and development of the HOPE Therapeutics clinic footprint with expanded operations in Florida. Let me start with the ANDA for preservative-free ketamine. As we discussed on our August 10th conference call, the FDA identified no major deficiencies related to the drug or to its manufacturer.
A single major deficiency was identified, however, related to the Luer lock component of the vial. That's the little prongs on the tip of the vial that connects the vial to a syringe without having to use a needle. And FDA requested that the company provide a manufacturer's attestation that the vial is manufactured in the same manner as it is for three other currently approved drugs that ship more than 12 million units a year. This attestation has been provided to the FDA and the company aims for 2026 approval.
Accordingly, 5 million units of launch stock have been ordered from the manufacturer. Turning to NRX100, we've continued to advance that new drug application to treat depression. During the second quarter, a presidential executive order was signed by President Trump and congressional budget language was added by the Agricultural Appropriations Committee of the U.S. Congress—that's the committee that funds the FDA—in both cases guiding the FDA to use real-world evidence for approval of ketamine and other psychedelic products to treat depression.
Evidence gathered from 65,000 Americans was presented at the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology meeting in Miami this year, demonstrating that intravenous ketamine has greater or comparable efficacy to intranasal esketamine with more rapid onset in treating depression. With alignment on the drug vial that's used both in this product and the ANDA product, the company is now poised to finalize its NDA, also aiming for 2027 approval. Turning to NRX101, we're delighted to announce a positive and meaningful potential expansion of the market for this drug.
As you know, we began working on this drug as an oral antidepressant for the treatment of bipolar depression. However, data began to emerge that the D-cycloserine component of our drug not only had the potential to augment the effects of transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, perhaps doubling or tripling that effect in randomized prospective trials. More recently, research partners at Harvard McLean Hospital have seen evidence that the lurasidone component of our drug is independently beneficial.
Now the military has gotten involved in the implications of this research because military personnel who are required to take chronic antidepressants are not deployable. That's also true of first responders. A firefighter who takes SSRIs is off the truck. A police officer who takes SSRIs is generally forced to surrender a badge and a gun. At the extreme end, a pilot on antidepressants is grounded for five years. TMS + NRX101 potentially opens the door to a short-term effective treatment with long-lasting effects that can put a sailor back on a ship or a firefighter back on a truck.
Now, as you know, DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as DOD's most advanced research organization, rarely does medical research. They're the people who invented the internet, invented military simulation, who invented swarming drone technology and a host of our most critical forward-looking technology. In this case, however, managing depression and PTSD has become such a key issue for force readiness and the readiness of first responders, the health of veterans and the general population that DARPA did get involved.
The SPARC TMS trial that you can read about on ClinicalTrials.gov is a continuation of phase 1 and phase 2 research that was funded by DARPA at Harvard McLean that showed extremely promising results. So, in a potentially federally funded expansion of our business plan for NRX101—that is D-cycloserine and lurasidone—we were selected as prime contractor by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and we're currently in that contract negotiation process to lead the SPARC TMS trial led by Professor Josh Brown that will combine NRX101 with robotic-driven TMS.
Our partners include Harvard McLean Hospital and multiple U.S. military treatment facilities, including the flagship Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. SPARC TMS measures the efficacy of our neuroplastic drug in combination with robotic-assisted TMS. Successful clinical results could lead to widespread adoption of this drug with robotic TMS for treatment of depression in the military and first responder organizations and in the general population, with initially published results that have rivaled or exceeded the results achieved with psychedelic drugs.
The idea of affixing a robotic arm to a transcranial magnetic stimulation coil and combining that with precise neuro-navigation may be surprising to many who assume that all TMS is basically alike. Our belief, however—and it's a belief that's supported by the published literature—is that traditional TMS is too technician-dependent and the failure of some clinics may have been tied to human technicians who aim the coil based on basic anatomic guidelines.
The technology that will be tested in the SPARC trial locates the depression focus in the brain using functional magnetic resonance imaging and then treats that area with sub-millimeter precision. The NRX101 component of the treatment creates a neuroplastic environment that, at least in small peer-reviewed studies, has doubled or tripled the effect of TMS. Until now, NRX101 was positioned only for the treatment of suicidal bipolar depression—an inpatient market.
This military-partnered and FDA-approved phase 3 trial potentially expands the market for NRX101 to all patients with treatment-resistant depression, with an addressable market of more than 15 million Americans. You can see more about this on our website nrxdefense.com. Our HOPE Therapeutics network has continued to expand and we now have five clinic locations in Florida, with the likelihood of expanding more broadly as opportunities to fold in partner clinics that share our philosophy are identified.
The SPARC TMS trial and the technologies we're embracing in that process provide HOPE Therapeutics a unique platform from which to take a stand on technology, clinical excellence, and the highest standards of compassionate care. Our focus on neuro-navigation, on robotic TMS, and neuroplastic-assisted care is not today the mainstream focus for people who get TMS. However, we expect to show that it produces a superior result in a shorter time frame than traditional handheld TMS.
Finally, GeNeuro, a word that's new to many of you, is the culmination of three years of work and the potential beginning of a breathtaking, paradigm-changing, but longer-term opportunity. The project began with the partnership we established and announced several years ago with the Fondation FondaMental of Paris, chaired at the time by David de Rothschild and led by our colleague and advisory board member, Professor Marion LeBoyer, and their work that demonstrated the role of human endogenous retroviral proteins, specifically HERV-W, in causing psychosis in both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Now, most of you have probably never heard of human endogenous retroviruses. When I got my molecular biology degree in 1978, they taught me that 8% of the human genome was junk DNA. Now we know that 8% of the human genome are old fossilized viruses that crept into humanity over the last three to five million years and for the most part they just sit dormant. But when they start expressing proteins, they're no longer capable of becoming competent viruses.
But when they start expressing proteins, some of those proteins are exquisitely neurotoxic. You can read about the work, read about the patents that GeNeuro now owns on the GeNeuro's website. Over time, as we learn more about the roles of these fossilized viruses that appear in the DNA of every human today, it made sense to acquire the …entire portfolio of patent cell lines and human-stage drugs, an acquisition that was finalized in June by the Swiss courts. GeNeuro now owns two clinical-stage monoclonal antibody drugs: one to treat ALS that's called GNK301 and another, temelimab, that so far has shown meaningful effects in multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes. And in Professor Leboyer's work, it may well have an important role to play in the treatment of schizophrenia and other forms of psychosis.
It's been shown that perhaps as many as 50% of patients who come into French and German psychiatric hospitals with acute psychosis have the HERV‑W envelope protein in their blood and in their CSF. And at least in animal models, it's been shown that the psychosis induced by HERV‑W envelope protein actually reduces the psychogenic effect. Now, the work that's been done was done by the Fondation FondaMental in Paris with French government funding. And GeNeuro aims to partner with them to launch a clinical trial of temelimab to treat schizophrenia. GNK301 is a very different story. Whereas HERV‑W is associated with the diseases I just discussed, human endogenous retrovirus K has an envelope protein that's found in the vast majority of patients with ALS — with the sporadic form of ALS, not the people with genetically induced ALS. And this drug, which is the antibody to that envelope protein, was co-invented at the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) of the National Institutes of Health by the head of ALS, Dr. Avindra Nath, under a cooperative research and development agreement between GeNeuro and the NIH. So GeNeuro co-owns the patent for the treatment of HERV‑K envelope protein, which may possibly turn out to be the first disease-modifying drug for ALS. And GeNeuro has already been selected in the first round of the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program for drug development and biomarker funding.
The first-in-human trial is targeted for July 2027. And should those initial clinical activities succeed, substantial funds have already been added to the 2027 defense appropriation to support ongoing activities. Again, you can read much more about the work on the GeNeuro website. So, in summary, in our second quarter we've advanced our core business toward commercial revenue, we've substantially strengthened our balance sheet, we've brought committed institutional investors to our company, we've established a key partnership with the U.S. military that creates a far broader opportunity for NRX101 than we previously imagined, and we've added a potentially transformative portfolio of drugs that have the potential to treat some of the worst diseases that affect humanity. With that, I'll turn it over to Mike to review our financial results. Mike,
Michael Abrams, CFO
Thank you, Jonathan. For the six months ended June 30, 2026, NRX Pharmaceuticals reported a net loss of $18.0 million versus a net loss of $23.1 million during the comparable period in 2025. The change is primarily related to the impact of certain fair value accounting measurements and other non-recurring charges related to the conversion and restructuring of previously issued convertible notes incurred during the six months ended June 30, 2025. For the six months ended June 30, 2026, NRX Pharmaceuticals reported a net operating loss of $11.3 million versus a net operating loss of $7.6 million for the comparable period in 2025.
The change was primarily driven by an increase in research and development and selling, general and administrative costs related to the anticipated near-term commercial launch of preservative-free ketamine, which is pending approval of the ANDA. As of June 30, 2026, the company had approximately $26.7 million in cash and cash equivalents versus $7.8 million as of December 31, 2025. This increase was primarily related to the company's completion of a public offering of common stock with gross proceeds of more than $22 million.
Management believes current cash resources, the economic potential of an ANDA launch, anticipated growth in clinic revenue, and opportunistic utilization of the company's active at-the-market offering facility will be sufficient to support operations for at least a year. With that, I turn the call back over to Jonathan. Jonathan,
Jonathan Javitt, Founder, Chairman and CEO
Thank you, and thank all of you for giving us the resources to operate from a stable platform. As previously noted, the second quarter of 2026 was a major inflection point for NRX in our ongoing mission to bring hope to the most vulnerable patients battling depression and suicidal ideation, with noted advancements across all of our major platforms. So our goal of bringing hope to life is closer than ever. And now we're ready to take questions.
OPERATOR
Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you have a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Should you wish to withdraw your question, you may press star two. Once again, that is star one should you wish to ask a question. Your first question is from Tom Schrader from BTIG. Your line is now open.
Tom Schrader, Analyst at BTIG
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. You just had a nice call, so I really just have one sort of big-picture question. How do you think about launching KetaFree when you have the NDA ketamine coming on its tail? And I guess my view is that's a very different drug because of its likely potential for reimbursement, but it's really the same drug. So I appreciate it's early, but how should we think about that? Because it's—I get it's a high-quality problem, but nonetheless it's a complex one.
So any thoughts you can share would be great.
Jonathan Javitt, Founder, Chairman and CEO
Thomas, it's a great question and thank you for asking it. First of all, KetaFree targets the market—and we believe it's a $750 million current market—of ketamine that's used in hospitals and clinics. Some is certainly used to treat depression, but the vast majority of it is used as an anesthetic and used for pain control. We've talked about this a little bit before, but it's one of those things that bears repeating. KetaFree by law has to have a comparable inert ingredients composition to the composition of the reference drug, which is Ketalar, a drug that was formulated back in the 1970s.
That means that for reasons we don't understand—nobody seems to know—Ketalar was formulated as a hypotonic drug. The sodium chloride concentration is 6.4 milligrams per milliliter. Now, if we'd gone to the FDA and said, hey, would you please give us a letter telling us that NRX101 and KetaFree are two different drugs, they would have said, well, we don't write letters like that. So instead what we did is, first, we submitted the ANDA at an isotonic sodium chloride level—at 7 milligrams per milliliter of salt—and FDA, of course, rejected it and said, you can't do that.
You have to use the same salt concentration as the old reference listed drug. So we reformulated, resubmitted at 6.4 milligrams per milliliter of sodium chloride, and the ANDA was accepted for review. So what's happened as a result of that is that the preservative-free ketamine, the ANDA product, is under the law a whole different drug than NRX101. They will have different—assuming they both get approved—they'll have different NDC numbers, they'll have different commercial pathways.
And while the label for NRX101 with its NDC number hopefully will include the treatment of depression, the label for KetaFree never will. So if one of those drugs is reimbursed by insurance for treating depression, it's not substitutable with the old generic product. Does that answer?
Tom Schrader, Analyst at BTIG
Yeah, got it. No, and I admit you have talked about this a little bit before, but it was worth repeating because it's a subtlety. The answer is you got another trick up your sleeve.
Jonathan Javitt, Founder, Chairman and CEO
So, thank you. Well, hopefully it's more than a trick. Hopefully it's solidly grounded in pharmacy.
Tom Schrader, Analyst at BTIG
No, I don't mean it in a negative way. I just mean they are going to be different drugs. So you are covered. So that's—thank you. That's very useful.
Jonathan Javitt, Founder, Chairman and CEO
Operator, thanks.
OPERATOR
Yes, your next question is from Patrick Trickio from H.C. Wainwright. Your line is now open.
Jonathan Javitt, Founder, Chairman and CEO
Patrick, congratulations on being a new father.
Luis, Analyst at H.C. Wainwright
I will relay to Patrick. This is Luis in for Patrick because he's on baby duty—because he's on baby leave. Yes, thank you for taking our questions. I just have a couple of questions on the SPARC TMS and then a follow-up. The trial positions NRX101 in broader treatment-resistant depression rather than suicidal bipolar depression. So does DARPA support a separate indication filing, and does it change the timing or priority for the NRX101 NDA now that Module 3 has been submitted?
Jonathan Javitt, Founder, Chairman and CEO
Well, I think DARPA is interested in research that can empower the military. So I don't think they focus on indications and drug approvals. That's the role of the FDA. From our perspective, NDAs are incredibly expensive to submit. The PDUFA fee alone is close to $5 million. So if this trial gets funded—and as you can imagine, it's the kind of massive non-dilutive funding that rarely happens—but you can read about the trial on ClinicalTrials.gov, and if we're looking at a chance to go for this much broader opportunity in conjunction with the military, we'll probably take guidance from people like you, from our shareholders, about whether to pursue both indications at once. My point of view is that, if we have the resources, I think the bipolar depression indication is a very important one. While it's not an orphan disease, there are hundreds of thousands of people who have severe bipolar depression. It is a breakthrough therapy indication—FDA gave us a breakthrough therapy indication for NRX101 in suicidal bipolar—given that there is nothing else that's ever been shown to reduce suicidality or reduce akathisia while also reducing depression in those patients.
So our objective is going to remain to pursue both. But assuming that the SPARC TMS trial kicks off the way we hope it will—and as I said, people are welcome to look on the NRX Defense website, to look on ClinicalTrials.gov—that's a massively transformative opportunity for NRX101.
Luis, Analyst at H.C. Wainwright
Thank you. That makes sense. And on the GeNeuro program, GNK301, you gave some nice color that the first-in-human ALS is targeted for July '27. What will be NRX's role in that program to reach that IND? Is NRX going to commit funding towards GeNeuro, or is it going to come from non-dilutive sources? Thank you.
Jonathan Javitt, Founder, Chairman and CEO
It's a great question and thank you for asking it. The folks who invested in our last round—the investors we talk to every day—have really given us an opportunity to fund the commercial launch of the ketamine family of products. We take that commitment incredibly seriously. That's our key objective with the funds that have been entrusted to us. ALS has a massive stream of available funding. And recognize that in this case we're partnered with the National Institutes of Health.
This drug was co-invented with the head of ALS at the National Institutes of Health, and NIH owns a patent together with us, technically. And should the drug come to market, NIH gets a 3% royalty on anything that happens. But I don't think NIH is in it for the money. NIH is in it for the 6,000 people every year who get ALS and who are mostly dead within three years. That's why we're all in it. So there's a tremendous amount of federal commitment around ALS.
Just a few days after we were awarded this portfolio, I applied for the first $3 million of funding from the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program. And, sure enough, the two applications we put in were selected in the first round, and we were invited to submit a best and final bid, which we'll do by September 30th. A number of members of Congress have formed an ALS caucus, and an additional $80 million has been added to the 2027 defense appropriation to potentially fund a clinical trial of any drug that could be shown to be a disease‑modifying drug for ALS. And as I said, in brief. And people are probably going to need to dig into it if they really want to understand it, because it took me years to understand it. The envelope protein. Every virus is a little bit of DNA with an envelope of protein that keeps it from being immediately chewed up.
The envelope protein for human endogenous retrovirus K causes ALS in laboratory animals and causes ALS in human cells. It's exquisitely neurotoxic, and you can block that neurotoxicity with a monoclonal antibody against that envelope protein. In the same way, once upon a time, I was involved in the first monoclonal antibody drugs that today treat macular degeneration. These are not drugs that cure a disease. But if you can identify a toxic protein — in the case of macular degeneration, it was VEGF; in the case of ALS, it appears to be HERV‑K envelope protein — those monoclonal antibodies are like a sponge for spilled milk. They take and neutralize the toxic antigen. So if we're able to advance this, there's all the philanthropic money and government money in the world to take risk that Wall Street investors generally don't want to take. And we're talking to many of those funding sources, but one of them is the U.S. military because combat veterans are known to have twice the rate of ALS as people who haven't been in combat.
In fact, generally, if you want care through a VA hospital, you have to prove that your disability is service‑connected. And the law says that if you go to a VA hospital and can show that you're a combat vet, you're automatically admitted for ALS. That's how strong the association is. So the long answer, but ultimately the short answer to your question is we expect to develop this with non‑dilutive sources.
OPERATOR
Thank you. And your next question is from Ed Wu from Ascendian Capital. Your line is now open.
Ed Wu, Analyst at Ascendian Capital
Yeah, congratulations on all the progress. I was wondering, is it too early to think about international opportunities for any of your initiatives, either in Canada or in Europe?
Jonathan Javitt, Founder, Chairman and CEO
Well, on the ketamine front, I think there are international opportunities. There are also international suppliers. On NRX101, we have worldwide, or mostly worldwide, patent coverage, and there's clearly an opportunity there. The robotic TMS opportunity, if it works in the SPARK TMS trial the way we hope it's going to work, has massive international implications. And the Genero assets began internationally. Some of the patent coverage was lost while the portfolio was sitting in a Swiss bankruptcy, but there's still coverage for most of the patents.
And these patents are disclosed on the Genero U.S. website so people can look at them one by one. There's still extensive patent coverage worldwide, and if these drugs show promise, I think one would expect that they will become global drugs.
Ed Wu, Analyst at Ascendian Capital
Thanks for answering my questions, and I wish you guys good luck.
Jonathan Javitt, Founder, Chairman and CEO
Thank you.
OPERATOR
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand the call back over to Dr. Javitt for the closing remarks.
Jonathan Javitt, Founder, Chairman and CEO
Well, thank you all for joining us. As you can tell, it's been an incredibly busy quarter. In fact, I'm in Vienna right now with two members of our team. Tomorrow, the first manufacturing of G&K301 is going to be initiated at a partner called Polymune in Vienna. And we're going to be excited to see you a quarter from now and hopefully have a lot to tell you. So thank you all for coming.
OPERATOR
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That concludes the conference call for today. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.
Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company's SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants' and analysts' statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.
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