LENZ Therapeutics - Earnings Call - Q3 2025

Executive Summary

• Q3 2025 marked LENZ’s first quarter post-FDA approval and launch of VIZZ, with $12.5M in license revenue (no product sales until October), net loss of $16.7M ($0.59 per share), and pro forma cash of ~$324.0M to fund post-launch positive cash flow.
• Commercial launch indicators were strong: ~2,500+ unique ECP prescribers, 40% wrote multiple prescriptions, and >5,000 paid scripts through October; ECP awareness reached ~90%, supported by ~70,000 samples to ~7,000 offices and >13,000 sales calls per rolling 4 weeks.
• SG&A ramped as planned to $27.6M (sequential +116%); R&D fell to $3.8M (seq. -58%), aligning with launch spend and completion of Phase 3 activities.
• Consumer-phase DTC campaign will launch in Q1 2026 with spokesperson Sarah Jessica Parker; near-term focus remains building ECP confidence and willingness to prescribe through sampling and education.
• Potential stock reaction catalysts: accelerating weekly scripts as retail pharmacy availability broadens mid-Q4, early refill behavior (e-pharmacy auto-refill), and Q1 2026 DTC activation with SJP.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Early launch traction: >2,500 ECP prescribers, 40% repeat prescribers, >5,000 paid scripts in October; awareness at ~90% among ECPs only weeks into launch.
• Strong field execution: ~70,000 samples to ~7,000 offices, >13,000 sales calls on a rolling 4-week basis; 88-territory sales force and 10-person inside sales team in place.
• Balance sheet bolstered: ~$123.5M raised via ATM in October; pro forma cash ~$324.0M as of Sept 30 to fund operations through post-launch positive cash flow.
  Quote: “We are very pleased with the first weeks of the VIZZ launch… over 2,500 unique prescribers and… over 5,000 prescriptions filled through October.” — CEO Eef Schimmelpennink.

What Went Wrong

• No product revenue in Q3 (first product sales started in October); revenue consisted of milestone license revenue ($12.5M), not commercial sales, limiting visibility on early script-to-revenue conversion.
• Transient adverse events surfaced in real-world use (redness/stinging), requiring expectation setting; management adjusted messaging to emphasize transient nature and mitigation tactics.
• Retail pharmacy availability lagged (broader retail availability mid-Q4), constraining early volume to e-pharmacy and limiting script channel mix clarity; management deferred split disclosure until both channels fully available.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the LENZ Therapeutics third quarter 2025 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. Following prepared remarks from management, we'll conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Dan Chevallard, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Dan Chevallard (CFO)

Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. My name is Dan Chevallard, Chief Financial Officer of LENZ Therapeutics. I'm joined today by Eef Schimmelpennink, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Shawn Olsson, Chief Commercial Officer, as well as Dr. Marc Odrich, Chief Medical Officer, who will join us for the question-and-answer session. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this call will contain forward-looking statements regarding LENZ's future expectations, plans, prospects, corporate strategy, regulatory and commercial plans and expectations, cash runway projections, and performance. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors and risks, including those discussed in our filings with the SEC, which can also be found on our website.

In addition, any forward-looking statements represent only our views as of the date of this webcast and should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any subsequent date. We specifically disclaim any obligations to update such statements. The company encourages you to consult the risk factors contained in our SEC filings for additional detail, including in our third quarter 2025 Form 10-Q, which is being filed today. With that, I will now turn the call over to Eef.

Eef Schimmelpennink (President and CEO)

Thank you, Dan. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. This is an incredibly exciting time at LENZ, as today marks our very first earnings call as a commercial company. The third quarter and recent period have been truly transformational for us. Defined by the FDA approval of VIZZ in July, which came ahead of our August KOL Optha day, and by the successful commercial launch of VIZZ in the U.S. in early October. This is the first and only pilocarpine-based eye drop for the treatment of presbyopia in adults. We are proud to have brought this important innovation to the market. We're now just one month into the launch, and our main focus is on giving doctors the opportunity to experience VIZZ in the real world. Trying it themselves with their staff and with some of their patients.

Already we're seeing tremendous enthusiasm from the eye care professional community as this makes its way into their practices. As of the end of October, more than 2,500 doctors have already prescribed this. What's particularly impressive is that 40% of those prescribers have already written multiple prescriptions. All of this has led to over 5,000 paid scripts for this being filled by consumers in October, a number that represents a very impressive start of our launch, clearly showing both consumer interest and satisfaction with this. These are just some of the early milestones, only about four weeks into our launch, that we're very encouraged by. This early adoption is aligned with the consistent and very positive feedback we are hearing. Doctors tell us this delivers rapid, meaningful improvement in their vision and a long-durational effect for a broad group of presbyopes.

They also point out that it's clearly differentiated from anything they've used before. Anecdotally, we hear about noticeable improvements in distance vision, and the early feedback that we're getting from the field also suggests that instances of headache, the side effect that we were most focused on in our clinical trials, appear to be minimal. All of this aligns with the fact that a miotic is the only pupil-selective and stereospecific miotic, which again we believe bodes well for the uptake of this. In line with our label, the most noted AEs appear to be brief, initial sting on instillation, and transient hyperemia. Based upon early results, we're hearing more of it than we initially expected. AEs in our trials, like in all well-run clinical studies, are a combination of doctor observations and direct patient feedback doctor asks for.

Our initial thoughts on the potential variance as is that it is driven by two main factors. First, in our trials, doctors would dose the patient and then return to them for the first set of measurements 30 minutes later. By then, the redness, if it happens, had lessened or resolved. Second, the following five days, subjects would dose at home, and by day seven, the next in-office visit, the patient had already progressed past the technical access phase. This appears to be very much in line with what doctors and patients are reporting now. Both stinging and redness tend to be short-lived and fade quickly for most people, and the rapid and very noticeable improvement in near vision outweighs these highly transient early effects.

Importantly, many doctors describe it as psychopalactic, meaning it becomes less noticeable after just a few days, in line with what we're hearing from patients as well. We have already tailored our field messaging based on this feedback, helping doctors to set expectations and share their experiences with confidence so patients know exactly what to expect and why it's worth it. We're seeing this work in their practices. As I mentioned, this fourth quarter is really focused on providing doctors with confidence and the right processes to prescribe this. That is essential groundwork as we prepare for our direct-to-consumer campaign early next year, ensuring that ECPs and their staff are ready to serve what we believe will be a significant inbound wave of patients.

We think of our DTC campaign as the second phase of our launch, and we are thrilled to announce that Sarah Jessica Parker will serve as our spokesperson. She needs no introduction. SJP, as she prefers to be called, is an iconic figure and, like this, truly represents a category of one. We believe this partnership perfectly reflects our brand and the confidence, style, and authenticity we want this campaign to embody. We are excited to share more as we roll out the campaign in early 2026. We also strengthened our balance sheet during the quarter. In October, we completed a direct placement to a single large institutional investor through our ATM, raising more than $123 million and bringing our current total cash position as we launch VIZZ to roughly $324 million.

All these significant milestones position LENZ as a disruptive new entrant into the ophthalmology space as we look to establish this as a standard of care for adults frustrated with presbyopia. We've talked before about the three phases each doctor moves through as they get ready to recommend us: awareness of this, confidence in the product, and willingness to prescribe. Let me touch on where we are in each of these areas at the end of October, roughly four weeks after the first samples reached the field. First, we've made tremendous progress on awareness for this among the eye care professional community. The mid-October survey showed awareness among doctors at 90%. This is an outstanding number for such an early stage of launch and speaks to the strong engagement we're seeing. We believe it bodes well for product uptake and long-term adoption.

Moving to confidence, as we spoke about, this is built through real-world experience. It's about doctors using this themselves, observing its effect, and hearing positive feedback from staff and early patients. Driving that experience, through October alone, we've already distributed more than 70,000 samples to roughly 7,000 offices, an initial average of about 10 5-pack samples per office. The interest level has been very high, not only from our target doctors but also from many outside that group. That tells us the word is spreading and the enthusiasm is broad. Finally, willingness to prescribe. This is where awareness and confidence translate into action. As I mentioned earlier, more than 2,500 doctors have already prescribed this in the first few weeks, and over 1,000 of them have prescribed multiple times. This has resulted in over 5,000 filled scripts in October.

That's an incredibly strong start this early in the launch, something we're pleased with and want to recognize our sales force for. We've been lucky to have been able to pick the best of the best as our specialty reps, and they are out in the field delivering each and every day. Having them building this willingness to prescribe with the ECP community is fundamental to our success and sets us up for the next phase, our direct-to-consumer campaign in the first quarter of 2026. Before I hand it to Shawn, I want to reiterate our confidence in this and the strength of this launch. We know the efficacy of this is excellent, and what we're hearing from doctors in the field continues to align closely with them, if not better in some cases.

This is the first and only truly practical pharmacologic solution for presbyopia, one that restores near vision without compromising distance vision, and that integrates seamlessly into everyday practice. As I said before, this is more than just a product launch. It is the start of a new category, one built on real-world efficacy, genuine doctor and patient confidence, and seamless access to both samples and product. With that, I'll hand it over to Shawn Olsson, our Chief Commercial Officer, to share more color on how the launch is progressing. Shawn.

Shawn Olsson (Chief Commercial Officer)

Thank you, Eef. 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 four times larger than those of dry eye. In fact, presbyopia affects more Americans than dry eye, demoduct, childhood myopia, macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, and glaucoma combined. Our commercial organization remains fully focused on one clear objective in Q4. The first pillar of our commercial strategy: driving doctors to recommend this. We know that eye care professionals' adoption is the critical foundation for our launch, and we're executing a clear three-step strategy. First, driving eye care professional awareness of this, then building confidence, and ultimately establishing willingness to prescribe. Let's start with driving awareness of this. Our awareness phase has been highly successful and is largely complete.

As Eef mentioned, we successfully achieved 90% eye care professional awareness of this since approval. This is a phenomenal awareness driven by a robust multi-channel campaign. This included a broad media plan with over 5 million digital impressions, a strong presence at major industry events such as Vision Expo West, Academy of Optometry, and the Academy of Ophthalmology, and the exceptional effort of our 88-person field sales team. We're conducting over 13,000 calls every four weeks. Our memorable single-syllable brand name has also contributed to this remarkable awareness. Moving into building confidence in this. In October, we progressed from the awareness of this to the confidence in this phase. This stage is powered by real-world experience through our sampling strategy and peer-to-peer engagement at SpeakerGrove X. To date, we've distributed over 70,000 samples to 7,000 ECP offices, driving exceptional engagement.

We're seeing positive organic stories emerge across LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, and other social media platforms as both ECPs and patients share their experiences. One notable story involved a skeptic doctor converting to a VIZZ believer after a LENZ sales rep challenged them to put VIZZ to the test. This ultimately ended up with the eye doctor and patients sharing their positive experience with VIZZ on Fox News, which ultimately was syndicated across multiple markets. We also launched our KOL LENZ Speakers Bureau in October. We have already held over 50 of the 140 events planned for Q4. These sessions highlight VIZZ's unique MOA, robust clinical performance, and ease of integration into the practice. To ensure credibility, our speakers were among the first to receive product samples and share their real-world results. Ultimately, we're seeing great progress in the confidence in this phase.

The feedback is positive, and it's clear this product is highly effective at restoring near vision with a rapid onset and long duration. As a reminder, the primary issue with the long-term adoption of Vuity was for most patients it did not work, and when it did work, it did not work long enough. We continue to see this as a category of one, and VIZZ stands alone in this category as the only drug achieving the necessary sub-2 pupil to restore near vision for up to 10 hours in both clinical trials and real-world use. We continue to hear great feedback from eye care professionals, and their enthusiasm and first-hand experiences are building strong confidence in both the product and its results. Finally, we move to willingness to prescribe, the culmination of awareness and confidence. Our goal is to bring ECPs to this stage by the end of Q4.

Already, more than 2,500 ECPs have prescribed VIZZ, with 40% writing multiple prescriptions, resulting in over 5,000 prescriptions filled through October. We believe this clearly demonstrates a strong belief in the product's performance, and alignment with the patient's need is already being established for an effective presbyopia solution in the first few weeks of launch. Looking ahead to the consumer phase, as we prepare for 2026, we're well-positioned to transition to the consumer phase of our launch. This category has proven to be highly responsive to promotion, both from prior launches and the organic virality surrounding VIZZ. In Q1 of 2026, we will initiate our direct-to-consumer campaign, driving the second pillar of our commercial strategy, which is consumers to request us by name. Our team has been preparing extensively for this consumer campaign.

As a category-one product, we must break through the advertising clutter as we compete for the consumer's views, inspire authentic belief in VIZZ, and ensure consumers see VIZZ as a worthy investment. To achieve that, we knew we needed a direct-to-consumer campaign spokesperson with stopping power, who resonates with our target consumers, who is an authentic user of VIZZ, and aligns to a category-one lifestyle product. We are excited to share that we achieved all of these objectives and partnered with Sarah Jessica Parker to lead the VIZZ DTC campaign. In fact, our marketing team just completed the commercial shoot in New York City with SJP yesterday, and we are thrilled. The marketing team's efforts are now focused on finalizing the creative assets and ad spots to support our Q1 2026 consumer campaign launch. We look forward to providing further details on our exciting DTC strategy in the months ahead.

With that, I'll hand the call over to Dan Chevallard, our Chief Financial Officer, to highlight our financial results. Dan.

Dan Chevallard (CFO)

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 LENZ, headlined by our FDA approval and the commercial launch of VIZZ, but also included great progress with our ex-U.S. strategic partners and, more recently, from the standpoint of substantially strengthening our balance sheet, which I will go to in a moment. Not to mention the exciting news that Shawn just shared on our DTC campaign. Importantly, and before I proceed, please note our first product sales of VIZZ occurred in October. So there were no product revenues in the third quarter. The script data that we highlighted today was from the month of October only.

As Eef mentioned, in early October, we received a meaningful inbound inquiry from a single large institutional investor on our ATM, which ultimately resulted in an initial block trade of $80 million. It was then followed by a second block trade of approximately $44 million, exhausting the remaining available balance on our ATM program. Pro forma for these placements, we ended Q3 2025 with approximately $324 million in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities. We view the timing, magnitude, and conviction of this single inbound as a tremendous validation of our launch strategy and the promise of VIZZ, and again, reiterate, our cash on hand is anticipated to fund the company's cash runway to post-launch positive operating cash flow. I'd like to now turn to our ex-U.S. strategic partnerships, where we had progress and advancements on multiple fronts.

In the third quarter, we recorded total license revenue and received cash payments of $12.5 million, which can be broken into three parts. First, we recognized license revenue and received payments for two separate $5 million milestones under our development and commercialization agreement with CORXEL Pharmaceuticals in China, totaling $10 million, including a China-based regulatory milestone upon submission of the NDA for LNZ100 to the Center for Drug Evaluation of the NMPA in China, and a U.S. FDA-based regulatory milestone upon the approval of VIZZ in the United States. In addition, and as we announced in July, we executed an exclusive license and commercialization agreement, granting Laboratoires Théa to register and commercialize VIZZ for the treatment of presbyopia in Canada.

Under the terms of the licensing and commercialization agreement, LENZ received and recognized as license revenue a $2.5 million upfront payment and will be eligible to receive over $67.5 million in additional regulatory and commercial milestone payments, as well as tiered double-digit royalties on net sales. Moving on now to our third quarter operating expenses. I previously discussed a planned ramp in our total operating expenses, specifically driven by commercial spend as we move into the second half of 2025. As anticipated, our total Q3 2025 OpEx increased to $31.4 million, a 44% increase over Q2, and well-aligned with our operating plan.

Total SG&A expenses increased to $27.6 million in Q3, compared to $6.5 million for the same period in 2024, driven primarily by an increase in commercial headcount, including the full financial cost of our sales force for the entirety of the quarter, and substantial pre-commercial marketing, advertising, and other commercial planning activities to support the commercial launch of VIZZ. Sequentially, SG&A increased quarter over quarter by approximately 116% from $12.8 million in the second quarter. I would like to highlight a key point that we have made on previous calls and in what will be a consistent objective, in that we will continue to be measured in our spend on the general and administrative side of the organization, as we aim to remain a lean and efficient G&A team and have the predominant growth in SG&A be driven by spend to support our commercial strategy.

Total research and development expenses decreased to $3.8 million in Q3 2025, compared to $6.5 million for the same period in 2024. Sequentially, R&D expenses decreased quarter over quarter by 58% from $9.1 million in the second quarter. As a reminder, the majority of our research and development expenses prior to FDA approval of VIZZ in July. Prior to the FDA approval of VIZZ in July of 2025, were dedicated to our manufacturing operation efforts to establish pre-approval commercial product and sample inventory to support our launch. Finally, our net loss per share, both basic and diluted, was $0.59 per share in the third quarter of 2025 on a net loss of $16.7 million, compared to a net loss per share of $0.38 per share in the third quarter of 2024 on a net loss of $10.2 million.

We ended Q3 2025 with approximately 28.6 million shares of common stock outstanding. Pro forma for the October ATM activity I noted previously, we have approximately 31.3 million shares outstanding today. In summary, we feel this quarter and recent period has been on schedule from a spend perspective and are pleased to have recently bolstered our balance sheet from both diluted and non-dilutive sources. It has never been in a stronger financial position than we are today to support the VIZZ launch. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Eef.

Eef Schimmelpennink (President and CEO)

Thanks, Dan. To conclude, I'm exceptionally proud of the LENZ team for all that we have accomplished. An early FDA approval for VIZZ, preparing the team for launch, maintaining an extremely strong financial foundation, and now seamlessly executing in these first weeks of our launch. Driving ECP awareness, confidence, and willingness to prescribe, ahead of activating our DTC campaign in Q1 2026. We look forward to our early momentum to continue and updating you on our progress as we launch VIZZ as a true category-one product. With that, I'd like to open up the call for questions.

Operator (participant)

As a reminder, in order to ask a question, press star and then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Stacy Ku from TD Cowen. Your line is live.

Stacy Ku (Biotechnology Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, thanks so much for taking our questions. Thanks so much for providing such a fulsome update. First question is on these 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 VIZZ profile? Just provide a little bit more detail here. Just want to make sure we understand how a motivated patient is able to appreciate the efficacy versus the transient redness and stinging. That's the first question. Second, wondering if you're able to disclose some of the week-over-week cadence of prescriptions for October as we think about those over 5,000 prescriptions that are coming from the clinicians. Last question. Wanted to just understand.

Still early days, but if you're hearing any anecdotal feedback, be curious if any folks are immediately opting for the three months versus one month. Just trying to understand how the patients are trialing these days. Thanks so much.

Eef Schimmelpennink (President and CEO)

Thanks, Stacy. Good questions, and we'll pick them up one by one and tag team on it. On your first one, I think importantly just to highlight that what we're not hearing is this product doesn't work. The discussion actually usually focuses on that, that people realize and doctors realize that as soon as you put a drop in, somebody does. Then anecdotally, 10-15 minutes, your near vision improves. That's very important to realize, and that's what we continue to hear back. Like we said, what we're also hearing is that people notice that also that distance vision in many instances improves. That's always the center of the discussion. No different than when we launched this product and how we prepared 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's on the label. Setting up expectations was always and continues to be a focus of our sales force, and they're doing that extremely well. What we've seen, as I highlighted in the call, is that, like most miotics, we were in a trial and in preparation for launch, most focused on potential headaches and a small subset of the population, and that doesn't appear to be happening a lot. 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.

How transient it 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. 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. This truly is not a big thing. What we're hearing from doctors, and for many of them, it's if this really is something that bothers patients, they'll immediately offer up some eye-whitening agent to use in those first couple of days. That's what we're doing on the sales force. In those 13,000 calls that they're doing on a four-week basis. Maybe Shawn can.

Talk about what we're doing on the KOL side and on the speaker bureau.

Shawn Olsson (Chief Commercial Officer)

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for the question, Stacy. When you think of all these speaker bureau events, we're running over 140 this quarter alone, and that will continue on in 2026. Obviously, in our speaker bureau, we lay out the expectation setting for patients in there, as well as how to introduce it to the patients. 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 it's transient and 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 one and day four. It can contextualize it for the doctors.

Again, this is something they're used to. This is an item that really focuses on near vision, and it does a great job restoring near vision quickly and long versus the transient nature of the redness.

Eef Schimmelpennink (President and CEO)

Thanks, Shawn. Really quick, and I'll combine your next few questions. Trends in script data and 3PEX. Important, again, is that we really look at this fourth quarter as getting that experience of VIZZ out there. We're truly very encouraged by the initial script data that we see. Just to remind everyone, initially, and up to, frankly, not even fully now, the product was only available in e-pharmacy, which is why we continue to highlight that full availability of the product is not going to be until the middle of November. That means that not all retail pharmacies are fully available, or patients that go there might not immediately be able to get that product. Against that backdrop, we are very encouraged to share that we've already had 5,000 filled scripts. I think it's too early to start sharing what the trends are.

One thing that we do note is that actually, if you look at Symfony data, it's more accurate than we initially thought. I'll leEef you with that comment there. We are seeing some patients opt in for the 3PEX. Again, that's only available through e-pharmacy. It doesn't make sense at this moment to comment on what that percentage is. That's something that we feel once we have this full quarter behind us, and we truly have both channels fully available, that's a more meaningful step to look at then. Thank you, Stacy.

Stacy Ku (Biotechnology Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

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

Yigal Nochomovitz (Director and Biotech Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, guys. Thank you very much for the question, and 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. Obviously, you're essentially flooding the market with samples. Could you just comment on the conversion from samples to paid scripts and how you expect that to evolve over time? 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? Thank you.

Eef Schimmelpennink (President and CEO)

Thanks, Yigal. Great questions. Like I said, I'm very encouraged by what we're seeing in our launch. I think different than Vuity, this is very much focused on driving that experience. 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. Let's see. And the second part of your question there, it's around the sample conversion.

Yigal Nochomovitz (Director and Biotech Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah.

Eef Schimmelpennink (President and CEO)

Yeah, sorry. The sample conversion is something that I know is something that people look at for maybe more traditional launch. You remember that this sample is just a 5PEX, and it's all about making sure that whoever wants to try the product has access. 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 reps deliver the samples is the doctor rips open a pack, puts the product in their own eyes, and that's done. 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.

In short, we'll continue to flood the market with samples. We think it's a great tool. That will drive patient uptake.

Shawn Olsson (Chief Commercial Officer)

The last question on the choice of spokesperson. When we were evaluating a spokesperson for VIZZ, we had a lot of criteria that we analyzed against. One, the person had to be authentic, right? It really had to be someone that was a presbyope. It had to align to our consumers. Again, when we look at the early sales of Vuity, we knew that it was predominantly in major metropolitan areas. It also biased a little bit more towards female than male. We want to make sure we have that right consumer alignment. We wanted to make sure we also had alignment with our brand. When we think of VIZZ, we want someone that's elevated, someone that's a category of one, or someone that stands out amongst everyone else. Our first choice was Sarah Jessica Parker for this, and we couldn't be more happy.

Now, this is a person who is authentic. One of our requirements is they must have used the product, tried the product, and they liked it. One of the reasons we waited until now to share who that celebrity was is we need to get them samples so they can try the product and get them onto VIZZ. This person, Sarah Jessica Parker, has used the product and does like the product. We're really excited to partner with her and to launch in Q1 of 2026 with that campaign.

Yigal Nochomovitz (Director and Biotech Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you very much.

Eef Schimmelpennink (President and CEO)

Thanks, Yigal.

Operator (participant)

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

Biren Amin (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Yeah, hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions, and thanks for sharing a lot of the metrics around the launch. I had a question around that. You highlighted how you detailed the 17,000 unique eye care professionals. Of those, I think about 7,000 ECP offices have been sampled, and then 2,500 ECPs are now unique prescribing. Maybe just talking through that funnel, is the expectation in the next few months that the remainder of the 10,000 ECPs detailed that have not been sampled will be sampled? The conversion rate from sample to a prescribing ECP, what characteristics are you seeing on that? Is the expectation that that number will grow given the samples across the 7,000 ECPs? Thank you.

Shawn Olsson (Chief Commercial Officer)

Thanks, Biren. Shawn and I will, again, tag team on this one. 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 four weeks by our sales force, which again is a tremendous achievement and one highlight in the great work that they're doing out there. If we say 7,000 samples or 70,000 samples delivered, let's do 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. Ultimately, as I mentioned earlier, the aim is indeed to have samples available at every office that wants them. 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. What we are seeing, and I have mentioned that in my prepared remarks as well, is that there is a lot of interest from offices outside of those initial 12,000-15,000 that we are focused on. We are definitely putting mechanisms in place to ensure that we can provide them with our background and samples for the product as well. That number continues to grow. We see that, frankly, on a daily basis on the numbers that we see coming in. Maybe Shawn can talk a little bit more on what we see in doctors that are those first ones that are converting into being writers.

Eef Schimmelpennink (President and CEO)

Yep. 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. We continue to focus on those people in terms of our call cycles and continued rollout of samples.

Biren Amin (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Perfect. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

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

Marc Goodman (Senior Research Analyst)

Yes. Good morning, guys. Two questions. First. For the patients who've gotten prescriptions, can you give us any sense of 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. Second, on the DTC, just how extensive will this be? Is this going to be analog where you're watching 6:30 news on television like the old days, or is it digital only? Thanks.

Eef Schimmelpennink (President and CEO)

Yep. Great question, Marc. Thanks for that. 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 patients. Again, it's in line with what we expected, right? We see the prescriptions. It's mostly people in that 45-65-year-old age group, still gainfully employed. We are seeing a bias towards female over male, again, as expected. We are seeing it in those metropolitan areas. Really, those more developed areas, along with what we saw with Vuity and being the biggest space in markets. This is great confirmation before we 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.

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. That is where the majority of our DTC will be focused. 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 our 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.

Marc Goodman (Senior Research Analyst)

Thanks.

Operator (participant)

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

Bhavin Patel (Business Analyst)

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. This is Bhavin Patel for Jason. First is, can you maybe help us break out 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. I think Eef might 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. My second question is with regards to the SG&A run rate for Q4. I guess, how should we be thinking about that? As we look towards Q1 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.

Eef Schimmelpennink (President and CEO)

Thank you. I'll take the first one, and then we'll talk about the SG&A. Like I explained earlier, currently in these first weeks of launch, initially, the product was only available through e-pharmacy. Only in the last couple of weeks, slowly, the retail pharmacy has come online. Whatever that split at the moment is, it will not be representative of how this will go forward. 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 a few guys that come 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.

I think your question was around the difference in availability of product through e-pharmacy. I think, as we've mentioned a lot, there's a three-pack that's available for consumers to buy at a discounted rate of $198 per pack. That's $66. That would 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. That's the difference there. On the SG&A, I'll hand it over to Dan.

Dan Chevallard (CFO)

Thanks, Eef. And Bhavin, thanks for the question. Just to break down the OpEx overall, what we've talked about this year were two trends. One was you should expect SG&A to ramp into the second half, which I'll characterize for you. You also should expect R&D to do the opposite, which also it's done. 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. 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. Q3 did include some one-timers. You'd expect around the moment of launch, there were some one-time costs. What we've always said for 2026 was.

Assume a commercial spend of $80 million-$100 million per year, inclusive of the DTC. And then layer on top of that the G&A spend of on the order of $20 million-$25 million. That kind of four-to-one 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.

Bhavin Patel (Business Analyst)

Thanks so much.

Operator (participant)

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

Lachlan Hanbury-Brown (Biotech Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question and congrats on the progress. I guess, Eef, you mentioned that, yeah, there's been a decent amount of non-target doctors that have expressed interest in you 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?

Eef Schimmelpennink (President and CEO)

Great questions, Lachlan. Thanks. 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. 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 targeted accounts. If in the same literally street there's a non-targeted one that is prescribing, and that's obviously data that's all available, that's an easy stop for them to make as well. That's some of the things we've always spoken about, and you guys know 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.

As soon as that makes sense, we will pull that trigger. That is on those two mechanisms. Time to fill can be very quick. We see, and that is what is 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, two to five days. If you really want the product earlier, that is a priority shipping in place as well. We see that that worked well on the retail side, similar timelines at the moment. We do not think that there is a hurdle or a delay in filling the script.

Lachlan Hanbury-Brown (Biotech Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Thanks. Maybe another one. You mentioned in the press release, I think there were 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. 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?

Eef Schimmelpennink (President and CEO)

No. Thanks for actually bringing that question up. I think it's an important distinction that, unlike different companies, or what you often see is where you just buy a dataset of, in our case, Eye Care Professionals, we want this to go very differently. It's an opt-in process. Doctors have to actively, one, be detailed, two, have samples in hand, three, opt in to Find a Doc. It's a bottoms-up fill. I think the number that you're seeing there highlights the enthusiasm that doctors have for the product. Anything you want to add, Shawn?

Shawn Olsson (Chief Commercial Officer)

I'd say, again, as early in the launch, we're already continuing to see that grow very rapidly. 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 Find a Doc.

Lachlan Hanbury-Brown (Biotech Equity Research Analyst)

Yep. Thanks.

Operator (participant)

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

Gary Nachman (Senior Analyst)

Okay. Thanks, and good morning. Back to the initial people using VIZZ, the 5,000 first RXs. Can you also profile them a bit in terms of the buckets you've talked about? Are they contact lens wearers, LASIK patients, those getting aesthetic treatments? Are you seeing any pushback at all with consumer sentiment generally pretty low with the price of VIZZ? Is that holding back any RX uptake?

Shawn Olsson (Chief Commercial Officer)

That's a great question, Gary. Thanks for that. 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. 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 give better insight in that after we turn on our DTC, and we've targeted those groups. It does appear to be those already in the practice would then lend itself more towards 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." We really see that as promising and haven't seen pushback on pricing.

Gary Nachman (Senior Analyst)

Okay. And then just one more for Eef. The distance benefit that you're hearing pretty consistently, it sounds like, in addition to the near vision benefit, how important is that for VIZZ's overall profile and how patients are viewing that? And will you consider a study looking at distance vision maybe to add to the label in addition to whatever data you have already? Thanks.

Eef Schimmelpennink (President and CEO)

Thanks, Gary. We are indeed hearing it, and that's great. In our phase III data, we saw that some 41% of people in the study showed, just, we measured the distance vision improvement there. That's clearly something that, in practice, translates. It's all anecdotal at the moment. It's not key in our minds to make VIZZ successful as a near vision improvement drop, but obviously, it's a nice added benefit. We're hearing doctors experiment with it in that way. Maybe experiment is not the right word, but they see, again, highly anecdotally, that people that are minus a half, minus one, minus one and a half, are able to go without their distance correction.

Highly anecdotal, something that we are obviously following, something that we are thinking of maybe ultimately doing a different study on because that could be a group of patients that you can actually serve with our product as well. Again, great to see, encouraging, not a make-or-break for the success of this as a presbyopia drop, but obviously a very nice added benefit.

Gary Nachman (Senior Analyst)

All right. Great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

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

Matthew Caufield (VP of Equity Research)

Hi. Great. Thank you, Eef, Dan, and team. Obviously, very excited for the launch. You had mentioned the focus on optometrists compared to ophthalmologists. 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. Thanks again.

Eef Schimmelpennink (President and CEO)

Yep. Thanks, Matt. When we look at our sales force targeting, it's aligned to where we saw the early prescribers of Vuity. Their targets are roughly 80% optometry and 20% ophthalmology. We'll continue to look at the prescriber base, but do not see any changes to that mix in the near term right now. We're seeing consistently that, again, this does continue to be an optometry play product. We're confident in that 80/20 split.

Matthew Caufield (VP of Equity Research)

Excellent. Very helpful, guys, and very excited for the launch. Thanks.

Eef Schimmelpennink (President and CEO)

Thanks, Matt.

Operator (participant)

That concludes our question-and-answer session. As I'm showing there are no further questions, thank you for your participation, and we now conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.