NovoCure Reports Q1 2026 Results: Full Earnings Call Transcript

NovoCure (NASDAQ:NVCR) released first-quarter financial results and hosted an earnings call on Thursday. Read the complete transcript below. Benzinga APIs provide real-time access to earnings call transcripts and financial data. Visit https://www.benzinga.com/apis/ to learn more. The full earnings call is available at https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/zmc3tkut/ 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 time benefit of $1 million. We also had a $5.6 million tailwind from changes in foreign exchange rates compared to Q1 2025. Net revenue from Optune LUA in the first quarter was $3 million compared to $1.5 million in Q1 2025. Based on the strength of of our first quarter results in GBM, we are updating our full year revenue guidance to a range of $690 million to $710 million representing 5 to 8% growth. We are maintaining the range for combined revenue from Optim Lua and Optune PACS at $15 million to $25 million for the year. Gross margin in the quarter was 78% compared to 75% in Q1 of 2025. This was primarily driven by lower cost for arrays resulting from improved array utilization and lower supplier prices. We continue to expect annual gross margin in the mid-70s for the full year 2026 as we bring more optune tax patients on therapy prior to establishing broad reimbursement. Research and development costs in the quarter were $58 million, an increase of 8% compared to the same period in 2025. This was primarily driven by increased costs associated with the keynote D58 trial. As a reminder, this is a 700 plus patient trial which we expect to fully enroll by the end of this year. Sales and Marketing expenses in Q1 were $58 million up 5% from Q1 2025. This was driven by launch costs for Optune PACS in the US and Optim LUA in Japan. G&A costs in the quarter were $86 million, up 92% from the same period last year. As we mentioned last quarter we incurred a $43 million share based compensation charge triggered by the approval of Optune PACS. I do want to note this expense is included for GAAP accounting purposes and the grant associated with this charge did not vest and shares were not distributed. Our net loss for the quarter was 71 million compared to $34 million in Q1 2025. Excluding the one time share based compensation expense, net loss was $28 million. Loss per share in the quarter was negative $0.62. Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter was negative $0.3 million compared to negative $5 million in the first quarter of 2025. We are updating our full year adjusted EBITDA guidance this morning to a range from negative $15 million to break even. This reflects our strong start to the year as well as accelerated expenses from our Optune Plugs launch. Our cash and investment balance as of March 31, 2026 was $432 million. Thank you all for joining us this morning. We will now open the line for Q and A. OPERATOR Certainly as a reminder to ask a question, please press star *1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star *1 again. Please stand by while we compile our Q and A roster. And our first question will be coming from Jonathan Chang of Leerink Partners. Your line is open, Jonathan. Jonathan Chang (Equity Analyst) Hi guys. Good morning and thanks for taking my questions. Can you provide any more color on the early Optune PAC's launch? Like the number of prescribers, the types of centers where you're seeing utilization, the early clinician patient feedback, and help us contextualize how does this compare to the early lung cancer launch experience? Thank you. Frank Leonard (Chief Executive Officer) Thanks, Jonathan. Appreciate the question. We are seeing. We're really proud of the Optune PACS launch, both our preparation and also the response from the market. As Bill mentioned in his opening remarks, we had over 800 certified prescribers in just the opening month essentially of approval. And as Bill mentioned, 27 of the certified prescribers are from academic centers. So. And while we haven't given specific statistics on the number of prescribers who actually wrote in the first quarter, I will say that we were pleased. It was a breadth across both community and academic centers as well as prescribers who even in the first five weeks wrote multiple prescriptions. So I think as we get into the second quarter, we will be able to give a little bit more color on that quantitative color on the prescribing trends and who's prescribing and where. But in terms of just the aggregate demand experienced in the first month of launch, we're very pleased. And to your question about how this compares to our lung launch, we would say this is across whatever metric we want to look at. It is multiples of demand and really just a significantly different reception from the prescribing community. Jonathan Chang (Equity Analyst) Understood. Thanks for taking my questions. OPERATOR And our next question will be coming from the line of Jason Bedner of Piper Sandler. Your line is open, Jason. Jason Bedner (Equity Analyst) Thanks. Good morning everyone. Congrats on a really nice quarter here and a start with Optune PACS, so I'll start there. The launch here is significantly better than what we were thinking. It's really nice to see. Wondering if you could expand a bit more on those results where you're at with physician onboarding versus the prescribing process. And I guess what I mean there is your early metrics are so strong, it has me wondering about the steps of converting certified prescribers into active prescribers. Are those prescribers predominantly those that were part of your trial and that's why they were able to move so quickly with prescriptions. Just any color you can add here. As we think about the launch curve after physicians are certified and then moving into that prescribing of pacs. Frank Leonard (Chief Executive Officer) Jason, thank you. I appreciate the question. What I would say is to your question sort of around who are those initial prescribers? I would actually start by just referencing back to the fact that this is the first significant approval for this indication. It's really, if we look just to the stage of locally advanced pancreatic cancer, this is the first successful trial in that space. And so while we've seen very strong engagement from the Principal Investigators (PIs) who participated in the trial, the interest is much broader. And it was essentially a buildup of demand that we were able to meet at centers we've never worked with before, academic centers where we've previously had very difficult times gaining access, wanted to have us in there in the first week so that they could immediately add to the standard-of-care. So I think we'll really go into some more numbers as we move forward into the next quarters. But again, I would say this is very broad based. There's not one single cohort that was able to go first and more on that process. To remind everyone as a device, we do have to train and certify our physicians as a first step. Once that training and certification takes place, they're able to prescribe right away. Those who have worked with us before might be a little bit more sophisticated about how to transfer prescriptions to us. But what I'm also really pleased to say is we've made significant investments over the last year into our Healthcare Provider (HCP) portal, the ways in which we work with physicians to transfer the prescription and the related data that's required such that I think we've lowered the bar in terms of the burden on the physician. And as a result, we've seen that speed to prescribe. Yeah. And the only thing I'd add is the enthusiasm really started to build at American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) last year when the data were first presented. We saw just a great reception from the podium. And so to your specific Question. The interest certainly had an opportunity to build and was far broader than the investigators. Jason Bedner (Equity Analyst) Okay, excellent. Maybe one quick follow up and then a separate one on guidance. But the quick follow up, just as we think about that launch curve, you've been in market here for now three months or almost three months, what does that look like in February to March to April, if you can share any real time feedback on that launch trajectory. And then separately on the guidance question for revenue, you bumped the midpoint by 10 million. You beat consensus by 6 million. So that's a pretty strong statement out of the gate here. Maybe talk about if you could, what you're seeing real time or over the balance of the year, that left you comfortable raising the revenue guide by more than the beat. Frank Leonard (Chief Executive Officer) Jason, thank you. I'll comment on the trajectory and then pass to Christopher to Christoph. We can't comment on the trajectory in the current quarter, only on the prior quarter. I would just say that when you look at there's FDA approval, then there's a bit of time where we have to refile our labeling with the fda. And you look at the last quarter really in the context of essentially four weeks in market. I go back to what I said before, that we were very pleased by the results. We see real strength in that, that initial interaction with our customers. And we are very excited for the rest of the year in terms of continuing the momentum. Yeah. Christoph Brockman (Chief Financial Officer) And Jason, Christoph here. So to your guidance question, I would say we came off the back of a very strong 2025 and also Q4 and we have seen in Q1 that we were able to carry that momentum into 2026, which gave us the confidence combined with the strong revenue also in Q1 to increase the guidance to what we have seen, 690 to 710 million. Jason Bedner (Equity Analyst) Okay, thanks again. Congrats. OPERATOR And our next question will be coming from Kevin Dejeter of Ladenburg Bauman. Your line is open. Kevin Dejeter (Equity Analyst) Kevin, Congratulations on the great quarter reimbursements. You know, specifically, can you comment on kind of what you're seeing in terms of, you know, your funnel for contracting and coverage with some of the commercial payers and provide any updated thoughts on engagement and potential for CMS coverage for. And this is for Optune PACS. Frank Leonard (Chief Executive Officer) Sorry, Kevin, I think we were getting a little bit of a breakup as you were speaking, but I believe the question is directed towards our pathway to coverage and reimbursement for optune packs in the United States. I'll start by highlighting we're very pleased to have our first major payer in the United States covering optune packs with the coverage policies from Elevance Health and we will continue to work through the reimbursement process with the other major payers, private payers in the U.S. what we've typically said is that we expect around a year to two years to work through a coverage process in the US for private payers and more on that full two year window to have a revision to the LCD for the Medicare Medicare coverage. In terms of contracting, we have existing contracts in place with most payers in the United States, so we actually do not have a contracting step on PACs. So once a coverage policy is issued, the reimbursement is in place on the private side. Lastly, I'll just close by noting, you know we do have a we do view National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guideline inclusion as an important step and we are continuing to we have filed with the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) to request that guideline inclusion and we are monitoring the situation closely. OPERATOR And our next question will be coming from the line of Vijay Kumar of Evercore isi. Your line is open. Vijay Kumar (Equity Analyst) Hi team. Congrats on a nice print here and thank you for taking my question. I guess Bill or Frank, my first one was on this pancreatic noted RAS inhibitors. I'm curious just to be clear, right I think Revolution Medicine had some good data. Just to be very clear, their approval is not a headwind to your PACs, correct? Because correct me if I'm wrong, the indications for your trial are very different versus Revolution Medicine. Could you just clarify that please? Bill Doyle (Executive Chairman) Thank you Vijay. Thank you very much. Thank you for the question. We are when we think about Optune PACS and TT fields for pancreatic cancer, I always want to highlight back to the fact that pancreatic tumors have a low bioavailability for drugs, which is a big reason for why so many drugs have failed in this indication in clinical trials. It's also a reason why we see that excitement from the treating community because using a physical modality against the tumor is intuitive when the tumor has low bioavailability. And so we see this strength of interest in Optune PACS that you see in the commercial launch numbers. But we also do see that in clinical interest in the number of Investigator-Sponsored Trial (IST) proposals we receive and the interest in helping us to design our next wave of trials in pancreatic cancer. And so we think our device has a unique biophysical rationale for being used in this tumor type that is definitely recognized by the treating community. In addition, as you know, we are approved for locally advanced pancreatic cancer which is a unique indication from where the current RAS inhibitor phase three data is. And we think, you know, we feel very confident that we have, we have and we have a path forward to continue the excitement that we've seen in the first quarter. And I'll ask my colleague Dr. Uri Weinberg to comment also on the exciting work that we've been doing to study TT fields with RAS inhibitors. Thank you. Uri Weinberg Hi Vijay, nice to hear you. So first, we certainly continue to monitor developments in all of our areas of interest and we are encouraged to see the new advancements in the field of KRS inhibition, first and foremost for the patients, but also with direct relation to TTFields. TTFields were found to inhibit c-Myc, which is a master regulator of cancer cell proliferation and growth. And therefore TTFields mediation of downregulation of CMIC may actually complement the upstream KRAS inhibition. And that would support a potentially more effective therapeutic strategy when the two treatments are used together. And in particular LCMI can also be activated through bypass pathways. And as Bill mentioned in his opening remarks, this data has been recently presented at aacr. And in a very complementary fashion, an independent group of researchers from Mayo Clinic looked into the concomitant use of TTFields and KRAS inhibitors and also repeated these same preclinical effects and reported even a synergy when the two therapies were used concomitantly. So we are very encouraged by that. Bill Doyle (Executive Chairman) If we, you know, if we take a step back, we have always maintained that with tumor treating fields there's an opportunity to use with whatever the prevailing pharmacological therapy may be. We've never seen anything less than additivity and in certain circumstances we see the synergy. And now we've seen synergy with checkpoint inhibitors and we're pursuing that strategy with our keynote D58 trial in newly diagnosed GBM. And we can see a future here where synergy with RAS inhibitors is also a very interesting treatment strategy for these very difficult to cure cancers. Vijay Kumar (Equity Analyst) That's helpful. Maybe one big picture question. When I look at the stock, clearly you're not getting any benefit or credit for some of the positive data you had, whether it's lung or pancreatic. I'm curious. Maybe the street wants to see a revenue acceleration. When I look at your assumptions here for GBM and pancreatic could NovoCure get back double digit growth in fiscal 27 generally? Talk about big picture, how we should be thinking about the revenue profile for this company going forward. Frank Leonard (Chief Executive Officer) Thank you, Vijay. I'll comment first on big picture themes around The Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) business and the bank launch. And I'll turn it to Christoph to talk a little bit more about how we think about the long term financial forecast. So first, we're very pleased to see growth last year in our Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) business. Not just international growth and opening new markets, but also in the core original business in the US Growing. And as we've said before, we believe there are many more patients that can benefit from the therapy as we currently have a penetration rate in our active markets of around 40%. And so what we've continued to do is invest into our Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) business, both the capabilities on the sales and marketing side to essentially dual cover doctors. So if we have call on a community practice for pancreaticreatic cancer, that same rep is now able to reach the community doctors to detail on GBM. We've also improved our sales, operations and targeting capabilities. And we really do feel like we've, in our, in our core businesses and particularly in the US we have the right team and the right skill sets in place right now to continue driving growth. And so we think that foundation alone is really an exciting way to think about the next few years. And what we've seen in Panc right now gives us really an incredible amount of confidence that we can turn this into the second major revenue pillar for the company in the coming years. Christoph Brockman (Chief Financial Officer) And maybe just to add to this, so to reiterate our strategies very clearly to get to double digit revenue growth and also to profitable growth and to profitability. Now we gave you a revenue guide for this year that is ranging from 5 to 8% at the midpoint, 7% growth with what I would classify as very initial contributions from new indication launches. So with more material contributions from new indication launches, we expect to get into the double digit revenue growth in the future. Vijay Kumar (Equity Analyst) That's helpful, thank you. OPERATOR And our next question will be coming from the line of Lawrence Bigelson of Wells Fargo. Lawrence, your line is open. Lawrence Bigelson (Equity Analyst) Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Hey, I wanted to ask of course about pancreatic, the pancreatic launch, you know, when we look at newly diagnosed gbm, I mean we only have one quarter here, but it looks remarkably similar on prescriptions, you know, better on active patients. I know it's early, but what can you say when comparing, you know, prescription launch in the U.S. you know, an active patient ramp for newly diagnosed GBM to pancreatic, you know, let me just, I'll just ask all my questions up front. Was there any pent up demand in Q1 for panc and then Just ou as time and remind us of that, please. Thank you. Frank Leonard (Chief Executive Officer) Larry, this is Frank. Thank you for the question. I would say, you know, we are, we haven't really focused on comparing pancreatic to our gb, our prior GBM launch for a technical aspect, which is simply that in GBM we had been approved in second line therapy and had existing relationships. And then in first line therapy the data had been out for over a year before the FDA approval. So it sort of on a technical basis becomes difficult to pick an exact comparison point. So what I would anchor back to is the almost over 900 prescribers who sought certification in the first month of commercial availability. That was, as we said before, that was multiples of the certification levels that we saw in our lunar launch. We do think that reflects some pent up demand, but I would absolutely not describe it as a bolus of patients waiting and that it then normalized to a different level. We do just see really strong interest from the community in using optune packs to treat their locally advanced pancreatic cancer patients. Christoph Brockman (Chief Financial Officer) And Ousmane. Oh, yes, I'm sorry, thank you. In terms of OUS (Outside the United States), Christoph, can you remind me of the timing? Yeah. So we said second half for both public approval as well as for Japan approval. Yeah. And all the applications are in. We're now just sort of waiting for those regulatory submissions. And if everything proceeds as expected, we would launch in the second half in those regions. Frank Leonard (Chief Executive Officer) I mean, just maybe one follow up. Frank, I mean, do you think pancreatic cancer could ultimately be bigger than GBM overall? I think you've said that in the past. Well, I certainly. So I think that pancreatic, I think in our current indication, in locally advanced pancreatic cancer, you know, we believe there's around approximately 16,000 patients, which is already bigger than the eligible patient population for Optune GEO. As we build our evidence base out and when we're able to secure those additional FDA approvals, it just keeps growing from there. So we are absolutely committed to success in this indication and we think it has, as I said before, have a tremendous potential to be our second major revenue driver. And ultimately the population is bigger than the population for our current business. All right, thank you guys. Lawrence Bigelson (Equity Analyst) Thank you. OPERATOR And our next question will be coming from the line of Emily Bodnar of H.C. wainwright. Your line is open. Emily, hi, good morning. Emily Bodnar (Equity Analyst) Thanks for taking the questions and congrats on a strong first quarter. Curious if you could comment a bit on your confidence for converting the full 169 prescriptions to active patients and if you can, kind of comment on what the average timing has been to converting patients from prescription to active therapy. Frank Leonard (Chief Executive Officer) Yes, thank you. Yeah, I appreciate the question because it was a big difference between prescriptions and active patients. And that simply reflected the timing of having one month at the very end of the quarter. So we don't intend to give the number of starts every quarter, but what I will highlight is that we had, you know, we had 90 starts which led to that active patient number. And we saw typically about two weeks, a little bit less than two weeks from a prescription to a start. And so you know, those, you know that 163 reflects a lot of prescriptions right at the very, very end of the quarter that we'll be talking about on the next earnings calls. Emily Bodnar (Equity Analyst) Thanks. And maybe on metastatic pancreatic cancer, obviously you have the Panova 4 data and then you also touched on kind of potential synergy with KRAS inhibitors. So maybe just kind of talk about general strategy moving forward for the metastatic settings. Uri Weinberg So thank you for the question. Yeah. We were very pleased to read out the results of the Panova4 study. As a reminder, our single arm study in metastatic pancreatic cancer patients using a combination of gemcitabine, Abraxane, atezolizumab, Roche's PD-L1 inhibitor and TTFields, the primary endpoint was met. The primary endpoint was disease control rate and it was significantly increased as a result of using the therapeutic regimen in Panova 4 from the historical 48% into 74%. I think that the most important message and takeaways from the Panova4 study is seeing again the relevance of TTFIELDS therapy as a therapeutic approach to be developed in the metastatic setting in pancreatic adenocarcinoma. And following our demonstration of the clinical effectiveness in locally advanced pancreatic cancer in the Panova 3 study and the approval that paves the way to continue the studies and development in this space. The population used TTFils therapy at a desirable usage rates. They use it for the entire protocol indicated duration of treatment. So again, a great evidence of ttfield's role in metastatic pancreatic cancer. And we continue to explore directions and may come back to this regimen at a later point in time. Emily Bodnar (Equity Analyst) Great, thank you. OPERATOR And our next question will be coming from the line of Jessica Fye of JP Morgan. Jessica, your line is open. Tanmay Hi guys. Thanks for taking a question. This is Tanmay on for Jess. I wanted to ask for Optune PACS. You mentioned the backlog of starts in the funnel, so I was wondering if the conversion from prescriptions to patients on therapy is going on as expected, and what do you expect the ultimate throughput to be from these, from those getting prescriptions to those patients who eventually initiate on therapy. Frank Leonard (Chief Executive Officer) Thank you, thank you for the question. Again, we want to be clear that with one month of essentially one month and a few days of activity where we could take prescriptions and convert to starts, it, you know, it's hard to give definitive answers around trends about the rate at which prescriptions will convert to start. But the consistent theme I want to emphasize is that we are very pleased with the results so far. We, you know, in particular, I'm really proud of our team who helps the patients, our technical support team that's helping our patients. This is a new patient population for them. And I think the main takeaway in that first month is that we can execute quickly to move from prescription start. And as I mentioned, we had a strong correlation between active patients at the end and the starts that occurred in the quarter, which means we're giving them the right support to make the treatment feasible and practical. OPERATOR And I'm showing no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the conference back to Bill Doyle for closing remarks. Bill Doyle (Executive Chairman) Thank you. I'd like to end the call today by noting that Novocure was able to maintain the momentum of the fourth quarter last year with strong and consistent execution in Q1. We're very pleased to see growth in both double digit growth in both active patients and net revenue compared to Q1 last year. And very promising early signals both from our LUNAR launch in Japan and of course from our Optune PACS launch in the US our 2026 catalysts remain on track. We look forward to continued reporting on the developments in the commercial business as well as the top line data from Trident up next in next quarter. We didn't talk about it much in this call, but our company remains focused not only on achieving the double digit growth that Christoph underlined, but also on bringing the company to profitability. And we were also very pleased with our numbers in that regard and we are focused as we have updated in our guidance on our path to profitability. So thanks to the team at Novocure, thanks to our patients and clinicians and it's an exciting time to be at the company and we look forward to reporting our progress in the next quarters. 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.