MannKind Earnings Call Insights: Partnership Status and AFREZZA

MannKind Corporation (NASDAQ:MNKD) recently reported its fourth quarter earnings and discussed the following topics in its earnings conference call.

Partnership Status

Matthew Luchini – Piper Jaffray: This is Matthew on for Ian. Thanks for taking the questions. So first I guess the one that always seems to come up, and that’s I was hoping you could give us sort of the latest color, the latest take on where you guys are in terms of a partnership status and how diligence is progressing with potential partners? Then I have just a couple of more after that.

Hakan S. Edstrom – President and COO: This is Hakan and which we have indicated before is that we are in discussions and also in diligent discussions with a number of interested parties again seems to be as we indicated earlier with the addition of the type 2 market and significantly increase opportunity that attracted additional potential partnerships. So those say discussions and due diligence sessions are underway as we speak.

Matthew Luchini – Piper Jaffray: Matt one for you. Could you just give us your sense as to expectations for operating expense run rate in 2013 and beyond, particularly once the trials complete?

Matthew J. Pfeffer – Corporate VP and CFO: I will try. So you will remember that I have been saying we are going to burn somewhere in the $10 million to $12 million a month range for a long time. We consistently seem to underspend that so I am getting a little reluctant. But that is what our projections are showing. So I do still think it’s going to pick up into that range as we hit the kind of crescendo period of the clinical trials in the first couple of quarters here after which we should start winding down. There will be a slight offset as we gear up a little bit for this commercialization. I think post filing but you should see some of the certainly clinical trial expenses which have been the major driver for the increases in that side will start coming down a little bit through the latter part of the year. Beyond that I can’t be to term it much more specific.