United Therapeutics (UTHR) Risk Factors

We may be required to seek additional sources of financing to meet unplanned or planned expenditures. Unplanned expenditures could be significant and may result from necessary modifications to product development plans or product offerings in response to difficulties encountered with clinical trials. We may also face unexpected costs in preparing products for commercial sale, or in maintaining sales levels of our currently marketed therapeutic products. Our Credit Agreement contains affirmative and negative covenants that, among other things, limit our ability to incur additional indebtedness. If we are unable to obtain additional funding on commercially reasonable terms or at all, we may be compelled to delay clinical studies, curtail operations, or obtain funds through collaborative arrangements that may require us to relinquish rights to certain products or potential markets.

We must be able to manufacture sufficient quantities of our commercial products to satisfy demand. We manufacture nebulized Tyvaso drug product, Remodulin, Orenitram, and Unituxin, including the active ingredient in each of these products (and in Tyvaso DPI), at our own facilities and rely on third parties for additional manufacturing capacity for nebulized Tyvaso and Remodulin. We also rely on third parties for our manufacturing, sometimes exclusively, as detailed under the risk factor below entitled, We rely in part on third parties to perform activities that are critical to our business. If any of our internal or third-party manufacturing and supply arrangements are interrupted, we may not have sufficient inventory to meet future demand. Changes in suppliers and/or service providers could interrupt the manufacturing of our commercial products and impede the progress of our commercial launch plans and clinical trials. Our internal manufacturing process subjects us to risks as we engage in increasingly complex manufacturing processes. We manufacture our entire supply of Orenitram and Unituxin without an FDA-approved back-up manufacturing site. We do not plan to engage a third party to manufacture Orenitram; however, we have initiated efforts to qualify a third party to manufacture the active ingredient in Unituxin, which will take multiple years and may not succeed. Our manufactured organ and organ alternative programs will involve exceptionally complicated manufacturing processes, many of which have never been attempted on a clinical or commercial scale. It will take substantial time and resources to develop and implement such manufacturing processes, and we may never be able to do so successfully. Additional risks of our manufacturing strategy include the following: - We, our third-party manufacturers, and other third parties involved in the manufacturing process, such as third parties that operate testing and storage facilities, are subject to the current good manufacturing practices regulations of the FDA and its international counterparts, as applicable, current good tissue practices, and similar international regulatory standards, and other quality standards related to device manufacturing. Our ability to exercise control over regulatory compliance by our third-party manufacturers is limited. - We believe we and our third-party manufacturers need to increase our respective manufacturing capacity by constructing new facilities, and/or expanding existing facilities, in order to continue meeting anticipated demand for our products. These efforts are often costly and time-consuming, and must meet rigorous regulatory requirements. For example, we are engaged in significant efforts to expand MannKind Corporation's (MannKind) capacity to manufacture Tyvaso DPI in the near term, at our expense. Longer-term, we are constructing our own facility to manufacture Tyvaso DPI. These efforts could be unsuccessful or take longer or cost more than we anticipate, due to a variety of factors including the lead time needed to procure, install, and qualify the highly specialized equipment necessary to manufacture the product. If these plans are not successfully and timely implemented, we could be unable to meet the growing demand for Tyvaso DPI, which would negatively impact our Tyvaso DPI revenues. - We may experience difficulty designing and implementing processes and procedures to ensure compliance with applicable regulations as we develop manufacturing operations for new products. - Natural and man-made disasters (such as fires, contamination, power loss, hurricanes, earthquakes, flooding, terrorist attacks, and acts of war), disease outbreaks, and pandemics such as COVID-19 impacting our internal and third-party manufacturing sites could cause a supply disruption. - The sterility and quality of our products could be substandard and such products could not be sold or used or could be subject to recalls. - The FDA and its international counterparts would require new testing and compliance inspections of new manufacturers of our products, or new manufacturing facilities we operate. - If we produce products that do not meet FDA-approved specifications and we fail to detect these issues prior to distribution of these products, our products may be the subject of safety alerts, product recalls, or other corrective actions, and we may be charged in product liability claims and lawsuits which, regardless of their ultimate outcome, could have a material adverse effect on our business and reputation and on our ability to attract and retain customers. - Regulatory agencies may not be able to timely inspect our facilities, or those of our third-party manufacturers, which could result in delays in obtaining necessary regulatory approvals for our products. - We may be unable to contract with needed manufacturers on satisfactory terms or at all. - The supply of materials and components necessary to manufacture and package our products may become scarce or unavailable, which in the past has delayed, and in the future could delay, the manufacturing and subsequent sale of such products. Products manufactured with substituted materials or components must be approved by the FDA and applicable international regulatory agencies before they can be sold. - Manufacturers of the devices used to administer our inhaled and infused therapies are subject to medical device requirements of the FDA and its international counterparts, as applicable. Any non-compliance, recall, or enforcement action issued against them could adversely impact our sales and operations. - The infrastructure of our internal manufacturing facilities, along with certain facilities of our third-party manufacturers, is aging. These facilities have highly sophisticated and complex utility systems and manufacturing equipment. If any of these systems or equipment require long-term repair or replacement, the impacted facility may not be able to manufacture product for a substantial period of time. - We and our third-party manufacturers rely upon local municipalities to supply our facilities with clean water, which is processed into high purity water and used as a key ingredient for several of our commercial drug products. If local municipalities are unable to supply water that meets relevant quality standards, we and our third-party manufacturers may be unable to manufacture these products until such a situation is remediated. - Our supply chain for raw materials and consumables extends worldwide and is complex. Suppliers based in China and Taiwan play a substantial role in our supply chain. Political unrest or trade disputes involving China, Taiwan, or other countries in our supply chain could impact our ability and the ability of our third-party manufacturers to source raw materials and consumables. We also have limited visibility into the supply chains on which our primary suppliers rely; as such, we rely on our primary suppliers to have robust risk mitigation strategies to detect issues and prevent supply disruption. - We are closely monitoring the military conflicts in Ukraine and Israel. Although we do not directly source any raw materials or consumables from Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Gaza, Lebanon, or Israel, our European- and Middle East-based suppliers and service providers could be impacted by extended conflicts or an escalation of these conflicts into neighboring countries. - The cost of many key raw materials and consumables used in the manufacture of our products has increased due to significant inflationary pressure. Should inflation continue to grow above historical averages, we could see higher than average year-over-year increases in cost of goods sold. - Any of our third-party manufacturers could undergo a change of control, causing a change in our business relationship with the relevant manufacturer. Such a change could impact our long-term supply outlook and cause us to seek alternatives that could require a lengthy regulatory approval process. Due to the nature of our products, alternative suppliers may not be readily available, causing us to rely solely on internal capabilities to meet future demand. - In 2024, we began operating a clinical-scale, designated pathogen-free facility (DPF) to produce our xenotransplantation products for human clinical studies. This facility houses gene-edited pigs in a highly controlled containment environment. This facility is a first of its kind, and unforeseen operational issues or disease outbreak amongst its herd could significantly impact the clinical development timelines for our xenotransplantation products. We have begun construction of a second clinical-scale DPF facility to mitigate operational risk and increase capacity. We will need to construct additional clinical and commercial-scale DPF facilities at significant expense in order to support the development and commercialization of our xenotransplantation products. We expect to begin construction of one or more commercial-scale DPF facilities well before our xenotransplantation products could potentially be approved, and if development of our xenotransplantation products fails or demand is significantly less than anticipated, we will not recoup our significant investment in these facilities. In addition, prior to approval of our xenotransplantation products, we may not construct the number of facilities that we believe will ultimately be required to meet patient demand, which may delay our ability to meet demand when and if our xenotransplantation products are approved. Any of these factors could disrupt sales of our commercial products, delay clinical trials or commercialization of new products, result in product liability claims and product recalls, and entail higher costs. Interruptions in our manufacturing process could be significant given the length of time and complexity involved in obtaining necessary regulatory approvals for alternative arrangements, through either third parties or internal manufacturing processes.