License and Collaboration Agreements

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2021

License And Collaboration Agreements [Abstract]

We have entered into various collaboration agreements including license agreements and collaborative research, development and commercialization agreements with various pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Under these collaboration arrangements, we are entitled to receive license fees, upfront payments, milestone and other contingent payments, royalties, sales milestone payments, and payments for the manufacture and supply of our proprietary PEGylation materials and/or reimbursement for research and development activities. We generally include our costs of performing these services in research and development expense, except for costs for product sales to our collaboration partners which we include in cost of goods sold. We analyze our agreements to determine whether we should account for the agreements within the scope of ASC 808, and, if so, we analyze whether we should account for any elements under ASC 606.

In accordance with our collaboration agreements, we recognized license, collaboration and other revenue as follows (in thousands):


		Three months ended March 31,
Partner	Drug Candidate	2021		2020
Bristol-Myers Squibb Company	Bempegaldesleukin	$	—	$	25,000
Eli Lilly and Company	NKTR-358	—		1,259
Other		54		1,256
License, collaboration and other revenue		$	54	$	27,515

During the three months ended March 31, 2021 and 2020, we recognized $18.8 million and $44.6 million, respectively, of revenue for performance obligations that we had satisfied in prior periods. This amount includes all of our royalty revenue and non-cash royalty revenue, as well as the $25.0 million milestone received under our BMS Collaboration Agreement during the three months ended March 31, 2020 described below, because we had previously completed our performance obligations of granting the licenses.

As of March 31, 2021, our collaboration agreements with partners included potential future payments for development and regulatory milestones totaling approximately $1.7 billion, including amounts from our agreements with BMS and Eli Lilly and Company described below. In addition, under our collaboration agreements we are entitled to receive contingent sales milestone payments, other contingent payments and royalty payments, as described below.

There have been no material changes to our collaboration agreements in the three months ended March 31, 2021.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (BMS): Bempegaldesleukin, also referred to as NKTR-214

On February 13, 2018, we entered into a Strategic Collaboration Agreement (the BMS Collaboration Agreement) and a Share Purchase Agreement with BMS, both of which became effective on April 3, 2018. Pursuant to the BMS Collaboration Agreement, we and BMS are jointly developing bempegaldesleukin, including, without limitation, in combination with BMS’s Opdivo® (nivolumab), and other compounds of BMS, us or any third party. The parties have agreed to jointly commercialize bempegaldesleukin on a worldwide basis. We retained the right to record all worldwide sales for bempegaldesleukin. We will share global commercialization profits and losses with BMS for bempegaldesleukin, with Nektar sharing 65% and BMS sharing 35% of the net profits and losses. The parties share the internal and external development costs for bempegaldesleukin in combination regimens based on each party’s relative ownership interest in the compounds included in the regimens. In accordance with the agreement, the parties share development costs for bempegaldesleukin in combination with Opdivo®, 67.5% of costs to BMS and 32.5% to Nektar. The parties share costs for the manufacturing of bempegaldesleukin, 35% of costs to BMS and 65% to Nektar.

In April 2018, BMS paid us a non-refundable upfront cash payment of $1.0 billion. We are eligible to receive additional cash payments up to a total of approximately $1.455 billion (including the milestones which we have received under Amendment No. 1 described below) upon the achievement of certain development and regulatory milestones, and up to a total of

$350.0 million upon the achievement of certain sales milestones. In April 2018, BMS also purchased 8,284,600 shares of our common stock pursuant to the Share Purchase Agreement for total additional cash consideration of $850.0 million.

We determined that the BMS Collaboration Agreement falls within the scope of ASC 808, and we analogized to ASC 606 for the accounting for our performance obligation of the delivery of the licenses to develop and commercialize bempegaldesleukin.

During 2018, we aggregated the total consideration of $1.85 billion received under the agreements and allocated it between the stock purchase and the revenue-generating elements, because we and BMS negotiated the agreements together and the effective date of the BMS Collaboration Agreement was dependent upon the effective date of the Share Purchase Agreement. We recorded the estimated fair value of the shares of $790.2 million in stockholders’ equity. We allocated the remaining $1,059.8 million to the transaction price of the collaboration agreement, which we recognized in 2018. We consider the future potential development, regulatory and sales milestones to be variable consideration.

On January 9, 2020, we and BMS entered into Amendment No. 1 (the Amendment) to the BMS Collaboration Agreement. Pursuant to the Amendment, we and BMS agreed to update the Collaboration Development Plan under which we are collaborating and developing bempegaldesleukin. The cost sharing under the Amendment remains unchanged. We received a non-refundable, creditable milestone payment of $25.0 million for the achievement of the first patient, first visit in the registrational muscle-invasive bladder cancer trial on January 30, 2020, which we recognized in the three months ended March 31, 2020. We have also received a non-refundable, non-creditable milestone payment of $25.0 million for the achievement of the first patient, first visit in the registrational adjuvant melanoma trial on July 27, 2020. For the creditable milestone, BMS is entitled to deduct the amount paid from future development milestones due to us under the original agreement.

Other than these two milestones which we recognized during 2020, we continue to exclude the other milestones of up to $1.8 billion from the transaction price as of March 31, 2021 due to the significant uncertainties involved with clinical development and regulatory approval. We re-evaluate the transaction price at each reporting period and as uncertain events are resolved or other changes in circumstances occur.

As mentioned above, BMS shares certain percentages of development costs incurred by us and we share certain percentages of development costs incurred by BMS. We consider these activities to represent collaborative activities under ASC 808, and we recognize such cost sharing proportionately with the performance of the underlying services. We recognize BMS’ reimbursement of our costs as a reduction of research and development expense and our reimbursement of BMS’ costs as research and development expense. During the three months ended March 31, 2021 and 2020, we recorded $26.7 million and $30.7 million, respectively, as a reduction of research and development expense for BMS’ share of our expenses, net of our share of BMS’ expenses. As of March 31, 2021, we have recorded an unbilled receivable of $26.2 million from BMS in accounts receivable in our Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheet.

Eli Lilly and Company (Lilly): NKTR-358

On July 23, 2017, we entered into a worldwide license agreement with Eli Lilly and Company (Lilly), which became effective on August 23, 2017, to co-develop NKTR-358, a novel immunological drug candidate that we invented. Under the terms of the agreement, we (i) received an initial payment of $150.0 million in September 2017 and are eligible for up to $250.0 million in additional development milestones, (ii) will co-develop NKTR-358 with Lilly, for which we were responsible for completing Phase 1 clinical development and certain drug product development and supply activities, (iii) share with Lilly Phase 1B and 2 development costs with 75% of those costs borne by Lilly and 25% of the costs borne by us, (iv) will have the option to contribute funding to Phase 3 development on an indication-by-indication basis ranging from zero to 25% of development costs, and (v) will have the opportunity to receive a royalty rate up to the low twenties based upon our Phase 3 development cost contribution and the level of annual global product sales. Lilly will be responsible for all costs of global commercialization, and we will have an option to co-promote in the U.S. under certain conditions. A portion of the development milestones may be reduced by 50% under certain conditions, related to the final formulation of the approved product and the timing of prior approval (if any) of competitive products with a similar mechanism of action, which could reduce these milestone payments by 75% if both conditions occur.

The agreement will continue until Lilly no longer has any royalty payment obligations or, if earlier, the termination of the agreement in accordance with its terms. The agreement may be terminated by Lilly for convenience, and may also be terminated under certain other circumstances, including material breach.

We identified our license grant to Lilly, our Phase 1 clinical development obligation and our drug product development obligation as the significant performance obligations in the arrangement. Based on our estimates of the standalone selling prices of the performance obligations, we allocated the $150.0 million upfront payment as $125.9 million to the license, $17.6 million to our portion of the Phase 1 clinical development and $6.5 million to the drug product development. We recognized the revenue

allocated to the license upon the effective date of the license agreement in August 2017. We recognized revenue for our performance obligations for Phase 1 clinical development and drug product development through March 31, 2020.

Although we are entitled to significant development milestones under this arrangement, through March 31, 2021, we have excluded such milestones from the transaction price due to the significant uncertainties involved with clinical development. We re-evaluate the transaction price at each reporting period and as uncertain events are resolved or other changes in circumstances occur.

Other

We have other collaboration agreements that have resulted in commercialized products for our collaborations partners. Under these agreements, we may sell our proprietary PEGylation materials for use in these products, and we are entitled to receive royalties based on net sales of these products as well as sales milestones. As discussed in Note 5, in 2012, we sold all of our rights to receive royalties for CIMZIA® under our collaboration with UCB and MIRCERA® under our collaboration agreement with Roche. Additionally, in 2020, we sold our rights to receive royalties for ADYNOVATE® under our collaboration with Baxalta (a subsidiary of Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd.), MOVANTIK® under our collaboration with AstraZeneca and REBINYN® under license agreement with Novo Nordisk. The 2020 transaction provides for a cap, such that, if the cap is achieved, future royalties on these products will return to us. See Note 5 for additional information regarding these agreements.

Additionally, we have collaborations agreements for products under development, under which we are entitled to up to a total of $40.0 million of development milestones, as well as sales milestones upon achievement of annual sales targets and royalties based on net sales of commercialized products, if any. However, given the current phase of development of the potential products under these collaboration agreements, we cannot estimate the probability or timing of achieving these milestones, and, therefore, have excluded all development milestones from the respective transaction prices for these agreements.