AstraZeneca PLC (AZN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to the Deutsche Bank Deposit Receipts Virtual Investor Conference. My name is Zafar Aziz from the Deutsche Bank team. I'm pleased to announce that our next presentation will be from AstraZeneca from the U.K. Before I show our speaker, a few points to note. Please submit your questions in the questions box to the right of the slide. Also, all today's presentations will be recorded and can be accessed by the Deutsche Bank website, adr.db.com. At this point, I'm very pleased to welcome Elizabeth Walton, Investor Relations focusing on biopharmaceuticals and ESG of AstraZeneca which trades on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol AZN and in the U.S. on the NASDAQ as AZN. Over to you, Elizabeth.

Good morning, and good afternoon, everybody. Thanks very much for joining us today. As I've already been introduced, but just to recap, my name is Elizabeth Walton. I'm the Director of Investor Relations at AstraZeneca, and prior to my role at AstraZeneca, I was actually an Equity Research Analyst on the sell-side covering European pharmaceuticals. I've known the business for a number of years. And moving to the next slide. So hopefully, you're aware, AstraZeneca is a global science-led and patient-focused company. We pride ourselves in creating innovative medicines for millions of patients worldwide. And I thought I'd start by recapping our recent performance. As you'll see here on this slide, in 2023, our revenue surpassed $45 billion and we had 12 blockbuster medicines, meaning we're not reliant on 1 or 2 medicines driving our growth moving forward. And we've invested almost $11 billion in research and development for our future growth. We're focused on 5 key therapeutic areas, which I'll dive into a little bit deeper further in the presentation. But we have a broad and deep pipeline with over 120 Phase II and Phase III projects ongoing right now. And on top of that, we're very proud that we are industry leaders in sustainability. So just to recap our strategic pillars, firstly and foremost, science and innovation, and I'll touch a little bit on our R&D capabilities today. Our recent productivity as well as some of the innovative platforms that we are investing in, both for our growth in the near term but also, as we think beyond 2030. Our growth in therapy area leadership, I'll briefly cover some of the messages from our recent Investor Day held back in May. And then we don't have a lot of time, but I'll briefly touch upon the people and sustainability angle of our business. We are very focused on recruiting top-tier talent across the business. And as I mentioned, we have an ambitious sustainability goals. So starting with Science and Innovation. I wanted to remind everybody of our framework for research and development, which originally anchored on the 5R framework, which you can see on the left-hand side that was originally published back in 2011. It's since been updated to include a 6R, which is now right digital solutions on top of right tissue, right safety, right patient, right commercial and right target. On the right-hand side, you'll see that our R&D productivity defined as progressing from a candidate from drug nomination to Phase III completion, it was 19% in 2022, which is versus an industry average of 14%. And as I mentioned, we have a very broad and deep pipeline ongoing. Maybe just to summarize the business as a whole, we have a number of therapeutic areas in which we are focused. Detailed on the right-hand side, you'll see Oncology, Biopharmaceuticals, which encompasses cardiovascular, renal and metabolism or CVRM, respiratory and immunology, what we call R&I, and vaccines and immune therapies. And through the acquisition of Alexion, we also have a rare disease business. If you now look on the left-hand side, you can see that our total revenue is really diversified based on the portfolio that's got a nice split between small specialty medicines in areas like oncology and rare, but also in primary care as well. And as we highlighted in our recent Investor Day, beyond what we have today, we're also investing and thinking very much about our future, and what we think are going to be the disruptive categories in medicine that will drive our growth beyond 2030. And just to walk you briefly through them. On the left-hand side, there's our weight management and risk factors pillar. Here, we're looking to establish and lead in new weight management paradigm, and that's really underpinned by our historic success with Farxiga in this space and building on it with new mechanisms like an oral GLP-1 and fixed-dose combinations with Farxiga, as well as other modalities that we think will play important roles in weight management moving forward like long-acting amylin and glucagon. Another key area of focus for us is in ADCs or Antibody Drug Conjugate and Radioconjugates. And here really, the ambition is to replace systemic chemotherapy and radiotherapy that's used today. And underpinning that, we have 6 clinical stage ADCs that are AstraZeneca wholly owned. And we recently acquired Fusion Therapeutics, which gives us access to the radio and conjugate space and mainly that's FPI-2265 which is moving through the clinic. Also in oncology, we're focused in next-generation IO specifics. And here, the ambition is to replace the PD-1 or PD-L1 inhibitors that are currently in the market today. And then we have 2 key assets that are moving through Phase III development as we speak for volrustomig, a PD-1 CTLA-4 and bispecific and rilvegostomig or PD-1 TIGIT. Beyond that, we're also looking at other platforms such as cell therapy and T-Cell engagers. And here, the challenge has been in the industry about developing scalable technologies. And here, we are investing across lots of different technologies and platforms in order to develop a scalable technology that we can apply both in oncology and in solid tumors where others haven't been able to go before, but also outside of oncology and potentially into immune-mediated diseases where we see potential as well. And then finally, building on our strength in rare disease, we continue to invest in gene therapy and editing, where we think there may be a possibility to make your a -- possibility for a range of rare diseases. Now moving to our growth and therapy area leadership. As I mentioned, we have quite a diverse business but here, I think, is a perfect example from our recent financial results in H1, you can see the diversification both from a geographic standpoint on the left-hand side, but also from a therapeutic area perspective on the right-hand side, we're seeing strong growth across all markets, but we have a particularly strong presence in emerging markets, including China, where we are a leading bio-pharmaceutical company. And then on the right-hand side, you can see the strong growth we're doing across our therapeutic areas. As I mentioned, we have a nice split between primary and specialty care medicines. But this is also really important when we consider the broader pricing and regulatory landscape that's ever evolving in this industry. I'm going to briefly recap another slide that we presented at our Investor Day back in May. And here, we set a new target, our new ambitious revenue target of $80 billion by 2030. As a reminder, we've just $45 billion last year. And you can see there are a few headwinds that we expect in the near term impacts from U.S. regulation changes as well as loss of exclusivities from some of our medicines. But actually, you can see that, that's more than offset by growth that we expect, both from our existing portfolio, so medicines that have launched but are perhaps earlier in their life cycles, all medicines that have the ability to expand into adjacent or additional indications or what we call life management in the pharmaceutical industry. And on top of that, we have a number of -- what we would refer to as new molecular entities, or NMEs or newly launched drugs or newly launched medicines that we expect to bring to the market before 2030. And as I just touched upon, obviously, we have an ambition for sustained growth after 2030 and we're investing today behind disruptive categories and R&D platforms that we think will enable our growth longer term. And just as a reminder, this is all the $80 billion target is all without as many assumptions on any new business development or M&A that could happen between now and 2030. Moving to talk about our financials. We are on track to achieve a mid-30s core operating margin by 2026. We've guided to core R&D to remain as a low 20s percentage of our total revenue, and we are expecting our core SG&A as a total -- as a percentage of total revenue to decrease the time, and that's driven by a number of things. Firstly, we're expecting to have more specialty medicines as part of our overall mix of our portfolio. There are life cycle management opportunities that I mentioned that can range in existing commercial model. So we're not having to add bodies for new drug launches. There are a few lots of exclusivities, which will enable us to redeploy some of our resources internally. And we're always optimizing our global footprint. As I mentioned, we are a truly global business. Now beyond 2026, we've indicated that we've committed to at least a mid-30s operating margin. And really that -- where we end up is going to be influenced by our portfolio evolution, as I stressed, we have a very deep and broad portfolio, and we don't want to strategically limit ourselves in what we could pursue. And unfortunately, [indiscernible] R&D is successful, and we have to see how the rest of the pipeline plays out, but we've essentially set a floor of mid-30s beyond 2026. To talk through cash conversion. Our focus on cash conversion continues and has improved over several years. As we return to revenue growth in 2019 and 2020, we've started our focus on cash conversion. And you can see how that's improved as a percentage of revenue over the last few years, and this will remain a focus going forward. To talk about our capital allocation. So here our priorities haven't changed. This was a slide again that was presented at our recent Investor Day, but I think does a great job of summarizing where we are and where we expect to go moving forward. Our first capital allocation priority is to reinvest in our business. And I'll talk a little bit more in detail about our capital expenditure in the next couple of slides. Second, to our CapEx is to maintain a strong investment-grade rating, which we've seen actually a couple of upgrades since we presented back in May and actually now post our 1H results, our net debt to EBITDA was actually 1.9x so this slide is slightly out of date. But remains a key priority for the business. And when we did the Alexion acquisition a number of years back, we had taken on leverage in the last couple of years, and we're looking to reduce that, and we're in a very strong position from an investment-grade standpoint. Our third capital allocation priority is business development. And over the last 18 months, we've done 10-plus transactions, and we've spent close to $7 billion. We believe we've been very disciplined and strategic and prudent in terms of how we've allocated that capital. And lastly, we maintain our progressive dividend policy. We raised our dividend in 2022 and then most recently at our annual meeting, we raised our dividend again. The AstraZeneca dividend policy, progressive means that we will look and the Board will ultimately make the decision. But we look at all our capital allocation together, and we are raising dividends when we believe that we can. As I mentioned, I was going to focus a little bit more on CapEx because I think this is really important. We're making investments today that are really going to support and underpin our future growth as we talked about with the waterfall slide a few slides back in our $80 billion revenue ambition. For this year, for full year '24, we have given the guidance that we expect our CapEx is going to be about 50% higher than what we saw in full year '23 and there are particular projects that are driving that higher level of investment. And the first is an inhaled facility that we're building in China, and this is really to help support our inhaled products where we see strong demand, both in asthma and COPD in emerging markets, and we're looking to support that. So this is just for China but also for the broader emerging markets. We're building a new API facility in Ireland. Again, this is to make sure that our supply chains remain robust. And these are particularly for the higher value API that lead to medicines. We've announced our cell therapy facility in Maryland in the U.S. And here, that's -- we've talked previously about the new and innovative technologies that we're focused on. And here, we'd like to be able to reduce the cost of goods, which is very important for cell therapy to become more of a mainstay in the commercial market. And lastly, we're spending and starting on a long journey to integrate all of our systems and make sure that our data infrastructure is there, as we almost double the size of this company from a revenue perspective. But the CapEx doesn't just stop there. There's future CapEx as well as we think about 2030 and beyond. I mentioned that antibody drug conjugates are a key disruptive category for us and when where we have 6 fully owned in-house ADCs that we're developing at pace through the pipeline right now. And there simply is not enough contract manufacturing capacity for ADCs and to support our pipeline, and we're expecting a lot of demand from this. So this newly announced ADC manufacturing facility in Singapore will be to support that. The second is more investment in cell therapy, particularly for the ex U.S. markets, building on the site that we're building in Maryland. And we'll continue to invest further as our portfolio progresses. And the same will happen with radiopharmaceuticals when we need to build out supply chain to support first commercial launches, as our pipeline progresses and derisks, we will obviously make the appropriate investments. But the end goal really here is to have a resilient supply chain and to have data infrastructure that can support our growth for many years to come. I wanted to spend the last few minutes just touching on people and sustainability. As I mentioned earlier, we're building a culture of lifelong learning and we aim to attract, retain and develop talented employees who really thrive in a vibrant and high-performing environment like AstraZeneca. We have specific KPIs around diversity and development, and we consistently show high employee satisfaction in the annual surveys that we run. And by 2025, we are aiming to have gender equality reached in all management positions, and I can proudly say that we've already met that target. And we're looking to maintain 100% of active employees trained on code of ethics which is very important and underpinning the work that we do. And then just to touch on our efforts in sustainability. As I said, we have an industry-leading efforts in sustainability, and at AstraZeneca we always strive to do the right thing. We have ambitious ESG targets across our 3 pillars, environmental protection, access to medicine and ethics and transparency. And you can see on the right-hand side there's the various sustainability ratings that we have and we're very proud of, and there's more to come on the sustainability front. And then just in closing, I think it's worth highlighting the superior shareholder returns that we've delivered on since 2013 and shareholder value remains an overall priority for the business. So just in summary, and these are sort of the concluding remarks that were made at our Investor Day. We have a new ambition to deliver $80 billion in total revenue by 2030 with a sustained growth beyond 2030. We are aiming to provide a mid-30s core operating margin by 2026, and beyond 2026, our core operating margin will be influenced by our portfolio evolution, and we are targeting at least mid-30s. But as hopefully, you can see from today, we have a broad and deep pipeline that we need to see how that evolves and before we can commit to margins beyond 2026. We have a very strong global commercial footprint, which we believe provides us substantial growth opportunities for our medicines. Many of those medicines are newly launched in a number of markets, but obviously have a long way to go as we can allow patients to access our medicines across the globe. We have a high-value late-stage pipeline. There are a number of catalysts that are expecting to read outs -- Phase III readouts over the quarter '24 and 2025, with $20 billion potential revenue in 2030 on a non-risk-adjusted basis. So you're going to see quite a lot of that value unlock in the near term, and a significant number of the new molecular entities, or NMEs, where we expect there could be at least a $5 billion peak year revenue opportunity on a non-risk-adjusted that expected to launch by 2030. And as I've hopefully given a good overview on the disruptive categories in which we're investing today to drive growth beyond 2030 as well. And with that, I'd like to thank you for your attention on the presentation, and I'd love to answer some of your questions. So just bear with me a moment while I pull those up through the chat function that we have here.

So the first question is, how does AstraZeneca manage and allocate costs associated with clinical trials? And what financial controls are in place to monitor these expenditures? So when Pascal came into the CEO seat a number of years ago now, the business was reorganized. And essentially, we have co-CEOs in each of our key therapeutic areas. So oncology, there is a head of R&D who works very closely with the Head of Commercial Organization Susan Galbraith and Dave Fredrickson. And then similarly, on the biopharma side, we have sort of a myriad approach with Sharon Barr, the Head of R&D and biopharma, working hand-in-hand with Ruud Dobber, our Head of the Commercial Organization for biopharma. And essentially, all the decisions are made first with science in mind is the science robust, but it also has to make sense commercially. And so the teams work very closely together to ensure that we're allocating our capital on the best ideas. Now we don't have a single -- so we don't have a part of R&D expense for individual disease areas. Essentially, there's one part of R&D. And we have to force rank and prioritize all of the projects in our pipeline to ensure that we're investing in the areas where we see optimum returns. And to point out that I highlighted that the low 20s percentage of R&D is our goal moving forward to total revenues that is. And there, we're finding that's giving us a really healthy prioritization of our portfolio yes, our pipeline is very broad and broad and deep. But actually, there are a number of assets that we quite simply don't have the resources to fund. So we've got more good ideas than we have R&D budget, but we find that the controls we have in place put a really healthy prioritization in place. And then there are regular touch points with all of the senior executives. We have what's called a late-stage portfolio committee meeting and then same for early stage where the entire business reviews, key decisions that we make, and we're always having to prioritize, okay, do we move this new asset into Phase III? What can we not do as a consequence of that. So we're looking at the whole business and the R&D allocation as a whole. I hope that answers your question. So the next question is how do you evaluate potential licensing and partnership opportunities and what financial metrics do you use to measure your success? So we don't get into quite as much granularity to say sort of what are the financial metrics. But what I can say is we look at everything. We have a very busy business development team that are always scanning the landscape. Our key priority is making sure that we are leaders in the therapeutic areas in which we play. So within oncology, lung cancer and breast cancer, for example, are 2 areas where we're leaders with a portfolio of medicines that allow us to treat a lot of patients. There's an ambition actually within lung cancer to be able to treat 1 in 2 patients with an AstraZeneca medicine in the next few years. And so we really look to be focused in the areas in which we add partnerships or we bring in new technologies. But also, as I mentioned, there were gaps in our technologies where we've looked to seek external opportunities to either catalyze what we had internally or accelerate what we already had to ensure that we can be leaders in those spaces as well. And for example, I can talk to cell therapy. We've done a number of deals here most recently a deal -- we bought a company called Gracell, Chinese-based cell therapy manufacturer that essentially enhanced our manufacturing capabilities, that wasn't to say we weren't already working on that at AstraZeneca, but we saw an opportunity to seek better technology externally. So it always has to make sense. And then, of course, the numbers have to make sense as well. But if we don't get into sort of the specifics of the financial metrics we use as you can imagine, for competitive reasons. But we always aim to be prudent with our capital allocation across the board, and that implies -- it applies both to internal R&D as well as external BD as well. I had a question to say is your new Cambridge research center up and running? And what will be the focus of this location? So yes, I think you're referring to our AstraZeneca Discovery Center or as we call it the DISC. It is up and running. It's fully open. In fact, we hosted our recent Investor Day back in May at that very site. There are almost 2,500 scientists base there, and it's a very busy site. The focus actually is very broad. We have people working all the way through from discovery through to clinical trials. So it really is an end-to-end operation with sort of cutting-edge equipment and science. But I think probably the most exciting part about it is its proximity to everybody else in the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. And that really allows us to have very strong partnerships and relationships both with academics and hospitals locally, but also with the startup community and even Cancer Research U.K., which are our neighbors. So very much up and running and a broad focus from an R&D perspective. I had another question on our dividends and our buyback program? So I confirm we don't have a buyback program in place. As I mentioned, our capital allocation priorities have not changed, primarily focused on investing in the business, and we're thinking about obviously CapEx, we're thinking or maintaining a strong rating with a strong net debt-to-EBITDA ratio. And dividend, as I said, is a progressive dividend policy, where we look to pay out, but obviously, we focused on investing in the business first and forward. And I think that closes all of the questions that I've received today. So thank you very much, everybody, for your attention. Should I have not covered anything you wanted to ask, please feel free to reach out to me. My e-mail address is [email protected]. You'll also be able to find details on how to contact our Investor Relations team on the Investor Relations section of our website. So I will conclude there. Thank you very much, everybody, for your time and take care.