CSL Limited (CSL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
October 15, 2023
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Mark Dehring
executiveLadies and gentlemen, we'll make a start. I realize we have a few coffee stragglers still to come, but aiming to start pretty well on time. So firstly, welcome. I'd like to start off with acknowledgment of the traditional owners of Sydney. CSL acknowledges the traditions and culture of the Gadigal people, the first peoples of Sydney. We respect and acknowledge their elders, past and present. And a very good morning, everybody, and welcome to CSL's Inaugural Capital Markets Day. For those of you who I haven't met, and I think I've met pretty well everybody here, my name is Mark Dehring. I head up Investor Relations at CSL. I think everybody here is aware of how much CSL has grown over the last decade. And it's grown to the extent where we felt it was important that we have a more fulsome briefing, we can only cover so much at a results briefing. So hence, today's briefing. Our plan is to conduct a Capital Markets Day every 2 years. And in the intervening year, hold our traditional R&D and commercial briefing. Please note, there won't be a separate R&D briefing this year. We'll incorporate that today. Please be aware, this briefing is being webcast, and I'd like to draw your attention to the forward statement disclaimer contained in the slide deck. And for those in the room here, I want to take a moment to ensure that you're familiar with the evacuation procedures to be followed in the unlikely event of an emergency. So if an evacuation alarm does sound, the venue's fire wardens will enter the room and direct us to the emergency evacuation points. Please, of course, follow their instructions. We have a full agenda today, featuring many of our senior leaders, and they'll be providing updates on their areas of business and share some of the initiatives that underpin our strategic ambitions. You'll first hear from Paul McKenzie, and I know a few of you already have. Paul, as you well know, is our CEO and Managing Director. Next, you'll hear from Ken Lim, who will talk about CSL Seqirus. Ken's kindly stepped in at the last moment. Steve Marlow, who actually heads this business is unfortunately sick today. After a short break, Andy Schmeltz will share his views on the CSL Behring business unit. Then we'll take a break for lunch. This afternoon, as you can see here on the agenda, we'll hear from Mark Hill, Joy Linton and Bill Mezzanotte on the topics of digital, financial performance and sustainability and research and development. Each section will be concluded with a Q&A. So there will be plenty of time for Q&A. We've got 3 sessions. Paul McKenzie will then make some final remarks. And then we invite everybody to join us -- to join the CSL team down in the Marble bar for a few drinks and [ nuggets ] and lively conversation. I'll now hand you over to our CEO and Managing Director, Paul McKenzie. Over to you, Paul.
Paul McKenzie
executiveGood morning, everybody. I hope everybody is doing well and great to see everybody here today in Sydney. I got my inaugural dunk in the bond eye pool yesterday. Nobody told me it was actually 17 degrees Celsius. So a little bit tight. But welcome to the first Capital Markets Day. It's outstanding to have you all here. Today, my team and I will cover our strategies for sustainable, profitable growth, which will return shareholder returns. These strategies are underpinned by our focus on preventing and treating disease in growing global markets with significant unmet medical need, combined with CSL's best-in-class durable product portfolio and scaled manufacturing capabilities. This is our recipe for success. Now I have to acknowledge there's been a lot of news about GLP-1s in the last couple of weeks. Bill Mezzanotte will address those in his comments later on during the day. But to give you the punch line that you'll hear from Bill, based on the high-level results announced last week, we do not see GLP-1s as having a material impact on the business. I would like to make sure today, you take away a few key points. First, CSL expects to deliver annual double-digit earnings growth over the medium term. Second, CSL has a clear and executable road map to increase CSL Behring's gross margin to pre-COVID levels. CSL expects and will deliver a steady improvement in our return on investment or ROIC, fueled by our double-digit earnings growth. And finally, as you'll see today, CSL possesses an exceptional management team, comprising highly experienced and globally diverse industry leaders. So those are the 4 points. So we'll tell you about them and then you'll hear about them later on. I'm pleased to see so many familiar faces in the room. For those I haven't met, which I haven't -- it almost seems like I've met everybody, but I joined CSL in 2019 as the Chief Operating Officer. And that was after 30 years in different parts of the business, starting my career at Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson, and then Biogen. I'm an engineer by training, having both a bachelors and a doctor in chemical engineering. CSL is truly an iconic company. Given the essential nature of our work and the history of this great company and the world-class quality of our team around the globe, I am certainly humbled but yet very excited to be the CEO. CSL is led by our purpose to develop and deliver innovative medicines that help serious and life-threatening medical conditions, help those patients live a fuller life, and protect the health of communities around the world. Over the last few weeks, I've had the opportunity to go to numerous patient events. These events are extremely energizing. You see firsthand the impact of our medicines on patients, their caregivers, their families. You also see the passion and dedication of our commercial team, and how they connect to the patient communities around the globe. Recently, I was in Japan, and I met with the President of the HAE Japan Society, followed by a visit to the office of the Health Minister of Japan. These meetings highlighted the journey these patients go on to get a clear diagnosis, and how beneficial our portfolio of products in HAE is for them. As many of you know, I'm also a frequent visitor and donator of plasma. I really enjoy engaging with our donors and frontline leaders at the collection centers. And I'm very conscious and thankful for the generosity of our donors. I enjoy getting to know them, understanding how we could do a better job on our donation experience. Trust me, like you, they are not shy. But that donation experience is critically important for us, and we are laser-focused on it. And you'll hear more about that later today from Andy and Mark. So let's talk about CSL's strengths that position us extremely well to deliver annual double-digit growth over the medium term. We are the global leader in plasma-derived therapies, influenza vaccines, hemophilia and iron. We operate globally in large and growing markets. We deliver innovative medicines to patients in more than 100 countries. And every day, our donors in 340-plus and growing plasma centers around the world, our donors save lives. We have fueled this growth recently by more than $5 billion in capital investments over the last 5 years, advancing our capabilities, our capacities and expanding our geographic reach. We are also investing in R&D and will continue to do so at a rate of 10% to 11% of our earnings. Our R&D portfolio underpins the future of CSL. And our pipeline has several exciting opportunities in late-stage clinical trials and they're soon approaching regulatory decisions. We have opened up several state-of-the-art R&D facilities. Here in Elizabeth Street in Melbourne, in Marburg, in Germany, and in our new facility in Waltham, right outside Boston. We are forging strategic partnerships to accelerate the delivery of leading innovations for our patients. Like we have done with uniQure to deliver Hemgenix, the world's first and only gene therapy for hemophilia B patients. All of these strengths are underpinned by our more than 32,000 dedicated employees around the world, who are passionate to deliver on our promise to patients. Our 2030 strategy, which you see in the top right of the slide and that you've seen many times before, was designed to ensure resilience and delivery of sustained and profitable growth, not in the short term, but in the long term while it has evolved over the years. For example, it now includes COVID, iron, nephrology. In essence, our focus has not changed. The core therapy areas where we can differentiate and develop a competitive and sustainable advantage. Innovation comes across all parts of our business. It's vital to our success and will continue in every part of the business. We have a broad and agile supply chain. And as I mentioned before, regardless of whether we're making plasma-derived proteins, gene therapies, monoclonal antibodies, influenza vaccines, iron, the processes, operations are proven and scale to respond. To remain a global leader, we need to focus not only on our reliability, but continue to focus a laser focus on our manufacturing efficiency. This manifests through many different ways, but the 2 big ones are technology and continuous improvement. These are following what has been a sizable capital investment over recent years. For the sustainable growth of our enterprise, we have and are continuing to invest in our strategic platforms, plasma fractionation, monoclonal recombinant technology, cell and gene therapy, preventative vaccines and iron therapy. And of course, I've already mentioned some of our benefits of digital transformation. You'll hear more about that from Mark Hill later in the afternoon. Today, I'd like to focus on some specifics, as what we are doing specifically to deliver on our 2030 strategy. We are extremely well positioned to deliver annual double-digit growth. Over the midterm, we expect to deliver those -- that growth through these strategic drivers. I've already touched on our leading positions in high-growth markets. This is true for all of our businesses and therapeutic areas. Today, you will hear from each member of the management team on how they will continue to grow by meeting significant unmet patient need across our therapeutic areas. You'll hear about our unique experience in complex manufacturing platforms, plasma-based therapies, influenza vaccines and iron, combined with a continuous innovation mindset that will ensure the durability of our products. To illustrate this, Ig has been available in various forms for over 4 decades, and it is clearly the standard of care for many diseases with significant further growth to come. Our ability to continue to innovate to meet patient demand with this durable complex product, which is complex to manufacture is what is CSL's secret sauce. It's our industry-leading expertise. Moving to R&D. Our pipeline is fueled by diverse sources of innovation, with several R&D programs nearing trial conclusion across each of our therapeutic areas. If successful and approved, these will drive additional growth. These include garadacimab as a new and potential treatment for HAE, Clazakizumab for their treatment of active antibody-mediated rejection in adult kidney transplant recipients, KCENTRA to improve survival in patients with traumatic injury and acute major bleeding, CSL 112 for the treatment following an MI or myocardial infection, Sparsentan for the treatment of IgAN, a very important disease moving forward. AQIVc, our next standard of care in influenza business. It combines the best of our adjuvanted products with our best flu cell technology. And self-amplifying mRNA, seasonal COVID-19 booster vaccine, which uses the platform -- the best of the 2 platforms, platform we got from Arcturus therapeutics and our own platform in self-amplifying mRNA. You'll hear more about all of these through the presentations and the near-term launches. I will note, however, we will not be spending time on CSL 112, because as we shared at the year-end, that news will come with the card flip in the first quarter of 2024. In addition to this great unbelievable pipeline, we have a period of substantial capital investment to expand our manufacturing network, and now have the capacity balance through the pipe to deliver on our future growth. Last year, we opened up a new plasma fractionation facility right here in Broadmeadows near Melbourne, 9x the capacity of the legacy facility. This facility will process not only domestic plasma, but commercial plasma sourced from across the CSL global network. We have expanded our leading-edge Holly Springs facility that delivers FLUCELVAX around the world. And if you're near the airport in Melbourne, you'll see our carbon copy of that, our new facility at Tullamarine, a FLUCELVAX facility, which will help us deliver on our aQIVc aspirations. Efficiency with Scout operations has been a long-time hallmark for CSL, providing us with a genuine unique competitive advantage. Tied to that innovation is one of our core values of all of our 32,000 employees. As part of our capacity expansions, we have also invested in new innovative processes to deliver higher Ig and vaccine yields and Bill Mezzanotte will talk about that later. Our yield maximization programs not only reduce cost of goods, but they provide more capacity for us to be able to meet the growing demand, particularly in Ig and cell-based flu technology. You will see today how we are approving the average donation yield across all of our plasma centers, as well as how we're increasing the yield of finished product through improvements in all stages of manufacturing. And finally, underpinning this is a disciplined approach to capital allocation that you'll hear from Joy later on during the presentation. Our strong cash flow enables us to maintain a great balance sheet. It allows us to reinvest in the business and deliver returns to our shareholders. CSL can achieve a lot on its own, but we can achieve even more through the appropriate strategic partnerships, some of those I mentioned earlier. We remain focused on external collaboration where it can accelerate our strategic direction and delivery of our therapies for patients and communities. For instance, our partnership with uniQure, to launch Hemgenix. Our partnership with Arcturus to develop next-generation mRNA vaccines, not only in COVID, not only in flu, but in other disease states that we want to pursue moving forward. And we embrace our partnerships with Terumo and Thermo Fisher Scientific. They bring supplier innovations, which enhance our productivity in our plasma centers and in all of our manufacturing facilities around the globe. CSL will continue to partner and continue to collaborate with these industry leaders and others to enhance our objectives. Today, you will hear from each of the business unit leaders. Andy Schmeltz, Ken Lim standing in for Steve Marlow, but Ken knows a little bit about the business, Hervé Gisserot, and they'll all share how each business will contribute to our collective growth within CSL. In CSL Behring, our demand for Ig remains high. We have a clear pathway to pre-COVID gross margins, through optimizing our donor payments, introducing new plasma collection technology and improving our yield. One of the first decisions I made as CEO was to unite plasma, operations and commercial under a single accountable leader for CSL Behring. It brings the entire team closer to patients. I am really excited to have Andy, who joined us from Pfizer. He spent 20 years at Pfizer before that at Abbott, and he spent that in a variety of senior leadership roles. It's great to have him as part of the team, and you'll hear him talk about the end-to-end CSL Behring strategy later this morning. CSL Seqirus is well positioned to outpace broader market growth through its differentiated innovation and the continued investment in scalable manufacturing technologies. Ken will share some of his thoughts on this shortly, because we want to not only be relevant in flu and continue our great position there, but also broaden our portfolio further. CSL Vifor will continue to grow its leading iron franchise over the medium term through market expansion and life cycle management with a clear plan to manage the loss of exclusivity that we'll experience later in the year in Europe. While each of these business units has a strong growth story on their own, we also see opportunities to create incremental value across all 3 business units. By combining the expertise and product offering from CSL Behring and CSL Vifor, CSL is well positioned to translate the World Health Organization's guidelines for patient blood management, which help patient outcomes and improve the overall health care cost and management. Hervé will share more on that approach during his comments. Another opportunity between CSL Behring and CSL Vifor is the formation of a combined transplant and nephrology therapeutic area. This TA enables us to treat patients with high unmet needs across the full continuum of kidney disease from early stage to transplants. When I became CEO, I outlined 5 priorities that would drive the highest value for CSL, and you'll hear more about all of those throughout the day today. Top line growth will be driven by our core franchises in Ig, existing and new indications, flu differentiation and continued market penetration in iron. Given the unmet need, served by our core franchises, opportunities to expand our market products, an exciting portfolio of potential products in the clinic, we continue to see attractive opportunities for growth. Ig will remain at our core for the long term. We are committed to further differentiation of our flu vaccines and look forward to our sa-mRNA vaccine for COVID-19, which broadens our portfolio. Iron is going to be a significant contributor. And together with CSL Behring, as I mentioned before, CSL Vifor is well positioned to address patient blood management. We know we must return our plasma margin to pre-COVID levels, and we have that plan and pathway to do that. Our strategy is to collect more plasma at lower cost per liter, increase our manufacturing yields and generate efficiencies across all of our operations. CSL Behring is committed and driven to do that, and we will make that happen over the next 3 to 5 years. We need to deliver our near-term innovation agenda and continually reinvest in our R&D pipeline, both new entities as well as indication expansion. We're not afraid to disrupt ourselves. You see that in hemophilia, and you see that now in HAE. In hemophilia, IDELVION is the market leader, but we're proud to bring HEMGENIX to offer more options to our patients. Likewise, the same in HAE, where we have HAEGARDA and now are going to bring on another disruptive medicine with garadacimab. This enhances our portfolio for patients in areas that we already have established commercial footprint and commercial knowledge. Digital, without a doubt, is an enabler of the entire enterprise. CSL's sustainable and profitable growth is underpinned by these advances. And Mark will talk about our potential journey on artificial intelligence that we're considering. These advancements will accelerate innovation. They will reduce the time to collect plasma. They'll help us discover new compounds, new biology, and they'll help us learn and conduct better clinical trials. Mark Hill will cover these later. And of course, our more than 32,000 colleagues are at the center of it all. Like other companies with strong growth prospects and very specialized needs, we're in a battle for talent. We must attract, engage, develop and retain the best talent to ensure our success in the long term. But I'm delighted by our ability to be able to do that. I've been visiting with employees around the world. And from my first day as CEO in Kankakee to the recent ribbon-cutting ceremony in the Melbourne office, One of my highest personal priorities is to ensure that the passion and energy that every employee feels grows every day. You get up before the alarm clock goes off. We have to offer a compelling career track, supported by active development and training. The world is changing very quickly. We need to make sure our employees have the skills and capabilities to do that. We need to encourage and embrace diversity around the globe and diversity in experience. I'm really proud that our colleagues around the world are led by an outstanding, highly experienced management team. They combine expertise in biotech, pharmaceuticals from many companies across the globe. Pfizer, GSK, Sanofi, BI, Gilead, AstraZeneca, to name a few. The diversity of this management team is what will help us deliver. It's a strong blend of people who recently joined and those that have been here more than 2 decades. You can see we've strategically spread out our management team. We're geographically diverse now. And that's for 2 purposes. One, we want to make sure we have management team where our customers are. Two, we want to make sure we have a management team where our employees are, because that's critically important for our success. You'll hear from several members of this team today, and they'll be available at the breaks to engage and answer any other questions. I'd like to now welcome Ken Lim to his new role of Chief Strategy Officer, and also to provide his comments on Seqirus. I'd also like to welcome Kate Priestman, who joined us from GSK, who is now on -- who now has joined us as the Corporate External Affairs Officer. With that, I'll turn it over to Ken, who will share his views on CSL Seqirus. Ken?
Ken Lim
executiveThanks, Paul, and good morning, everyone. As Paul mentioned, I'll be stepping in to present the CSL Seqirus business, as unfortunately, our colleague, Steve is not feeling well today. It's a pleasure to serve as CSL's Chief Strategy Officer. Up until taking on that role a couple of months ago, I've spent the last several years with our CSL Seqirus business unit. I had the pleasure of leading CSL's acquisition of the Novartis influenza business, the transaction that led to the creation of Seqirus, and recently served as Seqirus' Interim General Manager. Before diving into our business, I think it's helpful to take a step back to understand where we've come from and the success we've driven through the execution of our differentiation strategy. As you can see from the revenue chart on this slide, CSL Seqirus has experienced exceptional growth since its creation in 2015, following the acquisition of the Novartis influenza business. Our focus on product differentiation, serving unmet medical needs has fueled this growth, with now more than 80% of our sales coming from differentiated vaccines. We have been highly successful in shaping our markets, particularly through real-world evidence. Over the last several years, we have collected a compelling body of evidence, demonstrating the enhanced outcomes from our differentiated products in providing protection against the virus, which is constantly mutating. We're also proud of the global supply network we've established to support the differentiated products, most notably, our scaling up of cell-based vaccine production at our facility in Holly Springs in the United States. With that manufacturing capability to be expanded through the new cell-based facility that we're building at Tullamarine in Melbourne. To put the operational performance into context, the volume of cell-based food vaccine produced at Holly Springs in 2015 when we acquired the facility was about 3 million to 4 million doses. In the current 2023 season, output has exceeded 40 million doses, a result of our continuous focus on operational excellence and yield. Next, we'll move to what underpins our growth strategy over the next several years. Like all dynamic markets, the vaccine industry is evolving. The pandemic saw an exciting acceleration of new vaccine technologies. Post the pandemic, we're seeing some vaccine fatigue that's putting downward pressure on immunization rates around the world. That said, CSL Seqirus is well positioned to outperform in this evolving marketplace. Our strategy focuses on 4 key pillars: first, we will continue to grow our flu franchise, further evolving our portfolio to innovative, differentiated products. Pandemic preparedness is an important part of our business. Today, we have more than 30 agreements with governments around the world, where we commit to respond in the event of an influenza pandemic. And with our ongoing investment in self-amplifying mRNA, our intention is to broaden that capability to be able to respond to a range of potential pandemic pathogens. We're taking the first exciting steps to broaden our global portfolio beyond influenza. As I'll discuss later, we are excited about our next generation COVID vaccine, based on our self-amplifying mRNA technology. And finally, as we continue to grow, we recognize the importance of continuing to invest in our manufacturing technologies, particularly cell, mRNA, our yield enhancement programs and operational excellence. I'm now going to delve a little deeper into strategic focus area one, growth in influenza. As you know, the influenza virus is highly adept at mutating in order to evade our immune systems. Today, seasonal influenza still carries a significant health burden, not to mention the ever-present risk of a new strain of influenza, breaking out into a pandemic. In seasonal influenza, there remains a significant unmet need, which is especially apparent in the very young, as a result of their immature immune systems and in older adults, where their immune system starts to wane over time. Producing better performing vaccines and getting more people vaccinated is our best defense in protecting against the burden of influenza. On the topic of influenza vaccination, it's worth considering where we are since the pandemic. Immunization rates have declined post the pandemic, primarily driven by vaccine fatigue. As we saw in the previous H1N1 influenza pandemic in 2009, we expect these rates to return steadily over time in the order of a few years with one key near-term factor being getting to annual COVID-19 vaccinations. CSL Seqirus has been able to grow our business through these times of lower immunization rates, and we expect to continue to outpace market growth on the heels of our differentiation strategy. It's worth noting that the low levels of influenza circulating through the COVID pandemic has now reversed. In recent seasons, we've seen some of the highest and earliest prevalence of influenza in nearly a decade. This, coupled with population immunity being low and the protection afforded through vaccination, gives us confidence in the return of vaccination rates over time. Looking at the near term, I thought I'd make some comments about the current Northern Hemisphere season. While it's clearly still early in the vaccination season, we're comfortable with how the season is unfolding and our progress against our preseason commitments. Our supply performance has also been excellent, which, as you know, is very important for maximizing our sales and minimizing returns. Let's turn to see how we see our portfolio developing over the future seasons. CSL Seqirus is proud to have a history of driving innovation. When our business was created in 2015, our portfolio was almost entirely trivalent egg-based vaccines, completely undifferentiated from the competition. Since then, we have transformed our portfolio, more so than any other flu vaccine manufacturer. As well as driving significant increases in sales, we're conscious of the important role we play in public health and are proud of the enhanced protection that our products provide. Our recent growth has been underpinned by FLUAD and FLUCELVAX. And we expect to continue this growth through expansion in age indications backed by clinical programs and real-world evidence over the coming years. We are currently working towards extending the indication of FLUAD to 50 years and above, and FLUCELVAX has recently had its indication, expanded to 6 months and older in a number of key markets, making it the only differentiated influenza vaccine in this age group. We have also advanced some key development projects, namely aQIVc and sa-mRNA in flu. aQIVc, our adjuvanted quadrivalent cell-based flu vaccine, is scheduled to commence a Phase III study this northern hemisphere season. Our goal here is to set a new standard of care for the older adult population, where the burden of disease is the greatest. The potential of aQIVc is driven by its combination of 3 differentiated technologies that individually have already demonstrated improved vaccine effectiveness. First, our proprietary adjuvant, MF59, which we currently use in our FLUAD vaccine. Secondly, cell-based manufacturing, like FLUCELVAX, which is specifically designed to achieve an exact match to the circulating strains and avoid egg adaptation. And finally, the concept of higher dose vaccines. aQIVc will contain higher doses of both the adjuvant and antigen compared to our current vaccine formulations. Furthermore, aQIVc will be distributed at normal refrigerated temperatures. We expect to see a durable immune response consistent with our existing vaccines. Complementing aQIVc, we are also utilizing our self-amplifying mRNA platform to develop both seasonal and pandemic flu vaccines. Our flu sa-mRNA programs are expected to enter the clinic in the next few months. sa-mRNA is also the technology that underpins our next-generation COVID vaccine that Paul has mentioned. We acquired this through our licensing agreement with Arcturus Therapeutics. Let me give you some more color on our COVID-19 vaccine. As with flu, our COVID strategy is focused on differentiation. First-generation mRNA vaccines were vital to enabling the world to move on from the pandemic. However, as a vaccine for ongoing annual administration, these vaccines still have some significant compromises, particularly around duration of protection and reactogenicity. Our objective is for Seqirus' sa-mRNA COVID vaccine to be differentiated in a number of important ways. First, with our partners, Arcturus and Meiji Seika, we have generated data showing that our COVID vaccine candidate offers a higher immune response compared to an alternative mRNA vaccine already on the market. We also expect to see sustained protection, potentially for after 12 months, compared to current mRNA vaccines, which show significant waning of protection after 4 or 5 months. Achieving sustained protection is critical to being able to move to a pattern of annual vaccination, which we believe will also support higher vaccination rates. We expect to deliver these benefits with a significantly lower dose of RNA, only 5 micrograms compared to existing vaccines, which are 5 or 6x higher. As you'd expect, we're keen to bring these benefits to market as soon as possible and are currently focused on finalizing the clinical work and regulatory submissions in major markets around the world, enabling commercial launches over the next 1 to 3 years. We expect to receive our first approval in Japan, followed by the EU, U.K. and Australia and then the U.S. As you may have seen, we previously announced a partnership with Meiji Seika, who will be responsible for commercialization of the vaccine in Japan, and are undertaking the required local studies to secure licensure. Before leaving this slide, it's timely to reflect on the Arcturus licensing agreement and what is brought to CSL. As we've been discussing, the collaboration brought a near-term differentiated coded vaccine candidate. By combining Arcturus' expertise in product development with our pre-existing sa-mRNA capabilities, we have derisked our influenza program, improving our probabilities of success. Our collaboration also includes the right to use the Arcturus technology in a broad number of potential pandemic pathogens and other respiratory targets. And finally, we've inherited an mRNA manufacturing capability through a well-established network of contract manufacturers. I'm going to change gears now and provide an update on our cell manufacturing facility here in Australia. I'm pleased to report that construction of our new greenfield cell-based manufacturing facility at Tullamarine is on schedule. Our first production is planned for early 2026 for the Northern Hemisphere '26 season, as well as providing us with additional cell capacity for our seasonal influenza business. The facility also represents a major advance in Australia's national pandemic preparedness. In particular, we're pleased to maintain our long-term partnership with the Australian government to provide protection against future influenza pandemics, as well as ongoing supply of other essential products such as anti-venoms and Q fever vaccine. Our Tullamarine facility is part of a sophisticated expanding global supply chain. This network includes a mix of in-house and third-party facilities, balancing cost and flexibility, which is especially important given the dynamic seasonal markets in which we operate. The commencement of Tullamarine in 2026 will also enable us to retire our park drill site and some set our AFLURIA vaccine. This represents a significant milestone, as it will mark our transition to a completely differentiated product portfolio, a long way from where we started in 2015. And so to wrap up, a few takeaways. CSL Seqirus is well positioned to continue our success in influenza. Continued innovation will enable us to outpace market growth. We plan for aQIVc to set a new standard of care in seasonal influenza vaccines. It leverages and brings together our proven platforms of both adjuvants and cell-based manufacturing. Bringing our sa-mRNA platform to influenza will provide yet another avenue for further product differentiation. And finally, looking beyond influenza, our sa-mRNA platform technology would differentiate our next-generation COVID vaccine. That concludes my presentation. Thank you. I look forward to your questions after today's presentation. But for now, I'll hand over to Hervé to present CSL Vifor. Thank you.
Herve Gisserot
executiveThank you, Ken, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It's a great pleasure to speaking to you today and to see many of you again after the investor store in March at our home of iron in St. Gallen. CSL Vifor has now been part of the CSL family for over a year, and we have already contributed significantly to the CSL performance. We delivered plus 14% growth in fiscal year '23 for 11 months versus a guidance of 10%. This growth was primarily driven by the continued strong performance of Ferinject/Injectafer and [ Mircera ] and the successful launches of TAVNEOS and KORSUVA/KAPRUVIA. Our performance was EPS accretive in year 1 as committed. The integration activities and the cost synergies are well on track with likely more to come on the synergies versus targets. As you can see on the pie chart, the iron franchise represents half of the CSL Vifor revenue. The franchise will enter into a new phase with the loss of exclusivity of our flagship product, Ferinject, in some markets. No doubt, that this is a defining moment for our business, and we are very well prepared. Our strategy does address this challenge, but also multiple opportunities. We have 4 clearly defined objectives: maximize the Ferinject growth, unlock the revenue upside in patients and management across CSL, strengthen our BMO disease market position and portfolio and operate in a lean, agile and efficient way to compete in the new environment. Let's look at the different objectives in more detail. First, how do we plan to continue to win with Ferinject. One important factor to understand is the dynamic of the IV iron market. This market offers unique conditions to drive long-term value, even post loss of exclusivity. The market is underdeveloped with 85% of eligible patients not receiving IV iron treatment. We expect, therefore, the market to continue to grow in volume in line with historical trends. Competition in the IV iron segment should also remain limited, due to the specificity of non-biologic complex drugs such as Ferinject. There is no breakthrough innovation on the horizon. Ferinject is and should remain the standard of care in the many years, why not decades to come. The only unknown is price competition. It is, however, reasonable to believe that while strong pricing competition won't translate into the usual rapid pricing erosion experienced in other generic sized markets. And with Venofer or low dose IV iron, we have a compelling market experience. The product was approved in 1949 and was never patented, and it is still growing mid- to high single digits decades later. It demonstrates that leading iron products are extremely resilient brands. [indiscernible], but success does not happen by chance. This is hard work by many teams from R&D to manufacturing to commercialization. And we have started implementing a comprehensive strategy to sustain competitive advantage through targeted initiatives. This strategy has 3 major components. First, operating effectively in the new competitive landscape. It starts with tendering excellence. The majority of the EU business is standard driven. We have established a fast and agile governance process with input from our Behring and Seqirus colleagues. A well-coordinated approach across countries is crucial to prioritize standards and make the wide price volume decisions based on latest intelligence. And to ways or gain we have decided to hire for critical roles, highly skilled people coming from leading biosimilar and generic companies. Beyond pandering excellence, we are also focusing on the nonclinical differentiation of our products through, for example, supply reliability or commercial strategies like the launch of a [ certain ] brand in retail markets, for example, Germany. And we are, of course, focusing on cost of goods improvement to mitigate profit erosion. But the loss of exclusivity is not our sole focus. There is a lot more to Ferinject than just viewing it as an earnings erosion story following loss of exclusivity. There are still significant opportunities to grow the product. Starting with geographic and market expansion. We have the opportunity to grow the business geographically through new launches in key markets, such as China and Canada. In China, we expect successful national drug reimbursement listing in January 2024. We see a sizable opportunity in patient blood management and women's health. In Canada, we expect approval in Q1 '24. And for the launch, we plan to leverage the Behring footprint instead of commercializing with a partner, as Vifor has done historically. It will allow us to retain more profit within CSL. In the U.S., the launch of the heart failure indication is ongoing. And the initial market feedback is positive. The U.S. heart failure guidelines now support testing patients for iron deficiency with a Class 1 recommendation and treating them with IV iron with a Class 2A recommendation. And players are vitalizing the need to use Injectafer in 2 levels in heart failure with unrestricted access for 78% of the commercial patients and 86% of Medicare patients. The launch of this new indication is, by the way, a good example of the way we are maximizing the value of our strategic partnerships. Daiichi Sankyo and CSL Vifor have recently established a co-promotion of Injectafer in the U.S. to fully realize this growth opportunity. Last but not least, our life cycle management plan. We continue to invest in real world data and evidence to leverage our 25 million patient units of experience. We also plan to strengthen differentiation through more convenient presentations and potentially a game-changing [indiscernible] oral formulation. Very importantly, we continue our efforts to ensure that appropriate regulatory standards are being applied to approve follow-on products of non-biologic complex prices. So the key takeaway message for the iron franchise and Ferinject are, we are 100% loss of exclusivity ready, and we are confident in our ability to drive substantial volume growth. Turning to patient's blood management or PBM or sub strategic pilot. First, let's look at what PBM is all about. In the past 20 years, the concept of PBM has been developed with the recognition that the best thing for patients is to have their own blood in their own circulatory system. However, despite the progress of the science, the health problem remains. The other reliance on blood transfusion despite the potential downside. The sum of reliance translates into avoidable adverse outcomes, wastage of scarce blood supply and inefficient healthcare spend. And it is primarily due to the under appreciation of the impact of iron deficiency on surgical outcomes. And the suboptimal management of intraoperative bleeding by using less effective therapies rather than purified factor concentrates. But there is a solution, and the solution is PBM. PBM is an evidence-based approach to improve outcomes by preserving patients' own blood. And PBM is based on 3 pillars. Pillar 1 and 3 are about screening for diagnosing and appropriately treating anemia pre and postsurgery, making the patient better equipped to handle the physical size of blood loss during surgery and heal more rapidly after. And Pillar 2 is about minimizing blood losses throughout the patient care to avoid unnecessary transfusions. When fully implemented, PBM can deliver highly tangible benefits for health systems and patients. We have selected only snapshots of few key studies, clearly demonstrating that PBM can result in material reduction on whole blood transfusions in the 40%, 50% range, significant cost savings associated with surgeries and blood acquisition, meaningful reduction in length of hospital stay in the 15% range, clear improvement in patient outcomes with regard to MI, stroke, infection and overall mortality, all in the 20% to 30% range. And due to the well-established PBM benefits, there is positive momentum of PBM implementation, supported by the World Health Organization EU commission and multiple national guidelines around the world. So the stage is set for broad [indiscernible] PBM adoption. And based on our assessment, there is a substantial addressable market in the range of $4 billion to $5 billion. However, as too often in healthcare, premium guidelines are only partially implemented. Even though it will be a win for patients, healthcare professionals, hospitals, health authorities and payers, both medically and financially. This is where CSL comes into play. We are uniquely position in PDM to translate evidence-based medicine into evidence-based practice. The CSL Vifor portfolio addresses iron deficiency and iron deficiency anemia management, pre and postop to reduce blood transfusions and improve patient outcomes. And the CSL Behring portfolio addresses minimizing blood loos through optimizing hemostasis and attracting coagulation efficiencies, therefore, reducing surgical blood use. By bringing together this expertise and these products from Vifor and Behring, we can position ourselves as the leading and trusted blood health partner and make a huge difference. And we are not starting from scratch. Beyond our demonstrated expertise, we estimate that we are already generating $1 billion in revenue in PBM with our combined portfolio. But will the additional market potential will be unlocked overnight? No, changing healthcare systems and practices take time. The time is of the essence and to unlock this revenue upside as quickly as possible, we have developed an end-to-end go-to-market model. It does include improvement of product levels where necessary and evident generation to close remaining gaps in the medical detection. Policy shaping efforts to drive top-down changes, supported, of course, by constrained healthcare benefits and the increasing focus on clinical key performance indicators and quality metrics. Also hospitals assistance to help them overcoming implementation hurdles through data services and protocols. And last but not least, support of our commercial affiliates to achieve pull-through with the combined portfolio when the product label allows. Precedently, our strategic intent is to become a PBM one-stop shop for customers and partners with a financial offering combining products and services. So please keep in mind, PBM is a well-established concept supported by scientific and economic evidence and recognized by guidelines. There is a burning platform to act and get better patient outcomes with less resources. And we see ourselves have the expertise, the leading products, the commitment, the resources and the plan, and we are ready to unlock the substantial market potential over time. Moving to the third objective. Strengthening our renal disease position along the full spectrum of kidney disease. It means further expanding the portfolio from the [indiscernible] to prevention of kidney damage, treatment of CKD complications and transplant. It is estimated that the renal disease market will grow at a compound annual growth rate in the low double digits reaching $26 billion by 2026. This growth is driven by an aging population and increased prevalence of CKD risk factors such as diabetes and heart disease. And in our view, as already stated by Paul, the renal disease market won't be disrupted by GLP-1. In nephrology, we also benefit from our unique joint company model with Fresenius Medical Care. We plan to succeed in the near term through seamless execution of our product launches. In particular, building on the rapid uptake so far of Tavneos and Korsuva, Kapruvia with a significant wave of new launches in fiscal year '24 and beyond. And of course, take time for the launch of Sparsentan ahead of the expected EMA approval in early 2024. In the mid- to long term, CSL Vifor is also now in a much stronger position now that we are part of CSL as we can leverage CSL R&D pipeline, capabilities and resources whilst continuing to leverage our best-in-class business development expertise. To exactly do that, we have created a new therapeutic area, combining nephrology and transplant products currently in development, Clazakizumab and CSL964. To close, let me leave you with the following takeaway messages. Our key value drivers in the near to mid long term are well identified, top and bottom line synergies, market expansion and new launches and the pipeline and BD opportunities. In the near term, our revenue growth will be a bit choppy as we face a combination of headwinds and tailwinds. But CSL Vifor is and remains a terrific business. We are setting the foundations to drive mid- to long-term sustainable profitable growth. And I have no doubt that CSL Vifor, is and will continue to be a success story. I would now like to invite Paul and turn to the stage to answer your question on CSL Seqirus and CSL Vifor. Thank you.
Paul McKenzie
executiveAll right. Thank you, Ken. And Herve, I really appreciate those insights. Here, I'm going to moderate the questions and here's how it will work. What we'd like to do is focus this Q&A section, specifically on CSL Seqirus and CSL Vifor. So all your other questions you have, please hold until that appropriate section because it just makes the flow better. What we'd like to do is there'll be mics that are going around the room. Just raise your hand. I'd like you to limit it to 2 questions to start. But then if there's time, we'll continue to come back and allow people to ask additional questions. We would appreciate it if you could state your name and affiliation, just so that it's captured appropriately, both in our notes and on the webcast. So with that, I think we have our first question, right here.
David Low
analystDavid Low from JPMorgan. If I could start with Herve, just on the competition for Ferinject. Can Herve, talk a little bit about the market dynamics you're expecting? I mean it was quite clear that your comfortable that it can be managed. But how many competitors -- where is -- when are we going to get some sense of the price decline that you're dealing with, please?
Herve Gisserot
executiveYes. Thanks, David. So as I said during my presentation, we expect the market to continue to grow in line with historical trends in volume because of the fact that it is such an underdeveloped market. And despite the fact that in the end, we'll see less commercial investments in that space post loss of exclusivity, but we expect to continue on the same trajectory. It's difficult to anticipate the level of price erosion. It really depends how many competitors will enter the market. We believe it will be a limited number, and therefore, we don't expect the kind of pricing erosion you can see in other pharmaceutical markets. And at this point in time, only one follow-on product has been approved, and we are very close to the loss of exclusivity. So it's hard to predict. We expect more price competition, as always, post loss of exclusivity. But what will be the level of it remains an unknown.
Paul McKenzie
executiveAnd Herve, it's fair to say the market growth that you've seen historically is high single digit.
Herve Gisserot
executiveIn volume, it's high single digit, and we expect this trend to continue.
David Low
analystSo perhaps by the end of the year, you think you'd have a good sense as to how many competitors there will be.
Herve Gisserot
executiveBy the end of the year, every day, every week, we will learn more about the evolution of the competitive landscape. It's possible that other products 1 or 2 will be approved because we know that they are in the regulatory process. And yes, by the end of the year, we'll know a bit more, and we will keep adjusting our strategy accordingly. We have to be very agile in that context. And we have this not only short-term vision that we have this more midterm, long-term vision because we really believe that the iron franchise can continue to grow in the years and decades to come.
David Low
analystGreat. So just along a similar line for Ken, we've seen mRNA flu vaccines in development. We've seen some reasonable results in the last few months. Can I get you to talk about what competition you see on that front, please?
Ken Lim
executiveSure. Thanks for the question. We're obviously closely monitoring the developments with mRNA include from some of the other companies out there. I think it's still not clear to me whether or not those vaccines will achieve the current standard of care in both efficacy as well as reactogenicity. So we're seeing some data readouts, which showed and looks kind of similar to existing products with a safety adverse event profile, which is probably inferior to current standard for care. And I think that is a difficult commercial proposition. I think that the adverse event profile for mRNA COVID vaccines was acceptable to us in the context of a pandemic when that was the only vaccine that was available. I think it's a different proposition when you're talking about repeat annual vaccinations when there are existing standards of care already in that space.
Paul McKenzie
executiveAnd Ken, just like to add to that. I mean our focus really what we can control is driving the next-generation differentiation, right? So AQIBC will set the standard of care. We are very confident on that in terms of a flu vaccine and anxious to get this Phase 3 rolling, but double the adjuvant, triple the antigen, right? That's not possible unless we had the yield improvements that Bill and his team have brought with operations. So the whole story is coming together for us to bring an industry-leading differentiated products, while still being in the game of sa-mRNA in a good way because what we've seen with our sa-mRNA for COVID is differentiated initial antibody levels and durability. So we have both streams going at the same time, David, which is incredibly important. So with that, I saw a question over there, and we have one here as well. Please.
Saul Hadassin
analystSaul Hadassin of Barrenjoey. Maybe one for Ken. Assuming the [indiscernible] study goes to plan, when would you expect to have a product available for the Northern Hemisphere.
Ken Lim
executiveSo for [indiscernible], we're going to Phase 3 this Northern Hemisphere. We'll be looking to register as soon as that and launch as soon as that. So it would happen in the next few years.
Saul Hadassin
analystSo not necessarily end of next year for launch?
Ken Lim
executiveI think that's probably a little bit too much detail that we share right now in terms of the launch timing, but it will be in the near term.
Saul Hadassin
analystAnd just one for Herve as well. Herve, can you give us a sense as of today of the sales of Ferinject/Injectafer that is taking place, what percentage of those sales go to patients who are iron deficient due to kidney disease versus any other cause of iron deficiency?
Herve Gisserot
executiveSo we are not communicating the split by indication. So the Ferinject sales or Injectafer sales worldwide come from various indications, heart failure, patient blood management, oncology, chronic kidney disease. So it's a product being used across many different indications, as you know, 1/3 of people in the world suffer from iron deficiency and iron-deficiency anemia, so it's a product very widely used across multiple indications.
Saul Hadassin
analystAnd just a follow-up. So growth that you're seeing that high single-digit volume, is it high single digit across all of the different indications? Or is it in the indications outside of kidney disease?
Herve Gisserot
executiveSo we see also cost indications. But of course, some of them are more developed than others. If I take the example of heart failure, it is already a significant part of our sales in Europe, about 20% of the total revenue versus in the U.S. where we just got the indication for heart failure associated with iron deficiency. It is still a very, very low percentage of our total revenue, and therefore, we have such a great growth opportunity in this indication. So it varies, but especially between the EU and the U.S. In the EU, it's relatively consistent with cost indication.
Paul McKenzie
executiveAnd so I'll just remember, part of the strategy is geographic differentiation, right? So you heard Herve say, Canada, you heard Herve, say, China, right? So not only will we expand in the indications, grow in PBM but we want to grow like CSL Behring has done for years in a geographic differentiation. So the market is growing at 7%, but we're growing into other geographies to support that. Please.
Andrew Goodsall
analystAndrew Goodsall from MST. Perhaps just picking up there, I think you're in a sort of 78, 79 countries at the moment before China. I guess just trying to understand how active you are in each of those countries. And as Paul just mentioned, how aspirational are you that you could become more active in those countries and then matching up with Behring, which I think is in excess of sort of 140 countries. What's that rollout look like?
Paul McKenzie
executiveAndrew, I think it's an important component because what Herve mentioned earlier, a lot of those markets we're in with a distributor model. Now we can start having a discussion of, is that the best model to move forward with, do we want to diversify our model, either grow resources specifically for CSL Vifor or to leverage existing footprints with Behring. So you heard the example in Canada, we want to leverage that existing footprint. So we're going country by country. We've looked at Russia, we looked at Canada, and we keep on marching through what that strategy will be relative to distribution partners, which have served us well, but also going on our own, which is really important for the market share and obviously, revenue and earnings realities.
Andrew Goodsall
analystAnd presumably, you're doing that as those agreements come up for relegation?
Paul McKenzie
executiveCorrect. Exactly.
Andrew Goodsall
analystAnd Herve, you mentioned that I didn't quite understand it, that you've got 85% of private -- sorry, the other way around 78% of commercial and 85% of Medicare patients. Is that under former for heart failure. Is that right?
Herve Gisserot
executiveYes. So thanks, Andrew. So in the U.S., Iron products do face so-called [indiscernible] and the really good news for the -- which means prescription of oral, then logos iron and then IV iron and then high dose IV iron. The great news for heart failure patients in the U.S. is that basically it's unrestricted. So all the -- pretty much all the commercial and Medicare patients have unrestricted access to Injectafer since we got this new medication in heart failure, which is critical because you need to reach very quickly within days and weeks, the appropriate level of iron in order to really fully benefit from the treatment. So we are very, very pleased that payers have understood the need to prescribe Injectafer 2 level in this setting. And we continue to work with them to convince them that this [indiscernible] policy are medically and financially not relevant also in other indications.
Paul McKenzie
executiveThanks, Andrew. I think we had a question over here...
David Bailey
analystDavid Bailey from Macquarie. Just my first question. Just in relation to Ferinject and patient blood management, I think there's an ongoing real-world evidence study being undertaken. Just interested in the focus of that study and when you expect those results to come through.
Herve Gisserot
executiveSo we keep generating real-world evidence data across all the Ferinject indication. Of course, going forward, we will have an even stronger focus on patient blood management. I don't have the exact time line on the top of my head regarding the outcome of this study. But it will be really a major area of focus as well as generating data, as I said, to continue to improve our product labeling so that we can not only change the health systems, but also promote our products accordingly in that patient management setting.
Paul McKenzie
executiveDavid, I'm going to have Mark or his team circle back with the exact timing on that.
David Bailey
analystSure. With Venofer, there has been some generic competition as you alluded to. I'm just interested in your -- any thoughts you might have in relation to the efficacy of those products. And as you look forward to a potential generic competitor in Ferinject, just wondering if you've got any initial observations around their application bio-equivalents so far?
Paul McKenzie
executiveYes. I mean I think it's really an important question of -- and if you look at how our approach is tender excellence, robust reliable supply and continued real-world evidence, right? So I spent a lot of time in my career in the biosimilars part of the business. You've got to constantly be out there understanding how the products differentiate in the market, not only from an efficacy viewpoint, but from a safety viewpoint, and that's critical. And that's what we'll be doing with our real-world evidence data. And that will allow us to make sure that we're continuing to deliver what we promise to patients, but also continue to show the differentiation. So it will take some time. But there are great case studies where in the biosimilars world where products that were thought to be equivalent, did not actually play out to be equivalent in adverse events and/or efficacy. And you got to be on top of that game to make that happen. We have another question? It's hard to see.
Laura Sutcliffe
analystLaura Sutcliffe, UBS. First question is on vaccines, if I can. Are you willing to talk about any of the additional respiratory targets that you mentioned on the slide sort of beyond COVID, beyond flu, I suppose maybe people's mind float towards RSV and the like, but just anything there would be good.
Paul McKenzie
executiveYes. I mean I think we could save some of that directly to Bill later on in the afternoon. But Look, we're looking at all those potentials. Obviously, RSV has had a few that have come out. We're trying to understand what their data has been. They didn't get necessarily arousing ovation. So can we differentiate like we've been able to differentiate with the COVID vaccine. That's going to be the question. So that's under evaluation from Bill and the team and the commercial team moving forward.
Laura Sutcliffe
analystAnd then second question is a follow-up to first's question. I think historically, Vifor were pretty willing to disclose some information around what the distribution of indication were for the IV iron business? So I suppose, have you sort of seen a change in the balance of those indications since you've had the business or are we able to sort of cast back and sort of use Vifor...
Paul McKenzie
executiveYes, I think let us go back. We can come back to you with that. I think it's just -- we don't have all of that in front of us. We haven't seen a change in that distribution given the short time frame. But let's come back with the exact facts and numbers for you. We're between questions and tea break. So let's just have a couple of more available outside for additional questions as needed. Okay. Please.
Lyanne Harrison
analystIt's Lyanne Harrison from Bank of America. This is a question for Herve. You talked about blood patient management or patient blood management and having about $1 billion of a $4 billion to $5 billion market, which is still quite substantial. Can you talk about broader thoughts around how much market share you're looking to gain over what time frame -- we won't hold you to it. But also just to say what are the milestones that we might expect from the analyst community to show that you're getting those sorts of gains in that area?
Paul McKenzie
executiveYes. I think the key milestone that you'll see is us continue to go after the indication expansion of the products to allow the whole suite of products, right? So you'll see us continue to look at the Behring products, continue to make sure we have the right indications in that space to bring things together because we have different approvals around the world. So the team has been spending a lot of time there. And then you'll start to see some of the digitalization of the services that Herve mentioned in terms of how do we approach that, working with Mark and the team. And then you'll start to see us roll out the commercial models, right? Because like many things, the commercial models will be different country by country, but also healthcare system by healthcare systems. So we'll come back over time with a road map of exactly what those milestones are. Our goal today was to really help people understand the opportunity. We think it's a sizable opportunity. It's unique for CSL to be able to deliver on. But give us some time to really build out day X, which we'll never get to, but quarter year what our milestones are going to be moving forward. But we have people dedicated to this and making sure between the 2 organizations, we move this forward with purpose. So if we take -- I think there was a question over here. Do you want to -- we'll take 2 more questions, if that's okay, because probably everybody needs a stretch break and some little caffeine. So let's go here. please? Sorry.
Steven Wheen
analystSteven Wheen from Jarden. Just a question for clearly, with the emergence of generics, that's going to happen a bit later in the U.S. given the IP protection you've got to 2026. I just wonder how you transition or have some confidence in the transition to that loss of that IP protection when all sales are being controlled by another party and just understand how they're positioning for it and how much you can control their behavior for the final parts of the contracted term?
Paul McKenzie
executiveI mean I just -- I would say you can add some more color to it. I mean, we have a great relationship with Daiichi, right? I mean we're out there. We're working with them. We will have a detailed plan that will be informed based on what we learned in Europe. I think it's a great interaction with both them and FMC. So it's not like it's -- they just pass it over the fence at us. We meet -- we go through it. We have a very effective steering committee. And we'll learn from the Europe experience, right? We'll learn. We'll see what the differentiation is and we'll have opportunity to influence what happens in terms of that pathway. So I think we're in a really good set. I mean our partners in this space are really good partners. I mean I've seen a lot of partnerships in my career. I think it's -- these partnerships are very strong.
Herve Gisserot
executiveIf I may add, first, we have 3 more years ahead of us, and we have a growth mindset with our partner, American Regent and Daiichi Sankyo. Two, for now a few months, we have established a co-promotion. So we have even more steam in the game. So my U.S. field force is co-promoting Injectafer in the U.S., which really shows that our partner is keen also to maximize this growth opportunity. And then absolutely, to your point, we have to start preparing for the loss of exclusivity. These things do not happen overnight. We will have, as it is the case for Europe, a plan where we are 150% ready before the first follow-on products knock at the door.
Paul McKenzie
executiveOkay. If we can take one more. I think you are the lucky to time there.
Andrew Paine
analystAndrew Paine, CLSA. Your focus is very much on patient blood management in IV iron, but there's also opportunity in women's health. Just trying to understand, is there a reason for that? Is that a strategy of yours to focus on patient blood management sounds like a higher market to grow and kind of leads into your expertise in the area and allow potentially the generics to come through and focus more on the women's health and areas like that, where it's more difficult to grow the market.
Paul McKenzie
executiveI think it's an end at an end, right? I mean for today, we are trying to stress what we want to do with PBM. It's a very big market, and it uniquely uses the strength of CSL. So that's why we wanted to convey that. We can obviously come back at a future time and share our plans for women's health. Women's health is incredibly important for our journey and it's one that people benefit a lot from. So it's really just a matter of how much we can detail we can go into on a given day.
Herve Gisserot
executiveI think today, really, the intent was to talk about where we see this incremental revenue upside going forward. Women Health is and has always been a focus in CSL Vifor with some very clear success stories, especially to develop the fatigue segment in some markets like, for example, Switzerland. As we are about to launch in China, we are also investigating this market opportunity because based on my China experience, I believe this is a sizable one. And there are also clear interdependencies between patient blood management and women's health, especially when you start looking at postpartum hemorrhoids. So when -- if you think really more broadly about patient blood management, it does include some critical aspects of women's health.
Paul McKenzie
executiveGreat. Well, thanks, everybody, for your questions. There's going to be more than ample opportunity to ask more questions out and about with the team, I want to thank Herve and Ken for their presentations and for their questions. We're now going to break. Yes. We're now going to break for morning tea. When we return, Andy Schmeltz, will be giving an overview, end-to-end overview of CSL Behring. If we could be back by in your seats around 11:00. So it's a quick break, but bathrooms are down the end of the hall to the left, and goodies are outside. Thanks. [Break]
Mark Dehring
executiveLadies and gentlemen, if you could take a seat, please, we'll make a start. So we still have some stragglers getting a coffee if I could invite you in. We'll make a start. Okay. Thank you. Welcome back. Our next speaker heads up our CSL Behring business unit, Andy Schmeltz, so I invite him to stage, Andy.
Andy Schmeltz
executiveGood morning. I'm very pleased to be here today to talk to you about the end-to-end holistic CSL Behring business and how we're purposely focused from donor to patients to drive sustainable, profitable growth. As many of you know, I'm a newcomer to CSL, having spent 25-plus years in the industry across 2 companies. I made the decision to join CSL for 3 key reasons: One, the strength of the core business with a compelling track record and sustained leading position in plasma-derived medicines. Sure, not without both challenges and opportunities ahead, but many, many other biopharma companies would covet such a compelling core growth portfolio to build from. Number two, cultural fit. CSL is an organization with so many talented, committed, purpose driven, [indiscernible] , just get it done employees who have that competitive drive and are focused on delivering a bright future, including Paul McKenzie and members of the Global Leadership Group, you're hearing from today. And number three, true patient focus. I've spent the vast majority of my career in specialty areas where every patient counts. This mindset is truly shared across the company. CSL medicines make such a profound difference for people living with many otherwise devastating rare diseases. My CSL Behring responsibilities span plasma collection, manufacturing and commercial operations with an overarching emphasis on sustainable, profitable growth enabled by cohesive strategies and effective end-to-end P&L management. This scope of accountability reinforces CSL's commitment and my commitment to return Behring to pre-COVID gross margins over the coming 3- to 5-year time horizon. Plasma collection is all about growing plasma volume while concurrently reducing the unit acquisition costs. Our manufacturing capability is industry-leading, fractionating the precious plasma collected and transforming it into our portfolio of innovative medicines. Here, we're actively advancing efforts to improve Ig and albumin yield. And our commercial teams around the world are engaging with healthcare professionals, payers and key stakeholders to maximize the appropriate use of these important medicines and to deliver successful launches. Let me now share more color on our strategies and efforts for each of these 3 areas, so you can see why we are confident in CSL Behring forward prospects. I'm going to start with plasma collections and how we're growing plasma volume while reducing our acquisition costs. Here is CSL's collection network with plasma collection capabilities that are among the industry's largest and most efficient. CSL Plasma remains well positioned for continued growth and capacity optimization while balancing cost and efficiency. Currently, CSL Plasma international presence includes 12 centers in Germany, 3 centers in Hungary and 5 centers in China. In fiscal year '23, our investment in new plasma collection centers continued with the opening of 12 new centers in the U.S. and another 2 in Germany. And we recently opened our newest center in Landover, Maryland. This is our 322nd center in the U.S. Although at a slower rate than before the pandemic, we're continuing to grow CSL's Plasma collection network in the U.S. We recognize this is at a time when some of the other plasma players are contracting. And we're continuing to explore and prioritize opportunities to further expand our plasma collection capabilities. CSL's global plasma collections are back on track post-pandemic and continue to grow. After experiencing a 22% decline in collections in fiscal year '21 due to COVID, collections grew 24% in fiscal year '22 and 31% in fiscal year '23. We anticipate continued growth in record-setting collection volume in fiscal year '24 and in the years ahead. We're continuing to build off the momentum of fiscal year '23 with laser-like dual focus on sourcing sufficient plasma volume, achieving the collections needed to provide the critical raw ingredient for many of CSL Behring medicines and on optimizing costs, honing our efforts to drive cost to balloon during COVID down in a sustainable manner by reducing cost per liter or CPO as well as driving greater efficiency of our centers. In fact, we've already realized a 14% CPL reduction over the year and a 17% reduction from the peak in March of '22. Let me double-click on each of these 2 critical plasma collection components. We are pulling multiple levers to drive plasma collections growth all of which are enabled by cutting-edge digital capabilities that we've invested in. In targeting new and lapsed donors, we're increasing awareness about plasma donation through social media and the general media. We're offering differentiated fees, higher for the first 2 donations as an incentive yet that remain quite competitive, so that we can bring first-time donors in the door, and we're making it easier for new donors when they do come into our centers, leveraging an app and digital kiosks to manage preregistration, appointments and the required donor health history questionnaire. To improve donor frequency, we're focused on delivering best-in-class service as a differentiator. We're leveraging market intelligence to have the most competitive donor fees, we're customizing our donor app. To provide donors with a personalized experience that encourages them to get back in the door of one of our centers again and again. And to enhance donor retention, probably the best possible way to grow collections, we're using data and behavioral insights embedded in personalized messaging and incentives. And we're focusing our efforts on specific donor and specific local market cohorts. With our donor app, we can track what kind of messages best resonate with an individual and spurs them to take action. Are you someone who responds to special incentives? Or are you motivated by reminders about how plasma donation helps patients? Are there times when you don't tend to donate as often and need more reminders? Using our data and insights, we can increasingly customize our interactions with donors to help build retention. Bottom line, we're pulling the right combination of all these levers in purposeful synchronization and recalibrating them frequently based on local center-specific dynamics, all to drive plasma collection volume. Shifting gears to plasma costs. The pandemic created or the pandemic raised the cost of collecting plasma on multiple fronts. We needed higher fees to incentivize donors to come into our centers. Fewer donors meant our centers weren't operating at or near capacity and forced us to absorb more costs. And with so much competition for labor, we needed to increase wages to attract and retain staff. Simply put, COVID changed the plasma collection cost base. But with the pandemic now in our rearview mirror, CSL Plasma has a clear path to continue to drive down costs over the next 3 to 4 years. We are optimizing our fee structures by moving to a system that can individualize donor payments across any number of characteristics, allowing for customized differentiated payments specific to an individual donor. We're focusing on improving center productivity via systematic data-led approaches to identify issues and bottlenecks. We're implementing a number of solutions including optimizing center hours of operation, improving employee scheduling and workstation assignments, and we're standardizing new donor flow across all our fleet. And we're driving greater output at our centers with integrated solutions for optimizing both donor and employee experiences to reduce variability. Pilots are underway and enhancements are going to be rolled out fleet-wide over the coming 2 years. Now let me touch on 2 very important and interconnected efficiency opportunities. The individualized nomogram and the Rika plasmapheresis system rollout. The individualized nomogram will be an important step forward in plasma collection and an improving margin. A nomogram is the target collection volume that a plasma collection device is approved to set for each donation. Traditionally, a donors nomogram has been based on weight alone. Both Haemonetics and Terumo who provided devices used in our centers have been working on an individualized nomogram, which will allow factors like hematocrit, the percentage of red cells in a person's blood and height to be considered in calibrating the target plasma collection volumes for our donors. Pending regulatory clearance CSL expects to implement the individualized nomogram in fiscal year '25. And at steady state, upon full rollout across our fleet Individualized nomogram will enable us to calibrate plasma collection volume at an individual level and to collect on average about 10% more plasma from each donor. Over the short term, CSL will benefit from the recent release of nomogram A, which yields about 1.5% more plasma volume per donor on average. Now I also want to share an update on the rollout of the Rika plasma donation system. We continue to carefully monitor the performance of the new Rika Plasma Donation System technology already present in about 15 of our plasma centers, and we continue to look forward to deploying it in fiscal year '24 and fiscal year '25. Now Rika offers a number of benefits. It provides an enhanced experience for donors, resulting in fewer donor deferrals and 30% reduced time in the chair, as we call it. Now I've had a chance to visit a number of CSL Plasma Centers across the United States over the past few months. And I've had the opportunity to personally donate plasma on the legacy plasmapheresis device as well as on the new Rika machine. The 30% reduction in donation time is real, and I'm sure it's going to delight our donors. Rika's advanced control system enhances donor safety by monitoring the donation process and providing alerts and visual cues that guide the operator. It makes automatic adjustments during each procedure, enabling a more seamless operator experience. Improper collection volume due to employee air is reduced by 85%. And as I've already mentioned, the Rika rollout is time to incorporate the individualized nomogram. Adding this technology to the Rika device is expected to improve the average donation yield by about 10%. And another benefit of the Rika is on the environmental side, reducing biohazard disposable waste by 10% to 15%. Now our Rika Deployment plan incorporates scale, scale-up considerations and automation of production as well as evaluation of the 15 centers that we've already converted into the new technology. We remain committed to the Rika system and share our focus with Terumo on innovation, collaboration, donors and the patients who ultimately benefit and rely on the therapies made from plasma. Our next deployment stage gate with Terumo is in December. So stay tuned. Now pivoting back to the bigger picture. I hope you can now appreciate everything we're doing to sustain and advance CSL's industry-leading plasma collection capability. We're continuing to grow plasma volume by leveraging technology to personalize the donor experience as well as by advancing the rollout of the Rika Plasma Donation System and the transition to the individualized nomogram. And at the same time, we're moving actively to optimize costs. Again, leveraging technology to enable enhanced scheduling, donor fee customization and efficiency improvements across our fleet of plasma centers. We look forward to continuing to advance these dual priorities with a relentless focus on collecting the plasma needed for the patients we serve. Now let's shift gears to the next critical area in the CSL Behring journey from donor to patient, and that's manufacturing. This is a high-level look at our CSL Behring manufacturing network. All of our manufacturing sites perform base fractionation for immunoglobulin Ig and albumin production, which provide economic benefits and network resiliency for these 2 core products that we manufacture out of every liter of plasma that's collected. CSL Behring manufacturing has seen significant expansion since 2020 with new fractionation, Ig and albumin capacity coming online in Broadmeadows and Bern and Marburg, starting up new fractionation capacity. I visited Broadmeadows just last week and had the chance to spend time in Marburg in September and Kankakee in July. The upgrades and expansions at each site are truly impressive, and we're excited to utilize the added capacity to benefit patients. For CSL Behring, a focus on Ig yield improvements is critical to improving margins. In fiscal year '23, Ig yield reached an all-time high through purposeful continuous improvement efforts from our operations. Moving forward, CSL has 2 areas of focus for Ig yield improvements. Horizon 1, over the near term, we're aiming for an incremental 5% lift to Ig yield. In Horizon 2, over the mid- to long term, we're aiming to deliver an incremental 10% to 15% improvement in yield growth. Horizon 1 is the primary focus of our manufacturing teams with support from R&D, and Horizon 2 is a primary focus of our R&D teams in collaboration with manufacturing. You'll hear more about Horizon 2 this afternoon from Bill Mezzanotte. So let me touch now on Horizon 1. To drive Horizon 1 improvements leading to improved Ig yield, CSL is focused on process robustness and improving IP recoveries of our existing processes. We continue to pursue incremental continuous improvement initiatives by having a mindset that looks for opportunities to drive year-over-year Ig yield growth within our current regulatory filing boundaries. We work to embed this important continuous improvement mindset at all levels from frontline workers to our senior leaders through operational excellence across the 6 areas depicted here. In terms of productivity, automation efforts are playing a role in helping us reduce cycle time and to increase capacity. Looking at service, we're focused on having reliable lead times throughput and capacity while maintaining efficiency, so we can increase our level of on-time in full delivery. Standardization is enabling us to have better reliability, which means we can reduce inventory and have lower working capital commitments and requirements. Having our people highly engaged in our continuous improvement efforts is imperative. Our operators and analysts are empowered to identify issues and to develop solutions. Our focus on quality and right first time is eliminating repeat deviations and reducing the need for write-offs. And in terms of sustainability, a more efficient operating system translates into reduced rework, less waste and more efficient use of environmental resources. One of the points I want to convey today is that CSL has made significant investments in growing our plasma collection network and our manufacturing capacity, putting us in a position, an excellent position to meet demand. In the last 8 years, the number of CSL plasma collection centers has grown by nearly 160%, and we've brought significant new capacity on with expansions in Bern, Broadmeadows, Kankakee and Marburg. And as a result of these timely and forward-looking investments, we're now in a great position to reap the rewards and to be able to reduce near-term capital expenditures. In fiscal year '24, the stage is set for CFL to reduce our CapEx spend by 30%. Okay. Let's now move on to the final yet critical part of the CSL Behring journey from donor to patient and for sustainable profitable growth and that's commercialization. Our Behring commercial organization delivers our life-saving medicines to patients in more than 100 countries around the world. The CSL Behring commercial business consistently delivers on its promise to patients and shareholders supplying life-saving medicines to people living with rare and serious diseases. In fiscal year '23, Behring delivered 12% growth and generated $9.3 billion in revenue. And Behring is poised to continue with a strong growth trajectory in the years ahead. With compelling growth drivers across our immunoglobulin, Hemophilia and Hereditary Angioedema portfolios, which combined represent 70% of total Behring revenue. Let me share with you why we're so bullish on our forward prospects in each of these important areas, starting with Immunoglobulin or Ig. First, we see significant opportunity for continued global Ig growth given the significant variability of Ig usage rates across geographies. Ig utilization per capita is most robust in the U.S., Australia and Canada, relative to many other countries. And since the prevalence of the diseases treated by Ig generally is consistent across the world, the relatively low usage rates in Europe, Japan and many other countries reinforce that Behring can continue to grow global PRIVIGEN and HIZENTRA utilization with sufficient sourcing of plasma. CSL is committed to this, addressing these unmet patient needs around the world. PRIVIGEN and HIZENTRA growth opportunities span both current and new indications, primary immunodeficiency or PID and secondary immunodeficiency or SID, are the largest indications today for the Behring Ig portfolio. In treating these particular diseases, PRIVIGEN and HIZENTRA act to replace proteins that patients do not make on their own. And because Ig is polyclonal, it's an effective replacement therapy for patients with deficiency and cannot be replicated by a recombinant approach. Let me repeat that. In diseases where Ig is utilized as replacement therapy, such as PID and SID, use of recombinants is not a viable approach. In the major markets, such replacement therapy is the source of business for about 75% of HIZENTRA and about 55% of PRIVIGEN. Now in immune thrombocytopenic purpura or ITP, myasthenia gravis and chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy or CIDP. Ig acts as an immunomodulator rather than as a replacement. Here, Behring competes today with other Ig companies and potentially in the future with other modalities offering an immunomodulatory effect. That said, these emerging entrants likely will benefit only in the subset of CIDP patients who are intolerant to or not well controlled with Ig therapy. We expect PRIVIGEN and HIZENTRA to maintain compelling leadership positions in CIDP and in all core indications given their well-established and well characterized benefit risk profile, their proven long-term protection, physician clinical experience and strong placement in treatment guidelines. In CIDP, in particular, we look forward to competing with FcRns, both offensively and defensively, reinforcing the compelling benefit risk profile of Ig therapy. And beyond current formulations and indications, we're actively advancing our efforts to expand the utility of our Ig portfolio via real-world evidence where data abounds for both PRIVIGEN and HIZENTRA as well as with the upcoming U.S. launch of the HIZENTRA 50-milligram prefilled syringe and we're also exploring additional new indications for HIZENTRA, including dermatomyositis, currently in Phase III with study readout anticipated over the coming year. We expect the overall global Ig market to have mid-single-digit compound annual volume growth over the coming 5 years. With continued supply and improved diagnosis rates in PID post-COVID. And within this growing Ig market, both PRIVIGEN and HIZENTRA will gain share, outpacing the market with high single-digit portfolio growth annually over this time frame. We're proud of our Behring Ig leadership position, and we're poised not only to sustain it, but to expand it. Shifting gears to Hemophilia B, a rare genetic bleeding disorder resulting from the absence or deficiency of coagulation Factor IX, impacting approximately 38,000 people worldwide. I just spent a few days before traveling here to Australia with over 100 U.S. children and teens suffering from bleeding disorders, such as hemophilia. And while the field has certainly advanced over the past decade plus with more treatment alternatives, the unmet needs for this devastating disease remain, particularly for durable protection it doesn't adversely impact quality of life. We're excited to offer both IDELVION and HEMGENIX as important alternatives for people with Hemophilia B based on their specific situation, treatment goals and priorities. IDELVION is a well-established standard of care with $700 million plus in revenue in fiscal year '23, 13% growth and with 50% patient share. IDELVION provides the highest factor levels for the longest period of time of any Factor IX replacement therapy with a full range of personalized dosing options. And we are so excited to have HEMGENIX, the first hemophilia B gene therapy now launched in the U.S. and approved in Europe that eliminates the need for routine prophylaxis therapy. We have several patients who have received HEMGENIX in the U.S. to date, and all are doing well in the weeks and months post administration. And we have many more HEMGENIX prescriptions and referrals in the queue. Now a HEMGENIX referral is a prescription that also includes patient information, insurance data, dosing requirements and the physician signature. A referral is used to conduct a benefits investigation. So just to put this momentum into context. 1/3 of the HEMGENIX referrals came over the first 240 days post launch. Then another 1/3 came over the next 60 days in July and August. And the remaining 1/3 came during the just ended month of September. So 1/3 in the first 240, the second third in the next 60 days and the equal amount in the most recent 30-day period. Clearly, we're making progress, with more patients and their physicians aware of and enthusiastic about HEMGENIX therapy and its curative potential. Additionally, about 40 U.S. hemophilia treatment centers are trained for HEMGENIX administration. And HEMGENIX received a very positive assessment from the Institute of Clinical and Economic Research, ICER which is the leading health technology assessment authority in the United States and already has coverage for about 75% of U.S. commercial health plan lives. And we're in active discussions with several European reimbursement authorities. That said, we're working closely in the U.S. with all stakeholders to overcome the hurdles that we well anticipated in the launch of such a transformative onetime curative therapy. We're seeing firsthand the inefficiencies of the U.S. healthcare system. With some middlemen, stakeholders seeking profit opportunities and others wary of being stuck in the way, stuck with the bill. So we are making progress. We're confident that HEMGENIX as the first gene therapy for hemophilia B with a compelling benefit risk profile is going to make a profound impact for many, many patients. Our bright expectations for HEMGENIX over the midterm horizon remain unchanged. We expect the global hemophilia B market to have mid-single-digit revenue compound annual growth rate over the coming 5 years due to the steady prevalence of the disease and the launch of advanced therapies, including gene therapies. And within this hemophilia B market, the Behring portfolio is poised to grow to 35% to 40% share, outpacing the market with high single-digit growth annually over this timeframe, reaching well over the $1 billion threshold. It certainly is an exciting time for people living with hemophilia B. And finally, let's touch on Hereditary Angioedema, or HAE. Another rare genetic disorder that results from missing or low levels of a protein called C1 Esterase. HAE can cause attacks of swelling and often paning in specific areas of the body. An HAE laryngeal attacks that block the airway can be life-threatening. Today, there are approximately 12,000 patients treated for HAE across major markets. And despite treatment advances delayed or under-diagnosis is an unfortunate reality. And despite the availability of both acute and prophylactic therapies, prophylactic options today are not fast acting and don't have an immediate effect. Now as with Ig and hemophilia B, Behring offers a portfolio of compelling therapeutic options for HAE patients with BERINERT and HAEGARDA and with Garadacimab on the horizon. HAEGARDA addresses the root cause of HAE replacing missing or dysfunctional C1. It generated $450 million in fiscal year '23 revenue and continues to gain new patients holding 20% plus share of the HAE prophylaxis market. And we're very excited, very excited to be filing Garadacimab, the first Factor VIIa (sic) [ Factor XIIa ] therapy for HAE prevention working at the top of the cascade, offering the first true 1 dose, once-a-month therapy in less than 15 seconds with a prefilled injector pen. Garadacimab is the fast-acting prophylactic HAE medication that's been elusive up till now. CSL is in the process of advancing regulatory filings, and we look forward to U.S. and European approvals and launches in fiscal year '25. We see the HAE market growing at mid-single-digit annual growth rate over the coming 5 years due to improved diagnosis rates and new prophylaxis therapies. And within this growing HAE market, the Behring portfolio is poised to capture 30% share or more with BERINERT as the on-demand treatment and HAEGARDA as prophylaxis for patients who value natural C1 replacement and soon with Garadacimab, which is poised to be a novel best-in-class therapy for prophylaxis. The Behring HAE portfolio will outpace the market with high single-digit growth annually over this time frame, also reaching well over the $1 billion mark. It certainly is an exciting time for people living with HAE. I've now reviewed with you the forward growth drivers for 70% of the Behring portfolio. But yes, there is more to share. Albumin grew 11% in fiscal year '23. KCENTRA was up 10% and is poised to overcome competitive pressures with a potential new important indication in trauma on the horizon. And Zemaira revenue grew 24% in fiscal year '23 and the launch of a 4 gram and 5-milligram vial line extension is coming in the U.S. Zemaira is also currently being studied in Phase III for prevention and treatment of acute graft-vs-host disease for stem cell transplant patients. Stepping back, I hope you now better appreciate the strength and the robustness of the overall Behring portfolio with depth, leadership and continued innovation across rare diseases, enabling strong top line growth prospects over the coming years. Okay. Let's bring it all together. Behring is the core of CSL and is poised to continue to drive sustainable, profitable growth for the company from donor to patients with many levers in process to return the company to pre-COVID gross margins over the midterm with potential margin upside beyond. We will grow plasma volume and reduce plasma costs through the effective deployment of the Rika Plasma freezer system and individualized Nomogram over the coming years, enabling us to collect 10% more plasma on average from the current donor base as well as leveraging enhanced digital capabilities and operational excellence. Our manufacturing and R&D teams will improve Ig and albumin yield by up to 20% in the long run. By delivering Horizon 1 continuous improvement efforts underway and Horizon 2 process enhancements which will require regulatory review and approvals. And our top line will flourish by growing key medicines and delivering successful launches. The stage is set for high single-digit revenue growth outpacing the market for our Ig hemophilia B and HAE portfolios. So there you have it. The Behring business is robust. The Behring business is strong, and we are well positioned to deliver sustainable, profitable growth and a return to pre-COVID gross margins over the coming 3 to 5 years. Thank you. We'll move now to Q&A, and I'll invite Paul McKenzie to come up and join me.
David Stanton
analystDave Stanton from Jefferies. I note in the presentation for Ig, you talked to a 5-year volume CAGR for Ig. Could you talk to where you see price during that period. Should we be thinking the historical low single-digit price increases or something else please.
Unknown Executive
executiveDavid, thanks. And I think we've always reiterated CSL Behring never wanted to be the price leader. We want to drive volume, and we'll continue to take price at that low single-digit CPI-type level. Now obviously, if there's tenders or market opportunities where that makes sense, we will take price there. But our assumption is it will be low single digits.
Unknown Executive
executiveI think, we communicated our expectations in fiscal year '24 for mid-teens volume growth with modest price and I think the pricing environment, as Paul said, is becoming increasingly challenging in some markets, but where there's room to take price that's in line with the market, we'll do so.
David Stanton
analystAnd as a follow-up to that, should we expecting a continued mix shift to higher price version over the medium to longer term? .
Unknown Executive
executiveYes, I think as we acknowledged in fiscal year '23, we did have a unique situation in terms of the PRIVIGEN and HIZENTRA mix. But we do think the trend of moving more towards HIZENTRA will continue, David, now that we're post COVID. I think it was just a unique set of circumstances where we ended up growing high 20s in Europe, and that was predominantly PRIVIGEN because that was the clinical preference there. So you will see -- continue to see the shift back to HIZENTRA.
Unknown Executive
executiveYes. I think Hizentra is probably more impacted by COVID than PRIVIGEN because about 75% of its use is in PID, primary immunodeficiency and through the COVID, patients weren't going to visit their doctors and diagnosis of PID is already challenging. So COVID just made it even harder. There was this lull in diagnosis of PID it's back now about 80%. We see the trend increasing, but that's a little bit impacting the HIZENTRA growth. But there's 60% new brand -- new patient share for HIZENTRA and so when someone moves to a subcu Ig, HIZENTRA is the preferred brand. And then, of course, most of our forward life cycle for expanded indications and utility is in HIZENTRA with dermatomyositis, as I mentioned, this 50-milligram prefilled syringe, which is going to be super helpful and then we're also exploring additional indications that will come downstream.
Steven Wheen
analystSteve Wheen from Jarden. I just wonder if you could talk to the problems with the Rika platform and what is causing the delays. They seem to be continuing. And what sort of opportunities or leverage do you have over Terumo now to maybe get some benefit out of these delays perhaps around things like extending your level of exclusivity for this platform?
Unknown Executive
executiveYes, Steve, I look at Terumo as an opportunity, right? We're continuing to see great things as we execute. We're now over 15 centers. We've been rolling out more centers. As I explained with time, there was a series of issues, right, starting from initial supply chain issues coming out in terms of the consumables, then we had some device parts availability tied to COVID as well. And then finally, it was kind of bringing the whole ecosystem together under reliability. I think at the full year, I shared we were roughly low 90% reliability. We wanted to continue to see that grow before we would commit to flipping the switch to the entire fleet. The good news is we continue to see that move. We're in the 94%, 94.5%. So approaching our stage date of 95%. And that's why Andy has been able to comment that we're now dialing in on that final rollout schedule as we see the reliability. Terumo has rolled out additional software upgrades. They've rolled out some device supply chain challenge parts that they fixed. And now we're in a position of, as we look to go over that 95% threshold to be able to lock in with them and then share with you at the half year, our definitive rollout schedule. So I think there's lots of opportunities. Terumo is a good partner. We have worked with them now for several years. I have certainly become personal friends with Sato-San, the CEO of Terumo. We both share a love of Ultraman. I don't know if anybody remembers Ultraman as a kid. Maybe I'm sure those can Google it and remember Ultraman, but it's just as a side note, but look, they have brought the full power of Terumo, and we're very bullish on what the opportunities that Rika will do for us. We rolled out the new nomogram, not the Nomogram I, but the Nomogram A, and again, we're seeing good performance in the centers, and that performance continues. So we had a last software upgrade a couple of weeks back, and we expect to see that put us over the hump with reliability.
Unknown Executive
executiveI guess the way I characterize this is we need to go slow so we can go fast and that look so much from a business continuity is having the right plasmapheresis machines that can enable us to continue the flow of collections of plasma and plasma volume that we want to be -- as we make the transition, we want to be absolutely essential that we've got our folks trained, that the machines are going to work as we expect them to do, that we've got all the soft goods that we need. And so we're sorting through all those issues with Terumo. But as we then make the transition, I have every expectation, it's gonna come in time with Nomogram I, and we're going to reap the benefits. So going slow to go fast.
Steven Wheen
analystYes. And can I just -- the follow up on that? I mean it's clearly come at a cost to yourselves with regards to having to extend the arrangement with Haemonetics, which I can't imagine was the most beneficial contract extension you've ever done in terms of cost. So just looking at why is that you can leverage these delays that's not any of CSL's fault to help offset the impact that it's had on your business?
Unknown Executive
executiveWell, first off, I just want to clarify, Haemonetics has been an extremely good partner and continues to be a really good partner, right? So we -- and I don't want to share individual contract specifics, but the cost of Terumo and Haemonetics are on par during this period. There was no change in the Haemonetics direction in terms of how we work. And look, we'll continue to work with both suppliers to make the best of the transition and make sure that we give the best service to our donors.
Saul Hadassin
analystThis is Saul Hadassin, Barrenjoey. Two questions from me. Just on that outlook for industry growth for Ig, 6% to 8%. Can you talk to what you're seeing across those indications, whether there's any particular growth coming from, say, the nonautoimmune indications, SID in particular? Is it evenly distributed across all of those wedges.
Unknown Executive
executiveYes. So we didn't -- when we did the calculation, it was overall markets, I don't have in front of me the specifics by indication. There's expansion opportunities with improved diagnosis across all the indications. I think SID in particular, as there is newer cancer medicines that impact the immune system. I think that we will continue to see increased growth in the SID space in particular. And I think that goes for autoimmune diseases, new medicines for autoimmune diseases as well. But just about every indication is growing.
Unknown Executive
executiveAnd to Andy's earlier comments about P&ID, right, we're still seeing the diagnosis rates come back in the United States alone. So you'll see growth from just that increase of diagnosis rate. SID will be a growth engine and we continue -- look, we have a great history in these other, what Andy called immunomodulated diseases. And we've got years of history, patient experience, safety, so I think we'll be in very good shape to continue to grow those markets as well. So it's an aggregate number, but we don't see any one indication bearing differently from what our experience has been and what our expectations are.
Unknown Executive
executiveAnd in fact, we hope -- we look forward to adding more slices to the Ig pie as we expand our indications in other areas. I mean, dermatomyositis is there's no approved like therapies. And often, you see in specialty diseases when there is a new indication of approved therapy, surprisingly diagnosis of that disease grows. So we'll grow the pie and increase the slice of the pie.
Saul Hadassin
analystAnd then just as a follow-up on that note, CSL has invested a lot over the last 5 years, particularly in base fractionation across the globe. Can you give us any sense as to what your capacity utilization is today? Or how much headroom do you have before you need to stop then thinking about the next wave of capital investment?
Unknown Executive
executiveYes. I think at base fractionation, we're very well positioned. I think not only in terms of our ongoing initiatives, but the capacity we brought in. As I shared before, what we did was take advantage of that new fractionation to retire older assets, right? So if anyone's been the building 4 in Kankakee, -- it was a 70-year-old facility that we were able to retire appropriately. So some of the capacity we added on was really to replace capacity that had really gone well past its useful life, still great capacity, but we had to replace it. So we have room, and we -- look, the most important thing for us is the operational excellence that we continue to drive, but fully automated facilities give you a different strength in terms of your OE, operational excellence agenda than a manual facility does. So I think we'll continue -- what our goal is, is to continue to give ourselves back capacity through yield, through OE, so that we can continue to defer in our network strategy, the need for capacity. So it's really about that staying ahead of the game in terms of all the process nodes moving forward. So I think we're in a really good position from a capacity balance viewpoint across the network.
Unknown Executive
executiveAnd as I mentioned, our expectation for high single-digit volume growth over the 5 years, and let's assume that continues out beyond the 5 years, which we have every expectation that it could that we're -- we believe we have the capacity and plenty of lead time if we decide downstream that we need more.
Unknown Executive
executiveAnd the other only comment to make in Jeff Ball is here our Sustainability Officer, but also our network strategy. What we want to do is continue to make sure, as Bill and the R&D team make their changes moving forward that we can be very agile with what we bring on and how we balance that. But we've also fundamentally retooled our engineering capability so that when we decide we need capacity, we can do it in a modular way, and we can do it at a significantly reduced time, right? If you saw the cell culture facility, Ken brought up earlier, right? I mean, I was out there on Saturday and Tullamarine, it's ahead of schedule. It's ahead of budget, and that's really because of the fundamental change and how we engineer and execute the project. So we'll be able to respond quickly, but we'll be able to respond in a different way in terms of how we execute capital now with our strategy.
Chris Cooper
analystChris Cooper, Goldman Sachs. You alluded earlier to some of the hurdles you've seen with stakeholders on HEMGENIX in the U.S. rollout that were well anticipated. Could you please just elaborate a bit further on those and how you seek to resolve them, please?
Andy Schmeltz
executiveSure. So in the U.S., once a physician and a patient have decided that HEMGENIX therapy is appropriate for them when they get this referral and then do benefit verification. There's lots of -- I call, middle men stakeholders from physician, the group practice that they're part of or the hospital institution, the integrated delivery network, the hemophilia treatment center sometimes is involved, the health plan, the specialty pharmacy, all these different players in the U.S. environment have to align on this curative therapy. And as I mentioned, some are looking to profit with the average selling price plus a margin on such a transformative therapy, whereas others are worried if they lay out the money, then are they going to get stuck with the bill. And because this is the first time for these institutions and for these channels to experience gene therapy, we're having to work to give everybody confidence. And in some settings, it works very smoothly. But in other settings, you've got -- it takes time and then things get stuck in bureaucracy with individual contracts and you call it single case agreements. But that was all anticipated. And in this first, I think, a year or two, it's not like once that channel completes it for one patient, it's not like there's 10 or 20 hemophilia B patients that are looking for HEMGENIX in -- next up in the queue. It's likely a onesie or a twosie or a threesie in each local paradigm. So that's what we're working through right now. But we're having success. And I think as we learn from it and the different players can talk to each other, it's going to get more straightforward. That being said, I'm excited to see the process play out for reimbursement in many other markets in Europe because once there is reimbursement granted, it should flow much smoother given the kind of paradigm of healthcare in many other countries. And so that's why I characterize this as it kind of exposes the inefficiencies or dysfunction of the U.S. healthcare system.
Unknown Executive
executiveIt's interesting, too, some of it is just an individual cost center in a hospital, ends up losing the patient, meaning that if it's a Medicare cost account and now the patient goes on gene therapy, they don't end up having that patient later on. So you have the struggle of -- in a cost center, they have to show year-on-year growth that value in the healthcare system, right? And unfortunately, that's how many of the cost centers are valued, not just the patient outcome. So there's this natural tension of, hey, IDELVION is a great product, great standard of care. I get to see the patient, I get to infuse them. I kind of have them for their life. And now you're telling me I'm going to give them gene therapy, and I'm not going to have them in my cost center. Theoretically moving forward. So there is some unique tensions when we sit and talk through the contracting realities within the U.S. hospital system. The good news is when we talk to patients, and I was at the same JNC, Junior National Championship getting the game with Andy, right? Patients are very excited about it, right? They want options. I mean it's really heartbreaking to me to sit at a dinner and find out a kid cannot participate in local sports because the sports association doesn't want to have to deal with a hemophilia kid. I mean we actually had a mother at a table crying because this was the first time our son has really been able to participate now. He participated in the best sports swimming, some were participating in golf. But they were really saying how it made a difference for them. But -- so patients are excited. We're excited to get on with the clinical trial for that 12 to 18 year old, but it's going to take some time to get the contracting system to really work its way through.
Unknown Executive
executiveSo just to kind of put a pin on it, the receptivity for patients and physician cenegenics has been very, very strong. And when there's that level of enthusiasm, we will work through these issues. They will get worked through. It will become smoother, less friction. And we will achieve the expectations over time that we expect for the subset of hemophilia B patients that decide that gene therapy is the right solution for them.
Chris Cooper
analystJust to come back to Rika quickly. I know the original open expectation when the program was first announced was a rollout within about a 12-month period. Assuming reliability, not just up north of 95%, as you expected and you sit down with Terumo in December. Is there any reason to think that the rollout would need to be any slower than that 12 months that was initially proposed.
Unknown Executive
executiveOkay. Like I said, we'll come back. I want to really make sure we have all our eyes tired and t's cross, and we'll come back after our December final negotiation with Terumo to say that. But I mean, in terms of our readiness, we're ready. I mean we've been able to demonstrate that. It's really about Terumo making sure they can do the device builds, and we just want to make sure that's iron cloud. So I don't think you should be far off in that expectation, but I don't want to give you an exact yes until we really work through that build-out schedule.
David Bailey
analystIt's David Bailey from Macquarie. Just on Garadacimab some good results there in relation to attack reduction and also a portion of patients being attack-free. I suppose I'm just wondering whether you think -- this is a product that could drive conversion from on-demand to prophylaxis. So those patients currently on demand. And then secondly, potential switching from existing products, whether it's HAEGARDA and/or [indiscernible].
Unknown Executive
executiveAnd maybe I could ask Bill from a medical viewpoint just to comment on what excites him about the product, and we have a little station up here to put the GLG members to task. So and then we can talk about the market itself.
Bill Mezzanotte
executiveYes. Thanks for the question. We're extremely excited about garadacimab. And it's the patient convenience, the high efficacy, the rapid onset of effect, all of those features really screened for a big uptake with the therapy. It's in an auto injector, our first auto injector that we'll be bringing to the market. So your question, I think, was can we convert the on-demand because of it? Well, I think a convenient patient-friendly therapy may be one that can do it. There's an oral therapy out there that's been converting some of them. I think if you measure the combination of convenience and efficacy, this is going to be far better than that.
Unknown Executive
executiveAnd the market has definitely been expanding in terms of get moving away from acute treatment to ongoing treatment. So I think we'll continue to see that trend, right? The market has expanded wildly in that area.
David Bailey
analystMaybe just also on licensing products, HEMGENIX is a pretty good example of a competitive risk for your license and have had some success with -- is this something you will continue to consider going forward? And specifically, would you consider looking at an FcRn?
Unknown Executive
executiveYes. Look, strategic partnerships as a key part of our strategy, right? We'll always look for partnerships at every level and every part of the business that we do, right? It's how you get leverage in today's modern world. You can't do everything yourself, and it's really important to be able to access capabilities, capacities, new science across the board. We've looked at every FcRn and out there to date, Trust me. We've turned lots of stones. We don't see anything at this point that's differentiated, but never say never. We'll continue the BD team, Ken's team and Bill's team -- we'll continue to look and work with commercial to see whether there's something that would add value. Our goal at CSL isn't to be a me-too company though, right? Our goal is to differentiate and make sure we're driving value to patients. So when we see that, we'll go after it like we have with uniQure, like we had with our [indiscernible]. And I think that's the kind of spirit that you want to see. It's easy to do deals. It's hard to do good deals and that's what we want to do.
Laura Sutcliffe
analystLaura Sutcliffe, UBS. This might be the stupidest question that gets asked all day. But you mentioned that PID diagnosis is 80% or something of what it was pre-Covid. With your expertise and experience, why is it not 100% at this point?
Paul McKenzie
executiveIt's really -- I mean, Andy can comment for it. It's just people getting back into the healthcare system. COVID changed lots of behaviors, right? I'm sure even for this room, the number of days are in the office and these type of things probably have changed and it did change how people engage with the healthcare system. But remember, there's a continuous kind of exposure of the patient to the doctor. And during COVID they were less likely to have ear infections, less likely to have pneumonia. So it tends to be, you have to look at that trend and then say there's an underlying issue versus just treat that disease at that given point, so I think some of it is just the continuity of exposure. Some of it is COVID that the fact that people were less exposed. They were at home. They weren't getting as sick and that makes a difference as well. So I think there's lots of trends that contribute to that. But I think the healthcare system is coming back in full order. And I think people are now out and about again and they're going to get exposure to disease. So it's not a dumb question. It's actually a very good one.
Andy Schmeltz
executiveAnd I think just to add that PID is hard to diagnose, right? Someone has to have -- present to a doctor with recurrent infections for the doctor to make the connection that they're not just having an acute infection independent of each other, but there's something going on here with the patient's immune system. And as Paul said, during COVID, First of all, people didn't want to go to the doctor number two, they were in masks there in their house, so they weren't presenting with infections. And so an already tough to diagnose disease kind of became a little bit tougher to diagnose. And we track this as well. And so now, depending on the country, the kind of return to normal, people are out there, they're presenting themselves with more infections. And that's why we see globally about 80% of what pre-Covid was, but it's been growing. So we think that we'll get in a reasonable amount of time back to the kind of pre-covid rates of diagnosis.
Mathieu Chevrier
analystMathieu Chevrier from Citi. Just one on Kcentra, how large is the addressable market for Kcentra in trauma?
Paul McKenzie
executiveSorry, it was a little hard to hear. In trauma?
Mathieu Chevrier
analystYes. How large is the addressable market compared to the existing addressable market?
Andy Schmeltz
executiveYes. I mean look, Kcentra delivered $700 million in revenue this past year. And it's well established. And look, there is some use out there off label in trauma. We see the general space others pursuing these indications. I don't think we're going to double the $700 million in revenue, but I think it's going to be a sizable several hundred million dollar opportunity for the brand in steady state. And it fits very importantly, with the patient blood management strategy that Herve spoke to this morning. And that's what we talked about, we need to pursue the clinical development to get the labels so that we're in a position to really promote and package these indications. So maybe we'll get even further lift by having the patient blood management approach.
Paul McKenzie
executiveAnd unfortunately, in the U.S., this thing called gun violence hasn't gotten less. And so there is a reality of a growing trauma and other type emergency room setting that I think drives an important potential use. I'd like to see it go the other way from a society viewpoint, but it's a reality, it's an unmet need in terms of what's going on, particularly in the U.S. market. So high single digits. And then let's see what the clinical results say and then that drives your next level of view in terms of what we could possibly do with the market. But it's there for the taking and we just need to have the indication for it.
Mathieu Chevrier
analystAnd just another one on competition. What impact do you think it's going to have on pricing?
Paul McKenzie
executiveLook, anytime you have competitors in the market, there's a different dynamic. The key for us is driving reliable supply, which we've done for years and continue to do. And so I think it's really a matter of we'll respond. We do have a very good preferential spot in lots of doctors' minds and hearts and so that will continue to go. The competitor that's on has historically been challenged with supply, and that's where we'll continue to differentiate.
Unknown Executive
executiveI mean, we don't chase the low price, right? I mean there's plenty of tenders we make sure that we deliver the right value to the healthcare system.
Unknown Executive
executiveAnd in the U.S., if your question is specific to Kcentra, we'll pursue targeted contracting that combined with the 10-year history of KCENTRA and the real-world evidence that we have to preserve share, but I don't envision a significant price degradation in this category.
Unknown Analyst
analyst[indiscernible] Morgan Stanley. On your horizon 1 and 2, can you share what regulatory process we should be expecting across both Horizon 1 and 2? Is it quite a limping complex process. I guess I'm trying to understand other than legal what risk should we be highlighted about in terms of executing the strategy? Or in other words, what gives management confidence about achieving that 10% yield towards the back end of the decade.
Paul McKenzie
executiveSure. If I could ask on horizon 2, Bill is going to go through that in detail, but just at the high level, right, as I shared the full year. We've discharged the technical risk, right? We think we have a very good technical solution to get Ig Yield. Now Bill will go through the specific steps of now we work through the regulatory process to deliver Horizon 2. Horizon 1 has very limited regulatory impact. That's all in our control around operational excellence, R&D. There's limited regulatory impact on Horizon 1. So very confident on Horizon 1, the road map. Very confident technically on horizon 2, and we have to work through as a development project. So we have to work through those stage gates and Bill will go through that this afternoon.
David Low
analystDavid Low from JPMorgan. Turn lucky Just on plasma donors. What is your expectation with rates given they went up a lot, they've come down a bit. I mean CSL expecting that there'll be a further decline in donor rates?
Unknown Executive
executiveIn donor frequencies, I would you're asking, David.
David Low
analystNo, in the payment.
Unknown Executive
executiveNo, look, we'll continue, as I think as we shared before, we don't think donor fees will go back to pre-COVID levels. I think there would have to be some other macro events that would generate that. But we'll see what happens. We're assuming that we'll have to compete with elevated donor fees. We continue to see the trajectory down, but they won't hit pre-covid dollars. The world has just gotten more expensive, and we think the donor fees will fit in that regard. I think our job is to make sure we battle that. We win every donor. We get the right frequency and that we continue to drive our cost down in the other buckets, right? You have donor fees, labor costs, other costs. We need to make sure we're properly compensating the donor to get him or her in the door and then offset that by other costs. But it won't be pre-covid donor fees. That's just the reality of where we're at as a business.
Andy Schmeltz
executiveAnd maybe just to reinforce what I tried to articulate in the presentation that leveraging advances in technology. I know Mark Hill is going to speak to it this afternoon is that we're able to personalize for the donors. So where in the past, in a given geography or a given center here was the incentive here was the fee that in the future, and perhaps for an individual donor, you're paying them a lot more than what would have otherwise convince them to come in the door. And for other donors, you're not quite there, and they're not coming in the door. We'll have much more data, much more personalization that will enable us to be more purposeful to not allow surplus, but also not meet the market bearing price for donation. And so we're excited by those possibilities.
David Low
analystAnd on the same topic, I mean, with the rollout of Rika and with your experience to date, so less time on the bed, more comfortable, what does that mean for donor fees, if any?
Andy Schmeltz
executiveI mean, I think it's very exciting. I think that in the U.S., in many local markets, there's a choice for donors of where they're going to go. And so we take a lot of pride at CSL Plasma in having the best experience, relationships, trained staff, friendly, so that on the margin, if a donor might consider going somewhere else, they're going to be loyal to CSL plasma because of the entire experience. And already in visiting the centers where Rika is installed, there is a buzz amongst donors, Oh, this is the center where it's quicker. And so that's one piece. But I mentioned also improved workflow. It's not just time in the chair, but it's how much time does it take to get in the chair and out the door. And so we're very focused on the total experience to take it up a level and to reinforce, but even enhance loyalty for CSL plasma.
Paul McKenzie
executiveIn regions where we have, say, multiple centers like Chicago, like in Atlanta, there have been phone calls of--does this center have the new Rika system, right? So people do value it, and I think it's important for their time, but the whole pipe has to work, right? And that's where Mark and the team's effort, Jeff's and operational excellence, we really need to make sure from when they come in the door to when they leave, they see a cumulative reduction in time. And that's where every part of that puzzle makes a difference. So it's 30% on the bed. Our goal was to make it 30% or more across the whole donation process, right, particularly for returning donors.
David Low
analystAnd if I could squeeze in one more on the same topic. Could we get a bit of an update on what you're seeing with the border centers, the Mexican border centers, please?
Paul McKenzie
executiveYes. So I was at the border centers not too long ago. They're continuing to rebound. I'd say that high 80%, 90% of what they were with pre-COVID. We have had competitors who are certainly raising the bill in the area. Delta of about $25 to $30 per donation, which just we're not going to chase at this point. We have a good loyal donor base. We've put in some incentives, but we're steadily seeing those centers return, but it's probably in the high 80s right now, David.
Lyanne Harrison
analystIt's Lyanne Harrison here from Bank of America. If I can continue that discussion on donor fees, when you talk about personalized donor fees. What's the risk that you're paying different donor fees to different people, but for the same contribution of plasma? Is that a potential possibility? Or are people paid different donor potentially higher given the quality and the proteins in the plasma?
Paul McKenzie
executiveYes. So I think there's lots of attributes to it. Some of it may also be just the time they come in and when they want to donate, right? So if you think about rush hour, one of the things we'll do with our new donor management system is work to balance out the donors coming in with the labor. So we've actually been doing a pilot on scheduling. So it's a matter of you want to come at noon and we're really busy or come at 2, maybe there's a difference. So I think we -- there's not lots of things you can do once you start getting that ability from a system to be able to understand when people come, and then we can start making sure the donors coming in. are getting fairly compensated for what they're contributing, including protein levels and other things because we track all that. Now with our data analytics, we're looking from the beginning to the end in terms of what does the donor demographic in terms of that specific donor provide to us on an end-to-end process. But there's going to be lots of variables with Mark's effort and the team's effort, we'll be able to dial in to. So no different than Uber Eats or Uber at the busiest time, we'll probably get a little less of a donation fee. And then less time, hey, come on in and maybe we give you a little bit more there. So it's going to be very variable. But now we have that capability to bringing in that capability to do that.
Unknown Executive
executiveAnd I think it's going to be a journey, right? I mean we're going to learn and our algorithms are going to get better with more data and more experience so we'll be able to hone it and optimize it. And I know Mark is going to talk about this afternoon. So you can ask additional questions to him.
Paul McKenzie
executiveI think we have time for -- you finish your second one and then maybe one more after that. So please.
Lyanne Harrison
analystJust one more question. You spoke about hemophilia B in quite some detail. But can you talk a little bit about hemophilia A as to still, what your expectations around CAGR for the next 5 years? And where do you expect market share to land?
Unknown Executive
executiveI mean, look, the hemophilia A is still has been out there in the market for quite some time. The hemophilia A space is evolving. It's an important offering for us. But as we think about overall overarching for Behring, we're looking over the next year, I think a low double-digit growth in the outer years, high single-digit growth. And we're looking at where the drivers are with our Ig portfolio with the new launches, Hemgenix and Garadacimab and the expanded indications. So AFSTYLA importance for patients, but I wouldn't put it in the top 3 drivers for the -- or top 5 drivers for the portfolio.
Paul McKenzie
executiveLast one, maybe?
Andrew Paine
analystYes. Andrew Paine at CLSA here. Just coming back to 30% efficiencies, you've been talking about on the recosystem. Does that translate into 50% more capacity, that you can eventually get obviously versus a few things left to do in order to get it across the board there. But once those efficiencies start coming through, can we expect capacity to essentially increased by 50%.
Paul McKenzie
executiveLike I shared, our goal all the time is to add more capacity in every node, right? So we need to convert this 30% less time on the bed to overall less centers to build and that's our goal. So we'll be exactly 30% for 30%, 30% less centers, lots of other things have to fall in line with the software and other things. But that's always our goal. The more we can defer capital later, and still get the same growth and meet market growth better than market growth, right, meet our growth aspirations. That's what we'll do. So we don't want to rush to build new centers if we can build it and get -- take advantage of it with the capacity we added through those efforts. And it's not -- in your model, I won't put it as an exact 30% on the bed means, 30% less centers or 30% less build. There's lots of little parts that have to come together to make that happen.
Andy Schmeltz
executiveI think if you think about 5 or 10 years ago, where if we looked at our projections and we needed to collect more plasma, the core lever that we pulled was open more plasma centers. Now looking forward, we have, in addition, considering opening up more plasma centers, we have these other opportunities, whether it's Rika, whether it's Ig yield, whether it's the overall throughput of getting people in and out of the center faster that already are in process that will come into play. And so it might not be -- it likely will not be that just opening more centers is the path to delivering more plasma.
Paul McKenzie
executiveWith that said, we will be opening up mid-teens centers in fiscal year right, because we want to also diversify where we're at physically. So there's -- and there are some centers that are getting older, perhaps the neighborhood has changed. We'll replace that license and move that license. So there's lots of things, dynamics in play. Good. All right. I think that wraps up the morning session. You'll now break for lunch. If we could have everybody back in their seats at 1:30 for the afternoon. So we have several topics. We have Mark for IT, joy for the financials and Bill for R&D. Thanks for your attention. We really appreciate it and look forward to continuing the conversation. Enjoy lunch.
Mark Dehring
executiveLadies and gentlemen, we'll make a start. If you can take your seats, please. We have 3 more presenters this afternoon and a further Q&A session. So the next presenter we have is Mark Hill, who heads up information and technology, and he will be talking the information in digital this afternoon. Welcome, Mark.
Mark Hill
executiveGood afternoon. I'm Mark Hill, Chief Information Officer for CSL. I truly appreciate your allocation of time with us today. And I'm absolutely delighted to be here. Our promise to patients remains. Our therapies and vaccines continue to be driven by science, but advances in data and technology are starting to shape how we develop new products, engage with customers and maximize our supply lines. And there enlists tremendous opportunity. In my 4 decades as an information and technology professional, I have never ever experienced a time when the pace of technology change was so fast and the potential for business impact was so great. Digital experiences and massive analytics make it possible to retain and attract donors. It makes it possible to maximize yield and reduce waste of plasma supply. It makes it possible to increase the rate and quality of scientific experimentation and differentiate the value of our products with real-world evidence. Being digital is even more important in the face of growth. Our intent for digital transformation is to grow faster at less cost. We want more operational leverage. Growth is the signature word here. It is now rallying crack. It means increased transactions. It means more products, expanded markets and of course, more competitors. Our digital infrastructure must be designed to allow the company to evolve without complexity and difficulty. That is my mission for CSL. Here at CSL, we have a very disciplined approach to technology and digital investments. This discipline enables focus across 3 areas: Area #1, technology that enables interactions with our donors and the convergence of biological and computer science for growing our pipeline for all new therapies. We aim to remain an employee of choice for scientists, recognizing that the scientist of the future is also information and technology savvy. Focus area #2, generative artificial intelligence as a driver of scale, productivity and long-term innovation for our company. We are excited about the potential of generative artificial intelligence to be a multiplier of value for all of our initiatives. AI has the potential to democratize access to our organizational knowledge, our employees, our donors, for providers and for our patients. Focus area #3, we never forget that we live in an ever increasingly dangerous world from a cyber perspective. Every single day that I'm awake. We are heartening our cybersecurity policies, procedures and capabilities to keep CSL safe, secure and compliant. Now these 3 focus areas do not imply that other areas of our business are not important to me. Rather, it says that we overweight areas where information and technology and technology can extend our moat. Really important. Of course, when you're in an information and technology organization, you've got to think about how you deliver value and what that value is for the corporation. So information and digital is connective tissue across the entire enterprise. As a function, we drive differentiated value by making plasma donations easier. I'll talk about it a little bit more in a minute, while ensuring uptime and resiliency of our plasma center and workflows. Plasmas in a downtime equals plasma liters lost and donation attrition. Integration is how we stitch together our business units with a unified modern technology stack. Intelligent automation reduces manual tasks and drive productivity at scale. This is a sweet spot for machine learning and AI. Now let's talk about plasma for a minute. This slide depicts how I think about the world of plasma. In all of our plasma centers, we have walked the floor and put dots on the floor to make sure that we understand the pathway and the flow of a donor throughout our entire ecosystem. From the time they walk in to the time they get in the bed to the time they leave. In March of 2021, we had 450,000 mobile app users. Yes, we have a mobile app. And by the way, the mobile app is best-in-class. Today, our donor mobile app utilization is high, with 3.2 million total downloads to date and 470,000 monthly active users. We see plasma as an end-to-end solution or digital flywheel. We see the donor experience as a competitive advantage. The flywheel is what I continue to focus on each and every day from step 1 through step 6. Everything starts with our ability to attract more donors through the donor app and other digital channels. The more we know about our donors, the easier we can make the donation process. And the easier the donation process, this promotes stickiness and increases long-term value for us and our donors. We no longer do snail mail. Snail mail is the traditional post office. All of our interactions are, or the majority of our interactions are through the mobile app. We also focused on the in-center experience to help retain staff and lower the cost of donations. We are automating as many tasks as possible, including donor check-in and biometric entry. Automation speeds up the process, reduces errors and gives us the ability to learn more about our donors with less effort. It also removes low-value tests from in-center staff so they can focus on higher value customer service. Most recently, we expanded the capability to test appointments. Andy touched on this just a little bit ago. But we expanded the capability to test appointments and premiere pass options across multiple centers in the United States. Appointments allow first-time applicant donors to create an appointment for their visit. Premier Pass let's first time applicant donors pre-register and receive priority access to registration as soon as they arrive to the center. Now think about that. That means we are creating these experiences that are equal to having Elite status on Qantas Airlines as an example. We want our donors to know that we care and that the experience is top of mind. We are seeing reductions of processing time between pilot centers and control centers. A pilot center would be one without appointments. With further testing, we expect to see an increase in active appointments and potentially lower attrition. We also see the potential for a hybrid schedule walk-in model to maximize capacity. Full circle, we are making the donation process easier and our plasma centers more efficient, enabling a more positive donor experience. A better donor experience leads to more plasma collected and higher business growth at lower costs. Now let me shift to the world of R&D. The worlds of biological and computer science have converged. We are now at the point where these disciplines are intertwined, impossible to separate and impossible to be successful in the future without the fusion of business and technology. Bill Mezzanotte and I have embraced this pathway to scientific insights. The nature of work has changed from bench to laptop, from human-driven to automated and from internal to external. The function of research and development is also changing the ecosystem and the ecosystem is growing. The regulatory agencies are increasing their expectations on digital interactions. Science is being transformed from working at the bench to working on the computer. It transforms a day in the life of a scientist from conducting an experiment and capturing results into designing experiments and using data to advance the pipeline with new insights. We are now delivering information and technology with research and development as a coordinated capability and accelerating the pipeline here at CSL. Now let me talk about enterprise capabilities. While I was at lunch someone asked me if I over-indexed on plasma and I have an enterprise remit for the corporation. We are carefully aligning enterprise systems and processes with the scale required for the growth of our company. For example, 1 pharmacovigilance platform for safety and adverse events across CSL Behring, CSL Vifor, CSL Seqirus instead of 3 separate systems. The same is true across the entire R&D ecosystem. The path to enterprise value starts with the integration of end-to-end operations and enabling functions across business units, followed by relentless automation of our work processes, and finish with real-time data flows and connections across our ecosystem of external partners. We're also wrapping what I call a data band or a data halo around the entire company because, the next breakthrough could very well be in the data that we have at CSL today. The goal is to have a control tower for contract manufacturing, R&D, third-party logistic providers and customer orders. Now let me shift to generative Artificial Intelligence. Gen AI, in my opinion, has transformative potential to go beyond productivity gains and help our organization gets smarter. Our CEO is the sponsor of our AI Accelerator Program. We're carefully building an accelerator to explore opportunities across 3 tiers. One is to capitalize on the productivity boom, putting our tools into the hands of every employee to reduce the time we spend on repetitive tasks and accelerate our overall creativity. No longer do we need our people to summarize meeting minutes or labor on the first draft of a memo? I should repeat that, but I won't. We are educating our workforce on our approach. It's about smart humans and powerful machines, not a competition between humans and machines with guardrails on safety and security, of course. Two is our focus on select use cases where our organizational knowledge can be used to benefit the frontline workers, which Paul has talked about. We think our call center documents code basis and even competitive intelligence can become more intuitive, more personalized and more real time in nature. In other words, we can use our path to generate better solutions for today and create new ideas for tomorrow. Three is our search for areas of differentiation for our business. We are watching opportunities to accelerate the pace of scientific experimentation and add more value to our relationship with donors. Again, AI is not something different, it is a multiplier on the core measures of our business. For these opportunities to materialize, we are focused on curating our data, protecting our intellectual property and finding new partners. These 3 tiers sit on top of a new foundation, not just technology for experimentation, we also need a new mode of governance and change management as the technology advances more quickly than past paradigms. AI is actually here to stay, and it will be bigger than the Internet. Now let's shift to cybersecurity. The 1 area that keeps me up most nights. Cybersecurity remains the biggest risk in digital transformation today. The change in geopolitical landscape has the potential to impact our digital assets and the ways in which we conduct business online. As tensions rise in various regions around the world, so does the risk of cyber warfare. And that can have both erect and collateral damage on our systems, communications and operations. Adapting to these threats and changing regulatory requirements is our job in information and technology. We have invested heavily in our leadership, our governance and our controls for protection and resiliency. The explosion of Gen AI also presents risk. With great adoption and use, there is a risk of sharing sensitive data in public space. However, every single day, we are heartening our cybersecurity policies, procedures and capabilities to keep CSL safe and secure. A few quick takeaways. As the head of information and digital, we work from the future backwards. To understand where information and technology needs to be, we are engaging and energizing our people not to think of what needs to be done to rectify the problems of today. But what would make us design the fundamentals that would help us accelerate and leap forward. Our strategies derive from what capabilities and relationships are required for the future state of our business and when they must be available at scale. As stated previously, here at CSL, we have a disciplined approach to technology and digital investments. This discipline enables once again focus areas -- focus across 3 areas: technology that enables interactions with our donors and the convergence of biological and computer science for growing our pipeline for all new therapies. Gen AI is a driver of scale, productivity and long-term value innovation, and we never forget our commitment to safety and cybersecurity. We are witnessing a great shift in the technology landscape. And we have the great privilege to explore these possibilities for CSL, and our promise to patients. Thank you for your allocation of time with me today. Next, please allow me to welcome our Chief Financial Officer, Joy Lin to the stage. Thanks.
Joy Linton
executiveGreat to see everybody this afternoon. Good to see some -- many familiar faces in the room. I look forward to catching up for a drink later on. Thank you, Mark. Great presentation. Generative AI has certainly arrived and it's really important both to productivity and innovation going forward, and I look forward to seeing how that plays out in our business in the next near and long term. The focus of my presentation today is capital management. So if we move to the first slide, thank you. I'd like to start by walking through CSL's capital management framework. We deploy our cash flow in the usual ways, but I'd like to outline what's important to us the guardrails, if you like, is how we go about making decisions. I'm going to run through each of the components individually, and then I'll expand further on greater detail in some following slides. Firstly, maintaining a strong balance sheet. At our most recent results, net debt-to-EBITDA was 2.5x, obviously above our historical levels. Following the debt raising to support the acquisition of Vifor Pharma. We intend to work this down to under 2x in the next 1 to 2 years. We want an efficient balance sheet but we don't have a strong appetite to be too highly geared. We do, however, have a strong appetite to retain our investment grade credit rating. Moving to our shareholder returns. We don't actually have a formal dividend policy, but our practice has been consistent over many years. We grow our dividend in line with growth in the company's profitability with a typical payout ratio of between 40% and 45%. As you know, the majority of our profit is derived offshore, and we don't accumulate a significant amount of franking credits. We do distribute those credits from time to time, and that's when we've accumulated a meaningful amount to make a distribution. ROIC is clearly an important measure that we look at. And this has come under pressure of late with the debt and equity raising to fund the acquisition of Vifor. I will talk to ROIC in more detail in a few slides time. However, noting here, we do anticipate a steady improvement in our ROIC over time, fueled by double-digit earnings growth while continuing to invest in the business, which brings me to reinvestment. Our spend on research and development underpins the sustainability of our future growth. An absolute imperative is that we continue to innovate in our platforms and in new therapies for medicines. Developing innovative products is at the very core of why we exist in Hemgenix and Garadacimab that you've heard about today are recent examples. For many years now, we have guided investors to an R&D spend of approximately 10% to 11% of revenue, and we do not see this changing in the medium term. In addition, we will continue to make selective investments in our R&D assets. These are often investments at a preclinical asset, where we have identified alignment with our therapeutic areas of focus. Our capital expenditure is obviously another way in which we invest in the business. Most of it is growth focused and historically, that's been around about 70% of our CapEx. So increasing capacity to support sales, building out new capabilities to support production and new products and building new plasma centers. And then the balance of our CapEx is maintenance. I've got a couple of slides on CapEx, which I'll share in a few moments. So then what do we do with the excess cash? Essentially, we return it to shareholders. Many here will recall our 10-year program of share buybacks. And while I am not signaling that we're about to conduct another buyback, I do want to indicate that we regularly review our overall capital structure in line with our growth ambitions. And lastly, a few words about our approach to acquisitions and partnerships. When making an acquisition or partnering with a third party, we are looking for long-term value creation. We do the -- what we do is we want to do things that we understand and that we can add value to. So rare disease, complex manufacturing, developing new markets, creating demand. And we look for areas where we have capability, where we have got some competencies and logical adjacencies. And value creation can take some time. Elevating the treatment of primary immune-deficient patients in Japan took a decade. The acquisition of the Novartis Influenza assets to create Seqirus took 3 years before it turned to profit. And the rollout of our strategy for Vifor and the extraction of value growth will take some time, but we fully anticipate that the rewards will ultimately be there. I'll now move on to talk about our capital expenditure in a bit more detail on the next slide. So this slide is familiar to you all. And as already briefly alluded to for many years now our capital investment has been significantly orientated towards supporting company growth with major capacity projects completed at both CSL Behring and CSL Seqirus. And I know many of you experienced these assets firsthand at our European operations site tour early this year. I'm pleased to say next year, we are planning a similar tour this time over our Australian assets, so no European side holidays, but we're going to 2 of the Australian assets where we have, as you've heard today, made significant investments. There's been enormous expansion at Broadmeadows and construction of our new cell culture facility at Tullamarine is well progressed and will hopefully be nearly done by the time you get to see it. Our new research labs in Melbourne are complete, and our incubator suites will house their first tenants in the next few weeks. One metric we monitor is CapEx as a percent of revenue, a signpost of how efficient we are with our CapEx spend, and you can see here on the chart that, that has been trending down. And as we come to the end of a large capacity expansion program, as you've heard about today, Base Bracket Marburg and Broadmeadows, cell culture at Tullamarine, we can titrate down our CapEx spend in FY '24. As already said, we expect a reduction of around 30% to $800 million with the ensuing 2 years to be plus or minus around $100 million of that number. After that, I expect that we will need to once again increase our CapEx in order to support the growth in the company. Innovation is also a key component of our capital expenditure. The IG yield initiatives that we've been speaking about are both at our full year results and again today, have the effect of delaying the need for future capital and yield innovation goes beyond IG. So initiatives to improve yield in albumin as well as cell culture facility for influenza production. So if we go to the next slide, you'll see the graphic shows the pipeline of capital projects by name across the time period. And a couple of that I'd like to highlight. Facilities to support CSL112 production are being spent and will continue to be in anticipation of a successful trial outcome and launch. The Horizon 1 and Horizon 2 yield initiatives and in particular, the Horizon 2 rollout will require some retooling of existing facilities. But this spend is less than what it costs for a new IG module. And as I said, has the effect of delaying the need for that next module. We are, however, you can see on this slide, planning for continued expansion of both base frac capacity and IG modules in Marburg and Broadmeadows. And I know that line goes right across the page, but the intention there is the majority of the spend would be towards the end of the decade once we have clarity on the impact of the Horizon 2 IG yield initiatives. The rollout of plasma collection centers, which we've talked about today and plasma capacity innovations to support future demand are also there. So I think as you can see, the CapEx program remains focused to support the future growth of the company. And the other, one final comment, you might have picked this up as the day has gone on is increasingly, we are viewing and finding new ways to create innovation in how we spend our CapEx, particularly from an engineering perspective and a couple that, I would call out. We do intend to further leverage contract manufacturing organizations, or CMOs, particularly for fill/finish capacity, which is relatively commoditized, and then where appropriate, we are also been building dual-purpose capacity projects. So, for example, what we're doing on 112 manufacturing would be a good example of that. And both of these initiatives that are set are aimed at making our overall capital expenditure more efficient going forward. After turning to the return on invested capital on the next slide. Historic ROIC returns have been in excess of 25%. One could argue that it's not overly sustainable and perhaps represented an underinvestment in the business. But looking forward, I want to assure everyone, ROIC growth is an enterprise-wide strategic focus for us, and we do expect steady improvement over time, fueled by our double-digit earnings growth, and it will take a contribution from every business unit. We do anticipate that ROIC will modestly soften in fiscal year '24, as a result of the timing mismatch between when we raised funds to acquire Vifor Pharma and when we paid out the consideration in August '22. So we then expect an expansion in ROIC to occur from fiscal year '25. If we think about the denominator of that equation, debt will come down, and as I mentioned earlier, we're working towards a target of below 2x net debt-to-EBITDA in the next 1 to 2 years. On the equity side, we have no plans for any further material change in issued equity with continued investment for growth being funded from our cash earnings. Then on the numerator side, earnings will go up. COVID is behind us. plasma collections have rebounded. And I hope you've seen today the confidence we have in our future earnings profile. We will drive IG growth with -- and we continue to aspire to outperform the market. Something I'd like to think we have demonstrated many times in the past, and I think Andy did a great job of outlining this morning. Our differentiated product portfolio is a key lever for growth. We have a cluster of new products on the cusp of trial completion and hopefully, regulatory approval and launch. The R&D portfolio is progressing extremely well, and we believe it's in the best shape it's ever been. We have a pathway for CSL Behring gross margin to return to pre-COVID levels. And we've outlined our IG yield maximization initiatives across Horizon 1 and 2. And success here delivers strong earnings benefits. Our CSL Seqirus business continues to grow, driven by great operational execution and continued innovation. And we'll be working towards maximizing the strategic value of CSL Vifor through the implementation and execution of the strategies that Hervé talked about earlier today. We do have to remind ourselves that CSL Vifor has only been under CSL ownership for a little over a year now. and this is a longer-term play. But we believe that these initiatives together will deliver a steady improvement in ROIC, while we continue to invest in the business. And I do want to note that we continue to exclude any potential upside from CSL112 in these outlook statements. I want to make a couple of comments on inventory on the next slide. This slide again is familiar to you, but a couple of different takes. Firstly, I want to -- I'll focus on the top chart predominantly which visually shows the increase in CPL throughout COVID, mainly attributable to higher donor compensation and increased labor costs. And then you can see the tail end of that red line on the chart, CPL is trending downwards in fiscal year '23. The chart also shows the very strong improvement in plasma collections since we exited out of COVID. So combining these 2 factors and perhaps stating the obvious, we have more plasma at a higher cost. You can see that the impact of this has been on squeezing the CSL Behring gross margin, but it's also had a significant impact on inventory levels, which does need a little bit of interpretation. If you look at the lower chart, at first flash, it kind of looks like we're holding 2.5 more x inventory than we were 5 years ago. The reality, however, is that this just reflects the cost of the inventory, and I draw your attention to that red line, and that's an important metric, our inventory as a percentage of revenue, which largely remains flat over the period. Inventory, and for that matter, any working capital element is closely managed at CSL. The ability to improve our asset turn and to collect our cash sooner is a key focus for us. Despite plasma collections being at record levels, inventory wide challenges remain. We are still judiciously managing the tension between patient demand and replenishing our inventory levels. IG is still on the European Medicines Agency short supply list, and it is likely to be like that until the end of this fiscal year. Customers' confidence in our ability to reliably and consistently supply product is a lever that supports future growth and we should not underestimate the importance of that. It's further compounded by the fact that Europe is much largely made up of tender markets, and many countries now are requiring significant safety stock given their experience during the pandemic. So despite these ongoing challenges, we remain confident that we will balance inventory levels to the extent patient demand is fulfilled and our supply chain remains efficient. What this means in practice is that over the next 18 months, we will rebuild our IG finished goods inventory levels to about 2 months of cover. And that is less than what we were pre-COVID. Moving to the next slide on our debt profile. We continue to have a very strong balance sheet. As you know, we increased debt to fund the acquisition of Vifor. But to a large extent, we are shielded from the recent increases in interest rates. We have long tenants, some going out to 2062, and as you can see on the chart, 70% of our debt is locked in at fixed rates. The weighted average cost of debt for FY '23 was 4.11%. When we did raise debt for the Vifor acquisition, we accessed the US-144A market for the first time. This is a deep and liquid market, and we believe can provide us with funding flexibility as the need arises in the future. As I mentioned at the outset, at the end of FY '24, we expect our net debt-to-EBITDA to be closer to 2x, a reduction from 2.5x at the end of fiscal year '23. We continue to hold an A-grade credit rating, a rating that is important to us, as I've said, with S&P at A- and Moody's at A3. Before I finish, I want to share an update on the progress we are making on our sustainability agenda. Our sustainability strategy is an enterprise-wide -- it's enterprise-wide closely aligned with our values and with our 2030 strategy with patients, donors and our employees at the core. And on this slide, you'll see the CSL sustainability pillars, recognizing the environment, social and workforce with governance as our foundation. And while our sustainability efforts have been ongoing for a number of years, we are now rapidly progressing on embedding these objectives into our systems and processes across the enterprise. This slide demonstrates our systematic and focused approach to setting ambitions and ensuring that we are well positioned to reach our sustainability goals across each of our pillars. The systemic approach also allows us to continually measure our progress to ensure the benefits remain connected to our ambitions and our business strategy. But it also enables us to better anticipate risks and opportunities and helps us stay on course with the strategy. So while there are many efforts underway, I'd just like to draw your attention to a few key highlights in the last year. We're making tangible progress on our environmental road map. In June '23, just a few months ago, we submitted our commitment to near-term emissions reductions to the SBTi, and we will be seeking validation of those targets. We are focused on absolute reductions in Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, and we are pleased to now have all of our European manufacturing sites on renewable electricity. And actually, just last week, we signed a renewable linked power purchase agreement here in Australia, which goes into effect in January '25, and represents about 23% of our total Scope 1, Scope 2 reduction from the F '19 to '21 baseline. Our new headquarters at CSL Melbourne has a 5-star Green Star design rating are all proof points, I think, of us making meaningful and measurable progress. As you know, our complex and extensive supply chain means that the majority of our carbon emissions, I think about 85% are actually in Scope 3 rather than Scope 1 and 2. And we're making good progress here, too, bringing our suppliers on our sustainability journey. Last year, we committed to having 67% of our suppliers set their own science-based or SBTi targets by 2030. And in the past year, we've been able to confirm over 190 suppliers representing 40% of our Scope 3 carbon emissions, have set their own SBTi aligned targets. And we see this as very pleasing progress. We're also making tangible progress on the social and workforce pillars where we're currently aligning on ambition and the orchestration of these efforts. We've identified the donor experience as one of our social pillar focus areas, and you've heard a lot today about the donor experience. We know that 94% of our donors are willing to donate again and 91% are willing to refer a friend. And I think that again, this is little proof points around our focus on the donor experience and our continued investment in innovation, something which we've -- you've heard a lot about today. Our key promise to our patients is to ensure that our products are of the highest quality. So a proof of this commitment is that we are pleased that we've got -- we had 475 regulatory inspections of our facilities and including plasma collection centers and all of those are with no negative impact. On the sustainability workforce pillar, we do strive to be an employer of choice, and 1 dimension that illustrates the progress that we are making is in the diversity, equity and inclusion space, and you can see the progress we're making there. So in the next year or so, our key focuses in sustainability are really to progress the environmental pillar with an increasing focus on waste and water. To articulate ambitions and targets across our social pillar and to embed that into a clear road map of activity like we have done with the environmental pillar. And thirdly, to progress our external reporting has new standards introduced to ensure that our sustainability reporting is transparent, comparable, accurate and hopefully useful. All of this will be led by Jeffrey Borrell, who's been recently just in the last few months, appointed as our Novel Chief Sustainability Officer, Jeffrey is with us here today. I don't know if many of you met Jeffrey at our European site to earlier this year. And with that, I'm going to hand you over to Dr. Bill Mezzanotte. Thank you.
Bill Mezzanotte
executiveThanks, Joy, and thank you all. It's great to be here again in person in Sydney. This is now unbelievably the sixth year already I presented to this group. And I'm very pleased you're all still here. I'm sure it's not for the free drinks, but to hear from R&D. So, let's get started. But unlike our usual R&D day, I don't have the complement of scientists with me. And so I'll try to present some of the elements, I normally present but not maybe be at the depth that I normally have in the past. I remain very excited about the prospects of our portfolio, including our yield programs and look forward to another exciting year in R&D. But before I move on to that, let me take a few minutes to address these questions surrounding the recent GLP-1 results and potential impact for our portfolio and our business. So first, congratulations to my R&D scientist colleagues for delivering results in patients with diabetes mellitus in patient -- on renal outcomes and cardiovascular outcomes. There's never a problem with another arrow in the quiver of physicians. So congratulations. And I don't normally comment too much on unpublished data that gets kind of dangerous. And I think this is particularly germane in this aspect because the outcome of the recent renal trial was actually a composite of 5 different endpoints. And I have no idea what drove the result. Was it time to dialysis, was it cardiovascular outcomes? Was it a mix, I don't know. And so I'll be very anxious and of course, curious to see when the data actually come out in full. But, there are many disparate diseases that lead people to end-stage kidney disease and dialysis, including IgA nephropathy, which I'll speak about in a few minutes. Diabetes is one, but it's actually not overrepresented. And from the inclusion criteria, I've looked at moderate to severe renal insufficiency, proteinuria already, diabetes, these patients included in the trial would only represent a small percentage of the overall dialysis patient population, which, of course, is only a small percentage of our business. And therefore, despite the positive results, the trial outcome is likely to have a limited impact on the overall dialysis business. People have asked me about the impact on CSL112. So widespread use of GLP-1s may reduce the incident of MIs in this population we intend to treat, certainly may. And that's always the happens in development programs, medical care moves on. And so the improved overall medical care may reduce the incidence rate of MIs. However, offset by that, GLP-1s will do nothing for aging. And the overall population remains to continue to age, and that will likely balance the effect and keep the number of MIs in total, relatively constant. So net-net, the impact on CSL112 is likely to be negligible. And in one of my previous slides, one of my first jobs was to codevelop and lead the development of the first SGLT2 inhibitor got to the market. Those products have also shown benefit on weight, renal outcomes, cardiovascular outcomes, as has, by the way, Metformin a long time ago. And neither of those, despite being on the market have substantially reduced the dialysis population. COVID did that all by itself. And statins have been on the market for 25 years. And when they first came in, I was told they're going to be in the water and they're going to eliminate cardiovascular disease. Of course, none of these have done it and not because they're not effective therapies, but because it's such a multidimensional complex issue of cardiovascular and renal disease. And that's why the burden of the disease will remain and why it's an opportunity still to help patients there. And by the way, GLP-1s have been on the market for a number of years already. It's not like they're waiting to be approved. And so we haven't seen this impact as well on disease burden. Two final comments. The positive impact on GLP-1 appears to be lost when the drugs are stopped. So therapy has to continue all along to get the benefit that they saw in those trials. And as these therapies continue to be used in the kind of rate they're being used right now, is likely more and more of the patients will suffer from the adverse events that have actually been pretty publicly discussed. And of course, many of these adverse events are severe enough to cause discontinuation from therapy. And so I anticipate a decent subset of patients that come off of these therapies. But we'll see going forward. And lastly, much of the attention around GLP-1s, much of the lay press is actually has to do with their impact on weight loss, and people without other comorbidities. And the epidemiologist in me has to remind you that weight on its own -- obesity on its own is not an independent risk factor for renal disease. And it has a very small independent impact, small on cardiovascular disease. And so the obesity impact, making people aware of the GLP-1 class actually has little relevance to impact on kidney or cardiovascular disease. So I'm proud of the scientists that did these studies. I'm happy for patients there's another opportunity, but I remain confident that our portfolio of products is sound and not under severe threat from the GLP-1s. So with that said, let me move on to the next slide. CSL is committed to discovering, developing and delivering medicines and vaccines that make a meaningful impact on patients' lives with rare and serious diseases and that help ensure [indiscernible] health. And of course, we do this in a unique role as the largest collector and manufacturing of plasma proteins. Over the last 3 years, we in R&D have made 3 notable organizational decisions. First, to bring the CSL Seqirus R&D and CSL Behring R&D organizations together in FY '22. And this has resulted in effective sharing of people, skills, and approval and maintenance of the therapies across the 2 disciplines. Second, previously, the CSL Plasma, safety and regulatory groups were an independent group. By bringing this support under the umbrella of R&D, we and R&D can provide more strategic support to an ever-growing business and help ensure that CSL continues to innovate in plasma collection while at the same time, ensuring donor safety, patient safety and that we are in compliance with all the regulatory authorities around the world, very important. And lastly, during this recent FY '23, we integrated the R&D activities at CSL Vifor into the R&D framework, assuring we could achieve proper support for the Vifor Organization, and their initiatives while also achieving the synergy targets we set. Taken together, bringing the totality of all these research and development capabilities into one R&D organization presents us with a differential advantage and makes our R&D organization one of the most unique in the industry. But we remain committed to the proper focus, which has characterized CSL and at the same time, encouraging cross-fertilization so we get the most creativity and programs we can. Next slide. As a world-class organization, we have defined therapeutic areas and scientific platforms where we want to focus upon to help improve the efficiency of our efforts and to maximize both our chance of success but also our future growth opportunities. CSL's R&D focus is developing on medicines on our -- that use our 4 main platforms and align with the leading-edge scientific expertise in 6 therapeutic areas: immunology, hematology, respiratory, cardiovascular, transplant and vaccines. The addition of CSL Vifor, as Hervé said earlier, allows the R&D team to build on the heritage and expertise in nephrology with an eye towards the next generation of therapies across the spectrum of kidney disease. You can see that we've elected to combine our nephrology work into the transplant TA, creating a joint TA, bringing together these multiple competencies. And now with a new name and a new logo, nephrology and transplant together. Incorporating nephrology with our interest in overall transplant actually makes a lot of sense. And that kidney transplants are by far the most common solid organ transplanted, and we already have a vested interest there with our lead program, clazakizumab, an antibody-mediated rejection. And this program not only highlights maybe the logic behind this combination, but also I can point to this as demonstrating the early benefits of bringing the groups together. Because our clinical operations group have seen both in this program and in our clazakizumab and end-stage kidney disease Phase II program an uptick in recruitment for the trial as well as greater stakeholder engagement. And this is primarily due to the impact of the Fresenius organization and the CSL Vifor organization, where they have not only dialysis physicians, but transplant physicians to help us as well. So by focusing on these therapeutic areas and avoiding others, we can more easily harness our expertise across R&D and commercial and to bring more effective development programs that have greater chance of commercial success. But also, it makes us a more attractive partner in these areas. Somebody asked the question earlier today about, do we think we'll do other licensing deals? And the ability to do really good commercialization and cross-value chain development means that early partners who may not have that capability, but who have a great idea will come to us for consideration. And of course, uniQure and Arcturus are 2 perfect examples of that. While our therapeutic areas are important. Also our platforms are as well, plasma protein technology, recombinant technology, cell and gene therapy and, of course, our cell-based and SA-mRNA vaccine technology. Now those are going to be our primary focus of interest. But when you're a therapeutic area aligned organization, that means once in a while, there'll be compelling opportunities outside of our core strategic platforms, and we'll consider them as well. But when we can combine the platforms we do well and the TAs we do well, our chance of success goes up. And so that will be our primary focus going forward. Now how do we handle all of this? Well, through careful prioritization and resource management, we've been able to advance programs in all of these areas. While continuing to hold to our spending discipline. Takes a little magic sometimes and some help from Joy, but we get there. R&D also continues to provide support for the iron franchise not listed here, including new market expansion as well as new interesting presentations that should help differentiate our IV iron products. In addition, as you heard from Hervé, patient blood management is a cross CSL priority. For R&D, that means executing across all our portfolio, ensuring each brand has the necessary indications and registrations to contribute to this effort. Next slide, please. Over the past 12 months, we've continued to invest in new capabilities. Mark mentioned digital science, real world evidence, Andy and Paul mentioned earlier, and we could go on and on. But we've also been updating outdated labs or space-constrained labs. And now, of course, we have 3 new beautiful state-of-the-art facilities to help accelerate our R&D efforts. So first, in Melbourne, our new global headquarters located in the heart of the Melbourne Biomedical Precinct. This cutting-edge facility, of course, has 16 floors, over 850 employees and 9 levels of world-class leading laboratories that opened in June of '23. And in that building, we have the gamut of R&D capabilities and disciplines. Also located there is the Australia's first of its kind biotech incubator, the Jumar bioincubator, which was developed in partnership with WEHI University of Melbourne and with initial development investment from breakthrough Victoria. Jumar is a space for external collaborators, innovators and start-ups to translate their medical research and CSL is also, Melbourne is just 500 meters from the Bio-21 Institute, where our research group has been housed for 10 years. Taken together, this constellation of activity in that precinct and our place in the middle of that will lead to great advantages going forward. Another new campus is on the Marburg, Germany site and is home to about 500 R&D employees and a state-of-the-art vivarium for our animal pharmacology research around the world. As one of our homes for future innovation, innovative sustainability was at the forefront of our minds when we designed this building, and it has a number of unique features that lead to that ambition. It has 7,500 square meters of laboratory space and 10,000 square meters of working space. And it also has its own space for regional collaborators like universities, institutes and biomedical centers. Very important to us. Finally, in Waltham, Massachusetts near Cambridge, we opened in March a new R&D center that's capable of housing about 300 employees, has 5,000 meters of laboratory space and 13,000 meters overall and will house of course, our fledgling and growing vaccine development, including cell-based and SA-mRNA research and development. And so we're very excited about all 3. These kind of capabilities and these kind of facilities underlying the investment that Joy mentioned and continuous sustainability of our pipeline and our prospects going forward. Next slide. So while my presentation is a bit truncated, I wanted to show you a few slides that I've shown you in previous years. And one of the ones that I always show is, first to remind you where we were at this time last year and this portfolio snapshot does that. And then what has happened good and not so good throughout the year, what our portfolio looks like going forward and what highlights the R&D organization hopes to generate this year. So let me get to the next slide because I have a lot to cover, which I guess is good. So this is a new slide we've created and maybe give feedback to Mark, whether it's helpful or not. This mentions all of the movement in our portfolio. It doesn't talk about the progress of multiyear programs ongoing. It's just about those things that have actually shifted. And so you see there's a lot in Phase I. I don't want to go through every program or we'd be here through drinks. But just a couple of things. Anumigilimab is an anti-GCSF receptor antagonist that reduces neutrophil influx into damaged areas. And we've taken it forward in 2 aspects. First, we finished a Phase Ib study in hidradenitis suppurativa, and we will be moving that to Phase II. Second, preclinical models have shown some really interesting hint of efficacy in some tough diseases like pneumonia associated ARDS, and acute kidney injury. And so we're taking that into Phase I, along with some omex approaches to see if there's something there. Obviously, a tough area to research and develop and we'll have to be careful in doing that. Second, CSL has had a long history of excellence in complement biology, and we're taking 2 products forward. First, all the way to bottom is our C1 Inhibitor, HAEGARDA in other venues. And we'll be taking that into a high unmet need of acute ischemic stroke. What we know about acute ischemic stroke. Often, there's damage when the brain starts to revascularize. So a reperfusion injury is actually quite prevalent in the surrounding area of stroke. And so the complement plays a role in that, and we'll take this product into Phase I and see if we can reduce that in patients who get other therapies first. So this is not a primary therapy but a secondary therapy to prevent the downstream consequences. Second, our recombinant C1 Inhibitor with a longer half-life, it's going to be brought forward. We have some more of safety and efficacy work to do before it can continue to push forward, and we'll look at a few different indications. Including where ischemia reperfusion may be relevant like transplanted organs that are rejected immediately. Lastly, I want to mention in Phase I is the obvious explosion of vaccine programs, which is really exciting. So first, the H2 and 3 pandemic work is being done with BARDA, and so that's important for 2 reasons. One -- well, 3. One says that pandemics are still important to CSL. Two, the BARDA still finds what we do important. And three, the cell vaccines are still an important part of pandemic preparedness. And so we should not be led to believe that they're going away in pandemic preparedness. Second -- the other thing I want to mention is 2 SA-mRNA programs, 1 using the legacy CSL Seqirus backbone and 1 using the legacy Arcturus backbone. 1 being brought forward in seasonal flu, 1 in pandemic flu only in Phase I, and then we'll take a deep breath, see which is the best construct and bring 1 forward after that. But the hoof beats you here is our SA-mRNA program galloping forward. And so we're going to move this as fast as we can. Let me move on to Phase II. HIZENTRA, we did a Phase II study in systemic sclerosis to see whether HIZENTRA could be absorbed in the skin. It could. That's a good news. However, the mechanistic aspect of systemic sclerosis, how our drug works is still a little unclear to us, and we need to have more research work to do. In addition, the regulatory and clinical pathway in this area is quite clouded, and so rather than pushing something forward, we're taking a pause, doing some more work and watching as this space clarifies for us. Below that, aQIVc, you've heard a bit about it today. I believe, a best-in-class molecule for flu in patients 50 years and older. It's a high dose adjuvant cell-based vaccine. So it gets all of the advantages that we have proven over the years. And the Phase II data have supported that with really high immunogenicity across all 4 strains and excellent tolerability. So we're really excited about that program, and it's moving into Phase III and the first subject dosed should be very soon. So moving on to Phase III. Let me start with the SNF-472, our calcification inhibitor. We had, we are planning a trial in patients in end-stage kidney disease who have peripheral artery disease. We've decided not to do that program for 2 reasons. One, we designed a program that we thought was doable, but then we got feedback back from our physicians and stakeholders that while the mechanism was interesting, maybe the endpoint we had wasn't quite clinically meaningful enough for them and the patient population maybe wasn't quite exciting enough for them, which meant we'd have to really blow out the size of the trial to meet their needs which would have been very unwieldy in this area. In addition, we found from a market access research at SNF-472 in this indication would likely be in the payer prospectus system and therefore, have serious market access challenges. So between the clinical challenge and the market access challenge, we chose to stop this program. However, we have a lot of other good news in Phase III. Of course, Garadacimab, you heard about and I could go on and on, but this is a best in class molecule, homegrown, developed in Australia, and now with an auto-injector and with a formulation that has given it a tolerability profile that I think is best in class. And I am so excited to bring this product forward to the market. In addition, of course, our Arcturus 154, their COVID vaccine that we did the collaboration with. The Vietnam Phase III program they ran showed excellent protection against serious COVID illness and in addition, a small study done in Japan in a booster setting showed actually superiority to the Pfizer COVID vaccine as well. So we're going to be filing there. We have filed in Japan and in the EU, and we're awaiting regulatory feedback on that. It may not be this FY, but it will be. Lastly, let me talk about sparsentan. Sparsentan is a dual endothelium and angiotensin receptor antagonist, initially for the treatment of IgA nephropathy, another serious disease leading to end-stage renal disease. We filed for approval in 2022. And the CHMP indicated they would like to wait for the data beyond proteinuria and eGFR, which we are waiting now to come through. We just got that data. The data are positive for our primary endpoint, and we'll be interacting with the authorities to discuss this further. Lastly, our approvals, Injectafer, earlier mentioned for heart failure and now in the guidelines very exciting. We have HAEGARDA subcutaneous approved and launched ahead of time in Japan. Ferinject in China and my experience, the Chinese market is very loyal to quality brand products. And I look forward to seeing how that does in China. And lastly, of course, Hemgenix, we've talked about and what an exciting product. And now we are waiting approval in other countries beyond Europe and the U.S. We're waiting for our first patient in Europe, and we started our Phase III trial in Japan as well. So a very active and productive year for R&D, with many programs experiencing great progressions. But we've also taken appropriate action not to progress things when they have a low probability for success or unlikely to generate real value for patients or CSL. This is a critical discipline that allows us to keep such a rich portfolio despite the spend we do. Of course, most R&D programs are multiyear in nature, as I mentioned, and they don't show up. But believe me, all the ones grade out are still making progress in our portfolio. So on the next slide, you see the new portfolio going forward that we'll be showing this time next year. And most of the CSL Vifor products are now in the transplant and nephrology TA, except for the anti-calcification SNF472, which fits better in our cardiovascular TA. In addition, we have Injectafer here listed all the way to the right at the bottom as a different color that notes that this is a franchise upon itself. But we continue to support it. And any work we do to support Injectafer, patient blood management or anything you can infer will be part of that box down there. And importantly, of course, you see the Phase I portfolio has gotten much better. Next slide, please. So this is one of my favorite slides. People ask me, what is your position like and I like to show this slide because it represents the duality of my job, which is great. First, on the left are a bunch of promising products in exciting new areas innovative across 4 different platforms and in many different therapeutic areas. So I just love this. But at the same time, I love the challenge of improving and supporting our current platforms and making them as good as possible. And so we'll go through a little bit of this in the time we have. So first on CSL112. I don't need to say much, an exciting product that we hope will have a major impact on patients who have already suffered in MI and are at risk for a second MI. Phase III top line results should be available in this first quarter calendar year of 2024. I know you've all waited a long time for these results, and I'm as anxious as you are on what the answer is. And believe me, we're working really hard to clean up all the data, given the complexity and accurately capturing these data through the COVID era. There's a lot of challenge. But before the results come out and you won't listen to me anymore, just let me give you 2 comments more about this trial. First, in my experience, having run multiple large outcome trials. We deliver top line results, which are what they are. However, the full picture of the benefit of CSL112 and what populations are best at won't be known probably for a few months afterwards. I always say the questions start when the data come out. And so I imagine there will be other communications beyond that first top line results. And second, we at CSL are extremely proud and excited about the promise of this therapy, and we believe we'll see positive results from the AEGIS-II trial. But it's an experiment. But whatever the result, this has been transformative study for this organization. In the skills and capabilities, we've had to develop to run such a trial, and then the resilience to complete the trial with all the challenges in the past few years. We are now positioned to deliver all the other programs in our portfolio and the related value in large part because of the capability build necessary to run CSL112. So it is the gift that will keep on giving. Second, of course, I've gone all in on back Garadacimab HAE and I don't think I need to say any more, clazakizumab in chronic active antibody-mediated rejection of major cause of kidney loss, an IL-6 antagonism has been shown to have a benefit in this area. We have an agreement with authorities to do an interim analysis of 200 patients under which we can then file if positive slope differential, again, eGFR slope, get used to that term in renal disease. But we have to then go on and complete recruitment to 350 patients, that's our commitment. However, we're very close now to the 200 patients needed to start the analysis, but the analysis doesn't start until a year after they are recruited. So somewhat like 112. So it will be a while. KCENTRA Trauma, we talked about that this morning. Trauma is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the U.S. and 4-factor PCC is already in many trauma treatment protocols even though it's off label. We aim to demonstrate that the early administration of KCENTRA will impart an early survival benefit on trauma patients. We're doing our first interim analysis at 2,000 patients because the exact incidence of mortality is widely debated. And so we have a little bit of range finding to do. So we'll be doing both an efficacy assessment and a sample-size estimation of 2,000 patients. And if we get a tail -- a good tailwind, we could get to 2,000 patients this year, but we'll get close through this first fiscal year. Acute graft versus host disease hasn't gotten a lot of play today, but it is a high unmet need, and it really impacts allogeneic bone marrow transplant. This program with alpha-1 antitrypsin is supported by Phase II data. And of course, if we're positive, we'd have immediate and large impact on patients and our portfolio and our pipeline. There's 2 programs going on. One is in treatment. That program is reading out this year. It's being done actually by external bone marrow transplant consortium of North America. And then we have a second larger study that we're running, that's in prevention of GVHD that won't read out for another year or so. And sparsentan, of course, we mentioned, has a large possibility in IgA nephropathy. And sa-mRNA for COVID in the near term and influenza in the medium term is another opportunity for us to impart our expertise in flu with a new exciting platform and round out our totality of opportunities. And of course, with our expertise in cell and our expertise now coming in sa-mRNA our chances of expanding the portfolio become greater and greater. Lastly, aQIVc. I don't want to talk about the excitement of it, I have already -- but just to say that with -- through a lot of work, we came to the right dose, which was 3x the antigen and twice the amount of adjuvant in this vaccine. And as Ken has mentioned, in a cell-based vaccine, it really nails the right strain for that year. The results supported that choice because we have overwhelmingly high immunogenicity in the 4 strains tested in the Phase II program, and we'll be getting ready to start Phase III. However, you could be worried that so much antigen was going to lead to a real problem and have to get us to a new build to get the capacity to do this program. And that's why I'm excited to move to the right then and say one of our parallel efforts in R&D with an operations in Seqirus was to work on yield improvement to match what we would need for aQIVc. And we did this with things like cell reassortments and we'll be doing more in the future with seed innovation, but the totality of effort between the groups led to a 30% yield improvement, and that's enough to cover the needs of the aQIVc program without having to build new facilities and spend more CapEx. So this focus on actively supporting manufacturing improvements and LCM is a unique feature of my job that I just really find fun. And we in R&D start to bring this kind of thinking to both the iron franchise and support for PBM, I look forward to those possibilities as well. But furthermore, as we've talked about a little bit, we've also been bringing an R&D discipline to the Ig yield space. And the next slide, I'll go through that a little bit. At the full year results, Paul talked about this idea of 2 horizons, 1 and 2, and Andy saw it today in his talk earlier, an ambition to get to over 20% increase in yield. We and R&D have been actively involved in both programs from both the process development side and of course, the regulatory interactions. These yield programs are foundational to the spirit of CSL and working together to amplify the impact of the important work we do for the good of all. And maximizing Ig yield from every additional leader of plasma we collect creates more opportunity for patients more flexibility for the network and fully honors the contribution of all donors. As I said, R&D has been and will be deeply involved in the process development of Horizon 1 and somebody asked earlier about regulatory interactions, we're continuing to involve there as well. But our Horizon 2 is a true R&D development process. Conceived in our labs and with plans from preclinical, clinical and ultimately through to regulatory approval and the Chevrons at the bottom demonstrate the incremental pieces we have been working through. We started at a lab scale with attention towards maximizing yield and minimizing changes of the products such as impurities. Once we assess the process is meeting our target profile, we are ready to move it to the pilot scale, which we have done now. In the pilot plant, we will reassess the performance and the comparability of the product to our legacy. This phase of the program with a lot of preclinical studies, along with the coming stability studies are critical steps in the development process and will likely carry over multiple years. Andy said earlier, we have to go slow to go quick, and this is the period where we'll be doing that. In parallel, as we gain confidence, the manufacturing organization will prepare to accommodate this new process with a minimum of a change to the footprint, you saw James showed 3 Chevron about that as well already. All of this work, though has to be underpinned by a continuous and iterative interactions and relationship with the regulatory authorities, creating a relationship where they can trust us, so they can trust the changes we make. And that started a number of years ago at the concept stage, and we've been talking to them since with more interactions this year and in the ensuing years. The model for successful interactions was our experience with the new Ig modules in burn. There, we made a change in manufacturing operations equipment at our site, Albeit with the same Ig retrieval process. We're able to work successfully with health authorities to ensure them that Ig was unchanged, and we gained approval. The desired regulatory outcome for Horizon 2 in the near term, of course, is an agreed path to approval. And of course, ultimately, the idea is to get this approved as soon as possible and implemented. However, the exact timing for approval is still unknown, and I'll update you with future R&Ds. So if I go into the next slide, and we'll move quickly here. This is our significant target launch dates for the next foreseeable future. The slide that Mark insists because he says, you insist you love it. Anyway, I've talked about the FY '23 launches. Going forward, I'd say a couple of notes, of course, Garadacimab for HAE for approval, and we hope to gain approval in the upcoming calendar year, probably though in FY '25. Our 154 COVID vaccine, the submissions commenced in May of '23, and with hoped approval in Japan in FY '24 and the EU in FY '25. There was a question earlier about aQIVc. I think that would probably be more likely to be in FY '26 deliverable. And we're hopeful to gain approval for sparsentan in the first half of this calendar 2024 in Europe for the treatment of IgA nephropathy. Then in the outer years, many exciting programs, CSL112, Alpha-1 Antitrypsin for graft versus host disease, clazakizumab for antibody-mediated rejection. HIZENTRA for dermatomyositis. And of course, our Adjuvanted high dose cell vaccine. So let me go to the last slide. And I'm kind of out of time, but this is the other slide we always promise you, which is what we're going to do, what highlights would you like to talk about going forward, and we'll keep you apprised of our progress here, both at the midyear and the final year, and we'll come back and look at it once more at R&D next year. But a couple that I didn't mention before, the dermatomyositis HIZENTRA trial, enrollment should complete this year. We will have results of the Neb Ig, CSL787 in respiratory and hemopexin, another plasma product the Phase I top line results in sickle cell disease will become available this year or 2. So an exciting year already, an exciting year going forward. Thank you for your attention, and I look forward to answering your questions. And I think I'm going to turn it over to Mark now. Great. Thank you.
Mark Dehring
executiveThanks, Bill. I read get my ear chewed by many people in this audience that I never allow enough time for Q&A. So we're going to do this third Q&A session a little bit differently. I recognize that some of you have some residual questions on -- for the presenters from this morning. I also recognize that you want to pose questions to Bill, Joy and of course, Mark. So can you give us a few minutes. We're going to reset the stage. If you needed to use the restrooms, now is the opportune time, but a couple of minutes, reset the stage, and then we'll start the last Q&A session.
Unknown Executive
executiveOkay. Great. It's right at the strike of 3, so we'll get started with your questions. As Mark said, we brought the entire speaker panel back up so that we can make sure that you have enough time for questions that you may have had and didn't get to in earlier sessions. So if we could start with our first question, please, again, if you could name, affiliation so that we make sure that we get everything captured appropriately.
Chris Cooper
analystChris Cooper, Goldman Sachs. Joy, you reiterated again R&D spend of 10% to 11% over the medium term, clinical development program for 112 is clearly coming to an end. Presumably now you have a very good idea of how the differential is going to be reallocated. I'm not sure if this is a question for you or Bill, but perhaps you can share some insights in terms of how the how that R&D access is going to be allocated, please?
Unknown Executive
executiveYes, maybe I'll take it. And so first of all, when I said I need help from Joy, I'd like more money, but really what she does is hit me over the head more on. So I mean I think there's a number of programs. The flu programs are large programs, particularly not just the immunogenicity part, but then the secondary, all these new flu registrations will require big efficacy trials, and they'll take some of the spend. The outcome trial for KCENTRA in trauma is also an outcome trial and will be large. But in addition, the other Phase III programs do also take their share. And so that plus some reallocating some of the money to the earlier phases, where we had to skimp a little bit to make sure we could support. 112 is how we're allocating it. We do that through a pretty exacting portfolio management process, and we can look at our spend out for the next few years, plus the potential revenue projection and make sure we stay within that envelope.
Joy Linton
executiveYes, we haven't run out of things to spend it on you. That's right.
Unknown Executive
executiveWe're still saying no, not come on.
Chris Cooper
analystAnd Joy, just coming back to your comments on return on invested capital. So you mentioned the company was previously doing 25% and you mentioned that might have been a level of underinvestment in the business. I wonder just based on what you know today, what you feel would be an appropriate reflection of investment in the business versus returns for shareholders today?
Joy Linton
executiveI would have thought if we get ourselves to 20%, we'd be very happy with that.
Mark Dehring
executiveNext question?
Saul Hadassin
analystSaul Hadassin, Barrenjoey. Again for Joy. As we think about the progression of margin for bearing, which is obviously a fascination for the market, you've got 800 basis points, I think, to get back to roughly to get back to pre-COVID. Can you talk to any detail or estimates as to the contribution to that from, say, yield improvement efficiencies, so more of the cost side or manufacturing cost versus contribution from high-margin product sales from revenue growth in terms of those drivers?
Joy Linton
executiveYes. Thanks, Saul. I'd refer you to the page that we showed at the full year results, which actually had some Chevrons and the intention was to show the relative weighting that we saw at the time of where we were going to see that improvement come from. So clearly, reduction in CPL still is the biggest lever that we have. And within that, of course, Rika contributes to that. And then new products was there and then yield improvements. And of course, we're only talking Horizon 1, not Horizon 2 in that time frame, and then some that -- we talked about that ASP mix shift, which is really starting to see more HIZENTRA vis-a-vis Privigen because last year was a big build back of Privigen, so as that mix shift comes, that will also help. There's also a bit of geographic mix shift in there. And then as volume continues, you'll get the greater efficiency and scale. So I think if you went back to that slide, what I would say today is the same as what I think we'd say -- what we said at the full year that that's the relative weighting that we see. And clearly, within there, there's some variables around time, but I think the absolutes are still fairly true.
Andrew Goodsall
analystAndrew Goodsall from MST. Just a question for Andy, perhaps just around the competitive landscape, particularly, say, with the entry of a couple of FcRns already in the U.S. market and any other sort of factors you're seeing in terms of just impact to demand and so on for Ig?
Unknown Executive
executiveSo for Ig, as I mentioned before, we see the market growing mid-single digits, and we think in steady state that we will grow high single digits with our Ig portfolio in the face of the evolving competitive dynamics both within other plasma competitors and any impact on the Ig market from FcRns. We think our Ig portfolio is a significant component of it, 75% of HIZENTRA, 55% of PRIVIGEN in Ig replacement indications with PID and SID. It's only the subset of indications where it's acting as immunomodulator and I mean, let's just take that space. Say it's about 20%, 25% of our Ig business is in CIDP. Given the placement in guidelines, the long-standing clinical experience, the track record, the real-world evidence, the well-characterized benefit/risk ratio, Ig therapy is still going to have a significant role in CIDP. If the FcRns take 10% share, 20% share of our 25%, then that's still single-digit impact. And at the same time, we're growing the other indications, PID, SID we're expanding into other indications, and that all gives us confidence that given those dynamics, we're going to grow high single digits for the medium term.
Unknown Executive
executiveAnd I think that indication expansion that Andy talked about earlier is an important part, right? We continue to look at places we can put Ig and it's not just in DM, but there's other parts that Bill has thought about and that we're exploring between R&D and the commercial team. So remember, one of CSL hallmark is really indication expansion, and we'll continue to look at that across the board.
Andrew Goodsall
analystJust the follow-up question, sticking with FcRns. This might be one for Bill, but I'm sure you monitor the FDA adverse events database. Just wondering if you can comment on any trends you're seeing in terms of the safety profile of the immunoglobulins versus some of these new antibody -- the FcRn therapies, particularly for myasthenia gravis?
Bill Mezzanotte
executiveThanks, Andrew. So first of all, you were the first investor to say hello to me 6 years ago. So someone acknowledge that. And secondly, as far as the FcRns go, I'm aware that there's been some noise in the AERS database. We don't routinely monitor our competitors reports there because there's so much noise there, right, because there's no denominator because there's a lot of things missing. But I can assure you the FDA is well aware of what their AERS database are saying, having been on the other side of that with other molecules in the past. And so I'll leave it to the regulators to monitor that and consider the totality of data for new registrations and indications.
Unknown Executive
executiveAnd look, I mean, I think, Bill, it's fair to say our safety profile in Ig, right? I mean, thousands of years of safety data. right.
David Bailey
analystDavid Bailey from Macquarie. Bill, it's been a while since we've talked about CSL112. Just wonder if you could just remind us some of the things we saw in the Phase II trial in just one trial. I know it wasn't powerful efficacy, but it was designed for safety. But what did you see from that data series that gave you confidence to proceed to the Phase III trial, thinking about Cholesterol efflux.
Bill Mezzanotte
executiveYes. So it was a while ago, right? But first and foremost, it was an underpowered Phase II trial admittedly, and it had about 1,000 some patients in the trial, and it showed a modest effect on the MACE, even though MACE actually wasn't even collected in the standard way of an outcome trial. It was very safe and that was what that gave us confidence to move forward. But there was early separation between CSL112 and placebo, which is why we put the endpoint where we did in the trial. So taken together, we thought it's a safe product, it shows us early separation. There's a lot of scientific rationale that we did in the meantime, and all those things together were worthy of this bet. Now you could have done a 10,000 or 12,000 patient interim trial that make you feel better. But what you would have essentially done is still done an underpowered trial and not know what the answer was. And so we took the step to move right to the fully powered trial, which is 18,000 patients to get the real answer.
David Bailey
analystIs there any sub-patient population data that's sort of been presented in more recent years around CSL112 that you can sort of talk about?
Bill Mezzanotte
executiveSo we've really presented nothing. We've presented something on demographics. There is a fair amount of patients with diabetes in the trial, for instance, and age and things like that. But really, it comes when the data are unblinded and we start to do by region, by disease, by X by Y that we'll start to get some interesting insights.
Unknown Executive
executiveAs Bill said, that's where the fun begins once the data comes out, right?
Bill Mezzanotte
executiveSo we actually hired -- we actually have a lot extra programmers to the program after database lock because we know this always happens.
Unknown Executive
executiveBill, do you want to maybe add on about the design of the Phase III trial with the add-on to standard of care?
Bill Mezzanotte
executiveYes. Thanks, Andy. I mean, so just to remind you, it was patients came in who had experienced a heart attack. And within -- we tried to do within 48 hours of their admission, they were randomized to either CSL112 or placebo, but any other therapy that the specialists in whatever country they were working in would keep them on there. So it was an add-on to whatever the standard of care was in that region. And to remind you, we started with 1,000 clinical sites, and that was a self a monster. And during COVID, we lost many clinical sites to either became a COVID center rather than a trial center. We actually had about 10 investigators die of COVID, the investigators. And then we had to deal with 300 patients lost to follow-up who had been recruited in Ukraine, and we go about finding them as they got displaced. So there's been a lot of challenges, and that's why the data are a little complicated and piecing together.
Unknown Executive
executiveBut I want to really overemphasize Bill's earlier point, right? This team did an unbelievable job in my experience seeing clinical development programs to run this size program on time, right, plus or minus a little bit is unreal. And I really think it will set us up in the future, not only for people knocking on our door for partnership opportunities, but for us to continue to spend more efficiently in clinical. So we will get the opportunity to the earlier question, to put more products through because we just continue to improve our engine, no different than the engine we improve and manufacturing. And since we're talking manufacturing, I will put a shameless plug in for the Broad Meadows team because Andy and I were there, and they were making lots of CSL112. So it was very good to see the production team in full swing, ready. I think we're on our third batch of 112 at this point, which is just great. And so really playing through on that material will then move on to burn for final production. So all the engines are working. But remember, these become foundational capabilities that then you leverage moving forward.
Laura Sutcliffe
analystLaura Sutcliffe, UBS. I was just wondering if you could talk to your appetite spend any more on R&D for IV iron. I think the idea of indication expansion quite often pops up on slides. But other than getting heart failure on the label, there doesn't seem to be that much more that's really happened. And historically, Vifor didn't seem willing to commit to it either, and they always said there was an LOE coming up that the trade-off wasn't really worth it?
Unknown Executive
executiveYes. We've got plenty going on [indiscernible] Bill?
Unknown Executive
executiveSo I think we have invested already massively in our iron franchise and Ferinject in particular, to get all these indications. I think for us now, the time is much more to maximize what we have in our hands, plus to invest into the patient blood management evident generation, which is needed to unlock this revenue upside. So I think we have plenty of things to do with market expansion, maximizing the indications we have in our hands, plus really leading this enterprise-wide initiative with our combined Vifor bearing portfolio in patient blood management. And all of that will keep us busy, both on the R&D side as well as on the commercial side.
Unknown Executive
executiveBut we will continue formulation, expansion, presentation expansion, right? I think Herve is bundling all that into a market expansion. But I think they would be examples of where perhaps previous management didn't want to go down that path. We're very committed to that path because that's the way you expand the market.
Unknown Executive
executiveI just would add to that. I mean, I generally agree with both of those. But you just never know when a smart investigator finds that iron is either a cofactor or enabler of health in another area. I mean heart failure is a great example of that, right? That was out of some observational work that then became a small study and then became a big study. We continue to talk to those kind of investigators around the world. They still have a passion for the product. And so I don't have an idea today, but I wouldn't be shocked if something else interesting will come our way.
Laura Sutcliffe
analystAll right. And then maybe I could just revisit my question from earlier today on your ambitions in vaccines beyond COVID and flu, and if you're willing to talk to us about any more targets?
Unknown Executive
executiveSure, between Ken and Bill, why don't we.
Bill Mezzanotte
executiveThanks for the question. So I think your question earlier was around some of the other vaccine targets that I mentioned during my presentation. I think the first bit of background, I'll just remind people when we did our licensing deal with Acturis, we also included within that the rights to use their self-amplifying mRNA platform in the 3 other respiratory targets. So that's HMPV, PIB and RSV. So there remains across that cohort of respiratory viruses, some very significant unmet need. Paul mentioned before that we've seen RSV vaccines come to market now, both in the elderly and the young children. Let's see how that market forms. But I think that looks like one where there could be some attraction for us at some point down the track. And then for the other 2 reparatory viruses that I mentioned, there are currently no vaccines out there. I think that often out there, these respiratory pathogens are probably confused and misdiagnosed. I think that there's a lot of opportunity for us to shape and look for opportunities in that market. That said, all of that is preclinical at the moment. So echoing [indiscernible] comments, we have a lot to do right now. So we're still innovating in flu. We've got a lot of focus on launching the COVID vaccine. I think we will evaluate over the course of time the rate progression in these other respiratory targets?
Unknown Executive
executiveI would agree with all of that. And as a pulmonologist, I get tired of always rattling on about all the respiratory viruses that are at risk [indiscernible] HPV is really one that I think is interesting. The other aspect of -- 2 aspects of these are what is the best platform to do it on. And two, what's the cadence of these other viruses and what kind of prevention strategies? And do you need there versus flu and COVID. And I don't think we should automatically go to, hey, this is going to be an every year vaccine as well. I think we should show a little more disciplined in deciding how these other vaccines need to be used.
David Stanton
analystDave Stanton from Jefferies. A question for Bill. What does the -- just getting back to CSL112, what is the successful CSL112 Phase III trial look like for you in terms of percentage decline in MACE?
Unknown Executive
executiveYes. I mean, I mean it's successful, we'll start with a significant difference, right? And anything above that would be great. And then, of course, there's 3 subsets of the composite endpoint. And for them, the track in the right direction is usually ideal. But often the results are positive, but still mixed. And so we have to come and see it to know.
Steven Wheen
analystSteve Wheen, Jarden. Just for a question just on injective. From the moment we heard about Vifor. It's been discussed. It's just how complex Injectafer is to manufacture. And perhaps we're a bit surprised to see a generic emerge as quickly as it has, certainly post the transaction. Is there any data available on that generic from Sandoz and is there still significant uncertainty around whether or not it will be able to deliver the same sort of method of action, let's say, as Injectafer does.
Unknown Executive
executiveSteve, just before Herve goes, I want to make sure -- we had this in our acquisition plan, right? So we knew there would be competition at some point, right? These are seasoned generic manufacturers, right? They'll find their way, right? So we had it in our plan. So it's not like this is a complete surprise. Maybe the timing shifted a little bit. We were surprised by the regulatory pathway. But this is about competition. And it's about being ready for tenders, making sure we have robust supply. You saw St. Gallen, that's the -- that will guarantee robust supply and then it's all about, as you said, differentiating as it comes to the market. But it's not like we have the product in our hand, have done analysis. I mean the team in St. Gallen does that for years. I mean, it's amazing when you go into the labs, they have products from everywhere all around the world, comparing every product line that we have in iron going through that. So as soon as we can get our hands on it, obviously, we'll do that work, but we don't have a pre-look at what that potential product would be. So it's very atypical to have that.
Herve Gisserot
executiveMaybe just a couple of thoughts in addition to what Paul said. So nanomedicines are in the non-biologic complex drugs and the manufacturing process very much defines the product. So we know, however, that Sandoz has been successful. They have received an approval for what is being called in Europe, the 10a pathway, which is the generic pathway. So [indiscernible] has submitted their follow-on products to the same pathway. Interestingly, Viatris through the hybrid pathway, which is 10b, which means that not every company believe that they can match this, let's say, 10a generic pathway. So that's one. So the bar is quite high. Two, in many pharmaceutical markets, at loss of executive time, you have 20, 25 generics, knocking at the door, entering the market at midnight. Now the loss of flexibility is on the 20th of October 2023, so around the corner, one product has been approved in 16 European countries. So more to be seen, and we are completely ready to compete in this new environment.
Steven Wheen
analystCan I just ask one quick follow-up for Joy. There's been particularly around the Vifor acquisition, some, I guess, optimism around your synergies and what you've been able to achieve so far. What do you need to see before we can expect to see that upgraded in terms of the synergy target that you've got in your mind?
Joy Linton
executiveYes. It will come out at the full year '24, I think, Steve, with what we've delivered in '24 of what we see going forward in '25. And by then, we will have had a good 6 months of LOE as well. We'll know whether the commercial model that we've put in place, it's works and sustainable. So yes, call it the full year results in ending June '24, I think it's probably what we would do here.
David Low
analystDavid Low from JPMorgan. Just with the plasma collections. We've seen some of the plasma competitors move into other markets for collection, where they could see perhaps the potential for a cheaper source of plasma. Just wondering what yourself thinks of -- or how you think about your strategy and whether that's something that might be considered in the future?
Unknown Executive
executiveYes. I'll start, Andy, and then you can jump in. I mean I think geographic diversification is always something we look at, right? And we need to make sure we're on top of that. Some of the ones that you're referring to were more classic toll manufacturing contracts, not something that we are necessarily interested in pursuing. We're more interested in global products that allowed us to grow our global footprint. We have a great toll manufacturing business in this part of the world, but it wasn't one that we set out to expand. So we're looking at different markets. Some of those markets require significant parliamentary or other changes and they take time. And that's part of as we brought Kate on in terms of her external affairs role and how we build that efficacy for these type changes, that's an important part of the process for us.
Andy Schmeltz
executiveI mean just to add, as we discussed earlier today, with the other levers that we have at our disposal that we've been advancing in terms of nomogram A/I and the Rika machines, improving the volume of plasma collected from current donors as well as the Ig yield improvements that just expanding capacity for plasma collection is not the only path to enabling us to deliver more plasma. We feel good about our projections now in the capacity of supply plasma, and we can be more purposeful as we look to expand as we need to, whether it's domestically or in the U.S. or if there's opportunities in international markets, we can be much more purposeful than we might otherwise have been if we didn't have these other levers.
David Low
analystA question for Joy. Just you mentioned that the ROIC will be going down in FY '24. Can I just run through the drivers of that, so we fully understand?
Joy Linton
executiveYes. So unfortunately, we closed the acquisition of Vifor in August '22, not June '22. And so when we close -- when you do the ROIC calculation of your opening balance on July 1, '22. It's got all the cash that we raised for the acquisition, but none of the assets repaid it out. And so your ROIC in that 23-year is kind of artificially high, a little bit because not in the starting point. So it's just the way the maths work. We haven't had that little delay in the acquisition timing, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
David Low
analystRight. So we'll rotate past that by the time we get into FY '23 but '24 would have been lower. It's just 23% was higher because of that [indiscernible] .
Lyanne Harrison
analystLyanne Harrison from Bank of America. Just to follow up on some of the talk at the last session on Behring. It was made mention that in terms of FcRn, you're looking at -- you had looked at some potential partnerships there. Is a partnership on FcRn and the preferred pathway at this stage? Or are there any CSL, FcRn candidates in preclinical trials that you can comment on?
Unknown Executive
executiveYes. As Paul said, we're always looking at the partners that are closer to the market. But yes, we have 2 FcRn candidates. One is a dual FcRn FcR gamma, which we're really interested in, and it's going to probably progress through a stage gate this year but a preclinical one, but coming soon to Phase I. And we have a pretty clear criteria that it has to be better than what's on the market for us to progress it. So it's not like we're just going to spend time following behind, but we have some real clear criteria that we hope to hit.
Unknown Executive
executiveOther questions? Good. Well, maybe I'll just up one more. Wait until they get a couple of beers in us to see whether we maybe even more information.
Mathieu Chevrier
analystMattheu Chevrier from Citi. Just maybe one for Andy. We haven't talked about albumin today. I was just curious to get your views on where you see that market going? What you're seeing in China at the moment in light of the anticorruption drive that's happening in China?
Andy Schmeltz
executiveObviously, China is a critical market for us for albumin. I think we've stated in fiscal year '24, we think there'll be about 10% volume growth, but there'll be some price pressure. So we won't have double-digit revenue growth. We are committed to continuing our ability to deliver in China. We're working closely our China affiliate. We're working to kind of understand the rules. We're not more concerned than anything else in terms of anticorruption or any other regulatory pathways. Look, I think that we would love to expand our portfolio and presence in China for Behring beyond albumin. And it's challenging because Ig, they don't let importation of Ig. It's got to be plasma sourced from within the country. But for our recombinants, there definitely is a pathway, and we're taking steps to set the stage to expand our portfolio there in China. So China is a very important market for us and albumin is the cornerstone for us in China.
Unknown Executive
executiveAnd I think you saw one of Bill's slides, Idelvion, Phase III in China.
Unknown Executive
executiveI was going to mention that. So that is working towards registration in China. And I can tell you there's a lot of excitement for Idelvion and actually, that's still 2 in China.
Unknown Executive
executiveMike is coming along, Christian, right here in the second row.
Unknown Analyst
analyst[indiscernible]. One very specific one. [ H5 and 8 ]has featured in the last couple of presentations, but there was no mention of it today, I could see -- what's happened there?
Unknown Executive
executiveSo there continues to be concern about H5 avian flu, you probably followed it in the last several months. I think it's probably the worst infections we've seen in birds, and there has been some limited transmission from birds to humans. At the moment, no evidence of human-to-human transmission. So the CDC still rates the risk of human-to-human transition is low. But that said, a number of governments are concerned. So we have been working with multiple governments around the world. I think we've been public about the fact that we've been working with BARDA on manufacturing and the sale of H5 stockpiles. And those conversations are ongoing with another -- sorry, a number of other governments as well. So the risk is still very much real. And we as part of our pandemic business, I think we have a role to play in helping governments to prepare.
Unknown Analyst
analystThere was a trial earlier. Is that correct? Or we mistaken?
Unknown Executive
executiveYes. So we -- if you're referring to the BARDA collaboration, we manufactured H5N1 vaccine for BARDA so that they could then use that in a clinical study. BARDA generally -- are probably the leading health authority there in terms of wanting to make sure that they have a stockpile of vaccines for these emerging threats, and the work that we did for them was part of that preparatory response.
Unknown Executive
executiveIt's a case of -- it sounds like we can cover everything in one day, but just a lot of other things going on. So I think that's a good story overall, right? We're the only approved product in that space.
Unknown Executive
executiveYes, that's right. So for -- we're not in a pandemic. We're in a potential pre-pandemic. And CSL Seqirus has the only licensed pre-pandemic H5 vaccine, and so that then triggered these discussions that we're having with government.
Unknown Executive
executiveAll right. Let's take one more because I think it's been a terrific day, and then I can conclude with a few comments. If we have one more question. All right. Well, with that, why don't I thank you for your questions, but also thank the team and ask them to stand down, and then I can wrap it up for the day and get us on to the more important parts of the day. Great. Again, thanks for the team for a terrific presentation today. I hope you feel the energy that going on amongst the team and how we're trying to really complement each other. I hope by now, you have a greater understanding and confidence in the strategic direction of CSL and how we are executing against our strategy. You can see why I am personally so excited in the opportunities we have in front of us for delivering long-term, sustainable and profitable growth. To conclude today's formal presentations, I'd like to reaffirm our financial outlook for fiscal year '24, reiterate our strategic positioning, recap a few of the R&D programs and restate the drivers of the annual double-digit growth earnings that we'll see across the next medium term. First, on our financial outlook. Today, we are reaffirming our fiscal year '24 guidance. Revenue will grow at approximately 9% to 11% at constant currency. NPATA growth will be 13% to 17% in a range of approximately $2.9 billion to $3 billion at constant currency. We do expect the gross margin for CSL bearing to return to pre-COVID levels within the 3 to 5 years we have mentioned previously. As Joy mentioned, capital expenditure is expected to reduce by 30% in fiscal year '24 and should remain at that level for the next couple of years. We will continue to drive further operating leverage across the group, which you will see our general and administrative expenses come down to a plateau level in the midterm of 5% in fiscal year '24. Our balance sheet remains strong. We expect our net debt-to-EBITDA to be approximately 2x by the end of fiscal year '24. And our ROIC, as Joy outlined earlier, we expect our double-digit earnings growth will deliver a steady improvement on ROIC moving forward. Today, you've heard from each of the businesses and from our IT and R&D teams. Our focus will drive sustainable, profitable growth and will return returns to the shareholders. Our strategy is underpinned by our focus on preventing and treating disease in growing global markets with significant unmet patient needs. That, combined with our best-in-class durable products and our scaled manufacturing capabilities makes the difference for CSL. This is the case for Ig. This is the case for hemophilia. This is the case for vaccines, and this is the case for iron, along with all our other products. As Andy mentioned earlier, the Ig market will grow 6% to 8% over the medium term in volume. It is our goal to grow above the market. It's always been our goal. This will be driven by our market-leading products, underpinned by our world-class plasma collections and our optimized manufacturing network, all focused on maximizing yield and driving our operational excellence. For vaccines, Ken highlighted, CSL Seqirus is well positioned to outpace market growth with our differentiation strategy and continuous innovation. Our strategy to expand beyond influenza is advancing with the global licensure of our next-generation mRNA vaccine and COVID-19. And with Iron and CSL Vifor, as Herve shared, there is significant untapped potential growing both geographically as well with new formulations presentations moving forward. CSL has a global market leadership position in iron, and our relentless focus on iron through a series of targeted initiatives will deliver the midterm growth that we promised for Vifor. This includes market expansion, as I said, but also includes the emerging patient blood management focus that we have as an organization where we're optimizing our portfolios across CSL Vifor and CSL Behring. Turning to R&D. As Bill outlined earlier, we have a number of exciting R&D programs at all different stages. I think it was great to see the Phase I line getting a little longer. I hope you share my excitement for that, in addition to the great number of products coming near to launch or regulatory analysis. I believe the CSL R&D portfolio, thanks to Bill and his team is in the best position it's been ever. We are preparing for a number of launches. And anticipate over the next few years, these launches will be material to the company moving forward, innovative products that make a difference for patients around the world. This ranges from our homegrown monoclonal antibody developed right here, made right here, clinical trials, garadacimab, which is our latest offering in HAE. And of course, CSL112 that we talked a lot about. Of course, what is near and dear to my heart as an engineer is our yield initiatives. The team is working on delivering yield initiatives across both platforms, Ig and flu. This will strengthen our competitive advantage and most importantly, our capacity to deliver our life-saving medicines to patients. It will also defer capital spend, which is an important part of our program moving forward. In conclusion, CSL is well positioned to deliver profitable and sustainable growth over the medium term. We have leading positions in global markets with significant unmet need. Our 3 business units, CSL Behring, CSL Seqirus, CSL Vifor are underpinned by best-in-class durable products and an innovative pipeline focused on new therapies and indication expansion. Our embedded know-how and scale manufacturing platforms is driving efficiencies and improvements in yield. By serving significant unmet patient needs, at adding value to the healthcare systems, we will deliver consistent, profitable and long-term growth to support more innovation and research and generate returns for our shareholders. So I'll end today's session with where I started, 4 key messages for you to take away. Number one, CSL expects to deliver annual double-digit earnings over the medium term. As Andy said, a nice position to be in. CSL has a clear and executable road map to increase our margin to pre-COVID and beyond levels for CSL Behring. CSL expects a steady improvement in our return on investment capital fueled by these double-digit earnings growth. And I hope today, you were convinced, CSL possesses an exceptional management team, comprising highly experienced and diverse global industry leaders. Thank you for your time and attention today. Never seen a group so -- I mean, somebody said earlier, this is like a deep dive at a university. I see that, but every time I lecture at a university, somebody yawning or throwing something at you. So I really appreciate your attention. I really appreciate your passion and your support for CSL. So thanks again, and see you downstairs. Appreciate it.
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