Novartis AG - Sandoz Capital Markets Day (UK) Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Holger Blum - Patinex Management AG - Analyst : It's Holger Blum, Patinex Management. A question on the market side. You spoke about 8% growth in targeting off the market, and you're targeting mid-single-digit growth. Is it regional or timing differences of the forecast horizons? And maybe looking backwards, if we see Novartis 10 years or Sandoz 10 years ago, it was similar size, close to $10 billion, close to $2 billion of operating revenues and no growth basically in the reported numbers. So did the market part not play out? Or was it more company specific? And what are your lessons you take home?

Question: Holger Blum - Patinex Management AG - Analyst : Holger Blum, Patinex. A question on Eylea and your perspective on high dose Eylea, whether that's making the party less fun for you or whether you plan to have such a formulation as well? And also sticking in the ophthalmic space, I mean, there's a more vital use compound with bimekizumab, Avastin brand and would you be interested there over to have an ophthalmic formulation on the market? Last question to finish it up, just maybe you highlighted. I appreciate the color on the 2024 launches. Could you preview the class of 2025, what will be the biggest launches there? Pierre Bourdage Yes. So on Eylea, I think, let me frame it up by saying aflibercept is given as an intravitreal injection on an 8-week basis, typically. And now there is high-dose Eylea that gives the option for patients to either move from 8 weeks to 12 weeks or up to 16 weeks depending on patient response and the decision of the ophthalmologist. Clearly, that's innovation coming into market that we'll face. There's also equally innovation coming from Vabysmo from Roche as a bispecific antibody. Very good competitor, doing very well on uptake and also seeing the 16-week injection cycle. So there are a few ways to think about it. Number one, we're used to facing new innovation. Adalimumab faces lots of innovation from many different classes in the immunology space and yet continues to grow. The second aspect is, for us, thinking about the market and looking at the fact that in U.S. and Europe, 45% to 55% of the total market is split between off-label Avastin and Lucentis, which are given on an 8-week cycle. And so we believe with an $11 billion LOE, we will face some competitive pressure from the new formulation of aflibercept in high dose and from Vabysmo, but we think the market is very large and will still remain a very compelling opportunity. So that's the first one. The second one I'll make very short. On bevacizumab, we do have an in-licensed program by an external partnership. What I would say, though, is that we would never in-license and commercialize an asset off label. And so we follow the label in terms of commercialization and off-label would not be a consideration for us in terms of bevacizumab. And then, for 2025 launch, I can likely clarify denosumab and aflibercept are in that time horizon, particularly as you look at Europe. Europe, we're looking at second half of 2025 base patent expiry market formation we're very confident on.