Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ:AMGN) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 12 of 12

Murdo Gordon: Overall, our immunology business looks very good. I think we’re very pleased with the TEZSPIRE launch. We continue to see broad phenotypes of patients regardless of biomarker status being treated. We are seeing de novo patients who haven’t seen a biologic before in their treatment of their uncontrolled asthma. And we’re also seeing patients being switched from other products within the class. And so we expect that area of autoimmune disease growing in terms of the biologic penetration of severe uncontrolled asthma. And we’re well positioned to compete for that expanded treatment pattern. ENBREL continues to serve many patients. And the trends there are fairly predictable and fairly consistent. Otezla, as we’ve mentioned, is seeing some pressure from new free drug programs, both for our topicals as well as new entrant oral And then we also have just picked up TAVNEOS which we’re really excited about, a product that treats a severe autoimmune disease, ANCA-associated vasculitis, very young product, very early in its life cycle and I think a lot of growth there to be had.

And then, of course, last but certainly not least, on the branded side, the announced acquisition of Horizon. So I think the inflammation area, along with our own innovative pipeline and the pipeline of Horizon is a very good growth opportunity for us long term. And last but not least, here we are on the first day of launch of a novel biosimilar to the largest product in the U.S. and that’s HUMIRA. So I think we’ve got a lot of opportunities for growth ahead.

Bob Bradway: I think we’re down to our last question, Arvind, if you want to…

Arvind Sood: Yes. Let me read the last question, Bob and after that, you might have some concluding comments. So the last question is from Brian Skorney of Baird and Brian wants to know, do you expect this to be more of a longer-term tax rate, assuming no major changes to corporate tax rates in the U.S.?

Peter Griffith: Yes, Brian, I think, as you know, we don’t give long-term guidance on tax rates. And so we won’t go beyond this year, so 18% to 19%. And go back to your own just to make sure we understand the change in the PRET. The PRET is a percentage of its cost of sales as opposed to the income tax rate which is pretax income. So that’s a little bit of the difference to that Yaron asked about. So 18% to 19% this year is where we’re at and that’s where we’ll — that’s what we’ll give you for now.

Bob Bradway: All right. Well, thank you very much, again, for your patience. Apologies that we had a little bit of difficulty with our vendor’s connection earlier on the call. So if you have any further questions, shoot them into Arvind. We’ll be around here this afternoon, Peter Murdo, Dave and myself, to answer any further questions you might have. And we appreciate your joining the call and look forward to talking to you during the course of 2023. Thank you.

Operator: Thanks for using Webex. Visit our website at www.webex.com.

Follow Amgen Inc (NASDAQ:AMGN)

Page 12 of 12