AstraZeneca PLC (NASDAQ:AZN) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Pascal Soriot: Thanks Susan. Stephen Scala at Cowen. Stephen, over to you.

Stephen Scala: Thank you, I have one question and one follow-up. First on Lynparza, should we expect this CRPC label to reflect a propel population or be more narrow than that in some way? And second, Pascal, this is the follow-up. You’ve been in the industry a long time and I’ve seen a lot of product related litigation. Can you put the NEXIUM litigation in context? And how does it compare to other situations, which maybe had less than ideal outcomes on any key legal or medical, legal or other parameters? Thank you.

Pascal Soriot: Susan, do you want to take the first one?

Susan Galbraith: Yes. So thank you. So based on the data that we shared at ASCO GU at the beginning of this year, you can see a clinically meaningful improvement in radiographic progression free survival in both the patients that have HRR wild type and BRCA wild type population as well as within the BRCA mutant patient population. So that clinical meaningfulness and the tolerability that’s seen in combination with abiraterone, I think supports an indication that’s aligned with the patient population that was involved. Obviously, we are in continued discussions with regulatory authorities around the world and we’ll update you as soon as we have finalized agreement with those regulatory authorities.

Pascal Soriot: Thanks, Susan. So, Stephen, first of all, let me thank you for reminding me of my advanced age. And as it relates to your question, yes, I have, in my own career, I’ve seen quite a number of those cases. And of course, we take every case very seriously. Having said that, here, we believe we really have a strong case. Kidney disease is really so much multifactorial and inferenced by so many circumstances, of course, hypertension, diabetes, et cetera. And there’s clearly no link between NEXIUM and kidney disease. So we believe we definitely can manage this one and number of a few thousands of cases have already been dismissed. Having said that, of course, you always have to be prudent and you never know what happens with those cases. But I would say overall, it’s probably at the lower end of any case I have seen in the past in this area. Anything, Aradhana, you wanted to add? No. So James Gordon, JPMorgan.

James Gordon: Hello. Thanks for taking the questions. Two questions. One financial, one pipeline. The financial question was just about the implied sequential forward in revenues and profitability in Q4. And the question is, how much of a headwind do you think we could see from booking in advance incremental discounting in China on the NRDL renegotiation or algorithm adjustments were referred to. Is that something that would be a significant headwind in Q4 that we need to think about for our revenue forecasts and for profitability? And the second question was about pipeline and EGFR lung cancer and ADCs. So you announced a new ADC592, which is wholly owned by Astra and that targets EGFR and cMET. So is the idea that you would develop this for people who’ve got EGFR lung cancer in terms of going for an ADC approach?

Or could you also develop that ? Would you do them in parallel or just one? And could we read this new ADC approaches endorsing the idea that it does make sense to go off to cMET upfront in EGFR lung cancer with ? Or is this more of a backup plan? We’ve seen that it does look like a good thing to target alpha.

Pascal Soriot: Two good questions. Aradhana, do you want to take the first one?

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