Pascal Soriot: Thank you, Mark. Next slide please. I spoke at the start of this call about how we are building a pipeline for the future. And our aim to deliver sustainable industry leading roles for the long term. Our recent acquisition and partnership with Eccogene is a good example of this, where we hope to deliver differentiated treatment for patients not only addressing obesity, but developing combinations with other small molecule for a broad range of cardiovascular renal, metabolic diseases. In the near term, we have a rich catalyst pass with more than 20 Phase III studies due to read out before the end of 2024. On this slide, I’ve called out just a few, these include LAURA, which Dave spoke to earlier and DESTINY-Breast06 which has the potential to bring in HER2 one line earlier for the treatment of hormone receptor positive breast cancer, as well as answer the question about HER2-low expression can be for patients still to have meaningful benefit from this important medicine.
We should also see the first Phase III results of anselamimab in light chain amyloidosis, and a WAYPOINT trial investigating Tezspire for the treatment of chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps. Dato-DXd will be an important medicine in our portfolio and we’re investing heavily behind this medicine. TROPION-Breast02 will be the next Phase III study for Date in TNBC. This is thought to be highly responsible to top two directed therapies. Before concluding I would like to welcome Sharon to this call and say how happy I am to have Sharon on Board in our senior executive team. And I also want to thank Mene for his contributions over many, many years. And with that, I will hand back to Andy and we’ll move to the Q&A.
A – Andy Barnett: Thank you, Pascal. We will now go to the Q&A with all of our executive members participants shown here. As a reminder, you can raise your hand on Zoom or type your questions in via the Q&A button. We’ll try and answer as many questions as we can during the allotted time. But please do limit the number of questions you ask to allow others a fair chance to participate. And with that, we’ll move to the Q&A and the first question.
Pascal Soriot: Okay. Thanks, Andy. The first question is from Steve Scala, Cowen. Steve, over to you.
Steve Scala: Two questions to the extent that the oral GLP-1 will be developed as a monotherapy for obesity. Should that suggest to us that AstraZeneca believes obesity is a therapeutic opportunity that is here to stay. And we are in the early innings despite access and other challenges that it may present. And secondly, apologies if I missed it, but longer term financial targets both total revenue growth and margin guidance. Is that still intact? Thank you.
Pascal Soriot: Thanks, Dave. So maybe Ruud could take the first question. And, Sharon, if you want to add anything step in, and then the next one will be another favorite question.
Ruud Dobber: Yes, of course. Thank you so much, Steve, for the question. Yes, it’s obvious that we believe that obesity is here to stay. I think in the prepared remarks of Sharon, she was alluding to the very substantial number of 1 billion people around the world are suffering from overweight. More importantly, we truly believe that is a unique opportunity not only to help patients to lose weight, but also to help the cardio metabolic disorders associated with overweight. And I think we are in a unique position based on our broad portfolio of products. Of course, a lot of focus on Farxiga, but many other products in our portfolio, which makes it relatively easy to combine this new licensing of the GLP-1 with other products like an oral PCSK9. We’re very pleased to see the first results coming out of our R&D pipeline, and hopefully in the near future, you will see those results. So it makes it very attractive for combination products as well.
Aradhana Sarin: Steve on your second question, I think the long-term investment thesis remains very much intact. So we’ve talked about the growth, ambition that we have a sort of in that ’21 to ’25 timeframe and you’ve seen us deliver on a double-digit CAGR. So that remains intact. And then, post 2025 to 2030, we’ve said we would be — we would have industry leading top line growth. And what you see today in the pipeline, whether it’s the proprietary ADCs, or the bispecifics, or some of the new readouts on studies, I think all of that points to or confidence in that growth rate in the 2025 to 30 timeframe. As it relates to operating margins, that continues to be a focus for the company. And, again, we’ve not given guidance on that is our ambition. And we continue to improve on our operating margins, as we continue to invest in a new product launches and a new Phase III studies.
Pascal Soriot: The next question is Gonzalo Artiach at ABG. Over to you, Gonzalo.
Gonzalo Artiach: Thank you very much for taking my questions. Gonzalo Artiach from ABG Sundal Collier. The first one is regarding the new drug candidate for diabetes and obesity license from Eccogene. And this licensing has been announced with quite excitement today. So could you give us some color on what are the key points on the drug candidate that you consider more interesting to potentially position the small molecule best-in-class specifically given the fact that you have already an Amylin analog in development? And my second question is on the results from [indiscernible] on the EMERALD-1 study? I don’t know if you could give us some color here on the plans going forward for this indication? Are you planning to file a PFS results, or will you wait for OS?
And also if I’m not wrong, the study had a third arm of Imfinzi combined with base only without Bevacizumab, which is not reported in the press release today. So I don’t know if you could comment on that too. Thank you so much.
Pascal Soriot: Thanks, Gonzalo. So maybe Sharon, you could take the first one and Suzanne, the same old question.
Sharon Barr: Sure. I’d love to and thank you for the question. I think you heard the excitement in my voice as we talked about the in-licensing of ECC5004, which we think is a best-in-class, orally bioavailable GLP-1 receptor agonist. And we are excited about what we view as a differentiated clinical profile for this molecule. It demonstrates greater tolerability than other molecules in the class with a lower reported rate of Gi adverse events. We also believe that it has a simplified CMC path with a relative lower COGS relative to the competitors. And we have seen efficacy on par with competitors in this class, which we think will allow us to deliver an ideal target product profile to patients. Sure. So as you mentioned, also in our portfolio, we have a long acting [indiscernible] as well as a GLP-1R glucagon dual agonist.
So we are targeting both incretin and non-incretin pathways as we identify a robust cardio metabolic profile that we think will serve the complexity of disease.
Pascal Soriot: Thank you, Susan.
Susan Galbraith: Yes. So [indiscernible] as you say a three-arm study 600 patients were randomized to taste alone plus placebo, taste plus Imfinzi and then taste plus Imfinzi plus Bevacizumab. So it’s a local regional habitus cellular carcinoma. And it’s exciting that this is the first positive Phase III study in this setting. I would say to your question about the Imfinzi plus taste arm of course, it’s important for us to show the potential for contribution of components. And in terms of your question on filing on PFS, so we’re excited that what we’ve got is a clinically meaningful improvement in progression free survival. But given this is a local regional setting, it’s always important to have data on overall survival. So as is typical, what we will do is, we’ll discuss with regulatory authorities, it may well be possible to file on PFS and then wait for OS to be supplemented during the follow up period and during the review period.
