Christopher Boerner : Yes. Evan, maybe I’ll take that one. This is Chris. So we’re actually quite happy with the capacity that we continue to — and actually, we saw with both products in the fourth quarter. You may recall that for Breyanzi, we had anticipated the expansion of capacity would wait until we got into this year. We were very happy to see that expansion be accelerated into Q4. So I think that as we look forward to this year, we continue to see an expansion of capacity for both cell products, cell therapy products, and that’s certainly true with Abecma. And I would say the other thing to keep in mind is we’ve thought about manufacturing, which is going to continue to be an area of focus for us for cell therapy is we have a threefold strategy.
First, we continue to stay focused on manufacturing success rates. That’s 1 of the more important elements that frankly affect all cell therapy products. It’s — these are complex drugs, they’re living products and you have to stay focused on your manufacturing success rate. Second, we’ve talked at length about vector supply, and we obviously have a number of strategies in play from dual sourcing to increasing the number of suites and ultimately switching to a next-generation suspension vector on that front. And then finally, drug product. And there, it’s mainly about bringing additional manufacturing sites online, and we’ve discussed previously our efforts in Devens, Massachusetts enlightened to do just that. So what I would say sort of leveling it up is that manufacturing has to continue to be an area of focus for us.
We’ve got good strategies in place, and we’ve seen those strategies play out with expanded capacity, not only in Q4 but we anticipate through the remainder of this year.
Operator: The next question is from the line of Terence Flynn with Morgan Stanley.
Terence Flynn : David, probably for you. Just thinking about the guidance, OpEx, you’ve guided a low single decline this year, which offsets some of the gross margin pressure and R&D, you’re holding flat, so it looks like most of the decline is going to come on the SG&A side. So just as we look into 2024, I guess we’re anticipating additional gross margin pressure given Revlimid rolling off more fully. How should we think about expenses in as we think about the cadence into ’24?
David Elkins : Terence, thank you for the question. And you’re right as it relates to gross margins, we do anticipate them coming down and last year was in line with expectations as what we’re guiding this year that 77% due to that product mix as revenue declines. As far as OpEx is concerned, we continue to find efficiencies, operational efficiencies. We learned a lot through COVID with digital technologies, particularly on how we’re engaging with healthcare professionals. But also on top of that, reallocating resources from the mature brands to our launch products and making sure they’re fully funded. We’ve been able to do that very effectively. From an R&D perspective, you may recall, as we talked about the levels of R&D spend, it’s really driven by our portfolio.
That has the single biggest impact on the level of R&D spend, and we just launched nine new products. So we had many late-stage programs coming offline. We have some new ones coming online, but some of those are through partnerships. I think milvexian a great example of that, where we have several Phase III programs that are going to be beginning, but that’s shared with our — those calls are shared with our partners. So that’s why we believe, as we look at our business this year, a low single-digit decline in our overall operating expenses is what we’re anticipating. But we feel very confident even with the step down in gross margin. As we look at our base, continue to grow the top line faster than our expense base that gives us the flexibility to maintain those operating margins above 40%.
