Emma Walmsley: And obviously, looking forward to running forward with that 50-year-olds to 59-year-olds data too, which is another potentially meaningful cohort. Julie, anything else you want to add?
Julie Brown: No, I think actually Luke has covered it extremely well. I think we’ve obviously looked at the levels of stock in the channel. We’ve looked at the rate of immunizations. We’ve seen a correlation with flu as Luke mentioned very, very close and that’s really informed our guidance. And in terms of 2024, I mean. I think we’re going to — as we come through the US flu season, we are going to have a much clearer view of 2024 when we give our full year results. So, we will definitely update you at that stage, more fully.
Emma Walmsley: Thanks. Next question, please.
Nick Stone: Okay. Next question is going to be from Kerry Holford at Berenberg. Kerry, over to you, please.
Kerry Holford: Thank you. I have a couple of questions for Tony, please, within R&D. So, firstly, on bepirovirsen, so now you’ve got the full reach of your Phase II data, and you’ve recently signed that deal with J&J to look at sequential therapy, do you still remain confident you offer hep B patients the functional cure, at least a proportion of them? What do you expect that J&J siRNA to add here? And do you stand by your more than £2 billion sales target for that asset? And then secondly, a broader question on R&D budgets. So here, we’ve seen significant growth in your budgets over the past 18 months or so. And based on the pipeline you have ahead of you, are you broadly happy with the annual budget that you’ve effectively been given this year? The run rate looks to be about £5.5 billion. Or should we expect that R&D budget to continue to grow in the sort of low-double-digit range that we’ve seen year-to-date going forward? Thank you.
Tony Wood: Thanks, Kerry. Let’s get started with HBV, and then I’ll comment on the pipeline, but perhaps, Emma, you might want to make your comment on R&D budget. So, first of all, look, I’m really pleased with this deal, Kerry. Let me just remind you because I’m going to anchor it in what we are — what we know about bepi and becoming increasingly confident about that is in the context of monotherapy on top of nucleoside treatment, that we achieve a durable functional cure for a significant proportion of the HBV population, the chronic HBV patient population. And that’s for individuals that have a surface antigen count of less than 3,000. Just as a reminder, that’s about 40% of the 300 million individuals who are living with chronic hepatitis B.
To put it in a nutshell, what the new deal with the J&J siRNA does is takes the broader population down to that target population of about 3,000 and below. So, you should expect, and we’re excited about the prospects, therefore, of seeing both an increased coverage in an ITT population and also a deepening of the therapeutic effect. And this is important if you look at the mechanism of action of the J&J siRNA. It works in, excuse me, a complementary fashion to bepi, so further lowering viral DNA and the consequences of that, as I mentioned in the presentation. The other important thing is that we’ve built a complex PKPD model around response, which this will add to. And in addition, using AIML and some really deep phenotyping on nearly 500 patients, established an understanding of the immune status required at the beginning of treatment for response.
We’re going to continue to add to that because with the deal in question, we get a number of ongoing Phase II studies. So, I’m really very pleased about where we are with that particular deal. For me, it strengthens my expectations in terms of our ability to deliver a functional cure for a broader population of patients living with this disease. Let me just in terms of the question about R&D budget and growth, perhaps I’d just say a few brief things about the portfolio and then hand over to Emma. So again, I’m really very pleased with where we are on the portfolio. Emma mentioned the strength that we have in our growing vaccines portfolio, particularly next year, as you’ll see, more data coming from our mRNA platform, from MAPS, and we have a number of important studies, like, for example, therapeutic herpes simplex vaccine readout on POC that will again continue to hopefully deepen the importance of our adjuvant technology that is underscoring, I think, the fantastic clinical performance we see for Shingrix and for Arexvy.
Luke and I will say more at Meet the Management about the cornerstones of depemokimab, Nucala and camlipixant. In our respiratory portfolio, of course, I just mentioned bepi. And then moving again just briefly into oncology, Jemperli, most recently through the OS data that I mentioned earlier, continues to show its credentials as a very highly effective PD1 inhibitor. And with all of that in place, I think we’re well set with regards to our future ambitions and the budget required for that ambition. I’m in good shape about it. Emma?
Emma Walmsley: Thanks, Tony. I mean, I think that there are two important things to emphasize strongly here. First of all, we’ve been very clear in our capital allocation framework. The number one priority for the company is to invest in the pipeline, organic and inorganically. And that is why, over the last five years, you’ve seen a significant step up in our R&D spending. What matters is not how much you spend, but that you spend it super smartly and then that is ever-improving and we’re continuing to fuel competitive, profitable growth for our shareholders. So, the first thing is it is a priority, but it’s about how we spend it. And I think we are broadly at more industry norm levels in terms of spending, but very much focused on the returns of that.
And the second thing is we are absolutely committed to profitable growth and we’re in that chapter now. We’re now in, I think, seven consecutive quarters of competitive growth. Glad to upgrade guidance for the year. Very confident about our ’26 outlooks and our double-digit profit CAGR. This year, we expect R&D spend to increase slightly below our turnover levels. And we’re not going to set an explicit target around that, but you can be very confident that the outlooks we previously laid out, we’re completely committed to and delighted about our progress against. Next question, please.
Nick Stone: Okay. The next question is from Simon Baker at Redburn. Simon, over to you, please.
Simon Baker: Thank you, Nick. Thank you for taking my questions. Two, if I may, please, both on the pipeline. And apologies if I missed it, because I did lose sound at one point. But it looks like depemokimab is running slightly ahead of previous expectations. I just wondered if you can give us an update there on the [SWIFT] (ph) and the SWIFT-2 study timeline. And then secondly, on the Hansoh ADC, I wonder if you could just elaborate a bit on what attracted you to that asset. Obviously, we’ve not seen much data. You all have seen more than us. And I was wondering if it was data-driven or whether it was driven by the fact that the payload and the [linker bar one or two carbons] (ph) is identical to Dato-Dxd and therefore gives you a high level of confidence in the potential of that ADC. Thanks so much.
