Royalty Pharma plc (NASDAQ:RPRX) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Chris Hite: Sure. Yes. So the – as we stated in the past, deal flow in any given year is hard to predict and can be volatile, which is why we describe our capital employment targets over a multiyear period. So, I would just encourage you to keep that in the back of your head. But obviously, last year, we executed $3.5 billion of announced transaction value and $2 billion of which was upfront. And already this year, we’ve announced $1.6 billion in transaction value of which $600 million was up front. So, we feel we’re off to a great year. Last year, we looked at over 350 opportunities and less than 3% of those opportunities, we actually resulted in transactions. So it’s a very small percentage that we actually transact upon.

The environment, as you might imagine, is extraordinarily robust. And we are extraordinarily excited about our opportunity set. And that’s why we’ve raised our guidance and talked about the $10 billion to $12 billion capital deployments over the next five years. We’re very comfortable with that. So, I think everything is really sort of ticking in the sense of the backdrop of the overall royalty market growing, as I mentioned, tenfold since 2015, and our opportunity set itself, we’re really excited about the pipeline.

Operator: One moment for your next question. The next question comes from the line of Geoff Meacham of Bank of America. Geoff, please go ahead.

Susan Chor: Good morning. This is Susan on for Geoff. First, just a broader question. We’ve seen a lot of M&A deals this year and the valuations have been relatively high. Have you guys seen an uptick in asset valuations with the M&A environment getting better? And then two, just a question on under-innovated markets. Can you tell us more about what’s new and of interest within migraines beyond anti-CRPs, which from our research has really just been the dominant assets and migraine so far?

Pablo Legorreta: Thanks for the question Susan. Regarding M&A, I think it’s important to note that there are sort of different markets, right? When companies are acquiring other companies, the pricing of those deals is based on different metrics than the metrics we use when we’re acquiring royalties. And with very different – and there’s obviously, in some respects, the strategic components when a company acquires other company. And in our case, when we are investing in royalties, it’s more of a financial-driven analysis where we’re looking always at very attractive positive returns. And we’ve in the past, covered look forward returns we’re seeking. But the other thing I would mention is that it’s exciting to see all of this M&A activity happening because they do present opportunities for us to acquire royalty since once the company has been acquired and the acquirer is more interested in potentially selling noncore strategic assets and there’s been many transactions in the past that fall in that category.

We’re also working with acquirers when they’re looking at potential acquisitions, for us to partner with them and deploy capital side-by-side with them to make their acquisitions more efficient. And then maybe I’ll turn it over to Marshall for the migraine question.

Marshall Urist: Sure. Great question and a really interesting one. Overall, I think the things in or earlier things in migraine are programs that we continue to monitor. But I think the really important thing to keep in mind is the CGRP inhibitors in our mind, are still in the early innings of their rollout and their ability to really impact how migraine is managed. So, I think it will be great to watch in the years to come, how Pfizer and AbbVie are able to really broaden the prescriber base for the CGRP inhibitors and continue to penetrate into the still dominant triptan class and we’re excited to see them do that. And also what happens globally as well. So that’s – I think that’s the real focus on – in our mind right now, and we’ll continue to follow what’s happening in the earlier development stages.

Susan Chor: Thank you.