Royalty Pharma plc (NASDAQ:RPRX) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

But since they are risks, I am wondering if you would be willing to rank them by your perception of the challenge they represent to the company over the long term? And to provide a reference point, please allow me to speculate on the order. So I think probably CFS at the top; competition, two; IRA and innovation, number three; and adverse tax legislation is last.

Pablo Legorreta: Sure. So I guess, Terry will take your first question and then I can come back and provide some perspective on this bigger strategic question.

Terry Coyne: Yes. Steve, so on Imbruvica, we certainly have been disappointed by the recent commercial performance of that product. And like many people, we had expected it to be more resilient in the face of competition. But we do take the recent trends on board. And we continue to make sure we understand what’s going on in that market. And I think that our guidance, I don’t want to really get into or have an opinion on what AbbVie has said but I can speak to what we include in our guidance and we have taken what we think is an appropriately conservative approach to our guidance, including all of the recent trends. And we obviously look at a range of scenarios but certainly for this asset, that range of scenarios based on recent trends has been more focused on the downside. So that’s probably all I can say on Imbruvica specifically at this point.

Pablo Legorreta: Yes. And also, just a reminder, if you look at that investment Imbruvica and when we made it and the sort of purchase price of our royalty interest and the expectations we had at the time which were a couple of billion dollars for the drug. It vastly exceeded those sales expectations. I mean even the sales that are maybe likely in the future as it continues to decline, are meaningfully above what we have forecasted. So from a return perspective, that investment for us has been really a big winner. But I think talking about how I think about long term, the strategic opportunities and risks for Royalty Pharma. I think the biggest — the thing that always is — the most important thing we focus on and the thing that we worry about the most, honestly, is product selection.

That’s sort of the number one thing for us, more than anything. And mitigating potential risks as we make investments is really driven by really understanding the product if it’s a differentiated product or not, what value it brings to patients, then the competitive landscape, not over the next 2, 3 years but over the next 5, 10, 15 years. And then innovation but obviously, balancing that with like the significant upside that can be derived from investing in blockbusters. And if you see historically our track record, what’s been really consistent is our ability to find therapeutic classes that are going to become really important drugs that are going to become really important and then make several bets on many of these new therapeutic classes that are going to change people’s lives.