Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. I am here with Teva Pharmaceutical CEO Richard Francis joining me right now. Nice to see you in person.
Crazy to be here, Katie. Thanks for having me.
So let's talk about the past year that you've had. Because you take a look at your share performance, shares up one hundred and eleven percent last year alone, that is your second best performance on record. How do you plan to keep that momentum going in twenty twenty five.
Well, so, thank you, thank of Mohamminson, Thank you for recognizing that, and maybe could I just take a book of bask in the fact that the team have achieved that.
And I'm really proud of the team at Teva because we've had some tough times and to come back with that share growth happens because we've done a lot of things well, and I think it's primarily been driven by the fact that we've moved our innovative portfolio forward and we've sold that particularly well, commercialized it really well in the United States. Oesteto jaceti in a jovi and those who performed tremendously well raised our consensus twice in the
year because of their performance. And then towards the end of the year, our pipeline started to mature and we saw some great data on our till one A and that was sort of, you know, I think, really surprised everybody. And so with all that, we had a great twenty four and in a way to be a little bit boring, it's going to be more of the same in twenty five.
We're going to keep driving a stead of keep driving your steady, keep driving your Jovi, and bring that pipeline through because now people are really excited about the innovative aspects of TABA and our pipeline and still do that and on our generics and BIA similars, keep driving that. That's being a consistent driver for us and throwing off cash that allows us to invest in innovative business which is creating so much excitement.
Well, in your case, more of the same is good. I'm sure your shareholders would be happy to see a repeat performance there. But I want to talk a little bit about generic drugs and particularly prices, because prices for generics still going down in the US, and I believe you said on your latest earnings call that you expect generic prices to be push down further in twenty twenty five. So against that backdrop, I mean, how do you sustain the generics business in that deflationary environment.
Well, I think for Generics you've got to have a few things. You've got to be global in scale and we are. You've got to have a really deep pipeline which we do, a great manufacturing capability, which we do, and then a go to market model which.
We have that global reach.
We have to did all of those three three things really consistently. I do think, you know, they comes to a point where as much as we can offset those price decreases and keep growing the company, I do think healthcare systems in the United States and Europe need to understand are they paying the right amount for what are high quality medicines. I think TeV supplies roughly one in ten one in twelve.
Scripts in the United States.
Every ten or twelve scripts is a TeV script, and I'm very proud of that because we help affordable medicines. People have access to affordable medicines. But despite our efficiency and our scale, then I do think potentially we have to think about that if we want to have that level of service and not to have any issues supply.
Well, let's get into some supply questions here. I want to talk about Adderall because you have both brand name and generic Adderall in a shortage since twenty twenty two, which of course you manufacture. What more can be done to end the shortage and what role do you think that the government and other companies should be playing here.
Yeah, I think this is an interesting one because there's been a sort of dramatic increase in the prescriptions of this product, and so because of the type of product it is, we're given a quota by the government and what we can make, and so we make that amount and we max out on that amount because it's a restricted substance, and so it's quite a complex supply chain. I think part of it is about assessing is this this about supply or is this about prescriptions? And is
this about overprescribing? And I think that's the area that needs to be looked at. But we're maxed out on what we're being asked to do, and we're committed to do that.
So I think it's a big and more complex story.
Two questions there, I guess, would do you expect that you know that ceiling on what you can make to move higher. And then what is your opinion. Do you think that this is an issue of supply or over a prescription.
That's a really good question.
I mean, I think it's one where when I look at it comparative to other markets than the usage and the supply is a lot higher in the United States, so you don't often see discrepancies on the geographics called scale like that. So I think it's probably something as people investigate it, and I think the government should look into it, and the FDA, I think it may be is a bit of both, but I think the supply is probably where it should.
Be, maybe needs a bit more.
I think the prescriptions is really accelerated dramatically, and we've got to ask why is that a change in the incidents the epidemiology.
I'm not so sure.
Yeah, that's a big question when it comes to over prescribing that I won't ask you that particularly, but I do want to talk about GLP ones because you came out with your first generic GLP one drug. It's a copy of one of Novo Nordist's lineup. What are your plans for selling generics of the more popular GLP ones that are out there.
So we plan to do it.
So we have that one Victor's that that came out last year, and this year we planned to launch sex Enders. That's another GLP one And our aim is to know as a global generics company, any product that loses its patterned we sort of have in our line of sight, and obviously the bigger ones we definitely have in our line of sight. So all those GLP onees and those emerging other modalities in.
Obesity we would target.
But we always think about capital allocation because as much as we're a nine billion dollar generics business, but also one of the fastest growing innovative companies, and so capital allocation is very important. So we're still put in the majority of our capital into our innovative business because we have such a deep pipeline and such an exciting pipeline that we want to make sure that's properly resourced.
Well to that point of capital allocation. Let's talk about the M and A outlook here, because we're at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference. We are being hit over the head with deal announcements and you're expected to see a more friendly regulatory environment, at least in the United States under the second Trump administration. What is your strategy when it comes to M and A right now?
Yes, So we're sort of one.
Our balance sheet allows us to do a certain amount, so I don't think this years go big. We're probably going to en license a lot of well looked at in licensed products. But the thing we have is because we have this pipeline that I keep talking about in late stage. We have a product dary in ASPA in phase three, we have a lands of Being in phase three for schizophrenia, and we have the TIL one A which everything's excited about at the end of last year phase two and now.
Moving into phase three.
So we have a lot of growth drivers coming forward in Teva. So and then we have other products that we've moved into phase two and resolvement for MSA.
A read disease. So we're quite on our pipeline.
So when we think about BD or M and A, we've got to think carefully because we can get a lot of capital to our own pipeline and I think give a good return for our shareholders.
And so when we look outside, we're just going to be mindful.
Is it worth bringing that in or do we have a pipeline and that's the challenge we always have in our industry, but I think we're in a particular privileged position with Tever because.
Of the pipeline.
We have to do some more in licensing than Big M and A.
All right, well, that's a good place to leave it. Richard, really appreciate you taking the time.
Thanks Katie. Pleasure to be here.