AbbVie at BofA Healthcare Conference: Strategic Insights on Growth

On Wednesday, 14 May 2025, AbbVie Inc. (NYSE:ABBV) participated in the BofA Securities 2025 Healthcare Conference, where company executives discussed strategic plans amid macroeconomic challenges. The session highlighted AbbVie’s proactive approach to potential policy disruptions and its confidence in sustaining high single-digit growth through the decade. While addressing concerns over tariffs and patent expiries, AbbVie also emphasized opportunities in the obesity market and immunology sector.

Key Takeaways

• AbbVie plans to maintain high single-digit growth through the end of the decade.
• The company is preparing for potential impacts from Most Favored Nation tariffs and changes in direct-to-consumer advertising.
• AbbVie increased its 2027 sales guidance for SKYRIZI and RINVOQ to $31 billion.
• Entry into the obesity market through a licensing deal with Gubra, focusing on a differentiated amylin compound.
• Acknowledgment of potential price degradation in the immunology market, with strategies in place to maintain market share.

Financial Results

• AbbVie reiterated its confidence in achieving high single-digit growth through 2030.
• Increased 2027 sales guidance for SKYRIZI and RINVOQ to a combined $31 billion, with SKYRIZI expected to reach $20 billion and RINVOQ $11 billion.
• Growth in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) indications, with faster rates for ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease (CD).
• A $900 million increase in overall guidance for SKYRIZI and RINVOQ in the first quarter.

Operational Updates

• Over 25 transactions since 2024 to enhance pipeline in neuroimmunology and oncology.
• M&A strategy focused on early-stage assets for future growth.
• Entry into the obesity market with a licensing deal for an amylin compound from Gubra, highlighting its long half-life and IP extending into the 2040s.
• Complex and resilient supply chain with strategies to mitigate potential tariff impacts.

Future Outlook

• AbbVie is addressing patent expiries from 2030 to 2035, focusing on M&A and pipeline development.
• Anticipates continued growth and fragmentation in the obesity market, with a significant cash pay component.
• Plans to expand RINVOQ’s use in various indications, targeting five new indications by 2030.
• Believes oral IL-23 therapies may not match the efficacy of injectables like SKYRIZI.

Q&A Highlights

• MFN pricing expected to impact only government channels, not commercial pricing.
• Prepared to adjust marketing strategies if direct-to-consumer advertising is limited, focusing on digital channels.
• Exploring efficiencies to mitigate potential tariff impacts in 2025.
• Sees significant opportunity in the obesity market due to unmet needs and potential for differentiated innovation.

For a detailed understanding, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - BofA Securities 2025 Healthcare Conference:

Tim Anderson, Analyst, Bank of America: All right, thanks for joining us for this next session. I’m Tim Anderson, the US Large Cap Pharma and Biotech Analyst at Bank of America. Very happy to have with us three speakers from AbbVie, Jeff Stewart, Executive Vice President, Chief Commercialization Officer. He’s been in that role since 2020. He joined Abbott all the way back, I think in 1992, long time.

We have Doctor. Rupl Thacker, who’s Executive Vice President, R and D Chief Scientific Officer at AbbVie. He’s been in that role since 2023, but joined the company back in 02/2003. And then Scott Rantz, who’s Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, a role that he’s been in since 2022, I believe. And you joined the organization back in 02/2008, part of that you were advisor in pharmacy.

So we’ll start off like we’ve been doing all these sessions with some macro questions and I’m trying to ask a similar set of questions to all the management teams so I can pull together what everyone’s saying. And I know these are tough questions to answer. Just starting off level of disruption and how much time this is taking, talk about MFN tariffs, everything else, are you guys actively involved in day to day discussions and contingency planning and trying to figure it out? Or is that separate group doing it and you guys are just running day to day and no changes?

Scott Rantz, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, AbbVie: I think like everyone, certainly there’s some disruption from the standpoint of just taking additional time. It’s not disrupting the business, not disrupting our ability to execute, but certainly is something that we are spending time on. We’re a free hands on management team. So when we see these things, we work together with our teams and we inform our board about what’s going on and we do a lot of work around trying to understand the implications and also contingency planning and mitigation efforts and things of that nature, of course.

Tim Anderson, Analyst, Bank of America: MFN, everyone’s trying to figure out, is it real, is it rhetoric? We had a panel of policy folks yesterday at lunch. One of the speakers really painted a picture of this is gonna happen and others don’t necessarily agree with that. I feel like this sort of thing personally to me is rhetoric, but I’ll just put the question to you real or rhetoric? We’ve seen executive order in 2020, nothing came of it.

We have a new executive order. Trump does seem bent on doing something more this time around on drug pricing in one form or another. So is this something you guys are taking serious?

Jeff Stewart, Executive Vice President, Chief Commercialization Officer, AbbVie: Yeah. Maybe maybe I’ll start and Scott can chime in. I I think I think we we have to take it seriously. And you you mentioned, Tim, you know, that we have significant horsepower back at the office. We’ve got connections with Washington to really start to triage and understand this.

Obviously, it’s still very fresh and and very new, but nonetheless, it’s a it’s a it is a significant, disruption. Now we saw, you know, in the first administration, this approach. It was sometimes tailored with all the discussions that we all remember around the rebate rule and rebate pass through and what that would mean for premiums. And so, we’re carefully we’re carefully assessing that. We we we want more details, and we’re gonna work very hard to get as many details as we can, you know, you know, the full scope, you know, what segments of the government, you know, b, d, Medicaid.

We have some semblance of timing. I mean, I think if we take a step back, you know, there’s certain things that we’ve been very pleased with with the administration. So for example, we know even before with IRA, the idea that there was an affordability focus, you know, with the cap and smooth, that’s something that we heavily lobbied for because we thought that was the right thing to do. And, you know, that’s in place now. We also think that some of the more recent commentary around the nine and thirteen on the IRA, because we think, you know, the nine years for small molecules or innovative small molecules, not good for innovation.

So that’s encouraging. So we’ll have to see how this EEO starts to play out, but suffice to say that we’ll be working very hard over the next days to make sure that we’re in the best position to handle it.

Tim Anderson, Analyst, Bank of America: Another question that we’ve been asking is just this quote unquote equalization of price, which would imply US prices go lower ex US prices go higher. As a drug manufacturer, correct me if I’m wrong, you really don’t have any ability to raise ex US prices above and beyond where they are today. Is that correct?

Jeff Stewart, Executive Vice President, Chief Commercialization Officer, AbbVie: That is correct. I mean, to some degree, again, when you step back and look at this is that while there has been some moves towards, let’s say, a pilot program in Europe for, a European HTA, it’s really very preliminary, super nonbinding, and you have different systems, as you know, across across the continent. You know, the HTA systems, you have budget impact systems, you have different philosophies. And so it’s not immediately apparent that that is certainly something in the control over a a manufacturer in terms of the equalization of pricing. Now having said that, you know, if you look at the investment, the way investment flows around the world, you know, we’re in constant discussions with the Europeans through the trade associations at the commission to sort of say, hey.

If you have basically these sort of price controls or de minimis type of approaches with pricing or lack of flexibility, you get your populations with less access or delayed access to new innovations. And so the concept of sort of transferring that over to The US, probably not the best policy, but again, we’ll have to see it. But it is very difficult to see how pricing equalization or would work as we sit here today.

Tim Anderson, Analyst, Bank of America: The hard thing for folks in our position is to really understand what the pricing disparity is between net US prices and let’s say European net prices. So I know you probably won’t give us any data points that are AbbVie specific, but just your general understanding rule of thumb, I’ve always been under the impression it’s 20 to 40% cheaper in Europe versus The US, those aren’t heavy products necessarily. But you see a lot of numbers out there now, including recent ones that say, oh no, no, it’s a much bigger discount. And I’m not sure I believe that, but any data points you wanna throw out there that are high level?

Jeff Stewart, Executive Vice President, Chief Commercialization Officer, AbbVie: I mean, there’s been some analysis that’s been that’s been done where it’s it’s actually maybe a little closer than one might think because when you when you start to go through all the government channels and you look at, you know, CPI penalties and Medicaid and, you know, the different even even with IRA, the different ways of negotiation and the the cost shares on the ten and twenty, and you just cascade all it down or the rebates, You know? And then even if you adjust for per capita, it’s probably not that big of a disparity. But, I think that’s that’s many things that we have to work through. I mean, people sort of default to what does that list price look like, and that’s clear that there’s a very large disparity. So we’ll have to continue to sweat those details and understand how that all sort of flows through the system.

And as we go forward and see to your point, is it rhetoric? Is it negotiation or what have you?

Tim Anderson, Analyst, Bank of America: Might have been two years ago, and I think you were probably on this call, we do these commercial strategy calls where we just focus on the commercial side of the business. And a question we had asked at the time and we were asking out of many companies was related to IRA, would IRA negotiated prices spill over to the commercial book of business? And AbbVie’s view was, and I think it still is, is no, there really probably won’t be much of a spillover, which is more of a unique point of view. Other companies have felt there will be some spillover. So now let’s take that same question applied to MFN.

If you were to have MFN pricing apply to Medicare and Medicaid and government programs, do you think there would be inevitable substantial leakage to the commercial book of business?

Jeff Stewart, Executive Vice President, Chief Commercialization Officer, AbbVie: I still think that our position or my position is that it is unique to the the government channels. And I’ve talked a little bit about the history there where, you know and I I’ve been, you know, involved over my career in these negotiations with with payers. And certainly, if you look at, you know, different segments of government payers, you know, you have the VA system and the DOD where you have the federal supply schedule, and that’s sort of a calculated price, which is often much lower than where you have your commercial prices. And while some people would say, hey, maybe we should you know, can we get that price? It’s the answer is no.

And there’s a basis of competition and there’s you know, that’s a sort of a government channel with with really price regulations. I’d say it’s the same thing for Medicaid. I mean, we have discussions to say, if you have a more mature brand or you have CPI penalties and you ultimately have a quite a low net price and maybe it also is calculated in a commercial best price, that price is often far below your commercial negotiated prices and it doesn’t slip. So I think with with IRA, it’s it’s very constrained, and I think it’ll be the commercial prices will be largely walled off. Not that not that the negotiators on their side won’t ask for those price concessions, but I do think it’ll be fairly tight.

And I would suspect I mean, it’s highly speculative, right, that I don’t even know if MFN will go into effect. That that would be a that would be a government action or scheme for those segments as well. So I think I feel fairly confident we’re not gonna see big slippage.

Tim Anderson, Analyst, Bank of America: I mean, that’s my point of view too, but there’s a lot of debate on that front. Okay, a question, I think I might’ve asked this on your quarterly call, it’s even more pertinent now. Advertising form, direct to consumer advertising, RFK was out there by press reports saying, guys, not you guys, but the industry needs to pull the brake, pump the brakes on DTC advertising. AbbVie is the biggest DTC advertiser in the group. There’s independent data that shows how much you guys spend.

And you guys have obviously determined that’s very cost effective marketing approach to spend those dollars. So if you’re limited, is that impair the business? I think I do think it could be limited.

Jeff Stewart, Executive Vice President, Chief Commercialization Officer, AbbVie: I’m not sure that it would be limited. Now, reference to your first point, I mean, we’re an active management team. We would start to prepare for different contingencies, right? Certainly it would affect the whole industry. So in in that sense, if there were you know, if you look at mass media or TV commercials, there would be far less investment because presumably, there would be some constraints on mass media.

So we would have to we would have to pivot. Right? We would be capable of thinking about, you know, disease awareness campaigns that would also help to stimulate education of the consumer. I suspect that there would still be an ability to speak to that consumer via digital channels. It may just be that, well, we don’t we don’t support the the mass media.

So we look through all of our channels, all of our returns. We would look at different models of communicating with the consumers that we thought were equally as appropriate as we do now with DTC to be able to continue to, you know, drive our commercial model and authentic communication with consumers. So that’s how we are thinking about it now and we would think about it going forward.

Tim Anderson, Analyst, Bank of America: One last policy question here, this one’s on tariffs. So on Pfizer’s Q1 call, we asked the question to Albert, do you think this will be ring fenced to certain geographies like China? And he suggested it might be, and stocks rallied strong on those comments. What is AbbVie’s view on tariffs? And we have some news, of course, that’s come out since, some them with The UK, for example, but how are you guys viewing tariffs at the moment as a threat?

It seems like it’s kind of taken a backseat to NFM, frankly.

Scott Rantz, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, AbbVie: Yeah, I mean, I think a week ago we probably would have been talking a lot more about tariffs than we are right now just give given how things have evolved. When we look at tariffs, know, we’re certainly the president said early last week he would denounce something in the next two weeks from then. So maybe it’s in in the next week if if that holds. The investigation results have not been released from a February perspective and we’ll have to see what those come out with. I would say that it’s hard to handicap exactly what that looks like.

Maybe there’ll be a phasing in. There seems to have been some acknowledgement that certainly plants and manufacturing capabilities can’t be built overnight in The US. And so we’ll see where they come. I would say no matter where they come from the pharma specific tariffs. And when we look at it, we’ve got a very complex and resilient supply chain.

One of the things that we’ve always focused on is making sure we have the products coming to our patients, the assurance of supply for those patients that builds in to a supply chain and a manufacturing process, some optionality. Certainly, as we’ve started to look at the tariffs and we pulled together a cross functional team because it does impact people throughout the organization to see what can we do to look at the impact of what this might be in to mitigate. So we’ve done a lot of work around mitigation activities, leading up to with inventory management, making sure we’re optimizing our supply chain. And then we’ll just have to wait and see what is announced. If something is announced, of course, ’25 is going to be a part year.

And we’ve got some ideas and thoughts around how to mitigate the impact in ’25 or help to mitigate it from efficiencies, productivity initiatives. Our business has been performing. We’ve got some very strong momentum in the business. Our first quarter results were above expectations. So that would also be something that we would look to help to mitigate any impact of tariffs.

Tim Anderson, Analyst, Bank of America: Okay. A non policy, but still a general question, and it’s really on M and A. So a strength of the AbbVie story is between now and 02/1930, you essentially have no patent expiries. But when you look from 2030 to 2035, there’s a lot Rizi, Renvoke, Raylor, IMBRUVICA, VENCLEXTA, I think one of the migraine products falls in that period.

It’s far away, it’s too far for most investors to think about. But you guys run ten year planning cycles, And so you’re looking at that period, you’re looking at your pipeline today. I think there’s the perception that the late stage pipeline at AbbVie could be more full. So where is your head on M and A at the moment?

Scott Rantz, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, AbbVie: Yeah, look, when we look at M and A and it’s not dissimilar from what we’ve been doing. If you look at the transactions that we’ve entered into a little more than 25 transactions since the beginning of last year, the beginning of twenty twenty four, that has been driven to essentially a time period that you’re talking about Tim, making sure that we’re filling out and have all the mechanisms of action that we would like in neuro immunology, oncology building up that. So we have the robust pipeline so we can continue to develop things and that’s going to continue to be our focus. It’s not that we’re constrained by our balance sheet or leverage charts. We have a very strong balance sheet.

We have the ability to do what we want, but it’s really fitting in with that strategy. We have all the assets in place today to provide growth for at least the next eight years, as you refer to. We continue to feel very confident about our high single digit growth rate through the decade. And so that’s in place. So it’s really geared towards more early stage things looking to the future.

Tim Anderson, Analyst, Bank of America: Okay, let’s talk about obesity if we can. So a new area for you guys, it to me makes a lot of sense. A couple of years ago or maybe even a year ago, you guys had kind of consistently disavowed getting into this basement and you pivoted in a way, and you did this licensing deal with Kubra for an amylin compound. So maybe just remind listeners why the change in heart.

Scott Rantz, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, AbbVie: Well, I don’t know if I would say it was a change in heart to be honest with you. Mean, certainly it’s an attractive market. And I think all along we have thought if we found the right asset with the right level of differentiation, and think it would be helpful for Rupl to, you know, give some insights to what we saw with this particular asset. But so I I think, you know, we are a company that that, of course, is always gonna be opportunistic. We’re always gonna be strategic in looking at we’re doing things.

And it’s a it’s an important area and scenario that we couldn’t couldn’t you know, we didn’t wanna stay away from if we were able to find the right differentiated asset. And that’s what we Yeah.

Rupl Thacker, Executive Vice President, R and D Chief Scientific Officer, AbbVie: I mean, I think that’s what it is. It’s a thoughtful approach. And until you see the right entry point, that’s the one we saw here with Gubra. We like the we like the upfront. We like the 100% control at the commercial level and at the R and D level.

We like the amylin class. We like the IP that stretches out into the 2040s. We like the long half life. We like the delayed Cmax or where the Tmax hits, which is about forty hours. We saw that as a potential for better tolerability because that’s the insight we were having as we were monitoring the space, that thirty percent will drop in a month and sixty to seventy percent will drop in a year.

So these patients will likely come back, want something else, want something different, even though this comes a little bit later. So the tolerability was key, the half life being long, twice a month maybe, even once a month in maintenance. So these are all, I would say, really nice parameters that we saw that would potentially lead to a differentiated profile. Preclinically, we see maintenance of muscle mass with the current assets. You could see up to 40% loss of muscle.

We see bone preservation through calcitonin. It’s a DACRA pathway. So a lot of nice things that we see, and we’re gonna drive that. In the early data that we’ve seen here up at six weeks, already seeing almost 8% weight loss at a very low dose. So we’ll continue to test that out to twelve weeks, looking at titration, looking at dose extensions, and then we’ll start seeing some data next year and be able to design a robust phase 2B program.

Tim Anderson, Analyst, Bank of America: We had Amgen on stage prior to you guys. And the question I asked them was, if you’re not Nova or Lilly, and you’re trying to come into the market, in my opinion, it’s tough just to have one compound. And I think companies probably need to have a portfolio of compounds. And we’ve talked to you guys about this in the past, but your view on additional assets and is GLP-one on the target list to bring that into the organization as well? And you talked about dosing of your compounds.

So it sounds like every two weeks to start with induction and then maybe shift to monthly maintenance. So a long acting GLP would be something that would be fantastic to pair with.

Rupl Thacker, Executive Vice President, R and D Chief Scientific Officer, AbbVie: Yeah, I wouldn’t rule out any particular mechanism as we looked at the Gubra deal, the right fit, the right profile would make sense, and then we would go forward. The other thing I should mention we liked about the Gubra asset is the neutral pH for the formulation, so that might create a little more opportunity, flexibility for co formulations. So whether it’s a GLP or another mechanism that can create more ease for our formulators to get something together, so you don’t have to do multiple injections.

Tim Anderson, Analyst, Bank of America: So you guys are a way to go with that compound, right? I think that’s phase one. We’ll be advancing further, but I’d love to get your perspective on choosing to enter this space, you’re not gonna be selling your product this year, I don’t know what you wanna call it, ’29, ’30, something like that. Using a crystal ball, what do you think the world’s gonna look like in obesity in a five year window? When we get to the end of the decade where you guys will be launching, it’s really a pricing question more than anything else, because that’s probably the biggest debate at the moment is where’s price gonna go in this category, not only near term, but as we get the third, fourth, fifth, and the tenth product coming in, my view is that these are not actually expensive drugs, when I look at the value they provide, they’re actually cost effective, I think ICER will probably end up making that determination.

So I’m not convinced pricing needs to just continue to fall, and in most categories it doesn’t. Is this gonna be different?

Jeff Stewart, Executive Vice President, Chief Commercialization Officer, AbbVie: I think you’re right. I mean, I think already if you look at the and I think we’re like in the not the first inning, but like half inning of the game, to use the baseball analogy. And if you look at the just the way that over the history of this industry, the way that markets evolve, I mean, it’s hard to really envision when you’re in the first inning. But all we can say is like, look, there are the unmet need is enormous. The prices in the big scheme of things are already quite low.

And I think that when you start to bring differential innovation into the market, I mean, Rupl highlighted it, people are gonna have lifelong problems with with this condition. Right? There’s a billion people or more, and that market will start to cascade. And I think the prices in general will always be quite low, but I don’t see this, like, just disintegrating across the board when you can suddenly bring in a differential asset that people can find it much better tolerated. Their muscle mass is differently.

The dosing is differently. You get to a really, really nice way through clinical trials to think about maintenance doses. So I believe that we are very aligned, Tim, with your sort of point of view. I think this market is just gonna grow and grow and grow. It’s gonna fragment.

There’s gonna be different segments of people that pursue weight loss. I think there will always be a significant cash pay component to this market, which there already is now. And that’s one of the reasons, not the primary reasons, but one of the reasons with our aesthetics business that we thought that this was also quite interesting in terms of our ability to sort of win and play in that channel as well.

Tim Anderson, Analyst, Bank of America: Yeah, okay, good. Let’s pivot to immunology. So this is the biggest bucket of revenues for you guys. And really it’s kind of similar question, there’s pricing in this category and what you see happening beyond 2025. This year is marked by a new mechanism going off patent or a new product going off patent, which is Stellara.

We have Humira already off patent now for a few years. And when I look forward, Intivio biosimilars are a couple years away. Are those never gonna really have a material impact either on SKYRIZI or RINVOQ or pricing in the category? I mean, has gone down every year in this category. Yeah.

Single digit percent. Is that what we should just expect over the

Jeff Stewart, Executive Vice President, Chief Commercialization Officer, AbbVie: next five years? I think that for sure, if you take a step back to your point that this this is a volume game. I mean, this is a volume driven market. We talk about how robust the markets are in immunology. I mean, most of the penetration rates are still quite low.

I mean, the highest penetration rates and the biggest unmet need is, you know, mid forties for IBD. So there’s plenty of headroom. We’ve also talked about the way that since these are lifelong conditions that as people age and innovation comes in, line of therapy advances. So now you have meaningful third line plus market sizes in many of the immunology markets. And certainly market share gains are gonna be a big piece of our story given the the differentiation of the product.

So in some ways, we’ve anticipated there always is price pressure. It’s been low single digit, but having 10 or 12 head to head trials and we keep announcing more is some way for both payers and for the prescribers who actually can see the benefit to distinguish these brands. And so we feel pretty confident. I mean, we know in TiVo LOE will come at some point, plus it’s very significant in ulcerative colitis, particularly. And last year, we announced the eleventh head to head trial where we think we have high confidence we will win.

So I think it’s a combination of our development program and the ability of these products to continue to perform. But we do net net plan for price degradation over our planning cycle.

Tim Anderson, Analyst, Bank of America: You guys recently stepped up SKYRIZI guidance to 2027. I still think it’s too low. That product is straight up and what is gonna slow it down?

Jeff Stewart, Executive Vice President, Chief Commercialization Officer, AbbVie: It’s a good question. I mean, I’ll let Scott talk about how the guidance works, but look, we’re very, very pleased. And again, we have the right assets at the right market and look, there is competition, but fundamentally we still feel that in some ways that’s not necessarily a bad thing based on how markets grow and cascade. So I don’t know, Scott, you can talk about how we think about our guidance for our brands.

Scott Rantz, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, AbbVie: Sure, certainly. In 2027 SKYRIZI and RINVOQ combined 31,000,000,000. That was an increase for SKYRIZI of 3,000,000,000 and RINVOQ for one. So SKYRIZI is 20,000,000,000 of that RINVOQ eleven of that. I would say it was the increase was across all indications.

I would say IBD in particular is growing at a faster rate for UC and CD, but it’s strong growth across. And I think we continue to see momentum and you saw us also increase our guidance this year between the two of them by $900,000,000 in the first quarter.

Tim Anderson, Analyst, Bank of America: RINVOQ, your oral therapy in immunology. We kind of picked up through industry folks that docs are getting more and more comfortable with the safety of that profiling, right? There was the big shock event from Xeljanz a number of years ago. As a black box, the possibility of getting a black box removed off the label?

Jeff Stewart, Executive Vice President, Chief Commercialization Officer, AbbVie: I think it’s think it’s tough. Well, I’ll I’ll turn it over to Ruple but I think one of the things is there is increasing comfort with RINVOQ. It’s growing in all the indications quite nicely and as as you know, in the majority of the indication, it is stepped behind a TNF based on that issue. So it’s really a second line and third line agent. So we can co position it very effectively around the world with SKYRIZI because of really that fact base.

We recently got a new approval, GCA, where there was no step. Now it’s a little bit of a different dynamic there, but it’s really GCA is the first of our sort of third wave of RINVOQ indications where we will we’ll have, you know, five new ones that come over the next few years that will add probably, you know, at least a couple of billion in incremental revenue as we run into the 02/1930 time frame. But I don’t see that it’s it’s a clear path to sort of fundamentally change it, but the marketplace is speaking, Tim, to your point, where there’s significant comfort level as you get into you know, we launched RINVOQ in 2019. So there’s more and more comfort in

Tim Anderson, Analyst, Bank of America: that.

Rupl Thacker, Executive Vice President, R and D Chief Scientific Officer, AbbVie: Yeah, in terms of a box warning, I think it’d be challenging outside of an outcome study to rule it out and you wouldn’t be able to enroll it. What would you compare against? But as Jeff stated, there’s a increasing comfort as they see the data, particularly in non rheumatoid arthritis, even in GCA, the average age of those patients was 70, which is much higher than rheumatoid arthritis, high dose steroids, high cardiovascular risk. We saw one or two cardiovascular events, and they were in the placebo arm. And that was a week 52 study.

So not that that overturns the box warning and the need to communicate that, but that direct data is in front of rheumatologists that they’ll now see, and it’ll just reinforce the safety profile that they’ve seen in their own patients.

Tim Anderson, Analyst, Bank of America: Even the atopic derm is a little looser, right? It doesn’t say you have to fail anything as clearly. So can you just talk about where use of RINVOQ is really specifically in treatment naive frontline patients?

Jeff Stewart, Executive Vice President, Chief Commercialization Officer, AbbVie: Yeah, so basically you’re right. Our indication is after a systemic or a biologic. So you can look at that as if you’ve already tried like a cyclosporine or mycophenolate or some of the older generics, you can go right to RINVOQ or you can use it after DUPIXENT. I mean, most our business is after DUPIXENT, so DUPIXENT failures. But we do have maybe 20% of our market is actually prior to DUPIXENT after one of the older generics.

You know, it’s clearly a very important drug in the armamentarium. We are a clear number two in that marketplace. You know, Dupi is obviously the big incumbent, but we’re pleased with the performance because we can still capture, we’re capturing roughly 20, low 20s percent of in play share a market that’s growing very quickly. That market is the fastest growing immunology market.

Tim Anderson, Analyst, Bank of America: Last question, because we’re out of time. Just your views on oral IL-twenty three, so J and J and protagonists have the Cytochorokinra data quite compelling in psoriasis, even more compelling in the phase two IBD data, and that’s a disease where you commonly use orals. So there’s a paradigm there. So is that a threat in your view to your injectable products like SKYRIZI and Tarenvogue?

Jeff Stewart, Executive Vice President, Chief Commercialization Officer, AbbVie: I think what we’ve seen is that the oral medications are, you know, while they’re modestly effective, they don’t give the same type of clearance or effectiveness as the injectables. Now they are IL-23s, but they’re more somewhere like a Stellara type patient, which has really been ablated in the marketplace. Now having said that, I do think it will be a meaningful product. And by meaningful, I mean that you know, if you’re thinking of a Votezla or a Ducra or the way that the particularly The US market because it’s really the orals only really play in The US market, how those are positioned over time. But I think I think that the injectables based on their convenience and also just the level of efficacy will be insulated from, let’s say, a direct impact.

Tim Anderson, Analyst, Bank of America: Great. Okay, well, we’re out of time. So I wanted to very much thank you, Jeff, Scott, Rupel. Thanks to Abby for showing up today.

Scott Rantz, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, AbbVie: Yeah, thank

Jeff Stewart, Executive Vice President, Chief Commercialization Officer, AbbVie: you Tim.

Scott Rantz, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, AbbVie: Thanks for having me.

Tim Anderson, Analyst, Bank of America: Thank you. Great.

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