Bristol-Myers Squibb at Morgan Stanley Conference: Strategic Insights

On Monday, 08 September 2025, Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY) presented at the Morgan Stanley 23rd Annual Global Healthcare Conference, offering a strategic overview that highlighted both advancements and challenges. The company emphasized its growth strategy, focusing on current products, pipeline progress, and financial discipline. While optimistic about their trajectory, executives acknowledged ongoing challenges in policy and market dynamics.

Key Takeaways

• Over 50% of BMS’s business is driven by its growth portfolio.
• Seven potential new molecular entities could launch in the next two years.
• AI investments have saved approximately $250 million in the supply chain.
• The Cobenfi launch is progressing with over 2,000 weekly prescriptions.
• BMS is actively engaging with policy discussions on tariffs and Most Favored Nation status.

Financial Results

• The growth portfolio now constitutes over 50% of the overall business.
• Significant Q2 growth was noted in products like Reblozyl, Breyanzi, Camzyos, and Eliquis.
• AI investments have led to approximately $250 million in supply chain savings.

Operational Updates

• Cobenfi has surpassed 2,000 total prescriptions weekly, with a focus on expanding prescribers and securing broad access.
• The sales team is targeting hospital settings and expanding retail efforts to boost prescribing frequency.
• Direct-to-consumer advertising for Cobenfi aims to increase patient demand.

Future Outlook

• BMS plans to launch seven new molecular entities over the next two years.
• The Novoxaban program anticipates key data readouts in acute coronary syndrome and secondary stroke prevention next year.
• The partnership with BioNTech for BNT327 is progressing with clinical trials in multiple cancer indications.

Q&A Highlights

• BMS remains open to external investments that align with strategic and financial goals, while prioritizing internal R&D.
• The company is working constructively with the administration on policy issues, focusing on transparency and affordability.

For more detailed insights, please refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - Morgan Stanley 23rd Annual Global Healthcare Conference:

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: All right, thanks. I think we’re going to get started. I’m Terrence Flynn, Morgan Stanley’s U.S. biopharma analyst. I’m very pleased to be hosting Bristol Myers Squibb this morning. Joining us from the company, we have Chris Boerner, the company’s CEO, and Adam Lenkowsky, the company’s Chief Commercial Officer. For important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley Research Disclosure website at www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative. With that, I’m going to turn over to Chris for some opening remarks, and then we’re going to go into Q&A. Thanks so much, both, for being with us today. Really appreciate the time.

Chris Boerner, CEO, Bristol Myers Squibb: Thanks. It’s great to be here. Maybe just a quick update. I think the market is pretty familiar with the LOE exposure that we have with the company. Maybe I’ll just give you a sense of where we are now, almost two years into the journey that we’re on as a company. Broadly defined, we’re working against a strategy that has sort of three big components to it. First, we’ve got to deliver on the products that we have on the market that are going to drive the growth of the company as we get to the back end of the decade. Adam, obviously, can speak to more details around it. I think if you look quarter over quarter, we’ve seen consistent performance coming out of the commercial organization. Most recently, we showed very good growth in the second quarter.

The growth portfolio is now well over 50% of the overall business. When you look at that portfolio in Q2, we saw really nice growth from the products that you need to see growth from: Reblozyl, Breyanzi, Camzyos, the immuno-oncology portfolio, Eliquis, while not in that portfolio, also performed well. The new launches, be it Reblozyl or Cobenfi, are also off to a good start. Adam can talk more about that. The second key component is, in addition to those on-market products, we had to deliver on our late-stage pipeline. Over the next two years, we have seven potential new molecular entities that could launch. We have at least as many meaningful lifecycle management opportunities.

If you sort of pull the aperture back just a little bit and you look towards the end of the decade, that could be 10 new medicines and at least 30 meaningful lifecycle management opportunities by the end of the decade. It’s critically important that we deliver on that portfolio. We got a full-court press there. Of course, we have the ability to continue to bring innovation into the company where it makes sense. You saw us do that in the second quarter with the partnership that we announced with BioNTech, as well as Phylochem, which is an addition to our radiopharmaceuticals business with RAISE. The third thing is we’ve got to continue to be very financially disciplined. We’ve made good progress there.

That means being smart about where we make investments, funding the things that are going to drive growth, but being diligent about stepping back from the things that are not. We’re looking at the organization and how we operate, whether it’s structure or process. You guys just put out a paper, I think, last week on AI. We put a full-court press on digital and AI. Just to give you a sense of how that’s going, over the last year in our supply chain, we’ve been able to pull out roughly $250 million as a result of the AI investments we’ve made in that space. We’re talking about meaningful numbers. You add that up, that financial flexibility translates into strategic flexibility, which is critically important for a company going through the sort of LOE exposure that we have. We’re about two years into this journey now.

If I had to summarize it, I feel like we’ve got a lot more work to do, obviously. We’re certainly heads down. All things considered, I think we’re in a good spot. I feel good about where we are. We’ve got to continue to execute. If we do that and execute at the level I know we’re capable of, I feel good about us delivering on the growth ambitions by the end of the decade.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: Great. I know we’re going to get into a lot of these topics and the resulting questions here. Maybe just the first one, the high-level side. You mentioned one of the focus areas is obviously the external investments. As you think about your mix of internal versus external, what’s the right steady-state mix as you think about where to invest those dollars internally versus externally? As you think about the external opportunity set, you know, obviously, you guys have been fairly active there. Is there still a robust opportunity set? Maybe just talk to us where we are in the cycle.

Chris Boerner, CEO, Bristol Myers Squibb: Yeah. Obviously, both are important. Bristol Myers Squibb has historically always sourced innovation externally. We’re going to continue to look for opportunities to do that. I think that with respect to the opportunity set, just to get to the second part of your question, the criteria that we use is largely unchanged. We look for opportunities that make strategic sense for us. They’re in therapeutic areas that we know well, where we’re the rightful owners or the rightful partners of those assets. I think that was at play with the BioNTech agreement that we signed earlier in the summer. We look for opportunities that have to make financial sense. I got to be able to stand in front of investors and say that we’re going to deliver a return to investors for this investment. It’s got to be an area that we like the science.

If those three things are present, then we certainly have the capacity to go after it and pursue it. Business development remains a top priority. Having said that, you can’t move away from the fact that R&D investment, internal R&D investment, has to take priority. First of all, anything you bring into the company externally, you’re going to put it on that R&D chassis. That chassis needs to be running smoothly. That’s important. A high-functioning, highly productive, and efficient R&D engine is the lifeblood of companies in this sector. Always, that will take a priority for us. We’ve got a big focus, and we’ve had it since I became CEO, to ensure that we have the most productive and efficient R&D organization in the industry.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: That’s a good segue to the next question I had, which is on the second quarter call, you talked about reviewing some of the near-term studies to ensure timely delivery, but also high probability of success. You alluded to that in your earlier comments. Maybe just give us an update in terms of how long a long process you are right now. If you do find something in one of these trials, what are some of the steps you could potentially take to optimize PLS?

Chris Boerner, CEO, Bristol Myers Squibb: I mean, we have been looking at R&D productivity since I became CEO, as I said. I think there’s a lot involved in that. If you step back, you can think about it in two broad categories. The first is making sure that we hit the timelines that we set when we made the investment. Our late-stage pipeline is critically important to the shape of this business as we exit the decade. We need to make sure that we’re delivering those programs on time. Every Monday morning, Adam knows this on the commercial side, but we review commercial performance. For those key late-stage programs, we look to see how are they doing in terms of recruitment. If we find that some sites are running behind, we talk about it. We problem solve, and we engage to make sure that those sites catch up or that we mitigate any impact.

One area is just making sure that we deliver these programs. The second is making sure that you deliver with the highest quality. Again, this is across programs. We’re looking to make sure that before we lock any databases, we are ensuring we’ve got data, that all the data elements are present, that protocols are followed. That’s an effort that’s going to be ongoing, again, not for any specific study, but really across all of these late-stage programs. If we find opportunities to make improvements, we want to move and do so quickly.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: The one we get questions on is just the aDep program. I know we’re going to talk about Cobenfi, but that trial, maybe an update in terms of timelines there, is that still, should that still be expected this month? Is that something that’s likely, you know, later in the year?

Chris Boerner, CEO, Bristol Myers Squibb: As we said on the second quarter call, we still anticipate that aDep-2 will have a data readout by the end of the year. Keep in mind that aDep-2 is part of a broader portfolio of studies with aDep. We have aDep-2, again, that we expect to read out by the end of this year. We have aDep-1 and aDep-4 next year. The important thing to take away on the aDep program is, first and foremost, we have a lot of confidence in the role that Cobenfi can play in this area based on data that we’ve seen with our existing indication, the belief that we have in the science, as well as data that goes back to the late 1990s that Lilly published around Zanomaly. If you add all of that up, the scientific rationale for pursuing the aDep programs remains very, very strong.

Also, we’ll have to have that full data set next year in order to file. The timelines for ultimately getting approval remain absolutely unchanged. We feel good about this program. We’re going to continue to prosecute it. As I said earlier, we’re going to make sure it reads out and that reads out with the highest probability of success.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: OK, great. Maybe, Adam, just over to you, maybe just give us an update on kind of where we sit with the Cobenfi launch. Obviously, a really important product in terms of that growth portfolio for the company. I think there has been a lot of focus on the weekly scripts. Every Friday morning, everyone’s looking at those.

Chris Boerner, CEO, Bristol Myers Squibb: I’m sure you guys are too.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: Where do we stand with the launch? I know we’ll unpack some more of this.

Adam Lenkowsky, Chief Commercial Officer, Bristol Myers Squibb: Yeah, thanks, Terrence. The Cobenfi launch is tracking well and is tracking in line with our expectations. As you just mentioned, we’re seeing steady and consistent uptake around TRXs, which is important, now surpassing 2,000 TRXs on a weekly basis. We’re also looking very closely at adding new prescribers. That’s a key performance metric that we are looking at closely. That’s also progressing very well. I think most importantly, what we’re hearing from those physicians who are prescribing is very positive feedback on Cobenfi’s differentiated profile. That said, we knew it was going to take time to unlock the entrenched prescribing behaviors that existed in this space for more than 30 years here. We are going to continue to execute our plan. I’m happy to expound on that plan.

We feel very good about where we are today, and we believe that this could be a very big drug in schizophrenia.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: Can you give us any more granularity in terms of that number of prescribers? Maybe remind us what your target is, where you are now, how you’re thinking about the breadth of that further?

Adam Lenkowsky, Chief Commercial Officer, Bristol Myers Squibb: There are roughly 30,000 writers in terms of the psychiatry community. However, only a subset represent the majority. Roughly 10,000 or so represent the majority of prescribers. We’ve done a nice job in penetrating a good portion of those Tier 1 and Tier 2 physicians, but we still have room to go for sure. One of the things that we’ve been able to do over the last couple of months is continue to execute our plan. One of the things we wanted to do was, number one, secure broad access and reimbursement. We’ve done that very well in Medicare and Medicaid with virtually 100% access, and we’re making good progress on the commercial front as well. Now, about 60% access in commercial, and we expect to see that accelerate in the end of the year.

We’ve deployed now a hospital team into the Cobenfi sales organization and medical team because roughly 20% to 25% of starts are in the hospital setting. That will allow us to accelerate the number of Cobenfi initiations, and those patients then move into the community. We’re able to follow those patients and increase demand. The second thing that we’ve done to really drive increases in physician adoption is expand our retail team. We know that the depth and breadth of prescribing is critical. We found that we have to increase the frequency on some of these doctors, particularly lower-tier doctors, in order to change those behaviors. Finally, one of the things we’ve done with Cobenfi now for the first time, we’ve just introduced direct-to-consumer for Cobenfi to help galvanize patients, their families, caregivers, in order to go in and ask for Cobenfi.

Taken together, we feel good about where we are, and we’re very excited about the upward potential that we have with Cobenfi.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: Do you see that the hospital team or the retail team is having more of an impact in terms of when you think about the return on investment?

Adam Lenkowsky, Chief Commercial Officer, Bristol Myers Squibb: The retail team has responsibility for, you know, roughly 70% of the prescribing out there, and we’ll get a, you know, win with that team. That said, you know, 20% to 25% of schizophrenia is important, and it gives us a really good opportunity to, you know, unlock those prescriptions there. It’s going to take some time, obviously, because you’ve got to go in and get formulary access through P&Ts that could take, you know, a monthly basis or a quarterly basis, depending on the account. We’ve already seen a number of large institutions start to add Cobenfi to formulary. We think community is our biggest opportunity, followed then by the hospital segment.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: OK. Before we go over to the ADP side and commercial opportunity, just anything about gross-to-net dynamics that we need to be mindful of as we head into the second year, second half of this year into 2026, just from a high-level perspective?

Adam Lenkowsky, Chief Commercial Officer, Bristol Myers Squibb: Yeah, at a high level, I think the two dynamics we’ll see. Number one, as you move into the hospital, you’re likely to see an increase in gross-to-net, just by the nature of going into some of the hospital settings where you may be more apt for, you know, 340B. The second piece is, you know, just as you’re increasing volume, you’re going to increase your gross-to-net.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: OK. You know, we get this question a lot just ahead of the aDep data. Is there any learnings that you guys can leverage from schizophrenia into Alzheimer’s disease psychosis, and then how to think about the relative sizing of those two populations?

Adam Lenkowsky, Chief Commercial Officer, Bristol Myers Squibb: Yeah, it’s a great question. I think these are two very different patient populations, and their needs are different. Just think about schizophrenia. There have been options in schizophrenia for many decades, albeit those options are clearly suboptimal, which is why Cobenfi has the opportunity that it does have to really drive leadership in schizophrenia. However, in ADP, there’s nothing approved. When you look at where Cobenfi is, we have the opportunity to be the first product approved in ADP. There is off-label prescribing in the space. Roughly a third of atypical antipsychotics are used to treat ADP off-label. Recall those products carry a box warning in the space. They have side effects like EPS, TD, which are incredibly debilitating for those patients. When I think about the similarities with what you asked, I think there are some. Number one is that you’re introducing a new modality, a new MOA.

It’s going to take time to increase prescribing behavior and comfort. Safety is going to become even more important in an elderly patient population versus a younger patient population in schizophrenia. The lack of carrying a box warning, I think, is going to be incredibly useful for Cobenfi there. Finally, I talked about the importance of reach and frequency in schizophrenia. There is a high overlap in the schizophrenia to ADP market with psychiatrists. We will expand into really a larger market, which is in long-term care facilities, where primary care physicians often play a critical role in treating and prescribing atypicals. Right now, in this space, Seroquel is the number one prescribed antipsychotic in ADP. They’re using that just for sedation and not for the psychotic features of the disease. We think we’re going to be well positioned to transform the treatment of ADP.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: Is it a bigger opportunity, same size, or smaller than schizophrenia when you think about, you know, just the number of eligible people?

Adam Lenkowsky, Chief Commercial Officer, Bristol Myers Squibb: Yeah, it’s a bigger opportunity in Alzheimer’s disease psychosis, number one, because there’s nothing there. You’re looking at 6 million patients with Alzheimer’s disease, and about 30% to 50% of those patients have psychosis. They have hallucinations and delusions. Those are going to be a bigger patient population than we see in schizophrenia.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: OK. Before you get into the pipeline, Chris, we were talking before we kicked off just about some of the policy cross-currency here. You’ve been spending a lot of time in D.C., Europe, as you mentioned. Maybe just give us your kind of view on state of play here with respect to, if that’s possible, with respect to tariffs and MFN, because that’s obviously another frequent topic that comes up in the sector right now.

Chris Boerner, CEO, Bristol Myers Squibb: Sure. First and foremost, we continue to work with the administration on both of those topics. If you just step back and let’s start with the broad MFN topic, if you look at the executive order that was initiated, if you, frankly, if you look at the letters that went out, which largely replicate key elements of the executive order, there’s a number of things that we feel we’ve got a very constructive relationship with the administration on. First and foremost, I think there’s recognition that Europeans need to pay a larger % of their health care budget for innovative medicines. That’s one of the reasons that I spent as much time as I have in Europe. There, this administration has been very supportive through trade negotiations, for example, in providing a backstop to our efforts as companies to push governments to pay more for innovative medicines.

Obviously, those discussions are ongoing. In addition, the president made very clear that there are opportunities to cut out middlemen. We were the first company to go direct to consumer with Eliquis. That program was very well received by the administration. It’s actually been very well received by patients as well. Finding ways to make the U.S. system less complicated and thereby bring down the overall complexity and cost associated with the U.S. system is a great way to reduce the amount that patients pay in this country, which is a key objective that we agree with with the administration. Where it gets a bit tricky is how do you think about this concept of foreign reference pricing and the like. There, it becomes very important that we continue our efforts to bring costs down where that’s possible. We’re working constructively with the administration.

We also need to see those prices outside of the U.S. go up. With respect to tariffs, we’ve had very good discussions with the administration on this topic. Keep in mind that as a company, our exposure here is a bit less than others may have, primarily because we’re largely a U.S. company. As a result of that, the majority of our infrastructure is already in the U.S. Of course, we’ve had a number of months to anticipate potential tariffs. The discussions that we’ve had with the administration have been pretty straightforward in that if you’re going to do tariffs in this sector, you have to recognize that there are key differences between pharma and non-pharma. We’re going to need time to make any changes to the supply chain in this space. Tech transfer alone can be a year or more. That’s a conversation that’s been very constructive.

Obviously, we need to see how things play out over the coming weeks and months. We feel we’ve had a good dialogue there.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: Maybe there’s something that jumped in the cabinet meeting, linking tariffs to MFN. Is your view that these are coupled together? When we see some resolution, will it all come together, or are these two separate, still parallel processes and we’re going to get resolution on one, but maybe the other one’s still lingering? How do you think about that concept?

Chris Boerner, CEO, Bristol Myers Squibb: I think at this point, it’s absolute certainty that it would be speculation. The reality is that these are fluid conversations. They’ve been constructive. I think we need to let it play out, to be honest.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: OK. You mentioned your DTC efforts there with Eliquis. We’ve seen this from some of your peers as well. How do you think about leaning into that as a business model? Is that something that there’s just very specific use cases? Is this something that you could see leaning into more broadly at Bristol Myers Squibb and maybe across the industry?

Chris Boerner, CEO, Bristol Myers Squibb: I think that we were excited to be able to provide this for Eliquis patients. We think that a meaningful number of patients can benefit. Certainly, we’ll be looking across our portfolio to see if there are other opportunities. Conceptually, we like the approach of being able to cut out third parties that drive up the cost associated with medicines in the U.S. We’ll continue to look. Adam, maybe you can speak too.

Adam Lenkowsky, Chief Commercial Officer, Bristol Myers Squibb: Yeah, I mean, just piggybacking off of that, Chris, I mean, we know that policymakers, patients, providers have all called for, you know, increased transparency, increased affordability. The Eliquis direct-to-patient offering is now operational. It’s up and running for patients who can go online, get Eliquis at a 40% discount to the list price today. As Chris mentioned, you know, we’re going to continue to look across the portfolio to see what makes the most strategic sense. It’s obviously harder to do that with, for example, an infusible product selling it direct to patients. That said, when you look at some of the broad products that we have in our portfolio, we’ll continue to evaluate what makes the most sense for the company and importantly for patients.

Chris Boerner, CEO, Bristol Myers Squibb: We’ve been happy to see that other companies, after we announced with Pfizer the program for Eliquis, mentioned that they were going to be looking into their own portfolio to see if they could find opportunities as well. We’ll continue to talk to the administration not only about what we can do as a company, but potentially what we could do as an industry.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: OK, great. Maybe that’s a good segue into one of your key near-term pipeline readouts as we head into 2026. Novoxaban, this is your factor XIa inhibitor, potentially looking for a superior profile relative to Eliquis on bleeding. Maybe you could just remind us the scope of your phase III program there. What is the differentiated opportunity that, as you see it on the commercial side, Adam?

Chris Boerner, CEO, Bristol Myers Squibb: Yeah, Terrence?

Adam Lenkowsky, Chief Commercial Officer, Bristol Myers Squibb: Yeah, I’m happy to do it. Obviously, the Novoxaban program is a very important program for the company. We’ve had a long and storied heritage in the cardiovascular space for many years, starting with Plavix, Eliquis, and hopefully with Novoxaban. As a reminder, we have two data readouts coming next year in acute coronary syndrome and secondary stroke prevention. You don’t have to wait that long, and then the following year in atrial fibrillation. We feel very good about all three programs with our partner, Johnson & Johnson. When you think about the secondary stroke prevention, we conducted a large phase II study where we showed really robust relative risk reduction.

Importantly, it was the first time to be able to demonstrate that you can use a factor XIa inhibitor in combination with dual antiplatelet therapy without exacerbating the bleeds, which has been the limitation for factor Xa inhibitors like Eliquis. We look forward to that data readout. We look forward to acute coronary syndrome. In acute coronary syndrome, one out of every three patients are going to have another event within that same year. This is a great opportunity to use Novoxaban on top of antiplatelets to try to limit the events that happen post-treatment and also similarly with a lower bleeding. The largest opportunity is, as you would imagine, in atrial fibrillation. We’ll see that data readout, as I said, in 2027. Our confidence is high based on, I think, two key factors.

Number one, we took a very thoughtful and deliberate process working with Johnson & Johnson on conducting a phase II study in total knee replacement, where we were able to show low bleeds. There’s still about 40% of patients who are untreated or undertreated with factor Xa inhibitors. The second piece is, I think, what Bayer had read out now several months ago, we’re not seeing that at all in our program. We feel very good about where we are today. Obviously, we’re blinded to that data. We look forward to that data reading out in 2027.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: Can you give us any, I know you guys sometimes comment on the event rate in that AFib study. Are you able to give an update in terms of how it’s tracking relative to expectations?

Adam Lenkowsky, Chief Commercial Officer, Bristol Myers Squibb: We don’t give an update on how it’s tracking. What we said is we’ve got to deliver a profile that has a lower bleed than that of Eliquis. When you look at what was in our white paper, looking at a 1.33% relative difference.

Chris Boerner, CEO, Bristol Myers Squibb: We did say that that program, we have increased the enrollment in order to have that program read out on time in light of a slower event rate. Given the fact that, as Adam Lenkowsky mentioned, we now have moved well beyond where Bayer was when Oceanic was stopped, the DMC continues to review the data. Ultimately, at the end of the day, we got to see the study readout. We have a lot of confidence in what we’re seeing really across these three programs, and we’re excited to begin to see data readout starting next year.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: Maybe you could just speculate on this read across from the Bayer study. I mean, they’re going to have their FSP data Phase III later this year. I think there’s a question of just lateral read across on the event that it works or it doesn’t work. I mean, how would you frame the perspective on your program? I know there are a lot of differences.

Adam Lenkowsky, Chief Commercial Officer, Bristol Myers Squibb: Yeah, there are. I don’t think you can do, you could read through either study positive or negative, quite frankly, for what, you know, Bayer reads out. As you said, the study populations are different. The doses are different. We’re using the BID dose. They’re using a QD dose. We learned that from Eliquis. Just again, going back to our study, which I think is important, that’s where we have a lot of confidence based on what we saw in the phase II results. We feel very good about how the study was conducted, the dose that we chose, the patient population, and eligibility criteria in that study. We look forward to that reading out next year.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: Great. Maybe one more before we go to the next program is just you mentioned AFib, the largest opportunity. I think the factor XIa inhibitors are doing $18 billion, $19 billion now. You guys have the lion’s share of that with Eliquis. FSP, I think, is a smaller opportunity given it’s more of an acute treatment versus chronic treatment in AFib. Maybe ACS is the one where it seems like sizing that up is a little bit trickier. How do you think that compares relative to AFib if you had to size up ACS?

Adam Lenkowsky, Chief Commercial Officer, Bristol Myers Squibb: ACS is probably closer in line to what FSP can deliver. It’s still, when you think about both ACS and FSP and what we were able to deliver with Plavix, these are two large opportunities as well. Perhaps not as large as atrial fibrillation, but taken together, this is going to be, assuming positive studies, a multi-billion dollar opportunity for both BMS and J&J. We feel very good about the opportunity ahead.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: OK, great. The company obviously has been a leader in the immuno-oncology space for the last 15, 20 years or so. You guys have a very broad portfolio, not with just Opdivo, but OpdivoLAB as well. You announced a partnership with BioNTech for BNT327. It’s a PD-L1/VEGF bispecific. Maybe just anything as we think about the scope of that program. Obviously, you guys ran very broad studies across the board with a lot of the prior IO work you did. Should that be our expectation? Are there gating items? I think a number of us are watching to kind of read the tea leaves from competitor programs in terms of survival data, etc. How do you think about the scope of the program? Are there gating steps along that path that you’re waiting for before you really lean in aggressively on this?

Chris Boerner, CEO, Bristol Myers Squibb: Maybe I’ll start. Then Adam can speak to where we are in the clinical development plan. We’re excited about this opportunity, generally speaking. As you know, we have a long history in this space. We know it exceptionally well. We have great executional skills in this area across both clinical development and commercial. Quite frankly, what we liked about it, there were a couple of things we really liked about this strategically. Number one, we like the asset. Number two, clearly, BioNTech has done a lot in this space. They know oncology quite well scientifically. I think if you marry their expertise with respect to the design of this bispecific and what they liked about it when they brought it into the company with the expertise that we bring to the table, it’s a great marriage.

Moreover, I think it does, assuming the data play out the way we hope, give us the opportunity to be kind of in a pole position across some of these larger tumors. Adam, do you want to speak to the CDP?

Adam Lenkowsky, Chief Commercial Officer, Bristol Myers Squibb: Yeah. When you look at the CDP, BioNTech and Bristol Myers Squibb, we’ve announced three studies that are up and running, two of which are already enrolling patients. The third will enroll by the end of the year. Very timely, Terrence, because today we’ll be presenting data from our small cell lung cancer phase II study. We’re looking forward to that presentation at World Lung later this morning, Eastern Standard Time. We’ve announced the first-line small cell lung cancer study that’s enrolling. We’ve announced an all-comer first-line non-small cell study versus 189 standard of care. The third study is in triple negative breast cancer. All three provide a significant growth opportunity. This is just the beginning for the clinical development program for BNT327.

We’re working very closely with BioNTech leadership to identify a very broad and encompassing clinical development program, both in monotherapy versus standard of care, but also using novel combinations, which is also exciting for both companies because we do believe this has a true opportunity to become a new backbone of cancer treatment.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: Can you give us any early glimpse of what some of those combos might look like?

Adam Lenkowsky, Chief Commercial Officer, Bristol Myers Squibb: We haven’t shared that, Terrence, yet just for competitive reasons. As soon as they’re available, we’ll make sure that we share that as quickly as possible. Those will be posted, of course, on clinicaltrials.gov.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: OK.

Chris Boerner, CEO, Bristol Myers Squibb: I do like the fact that one of the things that BioNTech has done very well, really, across their portfolios, is think through rational combinations across their assets. We’ve done the same within our own portfolio. Obviously, we’re going to think broadly about this program. It will be a competitive space, as you well know. We have that history from the first generation of IO, and that’s why we think being in the first or second position here across these big tumors is going to be important.

Adam Lenkowsky, Chief Commercial Officer, Bristol Myers Squibb: The last thing I would just say is that when you look at the VEGF component, there is an opportunity to go beyond and even more broad than where PD-1 and PD-L1s play today.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: OK, that’s great. This kind of goes back to some of the earlier conversations we were having on just BD opportunities. I mean, this asset, BioNTech partnered it from a biotech company in China. Again, as you think about the opportunity set in China, I know you guys have been active there as well. Do you see an increasing number of opportunities coming out of China? How are you thinking about that in terms of your portfolio?

Chris Boerner, CEO, Bristol Myers Squibb: China is going to be an incredibly important source of not only business on the commercial side for us, but increasingly, we view it as a key place for R&D. BioNTech is one example of that. We’ve obviously had other partnerships with Chinese companies over the years. We’ve, like I think many of our peer companies, made significant investments in people on the ground there. One of the things that is very clear is you’re not going to be able to really navigate that market and be able to take advantage of the opportunities if you’re trying to do it from the East Coast of the United States. The way we think about China is it’s a very dynamic market. I was there three or four times last year.

Every time I went, I came back more impressed with the quality of the science that’s coming out, the speed with which programs can move forward there. The biotech market is thriving in China. It’s an exciting place to be. We continue to build our presence both on the commercial side, but also mainly on the R&D side.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: Great. Maybe just in the last couple of minutes, you could kind of walk us through what you’re most excited about here in terms of upcoming clinical catalysts throughout that balance of the next 6 to 12 months or so.

Chris Boerner, CEO, Bristol Myers Squibb: It’s hard to pick your favorite child when you have a really robust set of late-stage assets coming. I think if you kind of step back and say, where are we from a therapeutic area standpoint operating? If you start with oncology, I think we’ve talked about some of those. BNT327, we’ll continue to see data on 327 starting, as Adam Lenkowsky mentioned, today. Obviously, we’re going to have data on IBR and MEVI coming out over the next 12 to 18 months. That’s going to be important because those are big opportunities in multiple myeloma. While a big piece of that market has moved to IV, there’s still a lot of demand for an oral highly effective product. In fact, I was in the field not long ago, and I heard that from the community setting in the U.S. That data will be exciting.

Neuroscience, clearly, we talked about Cobenfi. We’ll start to see data play out in ADP over the next year. We’ve invested in seven new programs, phase III programs with Cobenfi this year. That’s the first of a string of data readouts that you’ll see now to the end of the decade. If you go into immunology, we’ll get data on SOTIK2 in SLE and Sjogren’s over the next 12 to 18 months. We will also continue to see data from NXT, our NXT cell therapy program. There, we are incredibly excited about the data that we’re seeing for that program. We’ll see a continuation there. Cardiovascular, I think we’ve already discussed Novoxaban and the importance of that data. When you look across the portfolio, we’ve got a lot of important data readouts that are coming.

Those are going to be important, as I mentioned at the beginning, for us to look at what the shape of this business is going to look like. If we execute those programs effectively, Adam Lenkowsky continues to deliver on the commercial side of the business, and we continue to be smart about how we’re running the company, I feel really good about the potential for us to deliver on the growth expectations that we have as we exit this decade.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: Great. Maybe just last quick one on ibrutamide. Any thoughts on where FDA stands on MRD and, you know, the accelerated approval possibilities?

Chris Boerner, CEO, Bristol Myers Squibb: The study that we’re running with IBR is one that we had reviewed with the FDA. We’ll have to see the data, and we’ll engage with the FDA. There are some new players at the FDA now. Having said that, we’re looking forward to seeing this data and being able to engage with those conversations if the data reads out the way we think it will.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: Great. Thank you so much, Chris.

Chris Boerner, CEO, Bristol Myers Squibb: Great to be here.

Terrence Flynn, U.S. biopharma analyst, Morgan Stanley: Really appreciate your time.

Chris Boerner, CEO, Bristol Myers Squibb: Thanks.

Adam Lenkowsky, Chief Commercial Officer, Bristol Myers Squibb: Thanks for the questions.

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