Teva at Bank of America Conference: Strategic Growth Focus

On Wednesday, 24 September 2025, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries (NYSE:TEVA) presented at the Bank of America Global Healthcare Conference 2025. CEO Richard Francis emphasized the company’s strategic shift towards innovation, debt reduction, and growth prospects. While Teva aims to enhance its innovative product line, challenges such as the loss of exclusivity for Revlimid were also discussed.

Key Takeaways

• Teva’s innovative business grew by 27% in Q2, offsetting a 2% decline in generics.
• The company is targeting $700 million in cost savings by 2027.
• Austedo and Ajovy are projected to reach peak sales of $3 billion and up to $2 billion, respectively.
• Teva aims for an investment-grade credit rating by late next year.
• The launch of olanzapine LAI is expected to leverage existing physician relationships.

Financial Results

• Innovative Business Growth: Teva’s innovative segment saw a 27% increase in Q2, driving improvements in gross margin, EBITDA, and EPS.
• Cost Efficiency: The company is on track to achieve $700 million in savings by 2027, with two-thirds expected by the end of 2026.
• Debt Reduction: Teva plans to achieve an investment-grade credit rating by the second half of next year, freeing up $400 million in cash by 2027.
• Revenue Projections: Austedo is projected to reach $3 billion in peak sales, while the Ajovy franchise is expected to generate between $1.5 and $2 billion.

Operational Updates

• COGS Improvement: Teva is implementing efficiency programs at its manufacturing sites to significantly improve COGS by 2027.
• R&D Approach: The company is adopting a "small R, big D" model, focusing on high-value opportunities and external collaborations.
• Manufacturing Optimization: Teva has reduced its manufacturing sites from 90 to 54, focusing on enhancing the efficiency of existing sites.
• Austedo XR: The extended-release formulation now accounts for 60% of the business, with a focus on increasing revenue per patient.

Future Outlook

• Growth Drivers: Teva is focusing on the growth of Austedo, Ajovy, and the launch of olanzapine LAI. Darii presents a significant opportunity in the respiratory market.
• LOE Management: The company aims to absorb losses of exclusivity through continuous product launches and strategic portfolio management.
• Biosimilars and Partnerships: Teva is exploring opportunities in the biosimilar market and has partnered with Sanofi on Dupixent.

Q&A Highlights

• Capital Allocation: Teva prioritizes debt reduction, investment in innovation, and strategic business development activities.
• China Opportunities: The company is exploring strategic partnerships and de-risked assets in China.
• IRA Impact: Teva is committed to transparency with investors while maintaining a competitive edge.
• olanzapine LAI Launch: The launch is expected to be strong, leveraging Teva’s experience with Yosedi and physician relationships.

For a detailed account of Teva’s strategic plans and financial performance, please refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - Bank of America Global Healthcare Conference 2025:

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: Going to get going with our next company presenter at the BofA Healthcare Conference here in London. Pleased to be introducing Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and CEO Richard Francis. My name is Jason Gerberry. I’m one of the SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma analysts here at BofA. Richard, thanks for joining us. It’s been an interesting year and some interesting events over the next 12 to 18 months, which we’ll get into. Maybe just to kick things off, if you can just talk a little bit about capital allocation. Right? It’s kind of central to what Teva is doing. Net debt paydown is obviously very important, but you also have a very interesting, innovative new product story. How do you keep feeding that new product story?

Do you feel like you have enough in-house to kind of feed the beast, so to speak, or how do you kind of juggle that balance, right, of finding assets that maybe have backloaded dollars that you can put into your engine and keep feeding the engine in that new product flow?

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: Great question. Firstly, good to see you, Jason. Thank you for inviting us here. What a great opening question. If I had asked you to pick one, I would pick that one to ask me because it sums up everything that is going on at Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. The fact that your first question is about how do you feed the innovative beast from when we spoke two years ago shows you the progress we’ve made as Teva. I think the last 12 months we’ve shown that the innovative part of our portfolio is now getting to a critical size where it’s making a meaningful difference. I highlight to people that in Q2 our generics business declined 2%.

I could talk about the fact there’s prior year comparisons and stuff, but despite that, we’ve grown innovative business 27% and that grew our gross margin, grew our EBITDA, grew our operating margin, and grew our EPS. I think when the math starts to play like that, you know that the innovative business now is starting to get to a size that is meaningfully different and is driving this transition. The good thing is we have so much more to come and we’ve got some more, obviously, we think Austedo is going to go a $3 billion peak. We think our Ajovy franchise is going to be $1.5 to $2 billion. We’ve got dual action rescue and everything. We have a lot of products coming through in the short term, which will keep driving that growth. When it comes to capital allocation, we are really, really thoughtful about that.

A part of that is how do we feed the beast, as you say. Part of that’s about making sure we’ve already streamlined our business from capital allocation to our generics business. We reduced our pipeline from covering every drug that comes off patent to 65% of drugs that come off patent. That basically covers the majority of value anyway. There’s a lot of diminishing returns. The extra 35% doesn’t really give a return and it compromises the ability to execute on the products you want to launch in generic. I think we reduced the investment there in R&D. We’ve allocated that to innovation. We have this operational efficiency-derived modernization of Teva where we’re taking a significant amount of cost out of the business, $700 million. That is to help keep driving the right allocation to innovation.

The second thing is, as we grow the top plan, which we’re doing, as we grow the innovative business, although we’re keeping our investments relatively flat from the % of revenue because our revenue is growing, we can actually still increase our absolute dollars. The final part you add is, you know, BD. We think about capital allocation and we do want to do BD because we think we’re really good at selling innovative products. We want more. To your point, we want them to be, you know, thoughtful and allocated capital. They need to be de-risked, and they need to be able to be synergistic to our infrastructure. That way we can create margin improvement and keep it on a margin improvement journey. Those are things we’re doing. I think we’ve been really disciplined in how we do that.

I think there’s a lot more to come in the next, I’d say, 12, 24, 36 months because of the olanzapine launch next year, the momentum we have in Yosedi, the momentum we have in Austedo, the renewed momentum we have in Ajovy. I think it’s an exciting time. I think we’ve moved from maybe non-believers, now we’re moving into the people who believe that everything is going to transition to a biopharma company. I think soon enough we’ll be there.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: What’s going on in China right now with the biotech scene? An opportunity for Teva because there is an opportunity to get assets that are more de-risked, right? Perhaps we’re seeing structured deals or lower upfronts versus buying a public U.S. biotech company that’s further along but more expensive. I just wonder, with kind of how you try to balance your capital allocation objectives, are you looking in China? Do you feel like that’s an opportunity to perhaps bolster the pipeline externally?

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: Absolutely. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Firstly, the great thing about Teva Pharmaceutical Industries becoming this innovative company is we don’t have deep traditions and ways of doing things. Our R&D approach is, firstly, we have a small R, not a big R. We have a small R, big D, and we’re agnostic as to where the biology, the science, and the products come from. We’re not saying it has to be all in-house. To China, absolutely. I think you saw the deal we did with Fosun on our PD1 IL2, where we partnered with them to do the early-stage clinical development, which means we get data really fast. It doesn’t cost us anything, and we can utilize that data to either refine our own clinical programs in the West or we partner with that asset.

That’s just a clever way we do it, which, by the way, no one else does, because maybe people have too big an R internally themselves and they want to use that. My Head of R&D and my BD guys were over in China in August exactly doing that. For us, it’s about what you’ve said: what is the right asset at the right price, the right capital allocation. Maybe that’s the West Coast, maybe that’s East Coast, maybe that’s in Europe, maybe that’s in China. Right now, China looks to be high quality, good value. It has to be good value for Teva because we’re very mindful of our capital.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: Okay. Can’t leave the capital allocation discussion without asking the TAPI question, right?

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: You can’t. I mean, you’d just be lost.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: People would want me to ask the question, right?

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: They’re going to ask that question.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: Three Q no go, no go, right? I believe. Anything you can offer on that topic, I won’t.

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: I think you’re summing it up really well.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: Okay.

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: Three Q.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: Okay.

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: The one thing on capital allocation I would say, by the way, is paying down debt. This is just important. I know you didn’t ask it, but I’m going to be a bit of a politician and give you an answer you didn’t ask for. We’re really going to pay down that debt, and we’re going to be investment-grade. We think the second half of next year. As we pay down debt, we’re going to free up $400 million of cash in 2027, just a matter of we just don’t pay interest on. $400 million more cash in 2027. There are little things in Teva that if you look in the detail, you realize that’s going to happen. That’s going to happen. I think it was an investor who said to me, $400 million of cash in 2027 is like having an asset which generates $1.5 billion sales.

Those are just interesting dynamics. Not to deflect on the TAPI, the timelines are the same and we’ll have a going over by then.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: Second half IG is feasible without TAPI, correct?

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: Yeah.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: Okay.

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: Yeah.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: A big piece of that.

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: Which is important to understand. You do not need TAPI for the journey we’re on at all.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: Another big piece of this is keeping that EBITDA up slightly or flat, right? In 2026, you’ve talked a lot about this and the Revlimid dynamics coming off and how you defray some of that. Some of that is on the cost of goods side, right? Improvement of cost of goods in your cost efficiency plan. I think it’s $400 million or so plus improvement in cost of goods that would flow through. Can you maybe share a little more detail how you improve your cost of goods in that short period of time? Is it coming more on the people side? Is it more on the procurement side? Maybe if you can help people, because I think that’s the thing I think investors struggle with. It’s maybe a little bit more straightforward on the SG&A side, but on COGS, it’s a little murkier.

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: Yeah, it is. Firstly, we committed to save $700 million by 2027, two-thirds of that by the end of 2026. We’re on track to do that. We will do that. To your point, some of that is COGS and some of that is capital allocation. The COGS takes longer. We’ll have some COGS come through next year. The majority of COGS come through in 2027. That’s a three-year program. In my last company, I did a COGS improvement plan. I know what it looks like. I know how long it takes. What we’ve done at Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, it goes back to the opportunity we have. After the Actavis acquisition, we had about 90 sites. We’ve added to 54. We spent all our time closing sites, selling sites, but we didn’t make the sites more efficient. Now we’re driving the efficiency program. The opportunity there is significant.

We look at what we need to do. My comfort level around the COGS improvement we’re going to have is high. One, I’ve done those before. Two, I’ve normally done them in organizations which have always had COGS improvement. We haven’t even reduced our COGS the years I’ve been here. Going forward, we will start to. It’ll be the things driving operational efficiency, running our sites with less people, and all those plans already in place. Improving the efficiency of formulations of MSMT, all the things that are just a standard operational excellence segment that we haven’t applied. We’re applying those. By the way, we’ve done six programs already. We’ve increased that to 14 programs. It’s called TLMS, Typeware Efficiency. I’m not sure which site they are, which line they are, to see the productivity improvements. I can see that coming through now. The majority of that’s in 2027.

We get some in the second half of 2026. I think that is something I feel comfortable about. One thing we haven’t, though, factored in is as you reduce COGS, theoretically, you still want the pets to insert molecules, which means you can either improve your gross margin or you spend contracts you’d otherwise get out of. We don’t factor that into our forward-looking forecast. We just say we have a COGS improvement. That improves our gross margin. That’s it. Once again, there’s an argument for the tenders we get involved in. Some of those tenders we don’t necessarily bid for because of the lack of COGS improvement. I think there’s a lot more to come there. By the way, it doesn’t end in 2027. Our COGS improvement program goes on every year for eternity. We just didn’t have it for the last seven years.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: As we think about 2026, is it primarily continued growth of brands plus cost efficiencies? That’s going to be the primary drivers to offset the loss of Revlimid. Are there anything you’d flag in the new product pipeline that maybe investors underappreciate? We talk less and less about the generics, but nonetheless, there can be some surprise meaningful new product contributors either on the generic or biosimilar side.

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: Broadly speaking, I think you’re right. I could talk about some things which could be interesting, but don’t forget we’re losing a big generic product in Revlimid. How we build off that is obviously continued momentum of an innovative business. We have the cost efficiency program. That’s the reason why we can offset all the profit loss that we get from generic Revlimid, which means why we grow our EBITDA. I’m confident in doing that. I do think we have olanzapine, which we’re going to launch next year, which could be something which adds to that. The caveat I will give to that is we’re very, very excited and optimistic about olanzapine. The one area that we will not do is we will not discount happy to get access. We will hold the line as we did with Yosedi.

That may mean that we have a lot of patients go on at the end of next year, but maybe they’re not all commercial patients paying. We see olanzapine as a big growth driver long term. We want to hold the right value proposition as we did with Yosedi. I say that could be something which plays out well for us, but we won’t move to have a good Q4 or second half of next year with olanzapine just to make next year an interesting one because you’re paying for 2027, 2028, 2029. I do think because we’ve held the line with Yosedi with payers and they’ve seen the value of that, then I think they probably know we’re going to hold the line with olanzapine.

I’d like to think that helps them and we’ve got a better relationship now come to the table and say, okay, we need olanzapine, need a long-acting olanzapine. That’s good to the table early, but we’ll see.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: Okay. Maybe shifting gears to your branded business in Austedo. Last quarter, your competitor called out a big step up in their gross to net deductions for their products to a two-player market, right? Which caused investors to wonder, oh, is this like a downward race to the bottom on net pricing? My understanding is Teva was ahead in contracting its business and your competitor caught up in contracting. There were obviously some competitive differences in products that are now neutralized. It’s seeming like a 50-50-ish kind of market that the outlook is really now on kind of category growth more broadly into an underpenetrated market. I’m wondering if you have a differing view just on how that category is shaping up irrespective of IRA. We can get into that.

In terms of just sort of the current net pricing dynamics, I know you keep talking about this is more of a category growth story than anything.

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: I think you summed it really well. I think it’s a category growth story. It’s slightly different with Teva. I think for us, it’s all about growth categories. The nuance in that, which I see as becoming a big nuance, is as we’ve launched XR, more and more patients are going on to XR. As more patients go on to XR, they end up with a higher average dose. That leads to a change in revenue per patient. It also led to changes in compliance and adherence because they’re probably on a more efficacious dose. I think that’s the nuance with us. I think, yes, it’s a level playing field. For us, we’ve consistently said this about growing the category, making sure patients are on the right dose, the right compliance programs, the right adherence. If we keep doing that, this product will go above $3 billion.

Any questions about that?

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: You talked about fewer compressive scripts, right? You get more value per script with the higher dose when you go to XR. Is that?

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: Yes. When we’re on BID, and when you move the patients on BID and they go through titration and onto drug, if a patient that goes to XR starts on XR but goes through titration onto drug, there’s four, I think it’s four or five less scripts in that journey. The script data steps down significantly, the dynamics, which is why we start also to show the milligrams per patient, because that gives an idea of that’s growing, which shows the importance of XR, but it also shows that’s helping drive revenue growth as well.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: Where are we in that journey? I think XR is about 60% maybe of the total business now. As that continues to shift, is that dynamic just going to muddy the analysis of growth when you look at scripts and trying to assess kind of, you know, where patients are on a milligram basis? Is there a tailwind still from a mix as well?

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: Firstly, I don’t think muddy is, no, it doesn’t complicate it. We’ll actually get to a point where the steady state, as we have more and more patients go on XR, which is to your point, it’s 60%. That was an older data point. New patients on XR, so that’s I haven’t seen the latest one. As that happens, we’ll get to a steadier state where the majority of patients, acute patients, are XR. The triangulation between TRX, milligrams, and revenue will become an easier one to forecast. We’re in that transition period now, which is probably where people are. I would say going back to it’s going to be driven by new patients. If you have new patients titrated on a more optimal dose, having a better compliance and adherence program.

One of the things I say to people, which is why I’m so confident about Austedo, is, when we started talking two years ago, Austedo had peak sales of $1.4 billion in everybody’s forecast. We were considered to not be very good at what we did, which is probably fair. All the things I talked about with this, targeting segmentation, whether it’s compliance, adherence programs, whether it’s specialty pharmacy contracts, all the things we put those in the last 18 months, they are not optimal. They’re not like where I think they should be. If we keep executing, regardless of what the environment does, we will keep getting better. I can see us getting better and better and better for a number of years. Don’t forget, I was at Biogen for 14 years driving these programs.

We’re not at the level we can be on patient adherence, our patient services taking a script, so a script to our drug. Patients fall out, they get a script, they don’t get on drug. We have so many areas of this leaky bucket, as I call it, to fill that made me think this product has a huge runway. Don’t forget, when you have a patient that comes off therapy, it’s not too dissimilar to my prior experience in MS. They always come back because you have an episode again and then you seek treatment. There’s a cycle. I think there’s a lot of opportunity here. We just got to keep getting better and we keep getting better. That’s why I think this plan will keep growing.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: I think you’re at your target of $3 billion, you know, even beyond 2027, adding roughly an incremental billion of reps and absorbing IRA along the way, right? Like, is that largely, is the battle at the psychiatrist? Because I imagine the psychiatrist sees a lot of these patients who got atypical antipsychotics over their lifetime and are the patients most likely to have these movement disorders, right? Is that the, you know, when you layer on a presence with your LAIs, you know, is it really about, you know, fostering that relationship with psychiatrists and getting them to protect and treat more?

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: Yeah, that’s a big part of it. Don’t forget, we are on the psychiatric conferences as well. It’s amazing. We’re now considered the number one psychiatric company, which is extraordinary because I suppose we’re going to have three products in that meaningful product. Yeah, that’s a big part of it. I go back to the other big part of it, we still don’t have every patient going through the titration path. That’s opportunity. We still don’t have every patient going through our patient services. That’s opportunity. We don’t have every patient on an adherence to compliance program. That’s an opportunity. For me, the psychiatry is definitely one, and we’re educating and expanding our use of psychiatrists because we realize absolutely there are more patients than what we call the lower decile of the doctors, but all the other ones.

When I look at the patient model and the revenue model, I go through all of these things. I say, okay, if we tighten that by a %, tighten that by a %, this goes up. The opportunity we have is significant. Now they get harder to move compliance and adherence from here to here. It’s super hard. As long as you’re incrementally moving that, yeah, for me, it’s one of those products where you have a lot of opportunity to grow. Part of it is patients doing my psychiatrists, but part of it is the work we need to do. I think we have a lot of good programs in place. We have a really, you know, we’ve built a talented team who are doing things that they know how to do and done it other companies to a higher level. It’s not, we’re not feeling our way.

We’re executing on a really clear plan.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: Okay. How are you thinking about LOE given XR, I believe, has maybe some longer dated IP than the settlement you have on IR, which I believe is like 2032 or 2033 with some other companies? Is that a longer tail? Given that 60% plus are at XR now and that will keep going up, if you can.

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: Yeah, I mean, look, so XR is 2041. BD is 2033. If you look at the natural progression of how we’re just doing with new patients on XR, we’ve got eight years, and I think eight years, the majority of patients will be on XR without us doing any programs. To help facilitate that, just the direction of travel is there. I think that’s really key. By the way, that feeds into a comment I have to make. When you look at Teva Pharmaceutical Industries going forward, we don’t have any meaningful LOE, and we just have new products we’re launching. We’re in this weird space that I’ve never been in my career, where we’re just constantly launching products which are meaningful to this company, like massively meaningful for a gross margin.

Our LOEs on the horizon are in a timeframe that if we keep launching and Duvakitug comes to the market, another indication of Duvakitug, another indication of Duvakitug, and GR15 comes to the market, one of the three or four indications, LOEs can be absorbed. We won’t have a mega, I mean, I’d love a Keytruda, but Vixen, don’t get me wrong. Because we don’t have any of those, and I’m already planning out 2040, 2045, you know, we’re long-term planners, okay? That’s what revenue, how do we keep that going? As we looted products, we’re thinking, well, those are ones we can absorb because we have these coming through. We’re, as I said, a very unique company that I think is not being maybe seen as the way I see it, which is understandable because I look at it every day.

The periods of 2030 to 2040, which is so exciting, I mean, period now to 2030 is a game changer. Where we will be in 30 years and how long we’ll be there is quite extraordinary.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: Okay. IRA timing is November 1 through November 30. We don’t know when within that timeframe it’ll happen. Hopefully, it becomes before your 3Q call, would be my hope.

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: That’d be helpful.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: It would be helpful. What I wonder is what you’ll disclose once it’s out. I.e., you know, I think the last CMS press release just gave us discounts relative to WAC against 2023 levels, right? It was for that, you know, a year. It’s relative to 2024 levels. I just wonder how we’ll interpret that, how investors will interpret that. Do you plan on offering any sort of additional commentary to interpretability of this, or is it just, hey, 2027 targets are good, nothing else to see here, move on?

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: Look, we’ve worked really hard with yourself and investors to help them understand that their need is about the model, it’s about the forecast. We want to, we understand that need and we want to help that. We’re committed to doing that. At the same time, I don’t want to give away a competitive situation in the net price. I suppose we’re committed to help. We’re going to try and not be crude and say, hey, 2025 is done. At 2027, we’re going to hit it or whatever. We’ll try and actually help you do that within the confines of, I don’t want to expose ourselves on a net pricing. Very committed to do that. I heard that a lot. I don’t want to help because one of the things I’ve realized in this journey on Teva Pharmaceutical Industries is, hey, I believe in where we’re going.

Other people have lagged that, but other, I think that’s been fair enough because people have said, how can I, I can’t see in the numbers. How do I model this? How do I model that? We’ve listened and then constantly we try and help people do that. We’ll do that in this situation just to manage expectation. I just want to thread that needle and not give away something because there’s a competitive information that could be detrimental to the company long term.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: Yeah. Okay. Maybe shifting to the LAIs, here, you had an update earlier in the week. You know, you’ve shot through 100% of the target number of injections, either you’re at 4,000 or so, versus 3,500 was maybe the FDA discussed number. Was that intentional to overshoot just to give yourself a little added cushion, you know, from a regulatory standpoint? Sometimes FDA can default to class labeling, even despite agreements or whatever. I guess that’s like the FDA peculiarities of the FDA that we have to sort of live with in our business, right? I’m just kind of curious as you thought about it and the need to maybe have additional safety data to put your best foot forward in that filing.

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: No, look, I mean, there’s things that happen that don’t always play out. We get more sensitive involved. We get issues. We get less dropouts. Some things happen. I think we’ve ended up with a, I don’t think we intentionally go too far over because obviously there’s a cost base. There’s capital that we want to be mindful of how much clinical trial costs. By the way, we think that, and the FDA thinks that statistically we needed 3,600. That’s statistically shown. We got more. That’s helpful. We also have a previous study which we also submitted that data. So show that. No, it wasn’t that. Although that said, you know, if you speak to Dr. Eric Hughes, I do actually have my skewed inhaler. We’re recruiting so fast on that. We’re probably going to over-recruit on that. That’s not a bad thing because we get exacerbations happen.

We get more exacerbations. We get a day to eat out quickly. Emmanuel Walter, MSA, I’m not saying we’re over-recruiting, but we’re recruiting so fast that it probably comes to a point where we probably will end up over-recruiting because you don’t want to stop patients with that disease coming to a study where they’ve been lined up to do it. We try to be quite precise. We do want the FDA to say we’ll have more data. Maybe that’s more helpful for them. I think it’s quite patent already.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: Yeah. What do you think the launch of olanzapine LAI looks like given that you’ve got Yosedi out there, right? You’ve had a chance to sort of be in the field with a product that’s, call it overlapping, right? Does that give you a leg up? Do you feel like, I know you’ve talked a little bit about maybe the Yosedi launch could have been better, for being more prepared, right, into that launch. Now I imagine you’re fully prepared for the olanzapine launch. Do you think that that’s an even more robust launch? Yosedi’s done pretty well.

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: Yeah, I mean, look, give me an opportunity to hedge it out. I’m not going to. Yeah, olanzapine should be a really good launch. Yosedi’s been a good launch and a good recovery. We shouldn’t have to recover, but you know, we did have a good track in place at that time. We don’t need to just come together as a team. Yeah, I mean, it’s the same physicians, the same players, the same hospitals, the same hospital DMT committees. We know the landscape. They know who we are. We have credibility with that community. We’re going in now with an offering where we say 75% of your patients with scleroderma, we can help you with our olanzapine LAI. I think my expectations are, and we’ve been planning for this now over a year now prior to the olanzapine launch. That would be two years of planning before we launch.

That’s how it should be for Yosedi. It’s about two weeks. It shows a good recovery by the team, it shows a good product profile, but we don’t want to do that. I think olanzapine, I’m going to, you know, I don’t think I’m sticking my neck out by saying it’s going to be an excellent product, an excellent launch. The caveat I always have is we will not give access to the discount we don’t think is fair. We’ll hold the line. If that means we have a slower uptake from a revenue point of view versus a patient point of view, so be it. If you do any care well market research, the physician excitement is high. They know this product. This product is super efficacious. They know Yosedi. They know our technology. They trust our technology from a long acting. They know who we are.

We do a lot of studies at several sites in the U.S. I’m definitely leaning into this one, it sounds, as I hear myself talk, I’m pretty managing expectations because, you know, I think we should be good and we’re prepared to be good. I see no reason why we won’t.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: A lot of us modeling LAIs tend to just, you know, sum some % of the oral volume. On a recent call, you talked a little bit about how patients may be on a paliperidone injectable, maybe are not getting sufficiently under control and could even be switch candidates. Is that an upside as you kind of look at the opportunity commercially for that? Is that base case in your view that you can, you know, get olanzapine oral volume, but also get some paliperidone injectable switches?

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: Yeah, look, I think what I think is it’s hard to quantify, but if you bring out a very good long-acting olanzapine to the market, how does that change the dynamic of the patient flow? If patients flow quicker onto olanzapine because the physician knows I’ve got a long-acting, do they cycle from long-acting to long-acting olanzapine quicker? This is an opportunity. I think it’s going to become more dynamic. I think long-acting could create more opportunity there if we have a long-acting olanzapine. Absolutely. I use sort of the analogue of Europe. Europe, long-acting is a bigger market share than the U.S., and the long-acting olanzapine market, I think it has more potential. How that will play out, but once again, at $1.5 billion to $2 billion, we’ve tried to give a bit of a range there to sort of say there’s different ways this could play out.

Once again, at $1.5 billion, it’s a game changer for Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. If you put that there with Austedo at $3 billion, you’re putting that there for Ajovy still growing, you’re putting that there for Darii. That portfolio of innovative drugs from a gross margin point of view is a game changer. Our whole P&L changes. Our ability to drive EPS growth changes. For me, I was at a conference yesterday where people were saying, what drives company value? Is it your multiple or is it your ability to drive EPS? There’s a big debate. No one can tell. I thought, that’s okay because we’re going to do both. We are going to change our multiple to another bigger X company, and we are going to change our EPS because financially we’re just going to keep driving our EPS up. That’s an interesting thing.

I think we’re one of the few companies that can say that.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: Okay. Darii seems like it’ll be an asset that maybe gets more spotlight next year, right? I think looking at the AZ product, I think they’re about half a million units or scripts already, which is a pretty impressive volume. I think maybe the revenue recognition is lagging just because they’re building that market out, which is good for you as you come to market. There’s 10 million units total. I’m just kind of curious, you know, what are the goalposts for success here? As you kind of like look at your data, is it just, hey, let’s get our product out there, let’s match it on efficacy because these component parts maybe work the same, but we’ll compete on device, we’ll have a broader label, and that’s going to be our angles to competitively differentiate.

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: Exactly. Look, I mean, it’s sort of a weird sweet spot. You let AZ create the market, and who are really credible in their specialty. They create, by the way, a very good market, a very good price point, a very good managed market as well. We come in, we just come in and we say, okay, right now give us pediatrics and the people who are struggling with their device. We have a similar device. I think from that wedge we can just grow out because obviously we can be used in all the patient population, but we start with they can’t be used in pediatrics, we can. Doctor, just use us. That’s an easy thing for a doctor to give. My experience in commercializing products is if the ask is reasonable for a physician, they’ll do it.

As the device, our device is simpler because we make so many devices, we know it. I think that compliance and adherence and ease of use will start to play out. I think we’ll get a bigger share. If 10 million patients go on, follow the guidelines, this market will be massive. When we say $1 billion for Darii, we’re assuming not 10 million patients who should be on dual action respiratory therapy go on. I think what’s interesting is the excitement and the continued positive narrative from AZ on this. It’s not sexy, but it’s a long-term product for that. They see this as long-term value because it’s very hard for people to follow into this market because otherwise it’s just so difficult to make. I think that’s another one that, by the way, I think our pipeline has no value attached to it.

All the ones I obviously slightly deterred by, but Darii is one that’s interesting because this will work because we know these products work, we know how the device works, we know the combination works, they’re total work. One will think you’ve got to have quite a summer to move into it. Obviously next year we’ll have the full enrollment clinical trial this year. We may be in a position to have enough exacerbations where we’ll get data next year. We’ll have the easiest launch in 2027. It’s pretty close. AZ will have done a full-on market. We come in and from a payer point of view, once we have access, it’s like you have to listen to a pediatrician. It’s a silly dynamic which is nice with that. We’re not competing against the big rebate goliath because in a minute it’s pediatric.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: What are the pushes and falls in this sort of market, right? Is it that payers are still, is it short-acting bronchodilators the alternative or the legacy alternative? Is there a guideline-driven push?

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: It’s guidelines. The guidelines are up to 10 million Americans who are supervised should be on a dual action risk for data. They said that’s really key. People forget. I think it’s, I don’t know if it’s been created, it’s created from wrong. Thousands of people die every year because of this. They die. They shouldn’t die. Then they get hospitalized as well. The reason why the guidelines are there, and I think the reason why the payers will be open to this is, is one, there’s a cost of steam. Obviously, death is not costly, but hospitalization, all the things that happen, which these people get hospitalized, you know, there is a need for this. The guidelines are clearly in place. In the respiratory, people follow guidelines. It takes them a bit of a while, but once they get into it, they see they’ll start to follow guidelines.

Where anybody can educate on guidelines, it’s a company like AZ who are respecting the respiratory. They know what they’re doing. Once again, I think it’s just another market that’s a new market, but will be clearly defined by the time we come in. I feel maybe it’s missing.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: Okay. We have like five minutes, so a couple of quick hitters here. Is there a reason why AZ can’t get the pediatric label over time? Is it just that they underpower their trial for pediatric patients and they shot themselves in the foot, or they could eventually go after?

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: That’s a really complicated question.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: They could eventually go after pediatric patients.

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: I think moving on to pediatric. Yeah, they can. There’s no question. I think, look, if you’re first to market, the biggest part of the market is adults. Yeah, I mean, children become adults.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: Yeah, as we sit here today, they’ve made no effort to go after pediatric.

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: I think there is some adolescent data potentially coming out, but it will take time. By the way, pediatric recruitment is really, really hard. We just focused on it. I’m looking at it every month. That will follow. Once again, we have a differentiation of device. When that happens, I think that’ll be more of a, as Tedi said, it’s a market leader. They need to be market leader because they have a different P&L for us. If we get $1 billion, it’s a game changer for us.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: Okay. European tariffs, how does that affect your business at all? I guess the 15% now, right? Does that affect you guys in any way?

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: Yes and no. No, because Austedo is made in the U.S., so we have no tariffs on that. Obviously, if you do generic, which we’re still waiting for clarity on, it sounds like we’ve got our generics.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: It’ll be exempted and anything kind of.

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: We model, when we said in, I think it was Q1 earnings, we modeled 10% tariffs across our business. We said that won’t impact our ability to deliver our guidance this year, our new guidance, and our guidance for the future years. We feel quite insulated. Don’t forget, because we have a limited innovative portfolio, we don’t have this challenge that Big Pharma has, which is that these factories that are reporting, we don’t think make Austedo or Florida. We make our long-acting products in this room.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: Okay. Just pushes and pulls going into 3Q, it sounds like maybe international markets, generics, tough comp, U.S. generics, tough comp, maybe some Revlimid phasing differences 3Q to 4Q that maybe are emerging or evolving real time. You also get European FX tailwind too, right? Is that kind of like a good synopsis?

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: Yeah, it’s a great synopsis.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: Okay.

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: Absolutely nailed it.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: All right. Duplicate Q2, you know, phase three is sometime soon that you’ll get this off and running. I guess, will you have two dose arms in the drug, one every two weeks, one every month? How are you thinking about dosing considerations with that?

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: I think on the earnings call in Q3, we’ll have the full trial design and explain that to everybody and educate because we’re excited about that. One thing I will say, just to quote, subcutaneous will be the structure that makes it so that we cross all of them just in case there’s any narrative about doing that, not that. Maybe let’s leave the full disclosure of going through our phase three clinical trial and do the Q2 to the earnings just to make sure people dial in.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: Okay. I think they’ll always dial in. How do you think about commercial, right? I think generic and biosimilar and biosimilar should be available, right? Biosimilar and Humira will be available. It’s a new frontier in the biologics world where two big mainstays, especially in UC, right? I guess Stelara is the big one in Crohn’s. You’ve got biosimilar options across the board of all these biologics. How do you see that affecting kind of payer behaviors and access dynamics when you have another new innovative biologic class coming through?

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: If I can answer in two ways, first I’ll answer, which is slightly how it is. If you go back to the U.S., the rebates, the addiction to rebates, one could argue that the introduction of biosimilars makes no difference because they don’t use that as an opportunity. They just beat up the rebates on the next product, right? We could say, yeah, that’s sort of one school of thought. The other one is, it doesn’t really matter because the cycle rates through these indications is so continuous. Nobody stays on therapy because nobody has the efficacy to maintain it. The reason why it doesn’t matter about Humira or Stelara, it doesn’t matter because they’ll cycle through those. I think it’s in CD, 80% end up on surgery anyway. It’s a really horrific disease. There is nobody who’s controlled. They just go through different MOAs.

Based on that, that’s why tier one out. People do really well. Duplicate do really well. With either one of those scenarios, it does really well. This is a bit pessimistic because I have a biosimilar portfolio. I think that’s going to change. If it does change, I think the interesting thing is what you see in Europe. When biosimilars are introduced, you see more treatment biologics earlier on, which would argue that it means you start to cycle earlier on into the new innovative products. Either of those, I think it’s possible.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: Is there a dynamic, like in oncology, right? When you get a third or fourth line patient, you just end up treating them for a shorter duration because they’re pretty far gone and the newer therapies don’t work as long. When you get in an INI disorder, like you see your Crohn’s and you’re catching them third, fourth line, right? Are you just going to get them for a much shorter duration of therapy and the value, you know, using this language, but value per patient, right, shrinks when you use later line?

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: I’d say it might be the opposite to happen. If you look at the data in our phase two, the efficacy we had in patients predisposed to biologics, the efficacy looked tiny. Just interesting. I see a bunch of it out in phase three. What you see if you take the oncology one, if it works in this patient, tend to get it to move further up. I think what happens because there’s a level of dissatisfaction in QC and CD, I think tier one A proved to be more efficacious as well. It’ll be more tolerable and have a better safety profile and less monitoring, less black box. I think actually physicians will start to use it earlier on because why go to something you have to monitor as a black box? It’s not more efficacious.

The payers can talk to you about it, but once again, these are difficult to treat diseases. They end up in surgery. I think physicians have quite a bit to say. The rebate’s right. Don’t forget we partnered with Sanofi, who has Dupixent. They have quite a big rebate opportunity. I think, yeah, let’s say we start there. I think we’ll move up because one thing people are forgetting about tier one, I believe it’s going to end up to be at least, if not better, from a revenue point of view. It’s really safe and tolerable. You don’t have that in this category across all these products. I think it’s really unique. I think it’s going to be used a lot more than people think. Once again, even if it’s not, the Teva is a game changer because we’re not a $50 billion innovative revenue company.

If you put a $2 billion duplicate to Teva, it’s a game changer. That’s the thing that’s always interesting when you talk about these products. They could be duplicates, it could be a $10 billion authentication. It could be more, it could be less. It doesn’t really matter. We’ll push it to be as big as we can. Obviously, Sanofi needed to be big as they can because they got Dupixent coming off that. For us, if we fall at the low range, which we said $2 billion to $5 billion in IBD, if it’s at $2 billion, it’s still a game changer for us. That’s without the other indications. We’re going to have two more indications next year. We’re in that transformational time for Teva. The next five years are super exciting. Then 30 to 40, just getting better.

Jason Gerberry, SMID-cap Biotech and Specialty Pharma Analyst, BofA: Okay. Thanks for your time, Richard. All right. Thank you, Richard, for joining us at the conference.

Richard Francis, CEO, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries: Thanks, Jason. We appreciate it. See you.

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