At Amgen’s 2013 Business Review hosted for analysts and investors in New York City on Feb. 7, Amgen Chairman & Chief Executive Officer Bob Bradway and key members of his senior leadership team delivered a series of presentations designed to provide deeper insight into the company’s long-term strategy.
Bradway highlighted the company’s core strategy that continues to focus on innovation, discovery and development of breakthrough molecules to address unmet medical needs, and manufacturing of high-quality biologics. He spoke of pivotal data from eight late-stage programs anticipated between 2013 and 2016 and progress with growth drivers such as international expansion and upcoming plans to launch six biosimilar therapies beginning in 2017. Bradway also touched upon the company’s continued commitment to serve patients and return value to shareholders.
Members of Amgen’s senior leadership team also touched upon evolving elements of the strategy within its R&D, commercial, and manufacturing organizations.
Sean Harper, M.D., Amgen’s executive vice president, Research and Development, told investors the company’s R&D approach will continue to focus on innovations that address unmet needs for patients with serious illnesses, but will follow four strategic priorities:
- Demonstrating the value of our medicines;
- Following a “biology first” approach;
- Identifying and validating targets through human genetics; and
- Driving improvements in operational efficiency.
“Amgen is uniquely positioned to shape the future of biotechnology,” noted Harper. “Our new R&D strategy embraces a ‘pick the winners’ approach, which takes advantage of the knowledge we’ve gained from decades of experience and our industry-leading position in human genetics that has resulted from our acquisition of deCODE.”
Tony Hooper, executive vice president, Global Commercial Operations, spoke of Amgen’s commercial strategy to reach new patients. This includes expanding Amgen’s geographic footprint in new and emerging markets, including Japan and China; and improving the patient experience with new delivery devices. He also noted plans to begin launching a portfolio of six new biosimilar medicines starting in 2017; four cancer medicines and two for inflammatory diseases. “Biosimilars represent a meaningful growth opportunity for the company,” he said.
Jonathan Peacock, executive vice president and chief financial officer at Amgen, reviewed Amgen's results over the past 12 months, and the strategic priorities that will allow the company to successfully execute plans for broad-based growth in 2013 and into the future. Peacock highlighted strong commercial execution, continued pipeline progress, increased focus on operational excellence and return on investment, recent acquisitions, and capital allocation strategy. Peacock detailed that Amgen has continued to execute on its capital allocation strategy focused on returning, on average, more than 60 percent of adjusted net income to shareholders through dividend growth and share repurchases.
Bradway, Hooper, and Peacock also said that Amgen is focused on developing new manufacturing processes and technologies, driving expanded throughput and flexibility and lower capital needs.
Forward Looking Statements
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