Key questions from the third quarter earnings call conducted by Pfizer Inc. on October 18, 2007.
Tim Anderson (Sanford Bernstein): Is the biotherapeutic center that you are going to establish on the West Coast going to be a bricks-and-mortar facility?
Jeff Kindler: We are starting with the facility that we already have in San Francisco called Rinat, which was the neuroscience spin-off from Genentech and has done quite, and we are excited about some of the opportunities that we have there and Dr. Goodman is going to initially start with that base. We are in the process developing the future business plans, but you can look forward to creating a network of organizations without a significant investment in bricks-and-mortar, because I do not think that will be necessary, and it will be an integrated approach to business development that involves both what Corey Goodman is leading, as well as what Martin Mackay, at Oregon, our business development group is leading.
Tim Anderson (Sanford Bernstein): Do you have any comments about Biogenetic being for sale and whether this is something that Pfizer would potentially consider?
Jeff Kindler: We do not comment on that kind of speculation. We will always keep eyes open at any means to build our business through alliances, licensing or acquisitions and when the right opportunities present themselves, we will act appropriately. We want to be disciplined in how we allocate our capital and we want to be thoughtful about that and so, we look at all these opportunities from that perspective. We are going to focus first on product potential, especially with our gaps in our therapeutic areas. We will focus secondly on expanding our platform potential, such as new ways to deliver therapies and the most important consideration here is to ensure that we deploy our capital in the best possible ways to create opportunities for creating shareholder value.
John Boris (Bear Stearns): Could you comment on the dividend increase?
Frank D'Amelio: As a company, we have been committed to total shareholder value. Going forward, we will continue to be committed to total shareholder value.Two years ago, the dividend was 76 cents, this year it $1.16, so it has increased 53% over the last two years. It was 32% in 2006, 21% in 2007. We will announce the 2008 dividend in December of this year for the upcoming year, as it has been our practice from the past.
John Boris (Bear Stearns): What about buybacks?
Frank D'Amelio: We announced this year a repurchases of up to $10 billion. At the end of the quarter, we have repurchased $7.5 billion worth of our shares, 291 million shares. We are on a path to achieve up to 10 billion in our repurchases. in January, we will announce our 2008 buyback program as it has been customary.
John Boris (Bear Stearns): Could you comment on the sales reps or the detailed effort that you have behind the Exubera brand and how are you going to be reallocating that important resource going forward?
Jeff Kindler: We are going to redeploy the vast majority of the effected colleagues in commercial medical and R&D functions, and there will be no reductions in the US field force. We are going to redeploy people in those groups to support projects and products that have greater commercial potential. Manufacturing opportunities for redeployment are pure and they depend on the ultimate role for the impacted sites. We will be exploring alternatives for those sites and their employees and consultation with works councils and other appropriate bodies.
John Boris (Bear Stearns): There was a manufacturing facility in Germany that went along with your acquisition of the full rights on Exubera. What are you going to be doing with that?
Ian Read: We have been shutting that facility.
John Boris (Bear Stearns): When do you anticipate seeing stabilization of the Lipitor trends in the United States?
Ian Read: We were down about 13% in the U.S. On scripts, the pricing and rebates were basically a watch given the fact that we had a favorable settlement in the third quarter of 2006, which basically offset our favorable pricing of impact for quarter. We appear to stabilize the switch loss at about 50% below the peak, post the advent of multi-generic simvastatin, in fact, we are now at the pre-multi-simvastatin level. New patient population or volume is fluctuating around to a 20% share. We are competitive, against the brand of statins in this marketplace. Our access remained strong, our access remains in the range of 65 to 70 at Tier 2 across commercial and medicare lives. We see the market while slowing up from 12 to plus growth to about high single-digits coming out of this year and I see that being maintained in 2008. Our strategy is to continue using our commercial resources on the switch, the new patients and maintaining access. Those strategies are being applied against on the professional platform to differentiate Lipitor on the efficacy across the dosage range; it is safety and outcomes, a strong DTC program using print and web ads. We are also looking at using those resources and targeting those sites where we see the most activity on generic switching. We are also using related things like value cards to deal with co-pays. That is the environment we see going forward for Lipitor.
Jami Rubin (Morgan Stanley): Could you talk about the level of cost reduction for 2008?
Frank D'Amelio: We are making good progress on our cost reduction initiatives. In SI&A in 2007, we increased the guidance from $500 million to $600 million. That was the SI&A element of overall cost only. If you think about some of the things we are doing, just operationally to demonstrate progress, you can bucket most of our cost reduction initiatives into five categories. Field force reductions, manufacturing site closures, research site closures, outsourcing and offshoring. In the field force, we have implemented 20% reductions in the US and similar reductions in many markets outside of the US. In manufacturing of sites alone, we have announced nine exits this year. In R&D, we have announced six exits. In terms of outsourcing, we have outsourced some of our IT operations. In terms of outsourcing and offshoring, we have outsourced and offshored some of our financial back office operations. It is a macro statistic. At the end of last year, we had 98,000 employees. We had announced the 10,000 employee reduction at the end of this past quarter we had about 87,000. We have a wide range out there for 2008. We are still in our planning process. We are comfortable enough at a macro level to reaffirm the guidance we have provided on the various elements. We updated the $1.5 billion to $2 billion at constant currency, given some of the things that are going on with the dollar relative to other currencies. We have reaffirmed the range and the guidance.
Jami Rubin (Morgan Stanley): Why are you stopping development in the second generation insulin device?
Ian Read: When we look at the marketplace, there are two barriers we underestimated. First one is the barrier to moving patients with the physician community earlier to Exubera. That is the resistance from physicians and patients to going on to insulin in any form earlier than they have been to-date. That is one major barrier. The second one is per se, the burden that the Exubera technology represented to the practice, which went from the lung function testing, the training on the device, and while the size of device may be a component of that, you have to look at the totality of it.
Jami Rubin (Morgan Stanley): Where the Lipitor 993 patent fits at the Patent and Trade Office? |