AstraZeneca PLC
Q3 2005 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 9 Nov 2005

[Operator:]

Ladies and Gentleman and welcome to the MedImmune 3rd Quarter Earnings Conference Call. My name is Ann Marina I will be your coordinator for today. At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. We will be facilitating a Question and Answer sessions after the presentation of today’s conference. If any time during the call require any assistance please “*” followed by “0” and a coordinator will be happy to assist you. I would now like to turn the presentation over to Mr. Peter Vozzo, Director of Investor Relations. You may proceed.

[[Peter Vozzo:]

Good morning and welcome to MedImmune’s Quarterly Conference Call of Investors. This call is being electronically recorded and the copyrighted by MedImmune. No reproductions, transmissions or copies of this conference call may be made without written permission of MedImmune. In this call, members of our senior management will discuss MedImmune’s financial results for third quarter of 2005, as-well-as the Company’s business outlook going forward. Please note that any statements for the Company’s prospects or future expectations are forward-looking statements. As you know forward-looking statements involve, substantial risks and uncertainties and actual results may differ a materially from expectations. Please refer to the press release issued earlier today that is related to this call and to our filings with the SEC for more information on the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ. Today’s press release describing our third quarter 2005 results, may be found at our website at www.medimmune.com in the box marked news, or with the archived press releases on investor relations page. And now, I will handle the call over to the David Mott, MedImmune’s President and Chief Executive Officer.

[[David Mott:]

Good morning everyone, thanks for joining us again. Let me begin by just remarking, what a quarter! The past quarter and frankly, the entire first nine months of 2005 have been a period of tremendous accomplishment and productivity across all areas of our business, commercial product development, operations, and corporate development. I actually have our entire Executive Committee here with me for the call today, and I must say this is the team I am proud to be part of. We have James Young, President and Research and Development, Armando Anido, head of Sales and Marketing, Edward Connor, Chief Medical Officer, Lota Zoth, Chief Financial Officer and I specifically asked Ed Mathers, who runs our corporate development function to join us this morning to take a figurative bow, because his group has really been bringing home the bacon for us during 2005. After Lota and I review the details of the quarter in our usual fashion for you, the whole team would be available for any questions you might have. During the quarter, we continued to make progress on many fronts toward our 2009 goals of generating approximately $2 billion in revenues and $2.0 of earnings per share before stock option expense. Worldwide sales of Synagis in the 2005 third quarter increased 66%, from the third quarter of 2004, due to a significant increase in Ex-US inventory stocking by Abbott international in anticipation of the season of strong growth. Domestic sales of Synagis increased, modestly during the same period as our US distributors built their inventories for the coming RSV season. We entered into an agreement Abbott, to buy them out of their US co-promotion rights for Synagis following the 2005, 2006 RSV seasons. This transaction provides us with substantial strategic operational and financial benefits in the future. We received regulatory approval in Japan for the use of the Synagis in children with hemodynamically significant congenital heart disease, at 8

[[David Mott:]

I would like to close by emphasizing that we’ve had an extraordinarily productive quarter and year thus far in 2005. We’ve made substantial progress toward achieving our long-term goals. The buyout of Abbott, US co-promotion rights for Synagis, the increased economics we receive to our expanded Ex-US distribution agreement with Abbott and the out-licensing of our HPV vaccine technology to both Merck and GSK, together have the potential to substantially drive the growth in our financial results over the next several years. The maturation of our late stage R&D pipeline and the substantial expansion of our overall R&D portfolio, promises to drive our long return growth. And we are clearly making the investments required to build a solid foundation for year business, as evidence by the recruitment more than 30 new Directors and Vice Presidents over the past 12-months, the construction of the new pilot lab and a new bulk vaccine manufacturing facility and the implementation of new technology initiatives, such as the corporate wide electronic document management system and a web based performance management system. We are intensely focused on building a world-class biotechnology company and I am pleased to report to you that, thus far in 2005 we are succeeding. I would like to thank our employees for their dedication and excellence and thank our shareholders for their continued support, now we will be happy to field your questions, please limit yourselves to one question each out of courtesy for those in the queue behind you, operator.