Earnings Labs

GSK plc (GSK)

Q4 2011 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 7, 2012

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Transcript

Andrew Witty

Operator

Okay. Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the GSK results. Thanks so much for all coming in. Hopefully, there are just about enough seats at the back there. Before I start, let me just introduce to you some of my colleagues from GSK who are here in the room, who may well get asked to answer questions, and if not, they'll be here for you to prey on at your leisure after we finish, in the coffee break afterwards. So we've got Moncef Slaoui, down here at the front, who's Chairman of R&D and also now looks after our whole Vaccine business; Simon Dingemans, who you will be hearing from shortly; David Redfern, who's the Head of our Corporate Strategy Group; Darrell Baker, who's running all of our respiratory development programs in R&D; and Patrick Vallance, who we've just appointed as Head of our Pharma R&D organization. Very good to -- oh, I'm sorry, and Deidre. Deidre, stand up, so everybody can see you. Deidre Connelly, who's head of our U.S. business. So what we want to do today is, I'll give you a little bit of an overview of 1 or 2 key themes that I think is important about the company and, of course, Simon will take you through some of the details of last year in particular, and how we see the business shaping up from a financial structural perspective. Basically, in terms of what I hope you've seen in the press release, and I apologize there’s an awful lot in that press release, but that's a good thing. There's a lot going on in this group, and there's a lot of good momentum building up in the different parts of the organization. What I hope you take away from the press release today, a couple of…

Simon Dingemans

Analyst

Thanks, Andrew. Well, certainly looking back to a year ago when I had the pleasure of sitting in the front row and not having to present, it seems a long time ago now, but it's given me a great chance over the last 12 months to get out into the company and really meet with a lot of our people and visit with a lot of our businesses around the world. And as I look back on those experiences and those conversations, it's very clear that the opportunities that Andrew and I talked about before I came on board to drive the returns faster and harder out of our strategy, are not only real but there are many more of them. And this is really the reason that we introduced in the middle of last year a new financial architecture to really try and align those opportunities, bring them together and collect the returns that flow from them in a much more coherent way that you're beginning to see in the results of the last year. But it's still very early days, and while the contribution last year was meaningful, particularly at the financial level, I think you're going to see much more of that going forward. So if we turn to the results for the year, very much in line with what we expected at this point in the delivery of the strategy. Underlying top line growth of around 4% and really encouragingly, driven by all 3 of our principal business drivers. So Pharma, up 2%; Consumer, up 5%; and Vaccines, up 11% over the course of the year, building on that global balance that Andrew just described for you. And that's despite a considerable number of challenges during the year, not least from the economic environment, political uncertainty…

Andrew Witty

Operator

Great. Thank you very much, Simon. Maybe I could ask Moncef to come up as well, and then we'll open up the floor to Q&A please. So any questions? Andrew?

Andrew S. Baum - Morgan Stanley, Research Division

Analyst

It's Andrew Baum from Citi. Three questions, please. Firstly, to Andrew and Deidre, you mentioned the U.S. as being a driver for future growth given what's going on in Europe. Perhaps you could talk to your level of contentment with existing Rx script trends, so the volume trends in the U.S. Because looking at some of your growth drivers in larger drugs, they're either flat or negative. So Lovaza, Tykerb, Veramyst, Advair and Flovent. So what can be done in the context of the reengineering of the organization that's happened to date? Second, in terms of tax rate. Simon, perhaps you could give a comment about the further acceleration of improvements for the tax rate for 2014. In particular, if you'd have a stab at where you think your tax rate is going to be at 2017 given the U.K. patent box. And then finally, on Vaccines, a question for Moncef. Seven vaccines, I think, have been added to the Japanese schedule of late from your competitors. To what extent that gives further opportunities to GSK to get its vaccines incorporated into the pediatric schedule?

Andrew Witty

Operator

Okay. Deidre, do you want to go first on the U.S. Rx position?

Deidre Connelly

Analyst

Thank you, Andrew. We have seen in the U.S. overall in the pharmaceutical market a contraction in terms of value in the general market of about 2%. And we think that is partly due to some of the macroeconomic issues. We've seen the economy impact the visits of patients to physicians’ offices at around 5%. In Respiratory, we're seeing about a 7% loss of patients that are visiting physicians with respiratory problems. So overall, the market has seen a negative impact. But I would point, Andrew, to some of the products that are growing double digits in our portfolio, for example, Votrient, Arzerra, Promacta, Jalyn. That gives us confidence in the current growth of those products and some of the products that we've launched. And also gives us confidence that the products that we are about to launch in the next couple of years will be launched effectively and we will see success with those products as well. So while we're challenged with some of the respiratory issues that we've seen in the marketplace from a macro economic, we're very encouraged with the results that we've seen with our other currently-launched products. Thanks, Andrew.

Andrew Witty

Operator

Thanks, Deidre. I think I'd also add to that, that if you look at our bigger products, shares look pretty good. So what's going on really there is majority market dynamic as Deidre’s just said. And actually in most cases, so if you look at Advair, for example. When you start the period with an 80 or 80-plus market -- percent market share, and you get 2 or 3 new entries, you'd expect to see a decline in performance. We really haven't seen the kind of share fall that you would have necessarily predicted and certainly not what you've seen -- and certainly, we've seen a better performance in the U.S. than we saw in Europe even. And even in Europe, we were able to hold on to 70% of that market for 5 or 7 years. So I think overall, the U.S. story, Andrew, is one of there is a, I think, a much greater tenacity than there used to be. And I think that's demonstrated in the robustness of the shares of the bigger products. And as Deidre says, the new products, I think, have all performed very well actually so far. Now the key, of course, is we have to fuel that market with new products. There's actually no point in dreaming that the U.S. is a great place to be with branded generics. It isn't. You need to be there with innovation, and that's been the whole point of trying to bring the R&D portfolio back to the floor. I think the early signals from some of the newer specialized products that I'm encouraged that we can make progress. I would also point out the shift in the customer perception of GSK in the last 12 months has been dramatic in the U.S. So if you look at the way that GSK is now rated by managed markets, customers, by pharmacy, by integrated medical centers, you'll see tremendous improvements. Very often now ranked as the #1 company in terms of the companies they interact with. That's key because that marketplace is very dynamic, customers are changing, the customers who make decisions for products we launch next year are not the same kind of customers who made decisions 5 years ago. And it's critical that we've got the right rapport and the right credibility. And I think that's more than anything, reassures me we're in good shape. Tax rate in 2017, and while you're at it, could you tell us what else you would like to know about 2017? The exchange rate with the yen, maybe?

Andrew S. Baum - Morgan Stanley, Research Division

Analyst

Just directionally. I mean, how much potential is the hit? That was the text of the question.

Simon Dingemans

Analyst

I don't think we want to change our specific targets at this point and you’ve already seen we've made some early progress towards those, and we'll benefit from those during the course of the next year, ahead of time. I think the patent box was always something that was for the future, beyond the targets we gave you. How much of a benefit we'll reap from that, depends on how quickly we can, a, bring product back into the U.K., what we're doing with the pipeline, how R&D in particular plays out. A whole host of factors that make it very difficult to predict. But clearly, we're targeting that 25% is the first target and we'll work better thereafter.

Andrew S. Baum - Morgan Stanley, Research Division

Analyst

And Japan?

Moncef Slaoui

Analyst

And so on Japan, I think, we've had a strategy that we started implementing already a few years ago, based on 2 approaches. One is to implement some -- introduce some of our most innovative vaccines into the Japanese market. And I think the experience with Cervarix this year has been quite compelling and Rotarix is the next one to follow on. The second approach is one that relies on local partnership. And for instance, we have a partnership around the development of a cell-based flu vaccine locally and there is potentially more to come. But we're definitely going significantly after that opportunity.

Andrew Witty

Operator

And I think if you look at the performance of Cervarix in particular and you look at which company really has worked hard, particularly on not just getting listing of vaccines, but listing of vaccines which are reimbursed at a substantial level, as you know, there's really only been 3 or 4 modern vaccines fully reimbursed in Japan. You can see that GSK has been a very successful participant in all of that. Mark? Do you just want to wait for the mic, just so folks can hear you.

Mark Beards - Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Research Division

Analyst

It's Mark Beards from Goldman Sachs. One on margins, which I think came as a little bit of a surprise to the markets this morning on how -- what a small amount of margin expansion we're expecting to see this year. What are the headwinds that are stopping you from expanding to the level that we were expecting in 2012? And then secondly, you mentioned Europe, what's happening in Europe in terms of innovation not being paid for. What knock-on effects might that have to the commercial organization in that part of the world?

Andrew Witty

Operator

Okay. Let me answer the second question first, and then Simon can talk to the margin, although that really is about the definition of the word gradual. But we will come to that in a minute. In terms of Europe, what we're seeing in Europe is really 2 general phenomena, although of course within Europe, there are many differences. So the 2 -- you've got price cutting going on. What you also have is in, particularly, in Germany, in the U.K., 1 or 2 other markets, relatively big markets, sustained patterns of very extensive delays to new product availability or a pricing regime which makes new product introduction not that obvious, I'll put it that way. So, for example, in Germany, proposals where you can launch but a year after you launch, you can have your price reassessed and potentially cut, which will be right when you're in the middle of negotiating prices in the other 27 member states. Is that really where you want to be? U.K., I think, you can read every day of the week of a drug not being approved in the U.K. Sooner or later, when you get to a point where we've gone through so much to try and get drugs approved, we've taken -- we've proposed risk-sharing deals, we proposed very significant discounts, and we still can't get through. Eventually, you just say, well, actually you know what, we'll focus somewhere else. It's not that we won't develop drugs for Europe. It's simply a case of the priority of where we're really going to drive what should the comparator be, where might we do the trials. It's going to be driven from the markets that we think are most likely to welcome the product. It's not that different to any other industry. And I think we just have to move on and recognize that at least for the next few years, Europe through all sorts of obvious macroeconomic pressures, is kind of stuck in a bad place. What it means for our European business? Not too much. We have halved the size of our European operation’s physical headcount, more or less in the last 4 years. So I think we're probably more or less at a state that's kind of fit for what I'm describing to you. And we'll still register drugs in Europe. We're just not going to necessarily design them for Europe in a way that we would have historically done. And obviously, that can change if the view of innovation in Europe changes. But at the moment, there's an increasing, not a decreasing gulf between the way European payers are behaving and the way American and Japanese, who are not pushovers by any stretch, but just have a more pro-innovation instinct to start with. And I think that's obviously a place where we would rather focus. On the margin?

Simon Dingemans

Analyst

On the margin, look, I think the important point is that nothing has changed in our expectations of what progress we're going to make in 2012. And we've always said gradual, and what we're trying to do is put a bit of definition around that given that people were struggling with that. And the reality is, when you look at, as I described in 2011, what we're dealing with is balancing the investment behind the growth drivers with the cost savings and the efficiency gains that we're making. And those are providing the resources to be able to allow us to invest to drive the growth at the top line that you're seeing. And the balance of that is going to change as the pipeline comes through, and as the growth comes through from those investments over the next 2 or 3 years. And to pull back at this point when the strategy’s just at the point of really rebalancing the group, the R&D position is really beginning to come through, just seems to us the wrong thing to do. And that balance therefore, is going to be relatively tight in '12. We'll have more room in '13 and more room in '14. And so it's a sort of 2- to 3-year progression that we're talking about here. But it is going to be a few tens of basis points next year reflecting that balance.

Andrew Witty

Operator

I think if -- as well, let me just add a kind of slightly more philosophical view. I mean, ultimately, pounds pay the shareholder, not percentages. And while -- we are, don't get me wrong, we're very focused on delivering. If we say to you, we want to deliver an expanded margin, we want to deliver an expanded margin, then that's what we're going to do. If opportunities come along, which allow us to create very substantial amounts of value for the shareholder but for some reason might dilute the margin a little bit, imagine tomorrow morning, Emma Walmsley rang me up and said, I've just discovered an organic growth opportunity for Consumer, which adds GBP 300 million of profit to the group but at the Consumer margin, obviously, that would be dilutive. Should I say yes or no just to protect the margin? I should say go for it, because it's creating more wealth for the shareholder. And I think we just -- so I just want to make very clear, we're giving you our best estimate of where we think this will go. It's absolutely where our plans take us. But ultimately, we're in the business of generating maximum economic return for our shareholders, not some theoretical percentage margin structure. And at some moments, that might lead us to say, actually this opportunity came along or this organic investment came along and it leads us to a slightly different place. And I think it's just fair to share with you that I have a slight -- I don't have quite that religious kind of obsession with the percentage. I'm much more focused on how do we drive profitable growth for the group and maximize cash for the shareholder and maximize returns for the shareholder. Graham?

Graham Parry - BofA Merrill Lynch, Research Division

Analyst

It's Graham Parry from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Just wondering on the buyback expectation for this year. Is there a scenario where you'd see your free cash available for dividends and buybacks exceeding essentially what you're pointing to here, so i.e., have you left anything in the pot there for bolt-on acquisitions and if they don't happen could you actually see yourselves exceeding the top end of that GBP 1 billion to GBP 2 billion, which you'd already set out as a long-term sustainable target? And then a question on the 719 dose ranging data, which you said is supportive of the current dosing in Phase III. Can you confirm whether that means that they still show that doses below 62.5 micrograms are not active, or are you actually seeing any kind of activity below that level? And then thirdly, on Promacta, are you still moving towards filing on Promacta despite the disappointing ENABLE 2 data? I know you're looking to cut that data in other ways. Have you done that now and has that given you any greater confidence in filing?

Andrew Witty

Operator

So can I ask Darrell, do you want to answer the 719 question first?

Darrell Baker

Analyst

We have completed as you know the lower dose study with the 719. The aim of that study was to help us fill out and understand the whole dose response curve, so that we'd know where we are with the doses that we've chosen for Phase III on that dose response curve. And I'm not in a position to reveal any details around the data, but the data have given us greater confidence that those doses which we've chosen look like optimal doses for us to be in Phase III.

Andrew Witty

Operator

And Promacta, Moncef?

Moncef Slaoui

Analyst

So regarding Promacta, as you know there is 2 ENABLE trials, 1 and 2. And observations were contrasted between the 2 studies and our overall assessment of the population on the 2 studies led us to conclude that the benefit risk intervention in chronic hepatitis C patients was positive and therefore, we will file and I'm sure, the observations made will be subjects of discussions during the review period. But we're confident to file and we are confident this is a beneficial medicine for patients.

Andrew Witty

Operator

And, Simon, if we didn't do any bolt-ons, would we have more to buy back shares?

Simon Dingemans

Analyst

Well, I think as we said in the presentation, our approach to the range we've given you is very much the same as last year, in that we'll see how we progress during the year with other alternative investments that may come along. And also how we generate cash and what our performance is on that front and put them together during the course of 2011, we came in better than we expected on the cash side. And we also didn't see really the opportunity on the M&A side, we then upped the buyback as a result. So I think -- I don't think we can give you any specific target today, but that's very much the philosophy that we go into 2012 with.

Andrew Witty

Operator

I mean, no question, if we didn't do any bolt-ons at all then there would be more -- if all else was equal, if the plan delivered what we expect it to deliver, then there'd be more capacity to do more if that's what we wanted to do. Yes, go ahead.

Florent Cespedes - Exane BNP Paribas, Research Division

Analyst

Florent Cespedes, Exane BNP Paribas. Three quick questions. First on the 2012 guidance, on the top line, given the soft Q4, how do you see the growth of the top line for 2012, and what are the mainstream factors? And given the operating leverage, is it fair to assume a mid- to high-single digit core EPS growth for 2012? That's my first question. Second one, on pricing environment. Could you give us...

Andrew Witty

Operator

That was 2 questions already, right?

Florent Cespedes - Exane BNP Paribas, Research Division

Analyst

The first was on the guidance. Now on the energy market and pricing environment, could you give us your view on the pricing environment on Emerging Markets and also, a quick update on your low pricing policy you announced last year on some of your products. And maybe last one if I may regarding the R&D for Moncef. Will you announce an Analyst Meeting with a review of the late stage pipeline sometime in the year as you anticipate the peer date shortly?

Andrew Witty

Operator

Okay. As far as -- we're not -- we're obviously not giving any specific sales guidance this year. We're certainly confirming that we expect to be able to report sales growth. We've shown you what our averages have been over the last couple of years. During that period, we've had 2 or 3 quarters which have bounced above the average, so Q3 of last year was plus 6, Q4 was plus 1. So you've got -- you can see just in those last 2 quarters the kind of volatility that we'll see. And I would expect to -- I would guide you that we'll continue to see volatility. And I really would guide you not to get too worked up about quarters. Having said that, I think that if you look at the Emerging Markets over the last 6 months, we've seen more price pressure, particularly in the government-controlled Emerging Markets. So the Russias, the Turkeys. So there's been more of that kind of pressure. We've seen extraordinary volume growth, which has been suppressed a bit from what you're seeing, both by the government price pressure in Turkey and Russia, but also by some of our own voluntary price cuts to drive a lower price opportunity, which will wash through because most of those price cuts were taken in the early part of last year and once we get out of the early part of this year, we should start to see more of the underlying volume shine through from that piece of the strategy. Overall, we're seeing the EMs click down a couple of notches. So whereas, if we'd been stood here a year ago, we'd have been talking about the Emerging Market market growing 14%, 15%, you're probably now at 11%, 12% in terms of where IMS is…

Andrew Witty

Operator

Simon?

Simon Dingemans

Analyst

Okay. We will see some of that GBP 300 million in 2012, and the phasing will ramp up over the next 2 to 3 years. So we'll see probably a 1/4 to 1/3 of it this year. But it will go into the overall aggregate OE benefits, which are ramping up to GBP 2.8 billion by the end of that period. So I think it is very much built into the mix of margin improvement and comes back to the same point of it’s paying for some of the investment that's driving the top line progress that we expect to make. So I don't think you should add anything extra into that. I think it's more about reassurance that there's some momentum behind gradual this year, more in the couple of years thereafter. James D. Gordon - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: So nothing's actually got worse that's offsetting it. Meaning, you still get to the same level of margin expansion, even though you’ve got the incremental savings?

Simon Dingemans

Analyst

Well, I think, as I say, there's a relatively small amount in 2012. Most of this will come through in the couple of years behind it. But what we've been able to do is look at the original OE program and the process of restructuring sort of unearths the next opportunities, so particularly in the manufacturing businesses, where we're simplifying the production lines and Consumer will be a good case in point, where the sort of end-to-end supply chain that I talked about has really identified a series of initiatives that are a reasonable chunk of these extra GBP 300 million that will come into that business over the next 2 or 3 years but relatively small in 2012. So it's not that something else has happened and we're offsetting it. It's about building some confidence and specificity around what happens over the next 3 years rather than just one year.

Andrew Witty

Operator

And CapEx?

Simon Dingemans

Analyst

On CapEx, I think for 2012, as I say, probably something in the order of GBP 1.5 billion. And that's in line with our historic norms. It's been down a little bit over the last couple of years. We're obviously continuing to see where we can take savings out of that. But I think you have to be careful, particularly when we're growing the business and we're bringing in a big new range of products on the Consumer side and on the Pharma side, that we will have to put some investment behind the manufacturing capacity for that. And so that's why I say, it’ll probably step up a little bit. But that's probably the sort of guidance level you should have in mind.

Andrew Witty

Operator

Yes, Jo, over in the far right. Jo Walton - Crédit Suisse AG, Research Division: Jo Walton, Crédit Suisse. Three questions, the standard today. First one, to go back to margins, I'm afraid. Second one on R&D and one product-related. So on margins, perhaps tackling it a different way, you've talked about 0.4% of sales adverse mix effect from product and regions last year. Is that a reasonable ongoing rate? As you move forward, you get more partnered product coming in, you're also getting more growth from Emerging Markets. So whilst we can all look at the good things of Operational Excellence, is that a reasonable sort of headwind? And in the SG&A, you talked about 0.8% of sales in the investment. Where is the incremental investment coming? Are you going to see, I'm not saying this is bad, but are we going to see more of this in Emerging Markets, perhaps Japan? You talked about that as being a real opportunity. Is there more footprint to go in there? My product-related question was on Advair in Emerging Markets. It grew strongly in 2010. Underlying, it showed no growth at all across 2011. Is there something that we should know about there? Is it disease pressure or whatever? And the final question on R&D, you talked about an improvement in your R&D productivity. When you're looking at an average Phase II, Phase III product going forward, you're trying to value that, have you reduced your sort of life cycle expectation for that? Because it's just never going to be as big, never going to get where you're going to get to in Europe. Is that an actual factor or do you now say, well, it's not going to be as big in Europe, but I can now factor in a better Emerging Market life cycle? So overall, the return for an average asset is the same.

Andrew Witty

Operator

Okay. On Advair Emerging Markets, almost all to do with pricing, Jo. So volumes look fine. But pricing, particularly in Russia and Turkey were very focused on Seretide. And actually, the same is true a bit in Europe. So Europe was very skewed by pricing. Seretide is very skewed by pricing in Germany, on Seretide. So it was just 2 or 3 examples where you've got very specific, quite deep price hits in 1 or 2 markets, just knocks all the growth out of the system. But nothing, I wouldn't worry too much about volumes. As you know in many Emerging Markets, we've already got generics in most of those countries. So in terms of the kind of the going-forward dynamic is very much the same dynamic we've had in the past. The issue is government price cuts, when they pop up and they can -- if you look across the whole of EMs, about 60% of our EM business is cash, about 40% is government-controlled. So it’s when the government-controlled element gets hit, that's when you've seen that kind of effect play through. In terms of the margin headwinds, I think there's no doubt that the partner products obviously reduce the margin going forward. So obviously, how we're going to pay for the R&D that was done on our behalf or the risk that was taken on our behalf. And the way -- I think it's very well worth being thoughtful that the kind of savings that you can particularly drive out of manufacturing are going to be needed to at least stand still against that pressure. There's no doubt about that at all. There's a clear, I'd say, clear CGS hit that's going to come in as the portfolio mix changes. And that's the one I'd say you…

Mark Purcell - Barclays Capital, Research Division

Analyst

Mark Purcell from Barclays Capital. Three questions as well. The first one is on albiglutide. I just wondered if you could help us understand the clinical proposition that the products provides. You've obviously got 2 new trials in-house that you've got and we haven't got. The lack of CNS penetration, I guess, is causing the lack of weight loss. Just trying to understand that product in the context of its competitors and what this means for investment in diabetes as a franchise going forward. Secondly, of the Emerging Markets opportunity, where you're looking to build further critical mass. Obviously, you talked about some of the reforms in places like Russia and Turkey, whether these are providing any opportunities for you to invest and put your product portfolio through. And then lastly, going back to the top line, moving from underlying sales growth of 4% to a top line figure. Obviously, as you say in the press release, we have to take out any OTC disposals. What should we be taking out for Cervarix out of the GBP 350 million that was booked in 2011? And should it be about GBP 300 million to GBP 400 million based on your comments on EU pricing coming out for 2012 as well?

Andrew Witty

Operator

Sorry. I just didn't quite follow the logic of the last question. Can you just repeat that?

Mark Purcell - Barclays Capital, Research Division

Analyst

Yes, sure. So 4% underlying growth in 2011. So I guess you start with the same roughly give or take a few percentage points in '12. So obviously, we'd have to take up to GBP 500 million worth of OTC disposals. I presume GBP 250 million or so of Cervarix in Japan, given that the tenders were biased to 2011. And then also, the European reform measures you just mentioned about minus GBP 0.05 negative pricing environment in Europe in 2012 relative to 2011. So just trying to understand the headwinds that you face relative to that underlying sales growth.

Andrew Witty

Operator

Well, so just to be clear, when we've always talked about underlying, all underlying has ever stripped out has been Avandia, Pandemic and Valtrex. So everything else, so the puts and takes of tenders, wins and losses, the puts and takes of pricing are all in what we call underlying. So it's up to you what you back out and by all means, do whatever you need to do. All we're simply guiding you is, don't forget, if we dispose of a business, we obviously can't grow it anymore. So that has to be adjusted. We're not looking for any other special kind of treatment or exemption and we're going to -- our goal, my view is that when you look backwards into a year, you have a bunch of one-off good things, you have a bunch of one-off bad things. Your job is to try and turn the one-off good things into repeatable good things, and find a few more and your job is to try and minimize some of the bad things and make them stop happening again. And that's just our job to have to deal with. So I don't know if that helps. But I don't think you need to get too stuck there. Russia, Turkey. Yes, there are opportunities in there. I mean, what I think you see in -- Turkey is probably a better example than Russia. What you tend to see in these markets is very strong go-go growth for 3 or 4 years and then a very sharp price correction. And it takes you a year and a half to recover and then you get 2 or 3 years of really net growth in the system. And we've seen that in a whole variety of countries, where you've got that strong demographic push going on underneath the surface. Turkey is a brilliant example of that. Russia's a bit atypical because Russia doesn't have the demographic dynamic that Turkey does. And so Russia's unusual and a bit of a case of its own. But as a general rule, historically, every time we've seen these big adjustments, we quite often see some companies withdraw. That quite often leaves space for us to do better over the subsequent 3 years and obviously we try and do that. Albiglutide, maybe, Patrick, do you want to talk to that?

Patrick Vallance

Analyst

Yes. So as you've said, I mean, you've seen some of the data and there's more data coming in and there's more data yet to come. So where we are with this is it’s a product that didn't meet the once-a-day efficacy in the first bit. But actually, very well tolerated. We expect that efficacy to continue. We're very optimistic actually that this is a nice product with a very good tolerability profile that will have a good place in the market. So we're confident of that, with data still to come, of course.

Andrew Witty

Operator

And we are going to drive you a bit crazy, I think. Because we, for various reasons, very often because we're partnered on the drugs, we have to announce the initial data for obvious reasons because it's very important to the partner. But in very many cases and in fact, in particular in this case, there may be very good reasons why we don't want to get into too much more detail, in this particular case because trials are still ongoing. And therefore, there are all sorts of regulatory implications. So we need to be -- so there might well be, and this is one, Relovair will be another. There may very well be times during this year, where we give you a sense of the data and it may be that the initial data we give you is not that overwhelming. It may well be that over time, we get more studies because the subsequent studies are looking at, let's say, more interesting subpopulations or particular niches or particular points of differentiation. Or in the case of Relovair, in terms of core differentiation from existing products. And there may be periods where all you've seen is that initial report and we're starting to see slightly more data, but it's just not ready to announce. And I'm afraid, we're just going to -- you need to be patient with us as we kind of assemble the full portfolio. What we don't want to do, particularly where we've got 10, 15 studies, is if we come out Monday with a study that's ho-hum, Tuesday with a great one, Wednesday, ho-hum, Thursday -- we’ve got to -- somehow, we have to get to a sensible holistic picture of the molecules. Certainly, our view on albiglutide and Relovair is that they both look very, very promising. And we'll see when the full data comes in before we can really articulate the full picture to you. And since you've all been taking 3 questions each, I’ve only got time for one more. So who's got a question? Yes, please.

Sam Fazeli

Analyst

Last question. This is Sam Fazeli from Bloomberg Industries. If I may, I have 2 questions to ask you. One is, with regards to China and Japan. In terms of the expectations for 2012, what level of impact are you expecting to see from the biannual price cuts in Japan and also the provincial bidding that's going on in China? I'm assuming that although you haven't given a specific guidance for 2012 Japan, China growth, that you're expecting volume to overcome all of that, and potentially in Japan from new product launches. And the other question was with regards to strategy versus possible generics, if you want to call them that for Advair. We've seen another company recently with massive genericization be very prepared for that over the year before the patent expiry and have shown some success in controlling the volume of the brand. And I'm referring to Lipitor, obviously. And given that you don't have that luxury because the patent and the combination's gone and maybe anybody coming with the device would not necessarily be going up against the Discus patents in your network, what strategies are left to you for potentially protecting Advair, if it just comes out of the blue?

Andrew Witty

Operator

So as far as China and Japan are concerned, and clearly, the process of the biannual price reduction’s underway at the moment. As you also know, there's been a very significant reform in the Japanese pricing system, particularly for the innovative products, and GSK is one of the leading beneficiaries of that, given the number of products we've introduced into Japan. So we don't know what our particular pricing impact is going to be. We have to wait and see. But I think what you can certainly see over the last 3 years is that, a, we've had extraordinary strong volume growth every year and in the previous year where we had price reductions, so 2 years ago, we were still able to grow the business. So the volume was sufficiently large to be able to grow the business. And again, a little bit dissimilar in China. We've got -- China, for us, is really obviously 3 businesses. But if you just focus on Rx and Vaccine, last year was a very difficult year for us in China for Vaccines because of the Chinese Pharma co-peer issue, which meant that we had to essentially stop selling a number of our vaccines alongside several of our competitors. That's one of the one-off bad pieces of news that happens some years, and you don't want to happen every year. But the Rx business has been extremely robust, double-digit -- very strong double-digit sales growth, and we continue to manage regularly price events in China. The fact that there's a provincial review, there was a different kind of price intervention last year. Every year, there's some kind of price intervention. You have to manage it and again, the volumes are very strong in those markets. As far as Advair is concerned, the fundamental…