Julie Brown
Analyst · JPMorgan
Thank you, Deborah, and good afternoon, everyone. As you've heard from the team, we've made great progress on our roadmap since the second quarter results and we're well-positioned heading into the end of the year. We continue to be focused on execution, our pipeline, capital allocation and investor engagement. And as Tony mentioned, we've had several regulatory approvals, including Ojjaara and Jemperli during the third quarter. And following our HIV Meet the Management event in September, we look forward to holding a similar event focused on respiratory on the 30th of November. Please now turn to Slide 22. Turning to the quarter, as I cover the financials, references to growth are at constant exchange rates, and I'll focus my comments on adjusted results. So, starting with the income statement. Sales increased 16% excluding COVID solutions and were up 10% overall, reflecting continued strong execution with the extremely successful launch of Arexvy. Gross margin improved 80 basis points, excluding COVID and 360 basis points at CER, including the impact of lower sales of Xevudy. SG&A growth was 14% excluding COVID. And as a reminder, in Q3 last year, we have foreign exchange gains on the Vir collaboration, which contributed 3 points to reported SG&A growth this quarter due to the credit last year. Adjusted operating profit grew 22% excluding COVID solutions and 15% overall. The margin increased to 34%, driven largely by cost of goods improvements and operating leverage. Turning to the reported results. Total operating profit increased 83% to £1.9 billion, and this was driven by overall performance as well as favorable CCL movements and fair value gains from our stake in Haleon. The reconciliation of total to adjusted results is included in the appendix. On currency, there was an adverse 6 point impact on sales and 9 points on adjusted operating profit, primarily due to the strengthening of sterling against the US dollar. Please now turn to Slide 23. Moving to the adjusted operating margin dynamics in the quarter. The margin increased to 170 basis points to 35% at CER and improved 180 basis points, excluding COVID solutions. Overall, cost of goods has been favorable, primarily reflecting reduced sales of lower-margin Xevudy and an improvement in mix towards Specialty and Vaccines. Regarding SG&A, we are in an investment cycle, supporting our priority products. Our spend is focused on maximizing the launch of Arexvy, building awareness of RSV, and catalyzing the global market expansion opportunity for Shingrix. We now have approval in 39 countries for Shingrix and 18 countries for Arexvy. Specialty Medicines is also a targeted investment area, with clear opportunities for the long-acting HIV franchise and the launch of Ojjaara in oncology. We confirm our guidance for SG&A this year with the growth broadly in-line with sales. It is important to say that following a period of investment, we now expect to move to a period of delivering returns on that investment and building on the great foundation of performance. In this new cycle, SG&A growth will step down and will be accretive to profits in 2024. Next slide, please. Adjusted earnings per share grew 17% overall and benefited from lower net finance expense following debt restructuring and the favorable tax rate, partly offset by higher ViiV profits, leading to an increase in non-controlling interests. Next slide, please. Cash generated from operations was £4.4 billion in the year-to-date and £1.4 billion lower than the prior year. There are two major items to call out: firstly, the receipt of the Gilead settlement last year of £0.9 billion; and secondly, the increase in working capital, influenced by stronger Arexvy sales in Q3 and lower Xevudy collections. The Arexvy sales will come through in the fourth quarter cash flow. Free cash flow more than doubled to £1.7 billion in the third quarter and brought the nine month year-to-date to an inflow of £1.3 billion. Cash expectations for the year have improved, but we still anticipate that 2023 cash generated from operations will be slightly lower than 2022 due to the one-off we've seen from Gilead last year. We confirm our commitment of more than £10 billion of cash generated from ops by 2026. Net debt stands at £17.6 billion with free cash inflow and proceeds from the Haleon stake are partly deployed through business development on the acquisition of BELLUS healthcare. Turning to the guidance on Slide 26. Given our sustained strong performance across all segments in the business, we are upgrading our guidance at CER for the full year. And as a reminder, our guidance excludes the impact of COVID-19. We now expect sales to increase 12% to 13%. We expect adjusted operating profit to increase between 13% and 15%, and adjusted earnings per share to increase 17% to 20%. The strength of the Arexvy launch has been ahead of our initial expectations and is the main source of the guidance upgrade. Q3 sales of Arexvy benefited from strong demand and initial channel inventory build, with TRx volumes representing around one-third of the volumes sold. As Luke referenced, we are projecting our forecast for the season in line with the high-dose flu analogues, and therefore expect full year sales of around £0.9 billion to £1 billion. There is however, still much to learn given the novel nature of this new vaccine, including annual vaccination patterns, duration of protection, competitor dynamics and what expert recommendations might be, and we anticipate further insight following the end of the US flu season, which will inform our outlook for 2024. We look forward to updating you further as part of our full year results and remain confident in our longer-term revenue ambition for Arexvy. Turning to the dynamics within upgraded guidance. Within sales, we're increasing our expectations across all product groups. We now anticipate Vaccine growth of around 20%. Specialty Medicines to grow low double-digits. And within this, HIV to grow around 10%. And General Medicines to grow low- to mid-single digits. Moving down the P&L to operating profit, we now expect royalties to be around £900 million with no change to our expectations for the other lines of the P&L. To EPS, we expect lower interest expense of between £650 million and £700 million. In terms of currency, if exchange rates were to hold at the closing rates on the 30th of September for the rest of the year, the estimated adverse impact on sterling turnover growth for the full year would be minus 2% and on adjusted operating profit growth, it would be minus 4%. Finally, we remind you of a few modeling assumptions in 2024, namely the impact of AMP cap, the loss of Gardasil royalties and the tax rate likely being a couple of percentage points higher due to OECD legislation. More details on these are included in our pre-quarterly aide memoire, and I look forward to guiding more fully at the end of the year. And thank you, and with that, I will hand back to Emma.