Biogen Inc. Common Stock Wells Fargo 21st Annual Healthcare Conference

Thank you for having us.

Thanks for the question. It's actually been an incredibly exciting time to be the CFO at Biogen. I've been at the company now almost 8 years.

But in the CFO role, just over a year and a half. It's really been an exciting time under Chris's leadership. I think he was very clear from the get-go on what the strategic focus for the company was and really diversification of Biogen and its portfolio. But also returning the company to growth. When I look at the really significant progress we've made on a number of fronts, the first would be the launch of the growth products and the key products there. We've really had an opportunity to launch those effectively and help to offset the erosion in the MS portfolio.

Right. Really putting the base business in a really good spot.

Also looking at the pipeline and looking at diversification of the pipeline beyond the neurology area and really broadening that and execution of transactions that supported that, like HI-Bio and the felzartamab assets. Then really taking that updated and revised pipeline and pulling programs into phase III. We now have 10 phase III programs, and those begin reading out here in the fourth quarter. Really the pipeline is at a pivotal point for us from a growth perspective. Really deploying capital and things like the Apellis acquisition, which has the opportunity to have near-term growth, both top and bottom line, while we wait for the pipeline products to launch and contribute to the long-term trajectory of the company.

In midst of all of that, we really continue to be focused on managing the OpEx, making sure we're also delivering growth on the bottom line. That's a bit of a tricky thing when you're investing in the launch products, but also deploying capital into the pipeline. That continues to be an area of focus for us.

Yeah. I had the opportunity to lead the project around the Fit for Growth initiative, which was our initiative to look at the cost base and infrastructure, to make sure that we were taking a prudent approach to optimizing that. Also we were at a pivotal time where we needed to redeploy investments from the MS portfolio to the four launch products, including LEQEMBI, SKYCLARYS, ZURZUVAE. The process of doing that was very much a holistic contribution by everyone in the organization to make that pivot. It was necessary in order to have the capital to put towards deploying towards the launch products. From a philosophical standpoint, being very disciplined in thinking about capital allocation has been a strong suit coming out of the Fit for Growth.