CMXHF - CSL Ltd (CSLLY) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

2024-02-13 00:53:08 ET

CSL Ltd (CSLLY)

Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call

February 12, 2024, 19:00 ET

Company Participants

Mark Dehring - Head, IR

Paul McKenzie - MD, CEO & Executive Director

William Mezzanotte - EVP & Head, Research and Development

Herve Gisserot - Chief Commercial Officer, Vifor Pharma AG

Andy Schmeltz - EVP, CSL Behring Business Unit

Stephen Marlow - SVP & GM, Seqirus

Joy Linton - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Lyanne Harrison - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

David Low - JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Saul Hadassin - Barrenjoey

David Bailey - Macquarie Research

Sean Laaman - Morgan Stanley

Andrew Goodsall - MST Marquee

Steven Wheen - Jarden Limited

David Stanton - Jefferies

Gretel Janu - E&P Financial Group Limited

Laura Sutcliffe - UBS

Andrew Paine - CLSA Limited

Mathieu Chevrier - Citigroup

Craig Wong-Pan - RBC Capital Markets

Presentation

Mark Dehring

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and welcome to CSL's first half results call for fiscal 2024. It's Mark Dehring speaking, and I'm pleased to be joined by several of CSL's leadership team.

With me here are Dr. Paul McKenzie, CSL's Chief Executive Officer; Joy Linton, CSL's Chief Financial Officer; Dr. Bill Mezzanotte, Executive VP and Head of Research and Development; Andy Schmeltz, Executive VP, CSL Behring, Stephen Marlow, Senior VP and General Manager, CSL Seqirus; Herve Gisserot, Senior VP and General Manager at CSL Vifor.

Today, it's a little -- we're going to vary a little bit from past practice. Paul will, of course, provide an overview of the results and operations, and then we'll have Bill Mezzanotte providing some updates on the R&D portfolio including the CSL 112 top line data announced yesterday. Joy will then provide some additional detail on the financials. And Paul will finish up with some comments on outlook. After which we'll move to Q&A. [Operator Instructions]. Please note, this briefing is being webcast. And lastly, before we start, I draw your attention to the forward statement disclaimer contained in the slide deck.

And with that, I'll pass over to Paul McKenzie, Paul.

Paul McKenzie

Thank you, Mark, and good morning, everyone. Great to be back in Melbourne. Thank you for joining today's CSL half year results call for 2024. As Mark mentioned, we released top line data for CSL112 yesterday, and Dr. Bill Mezzanotte will talk to this shortly. While not the clinical outcome we were looking for, the study was well designed, and well executed.

I would like to second Bill's thanks and gratitude to the entire CSL112 team, the clinical investigators and their teams and the patients who participated in the trial.

Before I deep dive into the results, I wanted to take the opportunity to reflect on my soon-to-be first 12 months as CEO. I continue to be energized by the passion that my colleagues bring to their work every day. All 32,000 of us at CSL and our partners are proud of the difference we make to patients, donors and public health. Our portfolio of life-changing medicines and vaccines provide significant benefit to patients around the globe, managing diseases of significant unmet need.

CSL Behring is a unique and resilient business with a strong growth outlook. My first 12 months as CEO has only reinforced that view. I continue to be bullish on the outlook for CSL Behring and look forward to sharing with you the great progress we are making in our plasma manufacturing and commercial activities.

In our CSL Seqirus business, the value of our differentiated vaccine portfolio continues to deliver value to public health systems now and well into the future.

Reflecting on CSL Vifor, our commercial portfolio addresses significant unmet need in patient journeys in iron deficiency and nephrology. While the strategic potential of the business and the adjacencies with CSL Behring portfolios remain strong, we are working to address a number of challenges. Some of our existing portfolio is facing commercial and regulatory headwinds. For example, step edit pressure with Ferinject or a reimbursement bundling of KORSUVA in the U.S. Further, some of the pipeline assets did not meet their desired clinical outcomes, a risk inherent in research and development pursuits. These collective dynamics have dampened our near-term financial growth expectations for CSL Vifor. ...

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