“In 2025, the emphasis will move to improving R&D productivity, while maintaining focus on margin expansion, commercial excellence and shareholder lending capital allocation.”

In context

“ocus on financial discipline also has yielded good results. We ended the year with expanded margins after a series of actions to realign our cost base. And we strategically deployed capital to enhance shareholder value, investing nearly $11 billion in support of internal R&D programs, de-levering by $7.8 billion and returning $9.5 billion directly to shareholders through our dividends. Finally, we also reinforced our commitment to strong governance. Our two new Board members bring deep expertise in financial markets and shareholder value creation. All these changes have created a strong foundation and allow us to start the new year from a position of strength. So now let me speak about our 2025 priorities. Last year, we had a significant emphasis on improving our commercial effectiveness. In 2025, the emphasis will move to improving R&D productivity, while maintaining focus on margin expansion, commercial excellence and shareholder lending capital allocation. Let me start with R&D. Across our pipeline, we believe we have a strong year of catalysts ahead of us and expect our new R&D organization to achieve multiple key milestones, including the possibility of at least four regulatory decisions, up to nine potential Phase 3 readouts and 13 potential pivotal program starts. For example, with atirmociclib, our next generation highly selective CDK4 inhibitor candidate, yesterday, we dosed our first patient in a Phase 3 study in first-line metastatic breast cancer. We also anticipate starting an additional first-line study in combination with vepdegestrant, the ER degrader we are codeveloping with Arvinas. Our ADC sigvotatug vedotin continues its Phase 3 study in second-line non-small cell and cancer. And this year, we expect to start a Phase 3 stud”