Bristol Myers Squibb Co (BMY) May 14, 2026 Conference Transcript

All right, everybody. We're going to get going here with our next company presenter at the B of A Annual Healthcare Conference. My name is Jason Gerber. I cover pharma and biotech, and I'm pleased to be introducing our next company presenter, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Adam Lankowski, Executive VP and Chief Commercial Officer. So, Adam, thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me, Jason.

Yeah, so great. Look, there's a lot to talk about. I think Bristol's at an important inflection point as a company. You're rolling through some older franchises, but you've got a lot a pipeline on the come and some products that are early in their launch process. So I think we have a lot to talk about. Maybe coming out of one queue and as you kind of think about the growth portfolio specifically, maybe just talk about some of the puts and takes with that versus the legacy portfolio and how things are coming along just in the base business.

Yeah, thanks for the question. So we've got very good momentum in our growth portfolios. You saw in Q1, we delivered 12% growth year over year in the growth portfolio. And as you said, it's a very young and diversified portfolio. Products like Amzios and Brianzi delivered strong growth, annualizing both at well over a billion dollars. Rebozil is annualizing now north of $2 billion. And then some of our newer launches, Optivo Q-Vantig, we're seeing really strong conversion rates from the iv formulation and of course co-benphy co-benphy is delivering steady growth and we've got a number of catalysts to look forward to over the next 12 to 24 months including things like you know alzheimer's disease psychosis readout bipolar readout alzheimer's agitation so you know taken together we feel very good about this portfolio which will drive strong growth through the end of the decade we're also seeing continued growth for eloquence you know giving us really nice cash flow with our Pfizer counterparts. We expect to see double-digit growth this year for Eliquis. And that's offsetting in our legacy portfolio products like Revlimid and Pomalyst, which has now full generic entry.

So our growth portfolio, coupled with truly an unprecedented number of data readouts, we have the potential to launch 10 new medicines and 30 meaningful life cycle management indications by the end of the you know the end of this decade by 2030 we feel really well positioned to be one of the fastest growing companies exiting 2030 okay great let's start with him's ios then um i think you've highlighted that you got about 25 000 patients i think treated uh today uh with additional diagnosis as a driver uh of this market it's kind of a key toggle in the market model so how should we think about the pace of diagnosis expansion and the ability of these centers of excellence to scale capacity from here

yeah so again as i said we're delivering really good performance with uh cams ios strong execution from the commercial commercialization teams i think we're seeing you know a couple of things happening number one steady growth of new patients as well as long persistency long durations of treatment our focus is twofold for cams isles number one there's still jason about a hundred thousand patients today that are diagnosed with ohcm so that's our you know first business opportunity to source as many of those patients but this is a market that we've also created you know now four years down the road and so what we see every single week which is remarkable for a product that's four years on the market is new prescribers largely in the community and that's another proof point around growing diagnosis rates. We also have partnered with a company called Viz AI. It's an AI-based company. They're in about 120 of these centers of excellence. And what we've been able to see, and they have now screened over 3 million ECHOs. And with that, they've been able to increase the diagnosis rates. And we expect that to continue. That coupled with new competition in the market, we believe this is a really good opportunity to continue to grow the market while sourcing the diagnosed patients that are out there today okay and then with respect to new competition you mentioned there um any observations early changes in the market if any that you're seeing or it's just too early to to say how that competitive dynamic plays out in in the area you have indication overlap well we've been planning for competition for quite some time we continue to hear from physicians that you know there really isn't any meaningful differences between the two products as you're right you're right it's still early but what we see is from the coes that they've prescribed maybe one or two patients what we hear back from our physicians is that they're utilizing the cam zios workflow the fact that cam zios has been out it's very predictable dosing q4 weeks so they're leveraging that q4 week dosing for uh for the competition as well we think this is really significant for for cams ios because patients most of the patients are on either five or ten milligrams and so patients are going to feel better almost immediately versus what we've seen with the competition you really need to titrate that up to the highest two doses so again it's early but we you know remain steadfast that we're going to continue to lead in this market in you know the near term and in the future okay and then just quickly on the acacia results uh how attractive do you see the non-obstructive hcm space now and your ability to play catch up there because i know there's an expressed interest to revisit a another trial there we announced on our earnings call that we we were starting a new non-obstructive hcm uh phase three study based on the learnings from the odyssey study that we had um you know we obviously need to see the full data results from acacia but i think largely it confirms what we saw in odyssey you know the numerically with the data that has been put out there the data looks very similar in kccq and you know pvo2 now in fairness they hit stat sig we did not but i think there are a lot of learnings that you know we were able to apply from odyssey we'll need to see their data set um but this is 30 of the market and we want to make sure that we're competing in the entirety of the market, not just the 70%, but our focus really is trying to source those 100,000 patients, which gives us growth way well into the foreseeable future for KM's IOS.

Maybe shifting to QVantig, and you've got roughly about 10% conversion, and I think if you continue on this pace, you'd be at that 30% to 40% target at the time frame that you've talked about. So what my question is, is it the key factors that could determine whether there's an acceleration to that conversion profile?

Yes, the teams also are actually really well with Cuvantig. As you said, we're now north of 10% conversion rates. We're tracking against our objective, which is that 30% to 40% peak conversion share over the next two years. We're seeing use for Cuvantig across a multitude of tumor types, seeing it in monotherapy, in our adjuvant settings, but also in combination, such as an RCC, GI, melanoma. Here's what we would expect. i would expect a very similar pace of uptake over the next year or so and then we get the results of checkmate 1533 checkmate 1533 is a study that's looking at the 9 la regimen which is our metastatic first line lung regimen using the sub q formulation you may recall that's not in our label today and that represents about 20 of the total ivy business that we're unable to tap into right now we'll get those results they will likely you know be added into nccm guidelines into the label uh in sometime in 2028 and that will serve i think as that next catalyst of growth uh for

the product so i do see an opportunity to you know further accelerate the cubantic performance in lung in lung and continuing the pace across the the rest of our you know indications how um I guess, how are you thinking about the plenary at ASCO with the bispec and the potential impact of, you know, shift away to maybe a PD-1 monotherapy backbone and how that impacts these subcuts in the lung setting?

Thanks for that question. So first, let me just say we are really excited about this ASCO coming up. We've got some, you know, important data on pominimig in lung cancer. We've got really exciting and promising data for Isobren in breast cancer, which is the product that we are partnering with Systemune. And then, of course, the results of our phase three study with mesignamide, which is our second cell mod that will come to market. I think the timing really lines up perfectly because by the time that biosimilars start to come to market, it um you know we'll start to see data readouts for pominimig in you know the 28 29 time frame and so you know the vision really is to be able to get the product to market in lung in breast and gastric and a host of other tumors as you know we've got seven phase three studies that we're actively you know recruiting for today and that gives us the opportunity to not just maintain but to grow our io franchise into the future okay maybe just um come back to to oncology but uh the the treatment of these these subcut uh combinations ira are you expecting anything this year uh visibility in whether or not the subcuts will get rolled into the treatment of iv uh pd1 well what you saw is for iv that the um you mfp effectuation was pushed one year into of 2029. We have not received any new information around sub-Q. We had expected that last year. That was deferred. We're continuing to monitor that. We are strongly opposed to having sub-Q included into the IRA negotiations in the same time of IV. This is a very novel mechanism. It's very different. We're using the Halzyme technology, as you know.

And so we've been working with policymakers to reinforce how this technology is truly differentiated from the ivy yeah well let's shift the pipeline because that's a huge area of focus for investors and milvexian you have a lot of uh know-how in this space given eloquist and so uh you know one argument that you may hear from uh physicians was hey warfarin was a just a rough drug to use uh had a lot of burden on the system right so uh that that was a maybe an easier drug for eloquist to displace as we think about scenarios are there scenarios where milvexian data wise could replace eloquist in full well clearly that's our belief our belief is that the um the the study was designed to show

a superiority benefit in bleeding and we know that bleeding is the most significant unmet need out there even with products like like eloquist and a comparable fsk profile this is a meaningful opportunity for patients you know particularly payers where there would be a clinical and the pharmacoeconomic benefit and prescribers because prescribers tell us they want a drug that they can be confident that they can use across a very broad patient population you know with with minimal bleeding we talk a lot about you've heard us jason talk about that 40 percent of patients who either untreated undertreated or discontinued treatment i would also say that you know if you and i were sitting here uh about 10 years ago you would have asked me the question well why is there so much stickiness in you know in the warfarin because at that time you know a few years post the launch of eloquist warfarin still had you know a 30 or 40 market share yeah we were talking about Coumadin clinics and it takes time again fast forward now over you know 14 years and Eloquist is not just the leading NOEC but also has about a 75 percent share so it's going to take continue to take time but we feel very confident about you know the profile that the vaccine will bring uh to patients payers and prescribers and the fact that this could become you know a true standard of care okay so when I think about data that you

you may be able to get and market for around Malvexian if you're able to show a neutral impact on stroke, right? That's table stakes. And then it seems like perhaps the sliding scale is the degree of superiority that you show on bleeding. And, you know, if that absolute delta is bigger and thus like the NNT is compared to the number needed to treat, am I thinking about the right toggles that may scale the size of this commercial opportunity beyond just, I guess, the lower-hanging fruit, which is those who can't take Eliquis because of bleeding risk or are suboptimally dosed, which I think you've defined as 40% of the epi, or is that 40% of Eliquis population?

No, it's a 40% roughly of the 10 million patients in the U.S. who are diagnosed every year. The way we think about it is how you articulate it. As I said, that's our base case, which is delivering a stat-sig improvement in bleeding, and that could be significant. in terms of the percent that we believe that milvexin can show a bleeding improvement over that of eloquence you know we know very we're very familiar in literally you know millions of patients through real world data what the bleeding profile is we've seen that that data also in you know in study in clinical trials in real world data and so you know we do believe that this is going to be a significant benefit in bleeds or you know over a standard of care eloquence the question then becomes you know what is the efficacy difference in in events in stroke and i think that's really you know what we are anticipating is to see a comparable effect to um you know to eloquence and with that profile we think that's the you know very significant opportunity that you know we believe we have in the market yeah if that didn't manifest for example you know if you saw a slightly higher hazard ratio in efficacy then we would need to look at populations that have, for example, higher risk of bleeds, such as elderly patients, frail patients, patients with renal disorder, PAD, and or CAD, which is still a very significant population. But as I said, that's not our base case. Our base case is a hazard ratio that is close to one and a STAT-SIG efficacy profile.

So I think what you're describing, though, just so I understand it correctly, like the point estimate is 1.2, and doctors are starting to kind of say to themselves hey what are my trade-offs on stroke uh but it's still approvable because it because it falls within the technical criteria on non-inferiority then docs look to the subgroups and commercially then they may skew utilization to some of these high risk subgroups depending on how the forest plot looks that's right and i think look we're not expecting uh you know a 1.2 hazard ratio it's hypothetical but you know so i don't think it It probably makes sense to hypothesize, but, you know, certainly, as I said, if that was the case, we'd have to look at subpopulations looking within the study.

But our base case and how we've continued to model Eloquus versus Movexian in a blinded fashion gives us a lot of confidence that the profile will read the way that, you know, we've articulated, which is comparable efficacy and superior bleed profile.

Yeah. I mean, one question that has come up in some of our recent doctor calls is that perhaps the annualized bleed rate of Eliquis has come down versus, say, 2010 when the pivotal trials were run then versus, say, Oceanic OF, what the annualized bleed rate is. And so you have a massive trial, right?

So presumably it's power to show some degree of superiority, but if that superiority is small, right, and it's a very large NNT, do you think that that matters commercially? doctors have not talked about you know number needed to treat as a factor in um in uptake i really think if you have a stat sig benefit it's going to be incredibly compelling particularly to payers where they know that that bleeds are a leading you know cost for you know for payers they're leading cost for employers um you know i also believe that you know the product like like milvexian is going to you know to show significant pharmacoeconomic benefits um and you know we talk a lot about major bleeds but these no acts also come with you know with non-major bleeds as well which are challenging for patients as you can imagine so that's why you do see such a significant need out there because patients are discontinuing their treatment prematurely when they see a non-major bleed and that's the i think the significant unmet need out there is a product that has the same if not slightly better efficacy than than eloquence with a superior bleeding profile yeah okay and then a quick question on ssp um i don't see why you'd have a different outcome than buyer i think christian has said that the baseline demographics of your

study are very similar to the oceanic ssp trial so that's that's all encouraging uh so your just thoughts around this opportunity now as you've gotten to see the data and better understand what that could mean from a commercial opportunity i think in the past it's i think eight to ten times afs eight to ten times larger than ssp is that ratio still hold in your mind and anything else you want to add just on the ssp opportunity well number one i think there's a clear advantage to having both indications you know becoming the you know the stroke prevention drug having you know secondary stroke prevention and afib as an indication you know as i said there are about 10 million diagnosed patients in the u.s so this is a much larger opportunity than that of secondary

stroke prevention that said when i think about what we've seen from our own phase two data large phase two study looks very similar to you know the buyer study we had a roughly a 30 percent relative risk reduction in events very low bleeding so we would expect to see a comparable profile to what you know Bayer has shown just based on our own data gives us obviously increased confidence in the data set as you know as Bayer has presented their phase three but we feel good about both opportunities that we have in front of us and the good news is we don't have to wait that long we'll see data you know by the end of the year and and you'll see what the results bring yep okay maybe we'll move to admiral parent and an IPF pulmonary is not a huge area of focus for

bristol currently but uh i think there are a lot of clear uh commercial success stories in the ipf and there's a lot of clinical uh attrition stories as well on the development side so i guess the one encouraging thing is that you know bi had an oral follow-on it's been up for about five months it's already annualizing at a billion and a half i don't know if you view that as uh wow this is like they're gonna have a first mover advantage on us that that's gonna be hard to displace them or do you just look at that as like this market was truly undertreated because people couldn't tolerate antifibrotics and there's there's just a lot of opportunity out there yeah this is a you know an exciting and i think uh an opportunity that's probably um you know

underestimated um externally but it's one where we've got a lot of enthusiasm about uh it's based on the phase two data that we've seen another phase three study in ipf we'll see the results this year and then PPF early next year. But I think what we have seen now with the launch of Jascade just confirms what you were alluding to and what we know is that this is a market that even if you have modest efficacy and tolerability improvement versus standard of care, which is what BI has shown, there really is a significant commercial opportunity. It's a $4 billion market today. We think this market can more than double at peak. And what is happening and what our thought leaders have said is that, you know, with the profile of Ad Milperant, the first LPA1 antagonist into the market that will offer really robust efficacy with minimal GI toxicity, has the opportunity not just to be foundational in first line, but what you're seeing today happen now with the new entrant and what we expect to see with the versatility that Ad Milperant offers. the opportunity to be a an add-on and or a switch that market didn't exist which is another reason why we expect to see significant growth so we feel really good about you know where we are with both our ipf and ppf program you are right this is a new area so there's a lot of work that that

needs to get done yeah from now until approval but you know we know the work that we need to do to get this product to market and we expect this to be a significant player in ipf and ppf okay okay uh maybe the cell mods quickly um the the space is incredibly fluid increasingly complex that being the multiple myeloma space with recent data from tech faily i think there's open questions around how bispex and cartes will be sequenced you know where maybe it's a little bit difficult to to have a full view until some of the readouts like successor to come out right and you have a better sense head-to-head how agents like palm or i should say mezzi compare to POM more directly, but paint the picture because I do hear the feedback that these drugs would generally probably resonate well with community oncologists because of the easy use profile.

Yeah, so we're very much looking forward to our pitufidate for ibertamide, which is August 17th of this year based on the MRD endpoint. And then as I mentioned earlier, we will present the results of basignamide, our phase three study at ASCO, which, again, you'll see what a significant opportunity Mezzi and Iber are, particularly in the community. I mean, that's where 70% to 80% of patients are treated. That's where we believe that initially we will have a stronghold. And there is an unmet need in the market for a product that has increased potency versus Rev and Palm, manageable toxicity, an oral drug. All those fit really nicely within the workflow of the community oncologist versus what you see with, you know, potentially combinations of TCEs. And it's why CAR-Ts can't be used outside of these centers of excellence. So when I think about, you know, what the opportunities that we have at hand, you know, number one, you know, we know that when you look at MRD for cell mods, they are significantly better than what we see for IMIDs. These products, cell mods, they were engineered to be more potent than REV and POM, and we're confident in that. We'll also have two studies that will demonstrate head-to-head. One is going to be in an earlier line of treatment. So we have a head-to-head IBER versus REV study in first line, newly diagnosed patients. And then we'll have successor one readout where you'll be able to see how Mezzi combination compares to that with a pomalidomide combination. But taken together, this is a market we know well.

We're very excited to bring these products to patients. and to prescribers and our goal is over time to be able to replace rev and pom in the second line setting okay so maybe shifting gears to just oncology and in the bd strategy you know as we think about uh the initial wave of trials to replace your your pdx or opdivo uh the coming wave of trials are going to be built on novel novel combinations right so uh you know isabren's one logical you know partner uh there but you know thinking about other kind of novel agents does that imply that bristol is going to be active on the bd front here to effectuate the strategy yeah so i think you know we we feel very good about you know a rich and deep oncology pipeline

this is an area that we've been you know leaders for for quite some time and we talked about some of the really exciting data that's coming uh at asco as far as novel novel you know we do believe that's going to be the case that novel novel combinations are going to replace you know what largely used today is you know chemo combinations so yes we've built very deliberately our pipeline to include certain platforms so you know we think we have a truly differentiated adc with isa bren the first her three egfr adc remember we also have through our raised bio acquisition um you know a platform in radio pharmaceuticals we are leaders today in cell therapy we continue to add to that important modality we you know have targeted therapies which we haven't talked much about like prmt5 which you know is in around 10 to 15 percent of all tumor types these are in mtap deletions many of these are going to be used in combinations as novel novel and we have a host of other other products in our pipeline that we're working to to rapidly bring forward but i think oncology is a really important space for business development because that the science continues to move probably the fastest in this space just yesterday um you know we announced a you know i think a pretty interesting and innovative approach with uh ungre which is a chinese biopharmaceutical company for kind of a landmark deal with 13 assets four of which we get access us to that are all oncology focused um and these are potentially you know first in class best in class or tces trispecifics things that we know are going to be really important for kind of future forward combinations and you know we feel good about how we're positioning ourselves with oncology and to remain leaders in the space in the future pominibig of course being the anchor asset there because there's so much room for you know for continued growth in immuno-oncology and It's an area that we know so well. We go back almost two decades there.

Okay, so about three minutes left, so maybe we'll just jump to CoBemphi. And, you know, as we think about sort of the early launch dynamics in schizophrenia and the entrenchment of the D2s, I guess what I wonder is, you know, is there a market analog you can point to that, hey, with time and resources, there can be a later inflection point in the rollout in schizophrenia specifically?

So Cobenfi is delivering steady growth. You saw that in Q1. And what we have seen and expect for Cobenfi is to continue to deliver that similar cadence of growth in schizophrenia. And the inflections, what we have seen through analogs, come from new indications. And right now we are ahead of all recently launched D2s in schizophrenia. There remains a very attractive opportunity to grow our schizophrenia business into the future. But it's those data readouts that are coming in bipolar, in ADP, in Alzheimer's disease, cognition, agitation, autism that are going to accelerate the pace of growth for this product. And we feel confident that this is going to continue to be a multi-billion dollar asset over time. But we need to add new indications and we look forward to data readouts coming over the next several months.

Are there any issues that you see in terms of the dosing profile in Alzheimer's? I know it's dosed three times a day. Or is the view that a lot of these patients are in long-term care facility, nursing homes, and so obviously the patient doesn't need to remember to dose three times a day. That would obviously be problematic if the patient had to do that. But I'm just curious if there's anything inherent in the product profile that we're seeing and maybe the schizophrenia adoption that plays into the ADP opportunity?

Yeah, I think there are some parallels that we need to make sure we take those learnings from schizophrenia and we will apply them into future launches. Number one is ensuring that we're building confidence in how to dose those patients, how to titrate patients to get the best, the maximal benefit and minimize the side effects, particularly the GI side effects. When you're looking at an Alzheimer's patient population, you know safety becomes of utmost importance and many of these patients as you said jason they are in nursing homes so side effects and adverse events like you know movement disorders eps excessive sedation these products every d2 carries a box warning for um elderly related patients with with dementia we know that cobenfi doesn't have any of those you know challenges now they we will have to make sure that physicians are confident in how to use the product how to titrate the product. The TID dosing started with the Karuna development program, and so that's why we have ADEPT-5, which is a program that's designed to move TID dosing into BID dosing, because we do understand that although most of these patients are treated in a long-term care facility, TID dosing is not ideal. So we want to make sure that they do have the opportunity for bid and then we're going to continue to look at data generation like we've just launched with our switch study as well as our food effect study that helps physicians really be able to use the product in a more real world setting how to dose it how to titrate it to manage any side effects and to maximize the efficacy of the product it's a quick question i'll ask you to put your cfo hat on there was commentary on the most recent earnings call just about that this pipeline rich fourth quarter data flow won't impede the company's ability to transact and do BD to augment the portfolio.

So maybe just give us a little bit of flavor for Appetite for BD, some of the parameters around that in terms of what the company's focused on.

Yeah. So David has said this well. I mean, we are in a very good position in terms of having the capital to do the types of deals that we want to do now um you know we're going to be selective in those deals making sure that the deals fit nicely into our therapeutic areas that we believe we are the you know the best owners the rightful owners we have the ability to win that these you know assets are differentiated but bd remains a you know a top priority so you know we're focused on two two key areas number one is you know is using capital allocation for business development continuing to add to the you know the profile not not in this part of the decade but continuing in the next part of the decade so that you know we continue to see that long-term sustainable growth the other area we're focused on is you know paying out the dividend and making sure that you know we're continuing to return money to shareholders and you know we've paid did the dividend i think 93 years now david would be better 94 years potentially um and i think that's the area that we're going to continue to to do is balance between you know smart business development looking at opportunities that you know fit really well within our profile our therapeutic area footprint and then returning our you know money to the shareholders all right great we're out of time so thank you so much for joining us thanks so much all right