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- [00:01]
A
Hi, everybody. Tune in to this short version of the podcast, which we do every Friday. For the long version, tune in on Wednesdays. Hi, everyone, and welcome to In Good Company. I'm Nicolai Tangen, the head of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund. And today I'm in particularly good company because I'm here with Albert Bourla, who is the chairman and CEO of Pfizer, one of the largest pharma companies in the world. Now, Albert, he has been with Pfizer for 30 years, been CEO since 2019, and, and has led the company through a remarkable period of change. Warm welcome.
- [00:32]
B
Thank you very much. And you know, I'm with Pfizer 33 years.
- [00:34]
A
33 years.
- [00:35]
B
I'm with my wife. 30.
- [00:37]
A
All right, I got it mixed up there.
- [00:38]
B
Yes, yes.
- [00:39]
A
Now, a lot of stuff has happened since you took over as CEO. What are you most excited about just now?
- [00:46]
B
I think I'm always excited by the Future. Like all CEOs, right, they see the opportunities ahead and science is at the highest levels we ever had it, and science is affecting our business very big time. So I'm very, very optimistic about the scientific progress that we can see in the next years. Until the end of the decade, you
- [01:10]
A
sharpened the focus on innovative medicine, sold off consumer health care and so on. Why did you think that was the right decision to make?
- [01:16]
B
I'm a believer that corporations role is not to hedge, it is to be very good. A few things, investors role is to hedge. So I believe that requires different culture for a scientific company and different culture for a consumer company, and very different culture of patent, generic company. So I felt that we should choose to be good at what is really important, and that was science.
- [01:45]
A
Now, we're not going to spend much time on Covid, but we have to just touch on the fact first. You did an unbelievable job, put a huge amount of your own capital in there and produced a vaccine in eight months. Just how was that possible?
- [02:00]
B
Well, you know, it was possible for several reasons, but the most important is, was exceptional times. So everybody felt that this is not business as usual, and everybody felt that the culture of society, our civilization, it's at risk. So everybody gave everything. And when I say everybody, I mean the government, I mean our people, I mean our hospitals that corroborated. So it was not easy to be done without them being aligned.
- [02:39]
A
The other area you wanted to zoom in on was obesity. And you bought Medcera. Why was that so important to buy? And you all beat Novo Nordisk there.
- [02:49]
B
Yes, we always believed that obesity is a very Big area. And we always believe that Pfizer is the company that can be very competitive over there. So we enter into the obesity space way back in the day and if things wouldn't go wrong for us scientifically because two major assets that we had in the cleaning, they suddenly saw signs of liver toxicity so we had to discontinue them, although they were very effective. But if that was not the case, we would be the first to launch an oral product right now in the market. And things will be very, very different for all of us. But unfortunately this didn't happen. So now we are having development organization that knows how to do primary care, a very big complicated studies. We have a commercial organization that, that it is a powerhouse and knows how to sell stuff. And we have a manufacturing network that can make those stuff better and faster and cheaper than anybody else. And guess what? We didn't have a portfolio. So it was for us extremely important to cover this gap because of bad luck, of scientific bad luck with an acquisition. And that's what we did with Micera.
- [04:08]
A
Now you own it for a little while. Have your view changed?
- [04:12]
B
Not at all. Not at all. I think I'm more and more optimistic, if anything.
- [04:17]
A
Why are you more optimistic?
- [04:19]
B
Because we had the release of data post the acquisition and we knew that Matsera has very good weekly product that we're really certain you can never be 100%, but we were 85, 90% certain that that will deliver. But we didn't have hard evidence that a monthly product could be delivered. We knew that the pharmacokinetics support something like that. We knew from phase one early data that it should work. But we needed the phase two data which we didn't have available when we did the acquisition. The phase two came later and indeed it confirmed that we do have a monthly product. We can debate is it going to be better than lilies, worse than lilies, but it's going to be monthly lilies and novos will be weekly that we know now with very high level of confidence, to the degree of course that science can provide you such.
- [05:18]
A
So that's why you mentioned AI and China. What is happening in China, in the pharma industry?
- [05:27]
B
I think the Chinese, when they put something in their mind is top priority. They have proven that they can deliver exceptional results. Chinese, they are working with a five years plan. They had 20, 25 was the 14th five year plan from Mao Zedong's time. This is where they first time spoke that they want to develop by years 35 to 36. Global players in pharmaceutical space. And to do that, they said in the first years they need to develop a biotech and improve science, et cetera. They did tremendously well. Right now in the Nature index of ranking universities based on scientific output, out of 10, the top 10 was always eight US. The usual suspects, MIT, Harvard. In 25, only one was US, Harvard and eight were Chinese. Eight of the top 10 were Chinese in the world. Based on peer review publications that they had and grants and PhDs and all of that. The progress that's happening is amazing. From the early stages of drug discovery, to regulations, to IP protections, to utilizing talents, encouraging investments, subsidies, they are moving with the speed of light.
- [07:13]
A
But so far they do it with us and with you. Right, so you did a deal with 3S Bio, which is a Chinese biotech company.
- [07:21]
B
Yes, we are trying to tap into the Chinese innovation. So there are a lot of things that they are developing. We are looking at them and when we find something good, we license it. But for me, this is not a long term strategy. First of all, they won't give their molecules forever to others. They will develop their capabilities to take them all the way to the market so that they can profit from the whole chain of value. But my focus is how to become better than them. Because right now they bring a very different league. They are doing everything with half the cost and three times the speed. If you compare Pfizer and Lilly and AstraZeneca and over Nordisk, one is better in something, the other is better in something else. But in general we are all within a range of same, let's say productivity levels, R and D, maybe one is better, commercial, maybe one is better. They come, as I said, half the cost, three times the speed. That's a very different league. You need to transform your companies and you have five years to do it so that you will be able to compete in a world that they come like they did with electric vehicles, like they did with solar panels, like, like they did with batteries, they will do with medicines.
- [08:44]
A
And how is Pfizer going to halve the costs and increase the speed by 300%?
- [08:50]
B
Yeah. The best answer, or the simple answer is through transformation through technology. I think it's a good thing to say I'm going to transform myself. But it's not that you were stupid before, it was that you didn't have technology that will allow you to do things very, very different than you're doing them right now. Now we have with AI, so transformation through technology, it is pretty much number one.