Novartis initiating share buyback of up to $2.5B

Novartis is hosting today its annual "Meet Novartis Management" event to give investors and industry analysts "a deeper view into the company's progress on its ongoing transformation and growth strategy focused on becoming the leading medicines company powered by data science and advanced therapy platforms," the company announced earlier. "Novartis offers a unique profile as a fully focused medicines company with diversification across therapeutic areas and geographies, while providing exposure to cutting-edge platforms. We have delivered strong operational performance, growing the top- and bottom- line and delivering on our commitment to margin expansion. Our rich pipeline continues to advance, and we highlight many assets that show significant promise. Reflecting our confidence in future growth and success of our pipeline, we are initiating a share buyback of up to USD 2.5 billion," said Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan in conjunction with the event. The announced share buyback of up to $2.5B will be executed under the existing annual general meeting authority, starts immediately and will last into the first half of 2021. "The program is supported by Novartis' liquidity and strong balance sheet, in line with our capital structure reflecting AA- (S&P) / A1 (Moody's) credit rating, and existing capital allocation priorities," Novartis said. "Novartis has a leading pipeline based on scale, innovation and future value, including 116 assets in phase I or II, 49 in Phase III or undergoing registration and more than 65 new molecular entities. The pipeline is expected to fuel growth in the mid-to long-term, with around 90 percent potential first-in-class/first-in-indication medicines and about 80 percent of targets in areas of high unmet patient need. The company is strengthening its advanced therapy platforms along the value chain with 20 advanced platform therapies in clinical development alongside a large number of pre-clinical projects. Novartis is also making significant progress on the manufacturing and commercialization of these advanced therapy platforms. The total value of estimated sales of products launched from 2020 to 2026 puts Novartis as number two for pipeline replacement power in the global pharmaceutical industry," the company added.