Good morning and welcome. On behalf of the Board of Directors, it's my great pleasure to welcome you today to Lundbeck's Annual General Meeting. It's wonderful to see so many of you here in person today. I would like to mention that we offer our shareholders also to attend the Annual General Meeting via webcast, both in Danish and in English. We provide simultaneous interpretation into English and Danish to allow shareholders from different backgrounds to attend our annual general meeting. As you will be aware, this annual general meeting concludes my first year as Chair of the Board of Directors. It has been an honor and a privilege to step into this role at a pivotal moment in Lundbeck's history, when a major transformation has just been going on since 2024.
In 2025, amidst significant geopolitical uncertainties, we have strengthened strategic momentum with continuous strong growth, additional transformation of our pipeline, and successful execution of an ambitious capital reallocation program. Lundbeck has an exciting path ahead, and I very much look forward to supporting this next phase in this great company's proud history. Let me now present the Board of Directors for 2025, and I'm glad to say that most of them are present here today. The members elected by the annual general meeting in addition to myself are Lene Skole-Sørensen, Vice Chair, Santiago Arroyo, Jeffrey Berkowitz, Lars Green, Jakob Riis, and Lars Erik Holmqvist. In addition, we have four employee elected board members, and also majority of them are present here today: Dorte Clausen, Lasse Skibsbye, Camilla Gram Andersson, and Hossein Armandi.
The four employee representatives who have served since the Annual General Meeting in 2025 are concluding their tenure as of today. On behalf of the Board of Directors, I would like to sincerely thank them for their valuable contributions, engagement, and commitment during this period. I'm pleased to note that the majority of them have been reelected, reflecting the trust placed in them and the strengths of their contribution. The newly elected employee representative, as well as the reelected employee representatives, will be formally introduced later in this meeting. When I look back on our work on the Board in 2025, it is with great satisfaction. As both CEO Charl van Zyl and I will elaborate on, 2025 has been a remarkable year for Lundbeck.
In connection with key strategic decisions made during the year, the Board has maintained an open and constructive dialogue with the executive leadership. This discussion covered strategic business development, commercial transformation, and a broad range of operational and market-related topics. This included considerations of evolving geopolitical and market conditions with continued attention to strengthening the company's long-term resilience. Let me briefly introduce the company's executive leadership. Lundbeck has an executive leadership team with extensive international experience that has been in place since August 2024. It consists of Charl van Zyl, President and Chief Executive Officer. Maria Alfaiate, Executive VP responsible for Portfolio & Product Strategy. Lars Bang, Executive VP responsible for P roduct Development & S upply. Michala Fischer-Hansen, Executive VP responsible for commercial business in Europe and international operations. Thomas Gibbs, Executive VP responsible for our U.S. business.
Dianne Hol, Executive VP responsible for people, culture, and sustainability. Joerg Hornstein, Executive VP, Chief Financial Officer, and responsible for corporate functions. Johan Luthman, Executive VP responsible for research and development. Tine Østergaard-Hansen, Senior VP responsible for communications and public affairs. Recently appointed, Markus Kede, Senior VP, Chief AI Officer. This group of leaders represents a broad range of capabilities and experience, both from Denmark and abroad. Under Charl van Zyl's leadership, the executive leadership team has come together as a strong unit, working towards highly ambitious goals and sharing a common vision for Lundbeck's future.
On behalf of the Board of Directors, I would like to thank the executive leadership team and all Lundbeck employees for their amazing efforts and dedication that have delivered impressive results in 2025. For the fourth consecutive year, Lundbeck has delivered record revenues. The company also achieved substantial growth in operating profit, also known as EBITDA. While simultaneously being able to further increase investments in research and development of new medicines.
The Board is very pleased with this performance and how it positions Lundbeck for the future. According to the company's articles of association, the Board of Directors appoints the Chair of the Annual General Meeting. Once again this year, the Board has appointed Attorney at Law Jørgen Kjergaard Madsen from Kromann Reumert as Chair of the Meeting. Welcome. With that, I would like to hand over to you, Jørgen, to chair our AGM.
Thank you very much. Thank you for appointing me chair of the AGM. I hope that we will have a good and positive meeting today. Before I take you to the formal agenda, I have a few practical remarks. As mentioned by the chair, we have simultaneous interpretation today as per tradition from Danish into English and vice versa. That also means that headsets are available for anyone who wish to take one. If you need a headset and haven't received one, please put your hand up. There's one there. We will make sure you get a headset.
Those shareholders who wish to speak under certain items on the agenda are asked to come up here to the rostrum because we are webcasting the proceedings, so it's important for everyone to be able to see and hear what's going on. Please also introduce yourselves before starting your contribution. Should anyone wish to leave the AGM during the meeting, please deregister at the registration desk with Computershare outside, so that we have an overview of who is here and how many we are during the AGM.
Now let's get down to business. My first formal task is to conclude whether the AGM has been lawfully convened and is quorate. First of all, we need to hold the AGM in the right place, in Greater Copenhagen in accordance with Article 7. We are here in Valby, even though it is quite the construction site out here, we are still holding the AGM at the headquarters. It should also take place before the end of April. That is also the case, and we should give the right notice, minimum three weeks and a maximum of five weeks of notice.
The notice was sent out on the 17th of February. It has been published on the company's website on Nasdaq Copenhagen, and we have sent out the notice to those registered shareholders who have asked for that. That is all in order. The required documents in accordance to the Articles of Association and the Companies Act have been available on the company website since the 17th of February, the same day of the notice, and that also complies with the requirement in the legislation. The notice and agenda is also in accordance with the articles of association. No items on the agenda requires a certain share of the share capital or the shareholders to be adopted. That means that all items on the agenda can be adopted by a simple majority.
On the basis of all of this, it is my conclusion that the AGM has been lawfully convened and is quorate. Should anyone wish to object, please say so now. Otherwise, I will conclude that the AGM is indeed lawfully convened and quorate. Today, we have representation of 86% of the share capital and almost 87% of the votes. That leads me to the agenda, which is on the screen behind me today. Let me just take you through it briefly. We have item 1 and 2, the report of the Board of Directors on the company's activities during the past year, and the presentation and adoption of the annual report for 2025. As per tradition here at Lundbeck, we will take these two items as one.
Item 3 is the resolution on the appropriation of profit, and item 4 is the presentation of the remuneration report for an advisory vote. After these items, we have item 5, which is the election of members to the Board of Directors. Item 6 is the approval of remuneration for the Board of Directors for the current financial year. Item 7 is the election of auditor. Item 8, any proposals by shareholders or the Board of Directors , and here I will get back to the specific proposals we have on the agenda today. Finally, we end with item 9, any other business.
For the sake of good order, I can inform you that with the proxies and postal votes received, we have a solid majority to adopt all of the proposals on the agenda today, and therefore, there will be no need for any formal votes in order to determine the adoption of each proposal. Therefore, under each item I will assume that the votes here in the room vote in favor of the proposals unless anyone says otherwise. If any shareholders should wish to vote against any proposals or abstain, please do that by registering when you leave the AGM. You can register at the Computershare desk and register your vote against or your wish to abstain under any of the items on the agenda.
That way we will get the complete account of the voting result that we formally need without having to stop and count votes and so on during the AGM. That is how we usually do it, and that is a very practical way of going about it. Those were the words from me so far, and I will pass the floor back to the Chair of the Board, Dorothea Wenzel, for her report and for a presentation of the audited annual report for 2025. Today, as I understand it, we shall also hear from the CEO, Charl van Zyl.
Thank you very much, Jørgen. I have been looking forward to presenting the Board of Directors' report and the review of the annual report for the past year to our shareholders. As mentioned, 2025 has been a highly successful year for Lundbeck. We managed to perform and transform at the same time and with great success. In my view, Lundbeck is a truly distinctive company in many respects. What sets us apart very clearly is that we are one of the very few pharmaceutical companies in the world dedicated exclusively to neuroscience. This long-standing commitment to brain health shapes who we are. It creates a unique spirit and a strong sense of purpose that defines our culture. We feel a strong connection to patients and caregivers because we have consistently focused on the same disease areas, neurology and psychiatry.
This long-term commitment allows us to build deep understanding and lasting relationships. Patients are at the heart of everything we do, and the commitment is clearly recognized by the communities we serve. This was reflected in the last International PatientView Neurology Survey, where patient advocacy groups ranked Lundbeck as the number two pharmaceutical partner worldwide in 2025. This recognition is a meaningful testament to our ongoing efforts to engage with, listen to, and learn from patients and their advocates.
Recent research indicates that around half of the world's population is affected by brain disorders. Collectively, these conditions represent one of the greatest global health challenges and are a leading cause of disability and reduced quality of life, and this is exceeding the burden associated with cancer and cardiovascular diseases.
Our most important task at Lundbeck is to address that challenge. We do so every single day by researching how we can advance brain health, developing new medicines that help patients who have no or insufficient treatment options, and helping ensure that our medicines reach patients all over the world. Lundbeck makes its medicines available through healthcare systems in more than 80 countries. In 2025, we were able to reach an estimated 27.8 million patients.
Furthermore, our so-called access coverage increase for our strategic products from 72% in 2024 to 77% in 2025. This means that even more patients had access to our medicines under public reimbursement. The efforts are fully aligned with our overall purpose as a company, which is to advance brain health and transform lives by creating long-term value, their patients, their relatives, and caretakers, and for society as a whole.
The need to research and treat brain disease is increasingly recognized and prioritized globally. As a result, we see a growing neuroscience market, which is expected to reach approximately $160 billion by the year 2030, which translates into a compounded annual growth rate of 10% from the year 2024- 2030. To ensure that Lundbeck is well-positioned to meet this growing need, we launched our Focused Innovator Strategy at the beginning of 2024. The strategy builds on our strong heritage in neurological and psychiatric diseases while sharpening our priorities and directing investments to the areas where we can make the greatest difference for patients and create sustainable long-term value. It is structured around three focus areas.
First, to grow and maximize value from our strategic brands, ensuring we are present in the right markets and reaching patients effectively. Second, to expand our position within neurospecialty, where specialized expertise and strong scientific capabilities allow us to compete and win. Third, to build a focused franchise in rare neurological disorders, addressing area of high unmet need. Together, these priorities provide a disciplined framework for how we allocate capital, prioritize innovation, and drive sustainable growth. As mentioned, 2025 was the second year of our Focused Innovator Strategy. Let me highlight now how our strategic focus and strong performance in 2025 positions Lundbeck for continued growth in 2026 and beyond. Over the past year, we have taken important steps to further strengthen the company commercially, scientifically, and financially.
The progress we are seeing is the result of our clear strategic choices and disciplined execution, and it reinforces our confidence in Lundbeck's long-term trajectory. In 2025, Lundbeck delivered strong operational momentum with exceptional double-digit growth from our strategic brands, led by VYEPTI and REXULTI. This performance reflects both the strength of our portfolio and the quality of execution across the organization. Given this strong performance, the Board proposes under agenda item 8.2 to increase the maximum yearly bonus payout for the CEO in cases where the actual performance significantly exceed the predefined targets. This is a reflection of Charl's significant contribution to Lundbeck's strong performance under his leadership and to ensure competitiveness in the market and to comparable roles in the industry.
Also, we are sharpening the company's commercial focus. By prioritizing our largest and most attractive markets, we are allocating resources where they have the greatest and most sustainable value. This disciplined prioritization enhances both growth potential and return on investment. On innovation, we have made meaningful advances across both neurospecialty and neuro-rare. Within neurospecialty, Vyepti continues to grow strongly, and we reported a positive phase II-B outcome for bocunebart, which is expected to progress into late-stage development. This reinforces our ambition to build a whole migraine franchise.
Within neuro-rare, we have advanced bexicaserin, acquired through Longboard Pharmaceuticals, and continued progressing amlenetug. The strong progression was validated by our announcement just last week, where we now have our last patient randomized into the amlenetug MASCOT phase III trial well ahead of our original planned timelines. This is a proof of the high unmet need and the significant potential future value these programs drive.
At the same time, we have broadened the pipeline in a disciplined manner, initiating assets in neuroendocrinology and in neuroimmunology, areas firmly anchored in high unmet need. The Board views the development portfolio as increasingly robust, balanced, and diversified. Throughout the year, we have maintained strong financial discipline. Capital allocation remains focused and prudent, and we have continued to deleverage at pace. This strengthens the balance sheet and enhances strategic flexibility while still enabling investments in innovation and growth.
As we enter 2026, Lundbeck is financially well-positioned, with continued growth in revenue and adjusted EBITDA supporting a positive outlook. Importantly, 2025 has been a year of significant advancements across the pipeline. With five to six mid- to late- stage assets, Lundbeck now has multiple potential catalysts over the coming years. This diversification meaningfully strengthens the company long-term growth profile and resilience.
In summary, through disciplined execution, focused innovation, and prudent financial management, Lundbeck is well-positioned for continued growth in 2026 and sustained value creation for shareholders and, most importantly, for our patients.
Let me turn to our share price development since January 2025. The year 2025 was, as we all know, characterized by significant geopolitical headwinds and devaluation of the U.S. dollar, a particularly important factor given our substantial exposure to the U.S. market. Despite these external pressures, Lundbeck delivered strong underlying performance. This was reflected in several guidance upgrades during the year, demonstrating solid commercial execution and continued progress across a number of initiatives advancing our pipeline. For the full year 2025, our share price increased by 4.5%, outperforming the OMXC25 index.
If we look at the share price so far in 2026, our share has been continuously impacted by geopolitical turbulences as well as newly introduced policies in the U.S. This macroeconomic sentiment could not completely be offset by the positive phase II-B trial of bocunebart that I just mentioned before, which was announced in February.
The Board remains confident in Lundbeck's strategic direction. Our fundamentals are strong, our strategy is clear, and we continue to focus on delivering sustainable long-term value for our shareholders, which we strongly believe will be reflected in the share price as we progress. Lundbeck delivered a strong operational performance in 2025 and upgraded its growth outlook three times during the year. Revenues reached DKK 24.6 billion, representing a growth of 13% at constant exchange rates or 12% in Danish kroner.
All commercial regions contributed to the strong growth in our strategic products, which increased by 19% at constant exchange rates or 15% in Danish kroner, reaching DKK 19 billion, corresponding to 77% of our overall revenues. Adjusted earnings before tax, interest, depreciation, and amortization, also referred to as adjusted EBITDA, increased to more than DKK 7.8 billion, reflecting the strong performance of our strategic products, combined with strong cost culture and operating leverage from our capital reallocation program. Adjusted EBITDA grew by 24% and reached an EBITDA margin of 32%, reflecting that the growth in strategic brands outperformed the increased investments in our product pipeline.
This means that we now have again surpassed the 30% margin level, and we are maintaining it, reflecting operating leverage from strong revenue growth, disciplined cost management, and focused capital reallocation. At the same time, we generated strong cash flows from operations of DKK 5.5 billion. This robust cash generation has enabled rapid deleveraging following the acquisition of Longboard Pharmaceuticals at the end of 2024, bringing the net leverage ratio down to 1.2x at the end of the year.
With this, I come to the dividend proposal for the year. In line with our dividend payout over the last four years at 30% of net profit, the Board proposes a dividend reflecting the same principle for 2025. This year, we have adjusted for the non-recurring impairment related to the planned divestment of a non-core production site in Italy. The proposed dividend corresponds to 36% of net profit before this adjustment and 30% after the adjustment. This results in a proposed dividend of DKK 1.15 per share or equivalent to total dividends of 1.145 billion DKK. Compared to last year, this represents an increase by 21%.
In 2026, we expect revenue and earnings to continue to grow. We expect Lundbeck to increase revenues by 5%-8% at constant exchange rates. The growth primarily reflects the sustained momentum of our strategic brands, where VYEPTI and REXULTI are expected to remain the primary growth driver, while generic pressure is expected to intensify for Abilify Maintena.
Lundbeck expects adjusted EBITDA growth of 4%-12% at constant exchange rates compared with the previous year. This is driven by revenue growth and strategic brands, combined with disciplined cost management and productivity initiatives, partially offset by continuous commitment and increased investment in R&D, and also higher cost of goods sold and accelerating generic competition.
Overall, Lundbeck continues to focus on profitable growth going forward. Lundbeck's sustainability efforts center on our opportunities to make a positive impact for patients, people, and the planet, as well as addressing sustainability risks and potential adverse impacts. Clearly, our most important contribution to society is to ease the global burden of brain disorders. As mentioned previously, our products reached 27.8 million patients in 2025. To me, this is a remarkable number because each patient is an individual human being whose life is improved thanks to Lundbeck's medicines.
Let me highlight a few additional examples of our sustainability focus. Lundbeck is committed to achieving climate neutrality by reducing emissions across the value chain, and we continue to advance on these ambitions in 2025. We have now lowered Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 47% since 2019, a significant step forward from 38% at the end of 2024. While Scope 3 emissions, those emissions, which is the footprint from purchased goods and services, remain above the baseline due to our business growth. We are actively addressing emissions across the whole value chain to ensure that we scale the company responsibly. In our production, we recycled 62% of the chemicals used by purifying and reusing solvents. While this is marginally below our 63% target, it is an area where we continue to strengthen.
In 2026, we will complete the installation of a new solvent recovery unit at our Danish production site, which will further improve our recycling capacity. The overall gender balance in the highest level of leadership improved from 2024- 2025, with the underrepresented gender, female, now accounting for 42% of upper management. This is in line with our overall ambition to ensuring a representation of the underrepresented gender at this level of at least 40%, in alignment with the Danish Gender Balance Act.
With the introduction of Lundbeck's updated inclusion, diversity, and equity policy, we are putting an increased focus on inclusion and sense of belonging. We believe brain health thrives in environments where everyone feels heard, safe, and included. In 2025, the surveyed inclusion score came out at 8.2. While this was less than our ambitious target of 8.5, it demonstrates sustained employee engagement and places Lundbeck in the top quartile among comparable companies.
To summarize, Lundbeck is delivering strong and responsible growth, expanding patient reach, reducing our environmental footprint, strengthening diversity and leadership, and continuing to invest in innovation. Ultimately, all of this, our strategy, our sustainability efforts, our financial performance, comes down to one thing: the lives of patients we serve. Behind each number, there is a person, a family, a future. I would now like to hand over to our CEO, Charl van Zyl.
Before I do that, I want to share with you a special story. It's the story of Anne, who's living with multiple system atrophy. Multiple system atrophy is a rare disease for which there are no treatment options today. Her story is a powerful reminder of why advancing brain health matters so deeply. I'm pleased to share this ambition with Charl and with our colleagues at Lundbeck.
To find another doctor, and they were the ones that were able to help officially diagnose with MSA. I went to a neurologist here for one year, and he just said it was an atrophy. I said, "No, it's not an atrophy. It's more." It was about three or four years ago. I found I wasn't able to walk right and step out from it. Incontinence just started. She would walk to church.
Church. On the way there would have an accident and didn't understand why that was happening. Yeah. Some balance issues . Yeah. I feel like we keep finding new potential symptoms, and we keep pushing the timeline back further and further. Yes. Few different doctors. Yeah. A few different clinical trials to try and figure out how to help someone else. That's one thing about mom. She wants to help everybody else.
Good morning, everyone. It's of course wonderful to see many of you here, and it's for me a privilege and a pleasure to be able to represent Lundbeck today here in front of you. I want to take a moment again to bridge on what Dorothea had said. You know, this story of Anne is a story that I think we should all understand in the context of our employees and why we're here. We exist as a company because of Anne. We are working with immense dedication, with a very strong purpose to find solutions for Anne. If you think about what her life means in terms of these severe neurological conditions, the impact it has on her life, but also on the whole society and on the people supporting her, then this is a purpose that is worthwhile fighting for every day.
I want to thank many of the employees here in the room, people who are here and get up early in the morning, who are dedicated to that journey, because it takes us sometimes eight to 10 years before we could find a solution for Anne. Think about that dedication, that purpose. I spoke to Jørgen a bit earlier, and you know, some of that metaphor is we sometimes plant the tree today, but we might not see that tree grow in the future. That's the work that we do every day. I really want, deeply want to thank all the Lundbeck employees for your work you're doing to find the solutions for Anne. It is my pleasure to present the great results, as we've heard, outstanding results, a record year.
Behind a lot of this and behind the high-performing company are the great people that stand behind it. My goal today is really to share with you where are we on our strategic journey, but also are we intact in terms of our strategy of where we're going? Are we therefore seeing the proof points of our journey very clearly around what we're trying to solve for Lundbeck?
What you see here are really just a few small snapshots, a few pictures. Behind all of this, there's a movie. People, teams working together, people that live with our leadership behaviors of curiosity, of adaptability, of being accountable for the results. What we see in our results don't come by chance. They come because of these teams, of these people dedicated inside the company every day to bring these outstanding results to the company.
I deeply want to thank our employees, those who are listening in today, those who are here in the room for these results, because this is what really matters. Your teamwork, your dedication makes me extremely proud to be able to represent the results here today. Now I'm going to go to the first question. Is our strategic intent clear? Is it still intact? Is our strategy working? Is the fundamental question. When we started our Focused Innovator Strategy, we addressed three questions. First one, how can we grow more with what we have? Secondly, how do we build a compelling pipeline, a pipeline that will solve the long-term growth in the next decade for Lundbeck? Thirdly, the important question is. How do we fund that journey?
How do we maintain healthy profitability for shareholders while investing very clearly in either growth or innovation? We are in our third year of that focus phase. We have a very clear flag we planted over the next 10, nine years that we want to achieve, to be in a breakthrough stage where we can grow for the next decade. To get there are many steps we're taking, and we're in this focus phase now, and I have to say, we have exceeded all my expectations in these first two years of our Focused Innovator Strategy. We have outgrown what we said we would do two years ago.
We have a much more compelling pipeline than we had two years ago, and we've been able to fund a lot of that through smart capital allocation inside the company to allow us to remain very profitable, but also being very clear on where we invest and invest for growth and for the pipeline. We have been able to perform and transform at the same time. There's a few illustrations here of just transformation, but it's a very dynamic process. We are not living in a world where we do some type of transformation every four or five years. We live in a world where we need to constantly transform, and it means leadership that is constantly able to adapt and be resilient, to be able to adapt to external inputs or changes that come within the strategy.
Our goal is very clear. Our destination is extremely clear. The path we are on now gives us great confidence that we are really on a strong strategic path to enter into that next phase of the company, which is where we scale, where we expand more in severe preventive migraine. We will be launching more into the future in Asia, our VYEPTI asset as a key component of severe preventive migraine. We are expanding our pipeline into neuro- rare diseases, areas where there's high unmet need, where we can, of course, expand further. We are also expanding our partnerships, and I'll speak to that in a second. Commercial partnerships with many countries, but also intend to expand our partnerships in R&D to collaborate on many areas of discovery.
Also building that sense of how do we bring artificial intelligence into our operating model that allows us to work in a very different way, not only reshaping what we're doing today, but also reimagining what the world could look like in the future and what is Lundbeck going to be in that world where we are more AI-empowered. That's very much the journey towards scale and what you hear more from us obviously next year also as we go into the next phase of our strategic journey. I'm extremely confident on where we're going. The path is very clear. We see many proof points along the way, and I will speak to just a few of those proof points in my next few slides.
First of all, on the growth side. As I said, we've outperformed on growth we said two years ago. We are growing double-digit. We grew essentially 13% as a total company, but our strategic brands, which make up 77% of our revenue, grew at 19%. Our two key assets, REXULTI grew 23%, VYEPTI 59%. This is phenomenal when you think about the time they've been in the market and the effort that has been behind that. We have put our focus and our resources there to ensure that we bring the most growth of those key assets. In the face even of generics that might come in, we are seeing that we've been able to extend our growth even well into 2026 now and potentially 2027 as well.
From an innovation perspective, pipeline has really transformed. You know, this is something that you've heard before, but we are now in a stage where we have five to six mid- to late-stage assets. These are the answers that will determine the growth of the next decade.
Now, have we solved everything? No. Our pipeline has fundamentally transformed and provides many more answers to long-term growth for the company. We have been very smart in our capital allocation, looking at where do we put our investments to get the best return for shareholders and ensure fundamentally that we're solving one important point, which is how does Lundbeck grow in the next decade, and how do we ensure the company can remain successful and relevant in this very important space of neuroscience. These are clear progress points on the strategy, which gives us confidence on the path that we're setting out.
I will just talk to three examples from 2025 that give us in a sense a signature of the things that we are doing and what we are addressing. These are very much transformative moves we're making to build the long-term success of the company. The first is we undertook a commercial partnership model last year in 27 countries, which represent around 12% of our revenue. This is a hugely complex project that was, you know, across a number of teams across the company to ensure that we build a partnership where fundamentally the first thing we do was to make sure that we retain access for the patients in all of these markets, choosing partners who will work with Lundbeck and represent Lundbeck in the right way to ensure that we gain access to even more patients.
The attractiveness of these partners is that they bring more resources, more scale than what we could do, and it frees up our capital to really invest and focus on areas where we can have higher impact. We've successfully transitioned this in the fourth quarter of last year, and of course, now this is a model where we expect to see expansion and potential further growth through these partners representing Lundbeck in these 27 countries. Something that might seem very easy on paper, but a hugely complex and an important strategic move for the company to ensure we focus where it matters the most with the efforts that we are putting behind it. The second major point is much has been spoken about the pipeline, but this is truly a pipeline that has transformed and looks completely different.
We acquired Longboard, of course, late in Q4 , but integrated a lot of that work in 2025. What we see now is a more balanced pipeline, more balanced towards phase III. Amlenetug, bexicaserin as just two examples. Bocunebart also advancing potentially into phase III. In a world where we were two years ago and where we are now, Lundbeck could be later this year with three phase III programs, which is fundamentally answering the question of long-term growth for the company. We also see advancing from phase I and phase II. This really shows a healthier pipeline than we had two years ago and a pipeline that is advancing to be able to bring that sustainable growth we expect in the long term. Again, very transformative.
When we think about our R&D organization, these are the people who are working for Anne, as you heard earlier, people who are really thinking about how can we solve those complex diseases, lifelong diseases in neuroscience, and this is the team that is really dedicated to find that edge, to find that innovation that will make the difference to the lives of patients. The last one is our journey around artificial intelligence, and we have made important strides last year to be very clear on where we place bets.
How do we build what we call a more bionic Lundbeck, where our employees, our people who are so vital to the company, are enabled with the best tools to use artificial intelligence to be even more effective and more impactful in the work that we're doing on not only personal productivity, but also how we are transforming the customer model, the customer in the U.S., for example. How are we ensuring that we use AI tools to engage with customers through their preferences and through ways of how we can bring even more reach to the message of our key salespeople and enable them with the tools to be most prepared also in front of their customers.
Finally, one of the big bets that we are placing is how do we enable further our research and development areas, expertise around artificial intelligence. Making partnerships with, for example, supercomputing with Gefion here in Copenhagen, but also many other partnerships that we're expanding to really see the future of what AI could bring to the discovery and what could be that next breakthrough opportunity.
While also thinking about our clinical programs and the capabilities we need to faster accelerate to get our products to the market and products that are so dependent on what Anne needs, how can we do it faster with more quality and speed to get us to the market more effectively? Three of these key things, certainly our commercial model, our pipeline, and just our artificial intelligence ambition are just three examples of many, but three important ones that show how we are transforming Lundbeck for the long-term success.
I will conclude again to say, you know, our priorities are very clear. It remains the strategy of growth, and we have set very clear priorities and ambition in 2026 to grow despite sometimes facing the headwinds of generics that are coming into the market. Despite that, we are growing, and we're growing really well across all our key markets and will execute our commercial partner model very much in 2026. Pipeline innovation core to what we're doing. We will see the advancement of this pipeline with important readouts that we will see in 2027 of some of the headline results of specifically amlenetug and also bexicaserin. Important that we continue to invest and advance, and this is also the clear priority for the company this year.
We remain vigilant to funding: f unding around where can we allocate capital in the best way that is available to us to ensure that we bring the best long-term return for our shareholders, but fundamentally ensure that through this funding, we can position Lundbeck for long-term sustainable growth, which is the core of our Focused Innovator Strategy. Thank you very much. With that, I come back to—
Thank you. This was the company's presentation, the Board's and executives' presentation of the report for 2025. The audited annual report for 2025 was also presented. It has an unqualified account from the auditors. You can see that from the annual report. Does anybody wish to speak at this time? Comments, queries concerning these two items in the agenda? Well, there is one question from Mr. Kjeld Beyer.
Yes. I wasn't really planning to speak today, but I thought I was interested in your story. You talked about getting problems with balance. A dear friend of mine, he's a singer. I write songs. You can find them on keldbeyer.dk. No, Annelies Van der Meer, she is the singer. She got problems with her balance, and different things were tried out.
She got chemo, vitamin C, but I got something for her that's not permitted in Denmark. It's been used for 40 years, different places in the world to fight parasites. Ivermectin, I think it's called. There are symptoms that you try to treat, and that's what you do. I think that's what you do. Do you look at the causes of these symptoms? Have you done enough research into that? It could be that some of the brain diseases are caused by parasites that sits in a different place than where you think. That's why I wanted to mention it. Maybe it's something you should look at, parasites, with the things that you're going to develop, so you could be at the forefront. Some of the things that perhaps you are treating are caused by parasites.
I think it's very interesting, so might be worth for you to look closer at. I'm jumping a bit here, but it's great that you have over 40% women, and they have a wonderful career here. You know, they forget giving birth to children. Denmark cannot continue existing if Denmark doesn't. If women don't get three children, and we need Danish women to do that to get three children each so that Denmark can exist also 1,000 years from now. I have a song about that too. That's a different matter.
It's difficult to find your financial statements on your website. That's really difficult. You change it every year. A couple years ago, I proposed that two clicks should be enough to enter your financial statements. I had spent more than 15 minutes finding the right information. I think you can do better on that. With all the intelligence you have in your accounting department, I'm sure you could do better. You can click your way forward, but you should also be able to click back to where you came from. It's very difficult, I think.
I think that your overview here, you could do better. There's a lot of numbers are missing. The intrinsic value is the most important number for me. You don't give that in any. You don't want to state that sometimes, you know. It's our way as shareholders to be able to check whether we understand the financial statements correctly.
I encourage you to state the intrinsic value of the shares. You need, we need to know also how many Treasury shares you have and at what price they were bought. When you buy Treasury shares, I mean, you use those to reduce the share capital, you could say, right? There's kind of a hidden value there. You can use these Treasury shares to buy companies with, or you can write down your share capital.
As a shareholder, you want to know how many Treasury shares do you have, and what did you pay for them? Some companies have paid far too much for their own shares, for Treasury shares, and then the price goes down, and then you can sell them to staff, and staff can be happy, but shareholders suffer. It's not in the financial statements. I think the government, the Danish government, they are not catering for the interests of Danish shareholders.
The fact that there are no financial statements in Danish anymore in a Danish company, I mean, the government has accepted that. I think they're not catering for the interests of Danish shareholders. Thank you for your attention.
Thank you, Kjeld Beyer. There were different bits of information for the company, proposals, making the website more accessible. I don't know if there is any feedback or comment from the company. You gave encouragements, right? You encouraged the company to do things, and the company will be looking at that, I'm sure. Thank you.
I want to hear if there are others who wish to speak under these two items on the agenda. That is not the case. I find that the Board's report has been taken. You've taken note of it, and you have approved the annual report for 2025.
Brings us to item 3 on the agenda. As already stated in the chairman's report, the proposal is to pay a dividend corresponding to about 36%, DKK 115 per share. DKK 1,145 million. Any questions or queries in that regard? That's not the case. Duly adopted.
We are at item 4 on the agenda, the presentation of the remuneration report in 2025 as presented on the company's website. I'd like to hear if there are any comments or queries concerning the remuneration report. Does not seem to be the case, so it has been duly approved. Brings us to item 5 on the agenda, the election of members to the Board of Directors. Here I give the floor to Dorothea Wenzel.
As I already mentioned at last year's annual general meeting, seven members of the Board of Directors were elected, and here you can see which committees they were members of. It was myself, Lene Skole-Sørensen, Santiago Arroyo, Jeffrey Berkowitz, Lars Erik Holmqvist, Jakob Riis, and Lars Green. All current board members stand for re-election today.
To ensure that the Board further strengthens the qualifications and competencies within the scientific area, the Board initiated a search for an additional board member in 2025. Based on a thorough assessment, Rita Balice-Gordon was identified as a tremendously strong candidate and the right strategic fit for Lundbeck and the Board. Rita has been part of the Board in an observer role for the last approximately three months of 2025, and we have already seen Rita's great contribution and value to the Board.
It is the Board's assessment that the proposed eight candidates together possess the necessary professional and international experience to maintain the company's position as a leading global pharmaceutical company in the field of neuroscience. Here you can see Rita Balice-Gordon's profile. It was also included in the notice. Very happy to welcome Rita in person also here today. Rita is an accomplished and recognized leader in the neuroscience rare disease area with a deep R&D knowledge, holding a PhD in neurobiology and a BA in biological sciences. Rita has extensive experience from global pharma companies such as Pfizer and Sanofi, where Rita held positions as Global Head of Rare and Neurological Diseases, building a leading portfolio of more than 30 projects, several of which went into clinics.
Currently, Rita is CEO of Muna Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotech company focused on discovering and developing disease-modifying therapies for neurodegenerative diseases, and she holds two other board positions. With Rita's profile and tremendously impressive track record, Rita will strengthen the Board's competencies within the neuroscience and rare diseases area and add significant international experience. Lastly, Rita will contribute with significant management experience and proven ability to develop strategy and portfolios from preclinical to clinical development. Very importantly, Rita Balice-Gordon is considered as an independent board member. With that, I will hand back the floor to Jørgen Kjergaard Madsen.
Thank you. The proposal is to re-elect the existing board members and to newly elect Rita Balice-Gordon. For the sake of order, I should hear if there are other suggestions. Kjeld Beyer, once again, or comments?
I am sad if a person enters the board who has anything to do with Pfizer. They did the medication concerning COVID-19. It wasn't the disease that was dangerous, it was the vaccine. Lots of professors and so on have looked into that. There were remnants of cancer cells, remnants from children, remnants of all sorts of stuff. You see an increase in disease, people dying. Pfizer made a lot of money from their product there. It's such a big shame that they still exist. I can only say that I'm really sad that you're taking a person in from Pfizer.
I mean, some of these people that you're taking in, they only want profit. They don't want anything good for people. COVID-19 was certainly very good, right? Because lots of people are dying now because of heart failure, brain disease. My wife's brother died of cancer. He was healthy. Anyway, there are things that Pfizer did that have been very detrimental to the Danish population. I think you should all know that. Thank you.
Thank you. The new board member is not from Pfizer as such, but there's been a thorough process prior to nomination. There is a big majority in favor of her election. Are there any other candidates? I need to ask that just as a formality. Not the case. Congratulations to those that have been re-elected to the board and to the newly elected Rita Balice-Gordon.
That brings us to item six on the agenda, the approval of the remuneration for the Board of Directors for the current financial year. You can see that in the complete proposals. There are no changes. Are there any questions or queries in that regard? No. The case to be approved.
Brings us to item 7 of the agenda, the election of the state-authorized public accountants. Again, I refer to the complete proposals. The proposal is to re-elect PricewaterhouseCoopers as the company auditor. I can say that the proposal is in accordance with the audit committee's recommendation. As you can see also from the convening notice, the audit committee has not been influenced by any third party, no restrictions on its recommendation or its work.
I should also say that, you can see that also from the convening notice and the complete proposals that the proposal to elect PwC also says that they will also be the sustainability auditor. This is one of the things that need to be added under the new rules. I think there are no other proposals, and nobody wishes to comment here. PricewaterhouseCoopers has been duly elected. Congratulations.
That brings us to item 8 on the agenda, proposals from the Board of Directors. There are no proposals from shareholders, so it's only the two proposals from the Board. Item 8.1, this is the standard authorization to acquire up to 10% Treasury shares with, the restrictions indicated. Any questions or queries on that? No. The case to be approved.
Item 8.2, as has already been described, a proposal to update the company's remuneration policy, and the proposal is that the remuneration policy should be approved in its entirety. The only change is an adjustment that concerns the CEO, who can have an increased maximum amount as the STI, you know, short-term incentives under that program. Any comments concerning that? That is not the case. The company's remuneration policy has been approved in its entirety.
Item 8.3, this is the standard item authorizing the chair of the meeting to file the resolutions passed at the annual general meeting for registration with the Danish Business Authority. I see no proposals concerning that. No questions. That's been duly adopted.
Brings us to the last item on the agenda. This is item 9, any other business. Does anybody wish to speak under any other business?
Kjeld Beyer once more.
Yes. Well, there's no access to the canteen or anything, but I just forgot to mention around Pfizer. I had been warned against being vaccinated at all. My wife and I, we didn't get the vaccine, but we didn't get sick at all. We have seen many of our friends having the vaccine and then becoming ill all the time. I don't think our government has protected us, and I don't hope that Mette Frederiksen will be reelected because she was in charge during this whole vaccine tragedy.
After the reconstruction, I hope we can come back next year and visit you, and also get access to your canteen and have a nice meal so that you treat your shareholders just as nicely as you treat your employees. Why do you treat your shareholders worse than your employees? I mean, we're the owners of the company.
Thank you very much. The remark about the meal is something we've heard before, and again, I can inform you that the employees actually pay for their meals in the canteen. You should bear in mind that there is a tax issue here as well, just by way of explanation. Any other comments or views that you would like to share under any other business? That does not seem to be the case. That means that we have exhausted today's agenda, and I can resign as Chairman of the AGM and pass the floor back to the Chair of the Board, Dorothea Wenzel, for a closing remark.
I would like to thank you for your participation and engagement at this year's annual general meeting. It has been a privilege for me to represent the Board of Directors at my first AGM, and particularly in a year where Lundbeck delivered such strong results. 2025, just to repeat it once again, has been a year of record revenue, solid profitability growth, and meaningful progress in our pipeline, a testament to the strength of our strategy and, very importantly, to the dedication across the organization.
On behalf of the Board of Directors, I want to extend my sincere thank you to the executive leadership team, to all employees of Lundbeck, as well as to our partners for your commitment and your hard work. Your efforts is what enables us to advance brain health and to generate long-term value for patients and for shareholders alike.
Finally, I'd like to inform you that next year's Annual General Meeting will take place on March 17th, 2027. Thank you for your trust, your engagement, and your attention.