Thank you very much, and welcome to this Conference Call Regarding our Approach to Sustainability. With me today, I have Camilla Sylvest, Executive Vice President and Head of Commercial Strategy and Corporate Affairs. I also have Henrik Wulff, Executive Vice President of Product Supply, Quality, and IT. I also have Monique Carter, Executive Vice President of People and Organization. Finally, I have Karsten Munk Knudsen, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please turn to slide two. We will today be making forward-looking statements, and I have to remind you that such forward-looking statements will include risk and uncertainties. Please look at slide two and also make reference to our quarterly and annual reports for further disclosure on forward-looking statements. Please turn to slide three. In November 2019, Novo Nordisk launched our new approach to guidance based on our Strategic Aspirations 2025.
They include four quadrants, and today we will be focusing on the first quadrant, which is purpose and sustainability, where we have three elements. One linked to our social responsibility, one linked to our environmental responsibility, and then one linked to what it means to be a sustainable workplace. If you look at slide four, you will see that for many years, Novo Nordisk has been focused on these sustainability factors, and we have an extensive experience in running a sustainable company. This goes back to our founder's mentality of having a focus on science and humanitarian purposes, as well as creating good conditions for our employees. In the late 1990s, we formulated what we call the Triple Bottom Line principle, and you can see on the timeline here on page four that we have achieved a number of milestones in this regard.
I'll just highlight a few. Then we will during today, dive deeper into many of these. In 2001, we launched the World Diabetes Foundation. In 2002, all Novo Nordisk manufacturing sites were ISO 14001 certified. This is the environmental certification. In 2004, we made our first integrated report incorporating finance and sustainability reporting. This was also the year where we included the Triple Bottom Line business approach into our articles of association. In the following years, there were a number of programs linked to changing diabetes, working with programs to really improve diabetes care. This led up to a new social responsibility strategy, Defeat Diabetes, announced this year. In the recent years, we've also made strong progress in terms of our environmental responsibility. This year we achieved one of our targets of supplying or running all our global manufacturing sites based on 100% renewable power.
We will, throughout this meeting, go into more details on many of these initiatives. Please turn to slide five. In Novo Nordisk, we believe that long-term value to society is driven by a strong sense of purpose and being a responsible business. This is really well supported by our ownership structure, where we have, as you know, a combination of shares owned by our Novo Nordisk Foundation and, obviously also institutional and private investors. This brings a good combination of both a long-term focus while also making sure that we have agile response to changing circumstances. Since 2004, as I mentioned, we have had our financial, environmental, and social responsibility anchors in the articles of association based on this triple line business principle, where we are responsible for our social responsibility, our environmental responsibility, and also our financial responsibility, all aimed at achieving our purpose.
These business conducts are guided by what we call the Novo Nordisk Way, which we'll also introduce a bit later. Please turn to slide six. We keep raising our ambition levels within these three dimensions, and examples are our recent Defeat Diabetes social responsibility and the launch last year of our Circular for Zero environmental strategy. We also seek inspiration from the various sustainability indexes and standards. While there's not one uniform standard, we believe we can learn from many of them. When you look at our ratings, we believe our approach is acknowledged by a number of these ranking agencies, and we are pleased with our standing in this regard. Please turn to slide seven. Here we have the agenda for the remainder of today.
We start out by looking at our environmental responsibility, and the mentioned Circular for Zero strategy, and that will be done by Camilla Sylvest and Henrik Wulff. After their presentation, there'll be 10 minutes for Q&As on our environmental responsibility activities. Following that, we will dive into our social responsibility, Defeat Diabetes, and what we mean is important in terms of being a sustainable workplace.
That will be c overed by Camilla Sylvest and Monique Carter, and again followed by 10 minutes for Q&A on social responsibility. We'll end up by a section on corporate governance and what it means to have a responsible business conduct, and that will be covered by Karsten Munk Knudsen, and again, followed by a Q&A session on that specific topic and any other topic you might have. With that, I'll hand over to Camilla.
Thank you, Lars, and please turn to slide eight. As part of our commitment to science-based targets, we have developed our environmental strategy, Circular for Zero. Circular for Zero aspires to have zero environmental impact. As part of our impact analysis, we have found that our current environmental impact is really threefold. Our carbon emissions, that is 1.3 million tons in 2019, here approximately 80% is from our suppliers. We also have waste, where of the most significant part is 500 million pre-filled plastic pens that are produced every year and increasing over time. Finally, also resources, summing up everything Novo Nordisk purchases, that is, of course, also have a big environmental footprint. Circular for Zero is addressing all of these dimensions. Our environmental aspirations are really to have Circular Products, Circular Company, and Circular Supply.
The Circular Products relate to both new products and how we deal with circular principles in developing those. It also deals with end-of-life product waste and how we make sure that we do that in a sustainable way. The Circular Company really looks at how we can have a strong environmental footprint from operations and drive a Circular transition across the company, aspiring for Circular environmental impact. Of course, we cannot do that without also making sure that our suppliers are supportive of this. Finally, we will also talk to Circular Supply that looks to how we can reduce our environmental impact across the value chain. Let's first zoom in on Circular Products. Please turn to slide nine. Circularity in designing products is really related to how we make sure that it is integrated in our product development framework.
In our processes, when we develop new products, we have make sure that new product offerings will be designed for reuse, but also for recycling. We, of course, have a special attention and focus on plastic in this regard to solve the end-of-life challenge as well. The parameters that are guiding us in this is really the carbon footprint, so how many kilograms of carbon per patient per year. We also look at what are the sustainable materials that we can use, and also how we can make sure that they are recycled. These are the focus areas that we have in our product offerings and how we design products for the future. Of course, we also need to look at the products we already have on the market, because there's a very long life cycle within pharmaceutical products.
Today we have, every year, around 500 million pre-filled plastic pens produced, and this volume is expected to, of course, increase over time. What we are looking at here in the end-of-life challenge for products is to see how can we return products allowing for plastic and other components to be reused or recycled. This year we are initiating a pilot in Denmark to look at how can we make sure that we, in a good way, take back the pens so that they can be reused and improved, used for other purposes. Of course, the purpose of this pilot in Denmark is to make sure that it can be scaled and also made of use in other countries in the future. To do that, of course, we are not working alone.
We have a broad range of stakeholders engaged with us that consist of municipalities, other public bodies, distributors, patient organization, pharmacists, and also the environmental protection agency. This is just to say, this is nothing we do on our own, but in a strong collaboration with a number of stakeholders. Now I will hand over to Henrik Wulff to give you more details on sustainable production.
Thank you, Camilla. When we are working together on this, seeing from a manufacturing and supply chain point of view, then we normally take all four quadrants in the Strategic Aspirations 2025, because basically we need to serve both the environmental ambitions that we have, but also the financial ambitions that we have. On top of that goes that when we look at new products and we also look at the pipeline and the segments that we are serving, we try to strike a balance where we can actually optimize our way into the future from a manufacturing and supply chain point of view. That we have tried to illustrate on the left-hand side on slide 10, where we have actually drawn our development in sales in our index up against our consumption in manufacturing.
There you can see that we have been able to basically decouple our sales from our consumptions and our emissions. This work, these years, has been further enforced by the environmental impact that we have and the environmental focus that we have. Now we have not only a financial interest in search from solutions here, but actually also environmental interests. That has become sort of multidimensional efforts in our organization, basically to improve our yields and manufacturing, especially in our processes, in our process part, but also in our pens that Camilla referred to. Actually, we have been able to develop together with R&D, standardize the platforms where we can actually utilize them across our product portfolio. We are much more focused nowadays to invest in multipurpose manufacturing units that can serve a broadened pipeline.
Lately, our biggest investment around RYBELSUS, both in Denmark and in the U.S., has already shown three to four times up capacity compared to what we thought in the beginning. That means, of course, a lot for our unit cost, but that means certainly also a lot for our environmental footprint when we want to develop that part of the supply chain. Further, another important topic for us is, of course, our partnerships within environmental efforts, where we have succeeded in making some long-term engagement with both establishing wind power around in the world and lately also solar power, that will also impact it. If you turn to slide 11. If you look further into our CO2 emissions, then we have sort of divided that into our own operations and our own transport, and then also looking at our suppliers.
That's, of course, a simple way of doing it, but it at least showing our efforts, what we try to do. In the middle of the slide, you can see a comparison in the different parts of the 20% CO2 emissions, where you can actually see surprisingly high figures from things like company cars and business flights compared to manufacturing and product distribution. We are working on all parameters to reduce them, and it's interesting to see how a year like this has developed our understanding and the needs for different elements among company cars and business flights. We'll work further on that. We have both local action plans on how we can shift to renewable power in offices and laboratories. We are aggressively following the development within less polluting cars worldwide.
We have more times communicated that our usage of business flight will be re-evaluated during our experiences during COVID-19 period, and then we will further double down on our use of sustainable energy within manufacturing. If you just look a little further into the supplier part of the equation, then we will basically start working with all our suppliers. That's on slide 12. We will start to work with our T ier 1 suppliers. That's the biggest, our long-term suppliers, where they also have ambitions already in this respect, and we have a good already initial collaboration with them and a shared understanding on where the world are moving. It's a good collaboration. Of course, we have around 60,000 suppliers, so it's a huge effort going through all the suppliers. We have started, and it's a good start.
Our Tier 1 suppliers, they actually account for 60 out of 300,000 tons of CO2, and so there's a lot of suppliers beyond the tier-one suppliers that we need to dig into. To sum up, we will strive for designing our new products for circularity. That means that we will take new materials into use. We are still very curious to find ways to design a meaningful take back program, so we can solve the end-of-life challenges that Camilla alluded to. We will continue aiming for zero CO2 from operations and transportation for 2030. Finally, the latest one that we have communicated about, our ambition is to have all direct suppliers to using 100% renewable power when they are supplying us in 2030. Thank you very much, and back to Lars.
Thank you, Camilla, and thank you, Henrik. We're now ready for the Q&A session on our environmental responsibility and would kindly ask you to limit yourself to two questions, please. First, let's set up questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question its zero one from your telephone keypad. If you want to withdraw your question its zero two to cancel, once again its zero one on your telephone keypad if you want another question. Our first question comes from Michael Leuchten from UBS. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. It's Michael Leuchten from UBS. Good afternoon. Two questions, please. One, I was wondering if you could speak to capital allocation for projects like your recycling program. That requires an amount of funding, but I guess this could easily also be a very steep requirement. How do you balance the funding versus the time horizon that you're striving for? That would be question number one. Question number two, on slide 10, a very interesting chart, where you plot the sales versus the CO2, energy, and wastewater. I was wondering if you could do that in terms of unit costs, so rather than looking at revenues, when we were to look at this from a volume perspective, how much has the average unit cost come down in terms of the environmental costs that you have on the chart? Thank you.
Thank you, Michael. First, Camilla, can you touch a bit upon the capital allocation for a recycling program? I know we cannot share the budget, but some perspectives on that. Then, Henrik, on what you can guide in terms of unit cost impact from the CO2 trends. First, Camilla.
Yep. Thank you, Lars. Thank you, Michael. On the Take-Back program , the objective of this is to understand how can we find the best possible way to take the devices back so that they can be recycled. Actually, in this process, with all of the partners that we have, there is a common interest in making this work out. There is actually, you could say, business opportunities in this for several of the partners in this project. One can imagine, for example, that if people come back to the pharmacy to hand in the pen, then that is also a shop where there might be more business for some of the pharmacists, and so on. The way that the partnership is constructed today is not very capital-intensive at all. Of course, this pilot in Denmark is not necessarily exactly the same in all other countries.
Now we are learning from Denmark how this works. Of course, we will be expanding to bigger scale countries later on, where the setup in terms of how the system works might be different. It's important for us to understand how many of the patients are willing to give back the pens. That's the first and foremost experience that we want to get now and how we do that in the best way.
Thank you, Camilla. Henrik, what can you share in terms of unit costs and the environmental trends we showed on the slide?
There's many perspectives of this regarding which products that we are talking about. In general, we can say that a 5%-6% volume growth per year is what we calculate with, and that's a rough number. Even though based on 5%-6% in general growth in so-called world volumes, then we are able to stabilize our consumptions and our waste. That's the answer from me.
Thank you, Henrik. Thank you, Michael. Yes, the next set of questions, please.
Our next question comes from Richard Vosser from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. First question, just following up on that reusing of the pens. Is there a thought to redesign the pens so that they could be essentially the outer housing and plastic could be reused, much like the old cartridge pens of the past? Any thought for going back there? Just on the program, is there a rebate idea for money for the patient on bringing it back? Secondly, just on the COVID impact on CO2, just wondering if you could give us an idea of the quantification of that and how much of that reduction you see carrying forward. Thanks very much.
First, Camilla, again, on design of the pen for reusability and whether there's incentive for patients to bring back the pen.
Yeah. Thank you. Thanks, Richard. On the reuse of the pens, it's important for us to, of course, make sure that the pens can actually be reused to something that makes sense when they come back. At the moment, we have actually tried to already with some of our smaller-scale pilot , we have tried to reuse the pens for chairs or for other types of materials that make sense as they can use recycled plastics. We are working with another company that can sort of dismantle the pens into different types of plastics that can be used for different types of purposes. Of course, the pen also consists of other things than only plastic. It's important to be able to split all of this apart in an easy way.
You can imagine that this is some of the things that also in the future could go into our design principles so that it becomes easier and easier to do this. We have also actually done some research with patients when we were designing the program as to monetary incentives for bringing back the pens. Maybe it's a little bit of a Danish phenomenon, but this was actually not sort of the biggest purpose for the patients. They, for environmental reasons, would like to make sure that they would support such a program. This is not to rule out that in other countries, there could be elements of this. For now, that is actually not part of our program as such.
Thank you, Camilla. On CO2 benefit from COVID, you have seen in our reporting so far this year that we have significantly reduced our CO2 emissions, partly because we have now turned into neutral powering in manufacturing, obviously also because many of us have been grounded in the locations we are. We are some 40% down on CO2 emissions. Looking into 2021, we believe some of that will continue as we will be, at least as we start the year, restricted from traveling. Overall, we believe we can reduce business travel quite significantly going forward. Thank you, Richard. Next set of questions, please.
Our next question comes from Mark Purcell from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my questions. Thank you for this session. I'll take two, please. The first one is on towards zero CO2. I just wondered if you could help us understand for a relatively new product like semaglutide, how this has allowed you to redesign your supply chain with respect to suppliers, if you compare that versus older, more legacy products such as. Secondly, in terms of RYBELSUS and oral medicines, I wonder if you could help us understand, if you take your COGS at the moment, what proportion comes from device costs and what comes from API costs? Given the recent deal you did with Emisphere, where your oral aspirations are now across your portfolio in terms of moving to an oral presentation versus an injectable alternative. Thank you.
Thank you, Mark. Henrik, can you say anything about what does it mean when you look at Sema supply chain versus some older products compared to the CO2 emissions?
Sema supply chain is, in a simple way, utilizing some of the same facilities and some of the same processes that we use from other APIs. You can also see our pen systems around the Sema product is similar to what you have seen on insulins and Victoza. In that respect, of course, the impact of once-weekly compared to once-daily is significant reduction in the consumption, both in our facilities and also compared to what the patients and the supply chain, how they see it. That's a significant advantage to moving from daily to weekly. Yeah.
Thank you, Henrik. On the notion of now selling all proteins, I cannot go into, say, cost split or anything like on split of devices, API, et cetera. From, say, an environmental footprint, it's clear that short-term, lower bioavailability and large API volumes will be, say, a negative on CO2. However, obviously, we will save on the plastic component. We see this as a technology platform that we will be investing in and maturing for the long term. We think both from a cost and CO2 perspective, there are significant opportunities for us to improve this, so that we can largely take this downward pressure on cost and CO2 down over time. Thank you . Next set of questions.
Our next question comes from Carsten Lønborg from SEB. Please go ahead.
Hi, it's Carsten from SEB. I was wondering, the feedback you have gotten from suppliers since you announced this ambition by being on their behalf, that they should also be 100% renewable by 2030. Will you also ultimately then be actually kicking out suppliers if they're not adhering to the targets that you are setting for them?
Thank you, Carsten. Camilla, will you comment in on that?
Yes. Generally, the feedback from suppliers have been very positive, we are not in a place where it's needed to throw anyone out. Actually, we already have a big part of them signing up to do this. We, of course, also able to share some of our experience. That's very important for them. Generally just very positive feedback. Of course, there's also still time to solve this. The earlier, the better, but 2030 is the date.
If I can quickly just follow up.
Thank you.
Can I quickly just follow up
With one more question?
Yes, please.
Yeah. That is also for Camilla, I guess, or Lars. Do you expect this strict focus on ESG to deliver a comparative advantage for you in the market versus other pharma companies? Or do you more see it as something that everyone basically will be able to do or will have to do going forward?
It's a good question. I think in our industry, it is the level of innovation that we bring to the market that determines our success. It's clear when we deal with governments around the world, the fact that you take a shared responsibility with them in terms of driving health benefits for the population, when we recruit employees, when we talk to stakeholders, the fact that we have a strong focus on the environment makes us a more attractive company to either work for or collaborate with. I think if you do it well, you can have a stronger standing with your stakeholders who have a significant say in your fortune going forward. You don't want to fall behind on this, but whether it can really be a sustainable competitive advantage, I would doubt. Thank you, Carsten.
With that, we will progress the presentation, and I remind you that we have a Q&A session coming up at the end, where you can get back to this particular topic if you want. With that, we continue with our social responsibility, and that's back to you, Camilla.
Yeah. Thank you, Lars. Please turn to slide 15. Earlier this year, at the end of May, we launched our new social responsibility strategy called Defeat Diabetes. After thorough stakeholder input and the discussions about expectations for the future and the role of big companies and how they can work to solve societal challenges, we have defined Defeat Diabetes with three important elements. The first one is innovation, because the biggest contribution that Novo Nordisk can make is really on innovation, given our capabilities. Of course, we also realize that not everyone has access to innovation. Therefore, access to affordable care for vulnerable patients in every country was also important to have as a strong element of the strategy. Finally, with the progress, in terms of new innovations, we can, of course, and access, we can reach a lot of patients.
The problem with diabetes and obesity constantly keeps getting bigger and bigger because of lifestyle and urbanization. Of course, prevention, for that reason, also had to be part of our Social Responsibility Strategy. With those elements, we expect that we can help society rise to one of its biggest challenges. Now I will just zoom in on the three elements of the Social Responsibility Strategy. Please turn to slide 16. On slide 16, you see how innovation as a core element can help us improve millions of lives. On the left-hand side, you see today's marketed treatment options and how they can reduce weight loss or how they can achieve weight loss over time.
We, of course, expect with some of our new innovations, we will be able to get to an even bigger weight loss opportunity, not only from semaglutide 2.4 mg, but also with our pipeline in question. With that, we would be able to, within the foreseeable future, get to the level of surgery and what surgery can achieve. Of course, with that innovation, we are able to help improve millions of lives and potentially also save costs for society. We are also working on other transformational treatments for people living with diabetes. We already at this call discussed RYBELSUS, the first oral GLP-1. Of course, we are also working on a once-weekly insulin, which we are about to initiate phase III on, and a glucose-sensitive insulin, and also on digitalization for our connected pens.
With all of this, of course, we are able to bring innovations that can help reduce the long-term complications of people living with obesity and with diabetes. With that, of course, hopefully also save societal costs. We are also working on, as you know, a stem cell-based program that is likely also to be able to contribute with curative therapies, potentially within Type 1 diabetes as well. Those are some of the core elements of innovation that we are bringing to the market in the future. If you turn to slide 17, please, you will see an overview of the access to affordable care for vulnerable patients in every country that we are also embarking on.
Because finding solutions to improve care for vulnerable patients that, for one reason or another, in different healthcare systems do not have access to life-saving medications is, of course, very important for us. We have committed ourselves to, in every country where we operate, to map who are the vulnerable patients that for different reasons might not have access to care. Sometimes those groups are minority groups, migrants, or displaced populations. They can also be groups of people with low socioeconomic status or limited resources or other underserved populations. We've now completed the analysis in 20 plus affiliates this year. Next year we expect to complete it for two-thirds of the affiliates or the countries where we work. For each of those affiliates, there will be an action plan in place within a year after the completion.
Those vulnerable groups are, in summary, groups that are struggling to get access to essential, affordable insulin. There are, of course, also a number of countries where there is already access to insulin where such groups do not exist to a large extent. At the same time, we are also looking at, and we have already this year reduced our seeding price for our access to insulin commitment in low and middle-income countries. We have now reduced the seeding price to $3 per vial in 76 countries. We are, of course, also looking at expanding our Changing Diabetes in Children program with the objective that no child should die from Type 1 diabetes.
Currently, we are operating this program in 14 countries, 10 in Africa and four in Asia, and we are expecting to add on more countries next year so that we can reach an ambition by 2030 of reaching 100,000 children compared to the 25,000 children we are reaching today that otherwise would not have access to life-saving medication. We are also engaging in partnerships with donations to the World Diabetes Foundation and, of course, also the World Federation of Hemophilia. We are also supporting humanitarian organizations in times of crisis. I'd like to emphasize that, especially during the COVID-19 crisis, the support needed was, of course, our products, but also our supply chain to bring the products to the right places where, of course, we have a special capability.
For all of these projects, we are trying to use our core capabilities to a large extent to make sure that we can help and support society on this. If you turn to slide 18, please, you will see an example from the U.S. where 8% of the U.S. populations are uninsured, and of course, these people, for them, they have developed a number of different access programs that can address some of the issues that they might face if they don't have any commercial coverage or are not covered by Medicare or Medicaid.
We have, as you can see on the right-hand side, a number of programs in place that can make sure that for whatever reason that a person is not able to get access to insulin, there hopefully will be a solution in place, so that they, for an affordable amount, can get access to this life-saving medication. If you turn to slide 19, you will see examples of how we are working with prevention. The global burden of diabetes keeps increasing, and we also know that to bend that curve on the prevalence, we would need to reduce also obesity, because obesity is the leading indicator to get diabetes. The global obesity burden is 650 million people living with obesity and 120 children million living with obesity. A part of our preventional efforts in diabetes is to avoid that more kids will grow up with obesity.
We have recently engaged in a partnership with UNICEF to prevent childhood obesity. We've started this partnership in Latin America, where the prevalence of childhood obesity in some countries is above 30%. Our midterm goal is to reach more than 500,000 children in Latin America by 2023. Hopefully, some of the learnings from this program can be expanded to other parts of the world. At the same time, we are also strengthening our prevention efforts in connection with our Cities Changing Diabetes network, where we today have 36 cities involved wherein more than 200 million people are living. The ways that we do this are very depending on the challenges. For example, in Houston, we have worked with faith organizations to target people at risk of diabetes.
In other of these cities in China, we have done educational efforts to make sure that we could support the move of the care to lower tier segments. Most recently here in November, we have launched the Urban Diabetes Action Framework, which is really an interactive guide to support facilitating cities and countries moving from understanding the diabetes challenge to getting into how do we then implement solutions. The Urban Diabetes Action Framework, which you can also find on our internet at novonordisk.com, really looks at cases, tools, and steps to take to get to actionable solutions. I would recommend that you take a look at that also at novonordisk.com. Now I will hand over to Monique to talk more to how we work with social responsibility also within the company.
Thank you, Camilla. Novo Nordisk is a company with a purpose-driven culture. The direction is set by the Novo Nordisk Way, providing a framework for our culture. It sets the guiding principles which underpins every decision we make. It describes who we are when we're at our best, how we work, and what we want to achieve, and sets a clear direction for our company and our employees. Today, we are more than 40,000 employees across the world with the passion, the skills, and the commitment to drive change to Defeat Diabetes and other serious chronic diseases. Our employees are our strongest assets. It's important to maintain our high levels of engagement, as you can see here, 92% this year, so we can continue to drive the business forward. Next slide, please. To maintain high engagement, we need to stay competitive.
One of the elements is that employees need to have a sustainable workplace. Novo Nordisk aspires to continue to involve the workplace by focusing on three areas. The first, we want to organize to win by accelerating diversity and inclusion and aspiring for gender-balanced representation. I'll get back to this on the next slide. The second is to continue to grow our people and be a talent incubator, so we are an organization that consistently grows our talent to fuel the pipeline and ensure that the company has the competencies in place to stay innovative and competitive for the future. The third is to drive cultural change to be an employer fit for the future, to ensure we continue to support the strong culture and foster an environment where our people can thrive, innovate, and perform.
I'll get back to how we use facilitation to support the adherence to the Novo Nordisk Way and cultural development in a moment. To give you an example of us continuing to evolve our culture, I can tell you about the launch of flexible ways of working. We call this FlexAble, and this consists of six ways of working to allow for more flexibility for our employees. For example, they could conduct their job from home, they could work different hours, and so on. We've seen that these initiatives that were launched before the global pandemic have actually been accelerated because of the pandemic and are now allowing for more agile ways of working while still fulfilling the business needs.
Next slide, please. Diversity and inclusion are key focuses for Novo Nordisk, and currently there's a broadly balanced gender representation amongst all managers, which obviously varies between the different areas and the seniority levels, where at senior management levels it's more skewed towards men. Novo Nordisk aspires towards a balanced gender representation across all managerial levels. To hold ourselves accountable for ensuring diversity and inclusion has been added to our incentive programs. In addition, local action plans are being made across all areas. Our focus is on ensuring inclusive leadership to enable everyone to be able to deliver their best. Everyone is heard, everyone is valued for their unique contributions, and so we unlock the value of diversity and inclusion. Next slide, please. At Novo Nordisk, our purpose-driven culture is defined by the Novo Nordisk Way, and our facilitation process is our way of ensuring this.
Facilitations are a proactive assurance done by interviews and assessment of different units in Novo Nordisk by our facilitators. Facilitators are experienced and senior leaders with a strong understanding of our culture and our business. Role models, you could say. Every year, Novo Nordisk conducts around 30 facilitations with interviews of more than 1,000 employees. 85% of facilitated units are champions of the Novo Nordisk Way. When areas are identified for improvement, action plans are outlined to ensure issues are resolved to minimize unpleasant surprises and as a way to drive compliance. Facilitation is also used to drive the evolution of the Novo Nordisk culture, where coaching elements are used to embed inclusive leadership. We believe this will support our aspiration to ensure we are an employer fit for the future. Next slide, please.
Now we've covered social responsibility, both related to Defeat Diabetes, which you heard Camilla talk about, and our aspiration of becoming a sustainable workplace. We would now like to invite for 10 minutes Q&A, which will be moderated by Lars. Over to you, Lars.
Thank you, Camilla, and thank you, Monique. We're now ready for the first set of questions within social responsibility.
Thank you. Our first question comes from Charles Pitman from Redburn. Please go ahead.
Hi, Charles Pitman from Redburn. I was wondering if you could please just talk to how you aim to keep management employees and suppliers accountable to the societal targets. For a second question, I was wondering on transparency. Does Novo Nordisk believe the balance between public disclosure and commercial confidentiality in their drug development is currently correct? For example, does Novo think all trial protocols should be published at or before the start of clinical trials in order to enhance their transparency? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Charles. Firstly, on best targets, is that something you would talk to, Camilla? No. Karsten?
No. The accountability on the Charles, could you.
Yes.
Charles, could you repeat the question? Your first part of the question around accountability and anchoring. Could you repeat that, please?
Sure. You've talked about the systems you've got in place to monitor and survey how employees are following your targets and keeping in line with the kind of pro-societal workplace. I was wondering how you keep management and also then suppliers accountable to achieving improved societal targets.
Yeah. Thank you for that question, Charles. I will come back to in our governance section around how we do assurance and different assurance measures we're taking. If I could ask you to park that question until then, I'll get back to it and happy to elaborate on that one.
Sure. Just on transparency.
Sorry, say that again.
Transparency.
Yes. Transparency.
Next set of questions, please. Is there any?
Our next question comes from Martin Parkhøi from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you very much. I have two questions. Firstly, one on the follow-on brand. Why have you only launched a follow-on brand in the fast-acting segment? Why have you not launched a follow-on brand in the basal insulin segment in U.S.? The second question, maybe a little provocative question. You explained in the earlier presentation that you have been able to improve the production capacity for semaglutide by 3x to 4x versus initial expectations, and you celebrate that by getting a better gross margin. Why do you not celebrate it by offering a lower price to the patients?
Thank you, Martin, for those questions. On the follow-on brand, I would say that this was one of the initiatives we took in the beginning of the year to try to alleviate some of the affordability issues in the U.S., so it was one of, I think, three initiatives. We upfront didn't know how it would be received. It has been well-received, and I think that leads to us obviously considering what more to do in that arena. I cannot be more specific on it now, but obviously it's encouraging to see that it's actually helping patients. In terms of production capacity and improving yields, et cetera, I think you know that we come from a lower profitability initially than for other products. I think in the whole area, we're working on getting up to the margin we have on other products.
We are pleased with the trends, obviously. You can say what we do in the market is a function of the competitiveness of the market. We price based on the clinical value that the product brings compared to other products. While at the same time looking at the most vulnerable patients, as Camilla spoke to, those who, say, fall outside of the normal market conditions, and we take a special responsibility for those. It's a market we compete in, and then we have an eye for those who fall out of that market. That's how, I believe, we can say that we take a social responsibility while still being a business. Balancing two of the Triple Bottom Line dimensions, social responsibility and financial responsibility. Thank you, Martin. Next set of questions.
Our next question comes from Michael Novod from Nordea Markets. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks a lot. It is Michael Novod from Nordea Markets. Just one question that relates to obesity and the skewness that is often in terms of social status and wealth, et cetera, potential education. The products that you are launching in general for obesity are higher priced products. How do you address social responsibility with the obesity portfolio, and also in terms of how do you then place potentially Saxenda® versus semaglutide in that business environment in order to focus more on social responsibility and obesity?
Thank you, Michael. Camilla, some perspectives on that?
Yeah, thank you, Michael. Of course, we are carefully looking into what are the barriers for obesity treatment. At this point in time, it's not the price that is the main barrier, it's really the number of people who seek advice from the physician. When they then go to see the physician, we also know that it's a fragment of the physicians that then decide to treat with pharmacy therapy. A lot of them decide to treat with exercise and diet, which of course also for some people will work. We, of course, are working on solving some of those parameters. I can say even within diabetes, we still have the rule of halves problem. That means that only half of the people are diagnosed, and of those diagnosed, only half are being treated.
Again, only half of those are getting access to a treatment that brings them in good control. In obesity, this is even worse. We are trying to improve on some of these infrastructure issues, along with, of course, launching better and more efficacious products. Now we will submit, as you know, by the turn of the year, semaglutide 2.4 mg for submission in the U.S. and EU. With that, we're bringing quite an innovative product to the market, of course, that we hope can help support many more people in achieving a significant weight loss. That is our focus. As we spoke to before, innovation is the core element of our social responsibility strategy. That's how we make the biggest difference. Then, of course, we will follow up in making sure we also look at access later after the launch of that.
Talk about access, you saw that we have developed an agreement with the U.K. regulator, NICE. Of course, we have to work hard on making sure that we can talk to the value of actually treating people living with obesity. The more established healthcare systems acknowledge that, and we build reimbursement, you also secure broad access and, say, a social profile for also those who cannot afford out-of-pocket. It's a new area, and a new area will always be determined by, say, level of innovation. Typically, you have the high end of the market getting access first.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Michael. Next set of questions, please.
Our next question comes from Trung Huynh from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Just two questions from me. First one on transparency, in regards to pricing and access. You focus on pricing approaches to help with the poor in the U.S., where you've expanded your affordability offerings. In the ex-U.S., you've focused on differential pricing policies. One thing we get less details on is the transparency of pricing. I'm curious to know how you aim to be more transparent to shareholders, stakeholders worldwide about how you implement these pricing approaches. Secondly, very quickly, just in terms of the affordable patient access? How does that go beyond insulins? Do you have any programs you're looking at with the GLP-1s? Thanks very much.
Thank you. If I take the general question first, and then maybe Camilla, you can talk to the affordability program, including the GLP-1. Our list prices are transparent. They are known. Obviously, in the U.S., we don't disclose per product rebates, but we do disclose what our aggregate rebate levels are, so you can see how that develops year-over-year in the annual accounts. We have, say, the blended net price, so to say. In the rest of the world, our pricing is also largely available and known. In a few countries, you have rebates agreed with payers. Largely, those prices are known. The affordability programs are also very well disclosed, how you qualify for free insulin in the U.S., the differential pricing policy with a $3 a vial program, et cetera. I believe we try to be as transparent as possible.
We are not in a position where we can disclose rebates per product because they are confidential in the contracts we have with our customers. Camilla, on the affordability programs more broadly in the U.S.
More broadly on the affordability programs, we have initiated our affordability programs mainly on insulin, both in the U.S. but also worldwide, because insulin is a life-saving product. It has been important for us that we establish those with insulin initially, and then of course, potentially down the road, we could look at other programs. Our key concern has been that people should not die from not getting access to insulin. We're trying our best to make sure we can support the most vulnerable patients in every country.
Sorry, let me close the affordability section with this, and I understand that my microphone was muted when I answered the question on clinical trials transparency. I apologize for that. What I said was that we always communicate when we start clinical trials, what the endpoints are, and we always publish our data. If there's need for more detailed insights to what we do, please get back to our investor relations officers after this call.
Thank you. With that, we'll go to the last section of today's agenda, which is corporate governance. Over to you, Karsten.
Great. Thank you, Lars. This section will cover both the corporate governance also how we govern sustainability governance and how we anchor it in our remuneration, finally, how we report on our performance on sustainability on an ongoing manner. Please turn to the next slide. In regards to our corporate governance set up, of course, the starting point for Novo Nordisk is that we conduct our business following all Danish and international laws and regulations. In addition to that, we base our business on the Danish corporate governance recommendations as designated by Nasdaq Copenhagen. In the company, our governance structure is a so-called 2-Tier structure with a board of directors consisting of nine shareholder-elected members and four employee-elected members, thereby ensuring that the employees are heard in the boardroom. Separate from that, we have an executive management consisting of nine members.
The management structure is then complemented by a set of assurance measures as we got the question from Charles before. The assurance we're conducting to ensure that we are following all the relevant rules and regulations is manifold. First of all, in terms of our financial data, then of course, we have external audits as are statutorily required for all companies. On top of that, we have an internal audit function, and as goes our social and environmental data, as you can see in our annual report, they are also reviewed by our external auditor. As Monique covered, our internal behavior and how we behave in the company and adhere to the Novo Nordisk Way is being reviewed by our facilitators that are providing facilitation reports on our behavior.
On top of that, we also have quality audits and inspections, both internally and externally, and that goes both for our clinical trial conduct as well as for our supply chain, thereby ensuring that we are following all the relevant laws and regulations in this area. Please turn to the next slide. When it comes to sustainability governance, there is a broad range of international standards and principles, and I put out a number here which forms the base for how we anchor our internal behavior in regards of sustainability. The way we have structured our sustainability governance is that we start out with the international standards and principles for responsible business conduct, that would be UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, UN Global Compact, as well as a number of other standards including TCFD, SASB.
As you see in our annual report, and as Lars mentioned in his opening, we are for a number of years, reporting based on integrated reporting setup. Furthermore, we of course follow the compliance requirements, for instance, as defined by the U.S. FCPA and the U.K. Bribery Act. That creates kind of a society's expectations and regulations as to what a sustainable enterprise is. Monique covered the Novo Nordisk Way, so the principles, how we work, and part of that is also our Triple Bottom Line principles, where we balance social, environmental, and financial responsibilities. Double-clicking on those principles, we have defined a global set of standards and codes of conduct, and thereby basically taking those more overarching principles and making them relevant for our employees on a daily basis.
We have created a set of guidelines covering environmental responsibility, a responsible workplace, bioethics, responsible sourcing, a business ethics code of conduct I will get back to, and a sustainable tax approach I will also be coming back to. Thereby, what you see in our external reporting, of course, the trigger is to make our sustainability approach integrated in how we conduct business on a daily basis by all 40,000 plus employees of the corporation. Please turn to the next slide. Slide 28. One concrete example is how we anchor business ethics in our business on a global setting. The starting point is that we operate on a global scale in many markets and in many different markets. How do we anchor a business ethics mindset both on a global scale and across the value chain of the company?
It all starts with the Novo Nordisk Way, as you saw before, and one of the key principles in Novo Nordisk Way is, as the quote here says, "We never compromise on quality and business ethics." That's the foundation for our business ethics approach for the company. The way we've done it is that we start out by identifying what are the key trends in the societies in which we operate, and what are the key risks in that context. Some of the key risks could be whether our sales representatives are adhering to the codes around product promotion. What are the practices around corruption and the rules and regulations there, and how third-party representatives are representing the company.
The way we then implement that in how we operate as a company is that we have created a business ethics code of conduct, and that basically states how we operate in the company around the globe, and what we expect from our employees, and also how third-party representatives should be operating. That is implemented through training for all employees in the company and management. We have annual training in the company and in the form of e-learning. Based on that, we verify on an ongoing basis how we're performing on a business ethics point of view. We do that both in terms of the audits and assurance activities I was discussing before. That could be group internal audit doing reviews in the different areas of the company and geographies.
It is also a function of the compliance hotline where employees and external parties have the opportunity to report any issues to an independent hotline, who would then review and take proper action for the reported cases. Based on these activities, we have reporting both in our annual report in terms of employees trained in business ethics in a number of business ethics reviews. We have reporting internally in the company, both to management and the audit committee and the board in terms of findings, both in terms of our internal audits as well as trends and observations from the hotline, and relevant actions taken as consequence of that. Please turn to the next slide. Another core area of running sustainable businesses is to have a sustainable tax approach.
As disclosed on Novo Nordisk website during the past few months, we have defined a sustainable tax approach, which has been approved by the board of directors earlier this year. Our sustainable tax approach is three prongs. First of all, our tax approach is commercially driven. Commercially driven means that our business structures, our legal structures, they are driven by commercial considerations and not driven by tax considerations. We set up our structures based on where we do business. As a consequence, we do pay taxes, or we pay taxes where value is generated by the underlying business that we're in.
When you look at our tax rate, that is, of course, another part of being a commercially driven tax approach, and our effective tax rates, which we are guiding currently, is in the magnitude of 20%-22%, very closely resembling the geographies in which we are operating on an average basis. The second part of our sustainable tax approach is responsibility. We are not setting up artificial tax structures or tax havens. We have set up our structures based on our business structures and where we do business and where we generate value for shareholders and for society. Another part of being responsible, having a sustainable tax approach is also that we've set up transfer pricing principles, which are compliant with the OECD guidelines.
Part of that is to ensure predictability around our tax rates and also ensuring that the tax authorities around the globe are understanding our setup. We have entered into so-called Advance Pricing Agreements covering to the tune of 65% of revenues. Advance Pricing Agreements, for those of you who are not detailed into taxation, is basically mutual agreements between tax authorities in different geographies who are agreeing on taxation of Novo Nordisk profits between those geographies. On top of that, the third element of our sustainable tax approach is transparency. The transparency part is both layered into our tax approach, which are publicized on our website. It's also driven by the fact that since we have 65% coverage with our Advance Pricing Agreements, tax authorities do have insights into how our profits are taxed across geographies.
Furthermore, we of course are adhering to the EU directive around tax reporting on a more detailed basis to tax authorities. Finally, we have started reporting our total tax contribution. Even though our corporate income tax is closer to the DKK 10 billion mark as you see, as a company, our total tax contribution is closer to the DKK 28 billion mark when you include indirect taxes and the withholding taxes. Please turn to slide 30. Anchoring our sustainability approach in terms of putting the hand on the stove, you can say, we have anchored our sustainability approach in remuneration. Just covering our remuneration approach for the company, it starts with our remuneration policy, which you can find on our website. It was recently again adopted earlier this year.
Our remuneration policy is designed to attract and retain executives and Board of Directors, it's based on a benchmark of Nordic general industry and EU pharma corporations. We combine the remuneration policy with our Strategic Aspirations, which are basically the ambitions for the companies in years to come based on our corporate strategy. Based on that, both short and long-term remuneration are paid out based on targets from our Strategic Aspirations. The remuneration payout is then reported in our remuneration report. We issued our first remuneration report earlier this year, and you will see our 2020 remuneration report come in the first quarter of next year. Please turn to the next slide.
As other parts of running our business and conducting our business, we have on an ongoing basis been reporting on our financial results, on our market shares, on our progress, on our pipeline, and doing performance management on sustainability is in relative fairly similar in the sense that we prepare a strategy, we set out an ambition, and then we keep score. The way we keep score, you will find predominantly in our website, but also in our ongoing reporting. What you'll be finding in our 2020 annual report, which again is based on the integrated principle of both covering finances, but also sustainability metrics. You'll be finding a number of metrics on our sustainability performance, both in terms of our environmental performance, that could be, for instance, CO2, or waste, or resources used.
Our social statement in terms of both donations or children's treats, according to our Defeat Diabetes strategy. Finally, our approach to governance and including a number of other metrics, where we are basically combining our reporting on our performance on our all sustainability approach. Please turn to the next slide. As you saw in the previous section, then we have a clearly defined governance structure, compliance and assurance approach associated with that. Our sustainability approach is defined, and it's integrated in how we run our business. It's not a separate standalone, it's an integrated part of how we run our business, and it's also integrated in how we report on our business. Actually, it has been so since 2004. With that, back to you, Lars.
Thank you, Karsten. We have now reached our closing Q&A where you can ask questions to the corporate governance topic discussed by Carsten, or you can follow up questions to one of the first two topics, environmental responsibility or social responsibility. First set of questions, please.
Thank you. Just as a quick reminder, if you wish to ask an audio question, it is zero one on your telephone keypad. Once again, it is zero one on your telephone keypad if you wish to ask an audio question. Our first question comes from Peter Sørensen from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Hi, it's Peter from Handelsbanken. Thank you for taking my question. I have just two. Respect to obesity and prevention. Last time I checked, Novo Nordisk was a pharmaceutical company. The STEP program has clearly displayed that you have some kind of core competence in developing drugs for the treatment of obesity. I really can't understand how you have competencies in preventing obesity and whether you should not leave that to, let's say, people who are more adept at that and, for instance, spend the resources on that on something perhaps more valuable, for instance, investing more in developing treatments that can actually cure diabetes.
Wouldn't that be, and whether, and that relates to my second question, which is why you are not more ambitious with respect to stating clear goals for timelines, et cetera, on how to have a treatment for or a cure for diabetes on the market that would, let's say, fit well with your ambitions of being a leading diabetes company, but also would fit well with your social responsibilities? Thank you very much.
Thank you, Peter. I hope I heard you right. Your sound was very low. Your question to why we engage in prevention and don't let that over to others, I will refer that to Camilla, and then I'll try to answer the second question on timeline for curing diabetes.
Yes. Thank you very much. We are very much engaged in preventing also obesity, but always with partners. As we just talked about, we have teamed up with UNICEF, and we will also be looking at other stakeholder coalitions. We have also teamed up with behavioral change companies in other parts of the world where we are looking at how can we combine behavioral change with pharmaceutical products potentially later on to treat, but also earlier on to prevent obesity. It is important for us to understand the link between obesity, diabetes, and also cardiovascular disease. As many of these three diseases can be prevented the same way, there is an opportunity for us to engage in this with partners, of course.
Right now we are in a stage where with childhood obesity, we hope that we can achieve some learnings which we can then later on also export to other parts of the world.
Thank you, Camilla. In terms of why not being more bold and set a deadline or a timeline for curing diabetes, had we done that years back, we would have failed miserably. Having said that, we have a number of exciting programs. If you look into our stem cell-based research, that is so far a 20-plus year commitment, which from the get-go was focused on finding a cure for Type 1 diabetes. We have now established the platform, and we've demonstrated that we can produce the cells in a GMP-compliant way. We are also figuring out how we can mature the stem cells into different type of cells. We are approaching first clinical trials.
The first one will not be in diabetes, but after that, we believe there is an opportunity to also test out our stem cell approach within Type 1 diabetes within a few years if all goes well.
That's, you could say, prevention of Type 1 diabetes from the get-go, not for all patients, but for those who are struggling the most in controlling their glucose level, despite the modern medicines we know of today. You can say, dealing with obesity, either preventing obesity or treating obesity is also indirectly prevention of Type 2 diabetes. You can say that's maybe an indirect way of treating a disease. We believe, with reference to what Camilla said, that we can play a key role not only in treating a chronic disease but also preventing it and collaborating with the stakeholders. Within a few years, we might be making the first kind of steps on the moon in terms of starting the journey to cure Type 1 diabetes. Thank you, Peter. Next set of questions, please.
Our next question comes from Wimal Kapadia from Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Oh, great. Thank you very much for taking my questions. Wimal Kapadia from Bernstein. Can I just ask a little bit more on the new remuneration policy? When I compare versus your peers, Novo management actually seem to be very good value. Can I just ask about what ESG factors are included within your new remuneration policy, and how much weighting do they actually have? Just trying to get a sense of ESG drivers in compensation and how accountable management is from compensation perspective. My second question is, you briefly touched on this, but can I ask for a little bit more insight into safety of clinical trials, data disclosure of these trials, and finally, product quality and safety?
Some of your competition have been hit negatively in recent years, so maybe you could provide a bit more color on how Novo ensures these factors are considered. You mentioned facilitation as one method, but can you talk more about the specifics for these factors? Thank you.
Thank you, Wimal. Karsten, on remuneration and how ESG factors are incorporated.
Sorry, Wimal. I just had to unmute myself. I was saying that clearly some of the ESG factors are more difficult to measure than financial metrics like profits or commercial metrics like market share. The metrics we include are basically some of the metrics that Henrik and Camilla and Lars were talking to, and Monique were talking to before. Metrics could be something around progress on social ambition, on our Defeat Diabetes strategy. It is also on our environmental agenda, it could be CO2 emissions. As Monique talked to also, then actually on our remuneration, diversity is a metric this year also on which remuneration is based. As to the weight, and again, I would refer you to both our remuneration policy and the remuneration report on our website for more granularity.
What we do base it on is that we have the four quadrants in our Strategic Aspirations, and all four quadrants are tying into the remuneration both on the short-term incentives as well as the long-term incentives. The main difference between short-term and long-term is that there's also an individual element in the short-term incentive program, whereas the long-term incentive program does not have an individual element. You can see both duration and weighting principles. In the long term, you should expect that to include both financial metrics, commercial metrics, and then progress on pipeline yielding long-term value as well as progress on our sustainability ambitions that we just talked to.
Thank you, Karsten. On, say, quality of our clinical work, Wimal, it's not an exact science and it's not an easy question to answer. You could say we spoke about our Novo Nordisk Way just before, we have these 10 essentials which all employees are trained in and guided by. The first one is to be patient-centered. There's another one on, as you heard before, that we never compromise on quality and business ethics. We have a very stringent view in how we look at data. If we see signals, if we have quality issues either in trial conduct or in manufacturing, we act on it. In management, we have twice a year a quality management review where we review the quality performance, not only of clinical development but also in manufacturing. I can promise you that we take this very seriously.
In our annual accounts, we report on number of product recalls, et cetera. Executive management is involved in each and every assessment of a potential product recall if there's anything of a signal from use of our products or anything that goes wrong in manufacturing. The same goes for clinical trial conduct. If you have more detailed questions or a need for discussing this more in detail, please get back to our investor relations officers.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. Last set of questions, please.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Trung Huynh from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Oh, thanks for fitting me in. Just two. First one of the biggest areas and problems of pharma is being off-label prescribing and the inappropriate influence with doctors. There's some concerns over the links with sales force remuneration based on prescription levels. Can you just tell us a bit more how Novo does things differently, perhaps especially in the international markets where the reps can perform quite an educational role? How do the reps incentives for Novo salespeople compare with your peers? Finally, just a more holistic question on the rating indices. There's quite a wide range of ratings for individual companies, looking at different indices, making it quite tough for us to rely on a single one. My question is. Is there anything you think these indices do particularly well?
Is there anything they do poorly, just given issues that are not always black and white? Which indices do you think are the most thoughtful in grappling with these issues? Thanks very much.
Thank you, Trung. Camilla, first on some perspectives on how our sales force is incentivized, what kind of messaging they do, potential links to off-label usage. Then, Karsten, you can get into if any views on the different rating indices and our perspective on that. Camilla?
Yeah. Thank you. It is so that in all of our countries, we have a business ethics framework in place where we train all of our reps to make sure that the way we promote our products are completely consistent, of course, with the local regulation, but also with the Novo Nordisk regulation. It means that if the Novo Nordisk regulation internally is stricter than the local regulation, then we will always follow the most strict regulation. We do audits of this also with our facilitators that Karsten talked to before. We also have, of course, training programs, then we do sample checks. Especially in emerging markets like China, we have a relatively deep sample checks of everything that takes place, and we also have digital solutions to try and track variations to such things.
When it comes to how the remuneration of the rep is compared to industry, I think we are relatively aligned with the majority of the industry in general.
Thank you, Camilla. Karsten, on the different ratings and our perspective on that.
In terms of sustainability ratings and ESG in general, as with the different standards that are available, this is an emerging area. What we have learned over time is that the key triggers for us to do something which makes a difference and is meaningful in the context of how we run our business and what our strategy is. As we do so, making that transparent in our reporting and ensuring to drive progress. Based on that, and you saw initially in Lars' presentation, you saw the sustainability ratings, which are very competitive compared to many peers. It's important to note we have very strong ratings, but we're not doing this for the sake of the ratings. We're doing this because we want to drive a responsible business, and it's part of our overarching purpose as a company.
As a consequence of driving this agenda for a long time and being transparent around it, then we get a very good performance by a number of the agencies.
Thank you, Karsten. Thank you, Camilla, and thank you, Trung.
Thank you.
With that, we close today's call. Thank you for your interest in Novo Nordisk and our approach to running a sustainable business. You can find more information on our website, and I encourage you to contact our investor relations officers if you have need for more information. Thank you all for today. Bye-bye.