Morning, good afternoon, and good evening, depending on where you're joining us from. I'm Ariel Babcock, FCLTGlobal's head of research. We're a nonprofit whose mission is to reorient capital markets to focus capital on the long-term in support of a more prosperous, sustainable economy. We've got a terrific group assembled here for today's conversation to take a topic that's really important and timely, into that. Our goal is to spend the time together in interactive dialogue. This is something we do with FCLTGlobal on a regular basis. We bring together leading asset owners, asset managers, and companies to develop practical tools that market participants can use to make long-term practices the norm and not the exception. How do you make the long-term decision the default instead of the difficult is something that we grapple with every day.
Today we're gonna talk about the financing of healthcare advancements and particularly vaccine development. This became a central priority of our time with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the scale and importance of such developments are not new. Successful innovation depends on a wide array of decisions, including capital allocation, risk management, communication with investors and with other stakeholders. Each of these decisions involves trade-offs between short and long-term focus. We've got a terrific group today. I'm joined by Roger Connor, President of Vaccines and Global Health at GSK. GSK is a science-led healthcare company focused on helping people do more, feel better, and live longer. Rebecca Sykes is Senior Managing Director and Global Industry Analyst at Wellington. Wellington is one of the largest private independent asset management firms worldwide and has a long history of taking that long-term perspective. Finally, Dr. Fidaa Alsagoff.
He is Head of Life Sciences and Joint Head of Enterprise Development Group at Temasek. Temasek is a Singaporean state holding company that takes a generational approach to investing. We'll spend the first portion of this conversation in panel discussion, and then we'll open it up to audience questions. If you have a question, please submit it via the chat function and our moderator, Demi McClure, will collect those and feed them up to the panel from there. Roger, if it's all right, let's start with you. We know from our research that returns on long horizon innovation are typically multiples higher than the returns on short-term incremental innovations, things that are sort of the 2.0 version of the last thing.
We also know that historically, really transformational vaccine R&D was a very long horizon process, but the pandemic really pushed organizations to accelerate vaccine development. Has that experience shifted your view of how to manage the mix of project time horizons in your R&D portfolio, and what are kind of the key lessons learned from that?
Ariel, thanks very much for asking me to come along. Such an important topic as well. I think it's a massive understatement. It's an incredibly exciting time to be part of any vaccines company and part of the vaccines industry overall. I think what the industry has achieved in the last couple of years through COVID is something that we're all incredibly proud of. 12 billion doses delivered already on COVID vaccines, and that could never have happened without a long-term investment approach. Just to put that in perspective, by the way, all vaccines in the world, typically in a pre-pandemic space, would probably add up to around 3.5-5 billion.
To turn on even just the supply and development to deliver 12 in the period that we have shows you the level of mobilization and the pace at which it's been done. I mean, we were talking years to develop a vaccine previously, and the industry has come through with a number of vaccines in around a year's time. Now, I think it's important to understand how that's been achieved because a part of that answers your question. First of all, COVID had been researched as a family of viruses for a long time, so a lot of investment had gone into just getting a head start, particularly in the NIH. So there'd been investments post-SARS and MERS to understand this family of viruses.
If you look at what has happened in the industry, the focus, the risk-sharing, the investment in new transformative technologies, and mRNA probably the one that everyone knows now. Everyone's talking about mRNA around their dinner tables and two years ago, no one would have known of this technology. It's phenomenal what has happened. The regulatory mindset of moving it at pace and just the level of collaboration that we've seen across the industry has been something special that has allowed us to achieve the outcome now, that we have. I suppose to answer your question directly, what is it changes. Reinforced in GSK, you know, we're one of the biggest vaccines players in the world. So what it's reinforced for us is some obvious things, but important things. One, the power of vaccination. This is avoiding you getting a disease.
I mean, there is no better intervention other than drinking clean water to public health, and that health economic return is massive. It's miraculous actually, that you can take an injection and just not get sick from a certain ailment, and we take that for granted, but it's shown the power of that. Secondly, I mentioned it, but investing in platform technologies. MRNA had been worked on for decades. It didn't just arrive. This long-term approach actually saved the world. This is something that we're very used to in vaccines. We have a transformative technology called our adjuvant platform. It has transformed the vaccination of shingles, a real horrible condition, and created a vaccine with 97% efficacy. That investment in GSK was going on for decades to come up with the right adjuvant platform to create that level of disruption.
As an industry, we've got to keep looking at what the next technology intervention will be. Finally, it's a high risk, high reward business. I mean, if you invest in that, in those technologies, if you invest in those new products, you create potentially a stream of income that can last a very, very long time. Some of our vaccines are over 30 years old. They're highly effective. They're like, more like consumer products because you keep investing in them, and their life cycle, they will continue. Those are probably our biggest takeaways, Ariele.
It sounds like the characterization then that this was a rapidly developed vaccine is the one that perhaps long-term investors need to push back on then to sort of write the story and the narrative around that.
Completely.
Rebecca, I'd love to pull you in on this one because, you know, I think as a long-term organization, how do investors really think about short-term investments versus longer term investments like vaccines or investments in potentially moonshot, you know, innovation in this category? Has that changed as the result of the pandemic?
Sure, Arielle, and thanks for having me here. It's a pleasure and an honor to be with this group. You know, of course, you know, the entire pharmaceutical industry and drug development is generally a pretty expensive and long cycle business relative to other industries for sure. Vaccines we tend to think of as being among the biggest investments. The COVID vaccine development, of course, as Roger pointed out, was astonishingly fast, right? Within the course of about a year to come up with a couple of really effective vaccines. That was, you know, for a number of reasons. The industry, of course, chased it so fervently. Regulators were flexible, and of course, the mRNA platform lends itself to, you know, quick identification of the right sequence and the right vaccine here and rapid scale up.
I do think there's gonna be important learnings about processes and sort of how to invest at risk, et cetera. That's gonna shorten some investment cycles for vaccine and non-vaccine development, but it's still gonna be a long cycle industry, and we have to recognize that as investors and understand the risks, particularly for smaller companies that are in the space, the big risks they're taking and the funding that's needed. You know, that probably hasn't changed. We are trying to understand how processes have changed, how regulators are working more effectively with industry to get things accomplished faster. That's all great.
You know, I'm also interested that the silver, you know, one of the silver linings of this pandemic has been increased attention and focus of governments and industry on infectious disease. It's been, you know, sort of at least in the limelight in terms of where R&D dollars get spent and where you see all the exciting innovation. There's been so much focus on cancer and autoimmune diseases, of course, in the last decade, and that's for good reason. We've learned a lot about, you know, how to harness the immune system, in particular for cancer. But I think it'll be important to, for, you know, more focus on malaria. GSK has a malaria vaccine, better malaria vaccines, you know, drug-resistant TB, HIV, of course, big problems globally that can be addressed either by vaccines or better anti-infectives.
Fai, you know, you've got a bit of a different perspective coming from a large asset owner organization. We often think of the asset owners that we work with as being more attuned with the beneficiaries that they're and the purpose of their organizations, because they're much closer to that end saver. As an asset owner organization, I think you can also often take a longer term perspective in your investments. You know, how do you think about the mix of short versus long-term when it comes to the healthcare portfolio that you look after?
Well, Arielle, first of all, absolutely delighted to be here. Thank you for having me. I think we have to take a deterministic view, a deliberate view in portfolio allocation. It is a lot easier to do a short-term investment, much less risky. However, if we want to be truly involved with groundbreaking innovation, if we want to push that agenda along, we have to be prepared to take a very long-term view and ride the cycles, and be uncertain. It really has to be done. If you really, truly want to advance and evolve the way healthcare is being given.
We have to make a determined view on certain areas that, as in our portfolio, we will take a very early view, and we will try to catalyze. We like the term catalytic capital for returns, but also patient impact. I think they're both equally important. To go in there and follow that along, and bring that along. Otherwise we had a phenomenal run in COVID-19 because, as Roger mentioned, there were massive investments into platform technologies, and mRNA has been around a decade. Some of the stuff we see in conjugated proteins, 20 years or more. If we didn't have that, it really wouldn't have been that quick. We pre-plan.
We will take a diverse view, and then once we decide on the areas to focus on, we will go in very early and then try our best, not just to put in capital, but try to help other technology evolve in any way that we can be helpful.
I love that phrase catalytic capital, Roger. I saw you nodding. I know, you know, the pandemic has maybe disrupted or perhaps reinforced the ways that pharma finances vaccines and other long-term innovations. You know, what are kind of some of the implications that you've seen for capital allocation decisions and, in particular, you know, the point that we were making here around the catalytic capital. I mean, some of our research has shown that even just allocating kind of 10% of the R&D portfolio to those potentially catalytic or we call them, right, groundbreaking, innovative long-term, right, things can really have a bigger impact. But at the same time, many of those things are likely to fail.
Yeah.
How do you think about the implications when it comes to capital allocation decision-making? You know, has any of that changed your perspective?
I think Fidaa's phrase of catalytic capital or catalytic investment is an important one. I really believe that as an organization, you've got to set aside a certain element of your investment for transformative and innovative new technologies. My background is in the manufacturing side before I moved into the vaccines business. In pharmaceutical manufacturing, I think it's critical that we continue to invest in those new technologies and new processes because they can transform the way that you operate. As you say, the failure rate can be high. You have to attempt, and I think allocation of spend is very, very important. In the pandemic, we've seen that actually a long-term investment strategy created an accelerated solution in the year. That's what happened.
I still firmly believe that it's a long-term perspective investment led to the success that we've seen apace within the pandemic. I think at the highest level, from a company point of view, you have to be clear on your strategy, and you have to stick to your strategy, and you have to invest and allocate into that strategy. We've been in vaccines for years within GSK, and it started small and a significant capital outlay at the start, knowing that we were building something for the future that creates scale and capability. That's allowed us to get into 160 countries and have 25 vaccines around the world. It's because we've allocated capital in a very clear strategic framework.
I think what we've probably had our key beliefs in vaccines reinforced by what's happened over the last couple of years. It is a crown jewel in GSK. It's a crown jewel that we've always felt was something special. Now everybody's quite interested in asking us about it, and we go, "Yeah, yeah, we knew this. This is a cool area to work in." A few things that it has emphasized. I mentioned platform technology. I won't repeat myself in terms of the need to invest in those disruptive technologies for the future. Including vaccines. Plus, maybe we're gonna laugh at needles being used in 10, 15 years' time. Maybe there'll be new delivery mechanisms where we'll need to focus.
To do that, I think you've got to really be very open to external innovation. Everything that we've ever innovated in GSK has been because we've partnered with someone on some aspect years ago or maybe recently. Being that partner of choice strategically is very important. You never become complacent that you believe everything can be created inside. You've got great scientists, but you also have to ensure that if somebody creates something cool, the first people they call is GSK. That's what we want. We want to be known that that's who they can talk to, who they can connect with, 'cause they know that we'll move at pace and bring them the capability that they need. Then I know it's becoming obviously very much more available now is external.
From our perspective, not hugely relevant from a cash flow point, but particularly in the space of pandemic preparedness is where we're engaged. Think a little bit about their own after action review on the pandemic. Many are looking at and asking, "What did we get right? What did we get wrong?" Many are realizing that they did not have onshore capability, and they would like it as a long-term strategic play. Again, we're asking ourselves, well, who do we want to partner with? What governments would we want to partner with? What win-win can we get to make sure that the world is better prepared for the next time a pandemic happens? 'Cause it will. I just think we have to ensure that we're better prepared for the next one.
Rebecca, I saw you nodding. Did you wanna react to a bit of what Roger said there?
Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, the job of the pharma industry is to come up with important new medicines for patients, right? Address big problems in global health. I think, you know, the way they do that has to be thoughtful and, of course, incorporate external innovation as well as internal. You know, I think the best companies at that know their strengths, right? Their technology strengths, their development strengths, their commercial strengths, and take advantage of that and supplement it with external expertise. What hasn't changed, of course, from outside looking into this industry is an appreciation that that's a very hard challenge. You know, we're constantly evaluating both the company's current pipeline, but also their decision-making and ability to allocate capital effectively, internally and externally.
Of course, for some companies, that's more urgent than for others. I mean, there's a life cycle to pharma and the inherent lumpiness of when the best drugs, you know, lose their exclusivity, et cetera. That's something we always focus on and, you know, I think that hasn't changed through the pandemic. Did you want me to talk about maybe the way things have changed a bit or sort of?
Yeah. I think, you know, one of the things that we're always curious about is how the investor corporate dialogue is impacting capital allocation decisions kind of on both sides of the aisle. So from your perspective, are those conversations you're having with your portfolio companies about their capital allocation behavior, have they shifted? Or are you still sort of encouraging them to go, you know, full steam ahead? Or now that, to Roger's point, there are perhaps some external funding sources, do they need you less than they used to need you? How have you seen that conversation shift, if at all?
Sure, sure. Yeah. I think one of the interesting things coming from the pandemic is a focus on efficiency. You know, large pharmaceutical companies at scale enjoy good gross margins on their commercial portfolios. You know, there's an expense to that to distribution of those medicines. Of course, research is very expensive to look for those next important products for the coming years. I think COVID of course, by necessity, restrained a lot of marketing activities of the industry. I've been interested that companies have found new ways to educate to convey their messages you know, virtually, et cetera. Some of that will revert back to the old way of things.
Some of that, I think it sounds like it's been learnings that will persist. Hopefully that's an efficiency that can, you know, enhance profitability and cash flows going forward. You know, the other thing I think that's obvious, maybe not so much a pandemic impact, but just the world we've lived in capital markets in the last 12 months especially, is just the reset of prices, right? And sort of in small and midcap biotech, we had, you know, really strong 2020, especially coming out of the pandemic, but really since February of last year, 12 months now, it's been a more difficult environment.
You know, that's relevant because it hopefully you know makes the investment decisions easier for pharma to the extent that they will leverage external ideas and either via acquisitions or licensing, et cetera. That to me is something I've watched and I think plays to the great positioning of a lot of the large cap pharma industry in terms of the resources they have. Of course, a lot of cash on balance sheets, you know, industry wide, but also a lot of really interesting companies out there that are cheaper than they were a year ago.
We were talking, you know, just now about what I think most people think about dollars and cents when they think of capital allocation. But, Seet, I think, you know, one of the things that we've also learned in this pandemic is that scarce resources aren't always financial resources. We're seeing a lot of conversation about human capital resources being the real constraint here, talent, labor, innovation. I think that's probably more pronounced perhaps in pharma, where the skill set required is very specific. But our language of capital allocation really hasn't shifted. I think it's still rooted in that mindset of scarce financial capital. Are you thinking about new ways to evaluate your portfolio companies, or do we need new ways to measure returns on things like human capital?
How do you think about that influence as a long-term investor if the constraint is not financial, but is, you know, perhaps human or natural capital and some other categories that we think about? Like, is that different math for you?
You know, that is a very important question, something to think about a lot. I think perhaps it's not an issue of do we need new measures to replace the financial indicators, because that's always going to be important. Without the financial returns, there's no sustainability. However, that is woefully inadequate, especially if you're going to take a long-term view. All the meaningful innovation in healthcare is going to require a long-term view. Drugs do not discover themselves, and they do not develop themselves. People do it in through certain processes, and it requires continual growth and innovation. What we have to start looking at more, we do already do that. We look at capabilities. Do you have them? Do you have the capability to evolve within your people?
Do you have the capability to retain good talent? Do you have the capability to suitably empower, motivate, and reward the talent so they will stay for the long haul? There are dimensions to human capital that is absolutely critical, and we do look at them, and perhaps we need to look at them even more because the pace of change, the pace of innovation is getting even ever more rapid, and it goes way beyond traditional technologies. Now you have to throw in digital machine learning, you know, into the sequence, and on top of that, be an expert in healthcare economics. That is the future we're going in, and our people have to be adequately equipped. We do look at that. Related to this, it goes even beyond human capital. Social capital.
If we're looking at the long haul, we have to look at how what we do impact and benefit the entire communities, right? There are stakeholders besides shareholders that are important, and we have to look at that. How do you think about that? It's not linear. You know, you might take a dashboard view of it. It's not let's put three categories together and average it out. I think they're all important components that have to be looked at in its entirety if you're going to get a shot at truly backing
A continually innovating and evolving healthcare company.
I think because this summarizes it really well. I mean, I don't think we'll ever get away from financial return analysis. Like any part in our next incremental project, the incremental spend we plot against the incremental value created. When we look at our efficiency frontier and we look to decide, okay, the next best project we can deliver, and we're very structured and balanced on that and forecasting all those type of things need to be done. But you need people being to do that, or you run into a bigger problem in an innovative industry like this, I really believe they're key. In the vaccine space at the moment, there is a war on talent going on. You can spell the word vaccines, you're probably gonna get a phone call because people are expanding. It's that sort of environment.
They come fishing in some of the biggest pools, and one of the biggest talent pools is GSK at the moment. We are making sure we both attract and retain. All of the financial elements that everybody's brain goes there first. Actually, what's most important to the scientists that work for us is great science. Great science attracts and retains great scientists. It's back to this long-term view around investing in technologies and excitement that will keep and attract the very best of the GSK. That's our overall. Then there's other element I've mentioned that we have found in this whole skills and capabilities space. Obviously, you've got to pipeline your skills like you pipeline your portfolio. Where are you gonna play? Antimicrobial resistance. Are you gonna play in RNA? Are you gonna play in therapeutics?
Whatever it might be, you have to plot your skills for the next 10 years to buy that in, or do you have to build it and start working with academia to fuel that pipeline of skills as well? I think industry could get much, much better at that. You then have to sprinkle through that diversity. It's an overly used phrase, but diversity on every angle fundamentally will create better innovation in a company. Any angle you can think of that creates a diverse team, whether it be culturally, whether it be gender, whether it be disability, whatever that is, we have found that that is critical. The highest performing teams and most innovative teams are the most diverse teams as well. When we do that pipelining, we have to make sure that we do that from a diversity lens as well.
This is so fundamental that you can't just get the money right. You got to get the most important thing right, the people right as well.
I'd imagine that kind of plays in then to the, I'd say, unprecedented collaboration we've seen among industry players in the midst of this pandemic. I mean, I think it took quite a number of investors, I'd say, just judging by the headlines I saw in some of the financial journals, by the industry pulled together and was willing to collaborate and share what were undoubtedly trade secrets, right? When you think about that collaboration, like, have you bumped into a tension also? There must be a balance between kind of collaboration to provide the services the global community needs and then also maintaining that competitive positioning. To your point, maybe people are also kind of fishing around the teams at the same time that they're collaborating for their next pool of talent.
How do you balance that, and how has that evolved here? Are there new ways of doing business that will persist at the back of this pandemic?
Maybe if I give you a perspective, Ariel. I'm incredibly proud of what the industry has done. Some of it very visible, like AZ, Oxford, GSK, Sanofi, others. Some not that visible, but just done because it's the right thing to do. I'm lucky that I chair what's called the Vaccine Steering Group between all of the CEOs that run the vaccines companies in the world under the IFPMA. That group has achieved, I think, incredible help each other out. These are small things like sending glass. These are like sending buffer solutions. These are things that will never, ever be reported, but just the industry got on and did. I think because we all put the most important parts, which was people who were waiting and struggling for this, and we had a common enemy. The common enemy was the virus.
I think that really helped. As well, and we'll always be competitive. Competition is healthy. Competition is what innovates, what drives us to create the next best vaccine as well. I think as you said it, completely a balance. I think we got that balance right to date. We'll always be learning some more that we could have done, but it's something I'm proud of.
I'd love to get the investor perspective on that. You know, Rebecca or Fidah, please jump in. Like, how do you value companies participating in collaborative initiatives versus prioritizing profits?
Yeah, maybe I'll start. I mean, I think it's quite important, particularly in emergency or pandemic situations, right? That you know, a profit focus is left to the side and companies do things because they're the right things to do and because they're you know, they do enhance the company's reputation, its ability to attract talent, you know, and lower business risk over time. I mean, there's actually measurable benefits to setting aside a profit-only goal in the near term. You know, like Roger said, I as an investor, I look for the appropriate balance, right? You know, the sort of sharing vaccine or sharing manufacturing capability, sharing adjuvant, right?
You know, knowing when to cut bait on your own internal programs because they haven't worked out and when to, you know, work on other things that sort of where you can bring value. That's important and, you know, honest internal reflection that needs to happen and that many of the companies did. You know, not that, of course, no one would have guessed, you know, that Pfizer would have the leading vaccine for COVID, but it happened and that's fine. Glaxo has a role to play today, you know, hopefully with its adjuvant, but definitely on the treatment side with monoclonal antibodies with their partner. That's all fine. I think it's that healthy balance in the context of the situation we're in.
I totally agree with that. I also think, though, that in a crisis, the company that steps up to collaborate, to work for the greater good in a crisis as unprecedented as COVID-19 speaks well of the value base of the company. As a long-term investor in healthcare, you think that is surely a good thing. I mean, if you're keeping everything to yourself and going for highest price, what does it say about your value, the value base as a company in healthcare? For us, I mean, that certainly is a plus. Then of course, there will be a time soon, we hope, where you go back to business as usual, and you have the competition, but also a bit of collaboration.
At least we've seen in the darkest of times, how companies what's really at the core of companies.
I think, you know, one of your comments sort of sparks a related question here. We were talking about the tension between collaboration and competition, but I think there's also been a tension highlighted in this pandemic between kind of pricing versus access. Those both of those things feed into profits from the investor's perspective. You know, I sort of just let that sit on the floor and see who wants to take the mic on that one.
Well, I'm very happy to
No, go ahead, Roger. Go for it.
Thank you. I think this is such an important area around price access and getting that balance right. I think from a vaccines point of view, first of all, the health economic equation of it is incredibly strong. When you look at it against, I mentioned earlier, it's, I think, only second to clean water; vaccination is the next best significant health impact for investment. Even looking at some of the recent data that we see around health economic modeling from immunization at EUR 1 spent. This was a trial that we saw in the Netherlands recently. EUR 1 spent creates EUR 4 of value. EUR 1 spent on immunization of older adults. This is an area, again, that's completely, I think, under-penetrated in the world.
Everybody thinks of vaccines, they immediately think of kids and going on holidays. We want people to realize, hey, when you get old, your immune system starts to go, and you need to do something about that. COVID has stimulated that. People know now that you're at more risk when you're older, but that's because your immune system declines. Therefore, flu, shingles, RSV, family of vaccines that are all coming in the future. These are all things that we need to make sure people are aware of. Obviously, pricing appropriately and tiering it for the market that you're in is very, very important. We also believe in GSK. You can say I'm vaccines, but I'm also global health. We have. I'm the head of global health of the company. We have a global health unit. This is so cool.
I mean, we've got one unit, and their role is they have an allocated budget. We don't plot dollar spend against profit generated. We plot dollar spend against lives impacted to take those neglected tropical diseases, those neglected diseases that commercially would never make sense, like malaria, for example, that we will go after and succeed and not look to generate the level of return that we create in our commercial portfolio. Because the success of our commercial portfolio allows us to do this from a global health perspective. I think there's a real win-win balance there that is important in what we call our trust priorities. We innovate and we perform, obviously, because we're a business and we have to, but we have to maintain trust.
Maintain trust for society means investing our capability into those diseases, because if we don't, who else is going to? There's a balance that's very important for us as well, then a partnership with the likes of Gavi. We're one of the biggest suppliers into Gavi to make sure that we access low-income countries and get them access to the very basic vaccinations that we all take for granted as well. There's still work to be done, and it's never perfect, but it's one that we've got to keep pushing ourselves on in terms of our ESG agenda, because that's a very important part that we believe our shareholders expect us to do as well in terms of that balance.
Is that what shareholders expect?
Yeah, definitely. Of course, you know, this whole audience will know there's a growing appreciation from long-term investors that ESG considerations are really important to the fundamental value of the company. You know, that's, you know, for the reason that Roger talked about, right? You know, it's of course the right thing to do, but enhances trust in the company. It helps with the talent equation that we've talked about and you know reduces overall business risk, I personally think. Of course it's a balance, right? I totally agree with that. I also think, though, that in a crisis the company that steps up to collaborate to work for the greater good in a crisis as unprecedented as COVID-19 speaks well of the value base of the company .
In a pandemic, I think it sort of makes us all think about prioritizing access a bit more and definitely, you know, a tiered approach to pricing at a minimum. I mean, some companies, of course, have gone not-for-profit across the board, but I think there's a reasonable case to be made, you know, for either approach, either tiered or 100% not for profit. You know, the other interesting thing is access is a very complicated challenge, right? Roger knows this better than any of us. It's not strictly linked to pricing. A pharmaceutical company could give away their vaccine or, you know, offer contracts. It takes governments, it takes NGOs coordinating, it takes funding, critically important, and it takes politics and nationalism aside, et cetera.
You know, that all gets tested and sometimes it's easy to blame industry, but access is a complex equation, I think, that industry is only one piece of.
I think that that's an important point that sort of circles back to something else we were talking about on that pandemic preparedness question that Roger raised around, you know, where's the line between the responsibility of private industry and the responsibility of governments. You know, Freya Temasek is an asset owner with very keen alignment between beneficiaries. You know, what do you think the responsibility of investors is for pandemic risk? Is that something that sits with governments or are there things that investors should be doing to deal with pandemic preparedness more systematically, perhaps?
We clearly have been thinking a lot about this. At the end of it really is a whole of society effort, isn't it? Not just single society, right? Across societies. It's more than a whole of government. It's certainly isn't just a private sector approach. Each stakeholder brings different necessary things to the agenda and to the game. That's what we're seeing. The countries that have managed to take on COVID-19 in a whole of society basis have tended to be better. Some of it's intangible. How much trust do you have in the policies? How much trust do you have in the ministries of health, right? How good is your local logistics and so on and so forth. It's fairly complicated.
We do look at the implications of a Disease X. It's inevitable. It's going to come. COVID-19 is an important testing ground for us to see what needs to be done. It's not an issue to us of how much profit you'll make. It really is an issue of how much loss economically, and I think you would endure if you didn't do this. I mean, we're talking about healthcare, and you know, quite a few companies that have done well for us. We have a portfolio of all the sectors. Many sectors have taken a real beating. Mental health is going to be big that comes out of COVID-19. Because we're dealing with acute problems, we're missing this. It's going to be a huge problem.
Therefore, how do we prevent this so that we don't have to deal with all these costs? We come back to initial theme that we look at all stakeholders. What is our role? We touched on this early on. We have to keep investing in the right human capital, in the right platform technologies, and particularly the disruptive ones that we don't know enough about, where we think there will be potential. We need to understand the potential and realize it, and we need to do this. We need to start looking, going even earlier for some possible treatments or some approaches, and invest there, even if the risk is high. Maybe the solution then is to have differentiated pots of capital to look at different things.
Start looking at this in a coordinated manner. I think we do have to do that. We have to look at investing or bringing about global surveillance systems. We know where the nonprofits come from. We can survey, we can do predictive analytics, we can store possible solutions into the freezer and think of it as an insurance premium and hoping never to use it. Some of these will do very well financially. If we do this in a cohesive, coordinated manner, then in its entirety, I think investors will contribute meaningfully to the overall robustness of our ability to prevent a tragic Disease X from coming upon us. I think we have to frame how we fund different things.
I think shareholder capitalism had its day in the sun. I think, you know, it's not disappeared. Many, a lot of the thought behind that is still relevant. It's just inadequate. What is our role then, as investors, for innovation that doesn't give you adequate returns? Rebecca spoke about this when you talk about tropical vaccines. You know, malaria doesn't make you a lot, but it's absolutely important, depending on how you look at your metrics. Should we then have a pot of capital, that truly is, you know, we have impact investing. One possible definition of impact investing that could generate, this sort of innovation over the long-term would be, innovation that gives you adequate financial returns to recycle the principal capital, but the social impact is huge, right?
Excess profits that we look at finding a way to give some of that into philanthropy because some innovations are just not going to be generating financial returns, but are necessary in and of itself to stimulate the development of other forms of innovation. Different buckets in a coordinated manner to drive the entire value chain of innovation so that at the end of it, we get a robust pipeline of innovation, gives us financial returns, of course, but will put us in a far better state to prevent COVID-19 and its like from coming upon us again. That's the wish, and that's the hope in any case.
I'm gonna turn now to some questions we've gotten via email and also in the chat here from the audience in our last few minutes together. You know, one of them that's come up actually in a number of different lenses is just around risk-taking behavior and the intersection of kind of, you know, putting all your eggs not necessarily into one basket, right? Because there were a whole lot of people looking at vaccines, but thinking about how that risk-taking behavior has resolved as a result of pandemic market conditions. I think this is probably a question for investors, but also for companies in the sense that, you know, through it looks like from the outside, throwing a lot of money at the problem meant that we got a vaccine much faster.
Then in the investor community, we saw a rush of retail investors into the markets that were, you know, perhaps treating capital markets a little more like a casino than in previous years. I think there's sort of two sides to this coin where there were some investors that were kind of going gung ho into healthcare and biotech stocks. Rebecca, I think you touched on this a little bit in the performance of some of those small mid-cap names more recently, you know, how investors have been influenced by that experience. On the flip side for the companies, you know, how the lessons learned from some of this collaboration and some of what's happened has adjusted the risk-taking behavior in the R&D portfolio.
Those are sort of two different questions that I tried to shove together. I'm not sure if that worked, but we'll give it a go. Rebecca, maybe since, you know, some of it was a bit inspired by that small mid biotech comment. You know, have you seen the behavior of other investors in this space shifting as a result of some of what we've seen in terms of market performance in the sector?
That's obviously a hard thing to fully understand and even successfully invest behind, right? I would tell you up front that we try to look through that volatility created by abnormal market participants, retail behavior, et cetera, and you know, use volatility to our advantage as portfolio managers, you know, not invest seeking whether it be ETF or you know, retail-driven behavior to increase demand for pandemic-related or vaccine stocks. It's something we try to understand, of course.
Sort of looking forward, could there be, you know, particularly regionally, if we think about China, if we think about areas of the world that tend to have concentrations of a certain type of capital or, you know, capital local to that region, what could be the, you know, considerations that might force them to exit or attract them to a certain area, region, and/or sector, right? We try to understand that, really as a fundamental healthcare investor, I try and understand, you know, important big ideas, innovations from the industry and direction of change. While I understand it, I try to understand that I don't invest for that. I guess is how I would answer it.
Anyone else on the evolution of risk-taking behavior in markets?
Yeah, maybe just very practically from a company perspective. One of the reasons why the industry was able to move so quickly was expenditure at risk. This was due to risk sharing and funding that had been made available, particularly through the Warp Speed initiative from the U.S. government. Ourselves and Sanofi were selected in Warp Speed, and like many of the manufacturers, to go fast, you had to assume success, and you assumed you knew your dose, you manufactured in advance. These are all things that you wouldn't typically do in a normal development cycle because you could potentially be putting tens, hundreds of millions of dollars at risk, and you wait to de-risk your program, and then you invest, and then you de-risk, and then you invest. This was all pulled forward.
I don't think that will stay. We've got to be realistic. If I did that for my whole platform, I mean, I wouldn't be in my job very long. Bits of it will. I think what as an industry I see is a couple of things. One, a new benchmark for development that it's not gonna be done in 12 months. I know my boss would love it to be done in 12 months for every vaccine, but I mean, it's not gonna be done in 12 months, but it will be done faster because I think we were more focused now on white space, your dead time in the, in the critical path to bring a product through.
Rather than talking in years, even just talking in weeks and changing your unit of measure so that your level of accuracy and your tolerance for any gap becomes much less. That's something I see culturally happening, and that creates a pace and urgency, which I love. I think that's very important. It also then does trigger to think about, well, how much would we be willing to spend at risk to gain six months in a competitive environment we're in? Roger, if you spend GBP 10 million and you do manufacture this at risk of your knowledge, that can be huge. We're using a really tough decision on investment at risk to create value ultimately as well. I think that's a good mindset.
It's something that, practically, I see coming out of the pandemic, exercise some new muscles that we have to retain and keep in our product development process 'cause everybody wins. The product arrives faster, and people will get the benefit earlier, as well as the business benefiting as well.
There's an interesting question in the chat that I think is linked to the aging demographics of many of the countries in the developed world. This question is, you know, as many societies continue to age quite rapidly, is there a scenario where we would take a similar collective engagement pooled approach to collaboration to address many of the problems of aging? I think, Roger, you touched on this in the pharmaceutical sector, and could that potentially combat some of what we are seeing in, you know, in some of the estimates around deceleration in global growth and pieces like that? Like, should there be a similar push by governments and business and investment communities to try to solve the problems of aging too?
I would love to say yeah, that's what is going to happen. I think practically what we have had, and we're still in, is a burning platform of unprecedented proportions, where to do nothing means to perish. There's a commonality of urgency there that unfortunately, we won't get ordinarily, even though these problems are huge. I mean, dementia is a big problem as society ages.
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The power or the impact of a truly collaborative cross-stakeholder endeavor, at least will.
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I think I could be hopeful for that. I'm a little less sanguine about a COVID-19 response being replicated, but I would love to be completely wrong.
I think that raises an interesting question, though. I mean, we've continuously gone back to the various stakeholders and the perspectives of folks at stake in the middle of this pandemic. There are often circumstances where a stakeholder expectation can distract from long-term strategy or is at odds with the purpose of a business or an organization. Just because stakeholders expect something of you doesn't necessarily mean that you're well-placed to deliver it. How have we dealt with that tension? You know, are there cases where those stakeholder expectations can be a real distraction when it comes from delivering on that long-term purpose? How do you practically deal with those? That's a big question, and we've got two minutes left, so I'm gonna ask it.
I'd give a very simple answer, and everybody else can chip in. I honestly think this is about being clear on your priorities and sticking with them, and ensuring those priorities are balanced. Obviously, reputation and when some of these stakeholders come in, that can be seen as pressure or will it damage our reputation. However, if your priorities are already balanced and appropriate, I really feel that gives you a framework with which to stick to. That's what I mean in pharma and in GSK, we continuously come back to innovation, performance and trust. Are we balanced in these priorities? Are we allocating our resources and capital to make sure that we get that balance right?
I think that's an incredibly important part, and it's an anchor that we'll always sort of come back to.
Yeah. Maybe I could just add and I saw a question also about sort of ESG frameworks and how do you grapple with this and incorporate into, you know, your analysis of the value of a company. I think we've talked about some of the pieces, but one classic example where sort of short-term and long-term might conflict is drug pricing. It's an area, you know, relevant for not just vaccines, of course. It sort of seems at first blush to be, you know, drug pricing companies should have profit maximization in mind. Certainly, particularly with free pricing in the U.S. today, you know, we do empirically see much higher prices in this country.
I think what's become very obvious in the last couple of years, ignoring, you know, political pressure, is that the industry needs to affect change from within and think potentially in disruptive ways to solve the problem of wide variance in prices globally and implications for access. Because if they don't do it probably will happen to them. We think it's a fundamental business question that has supreme relevance for the long-term. I think about it a lot as an investor. I try to understand how companies are thinking about it because it really does impact their value today and sort of how the markets value the whole business model of a pharmaceutical company.
I think it seems like a conflict, but actually it can be quite accretive to long-term value to think disruptively and not necessarily in a highest price that works type of market clearing strategy. You know, that's controversial, but it's something that I think is becoming quite a bit more apparent as the years pass.
Rebecca, I completely agree. I think when we go into our trust agenda and we talk about an ESG framework, there's probably six areas that we look at, and the very top of the list is pricing and access. We follow that up with global health, because we really believe that someone has to look after those areas of disease that would not naturally get looked at. That's where we haven't talked antimicrobial resistance today, because I think that is the next almost pandemic that the world will wake up to at some point. Industry and everyone has a role to play on that as well. You add inclusion and diversity, you add environmental to that as well. We haven't talked sustainability.
As companies, we have a huge role to play to make sure that we're not only looking after the climate, but contributing positively to nature as well as a big goal we've set ourselves. These are all important topics, and it's brilliant to hear you say that you look at that balance as an investor.
I do want to be sensitive to the time, because we're at the top of the hour. I'll give Fida the mic for 30 seconds, and then I'm going to take moderator's prerogative and close us off.
I'll just take 10 seconds. I totally agree with Rebecca's statements. ESG and Roger's ESG considerations are extremely important, but especially for long-term investors. I think probably the mantra to move away from is profit maximization. Perhaps we should think about profit optimization because you have to look at all sorts of other variables. Completely agree with the comments there.
This has been a wonderful panel discussion. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'd really like to thank our panelists, Roger, Rebecca, and Fidah for joining us and sharing their insights. I think we've heard some great suggestions for practical action today, and I really hope others can use that to inform their own capital allocation and investment decisions. I'd invite you to join us for other upcoming events. You can see where those are by visiting www.fcltglobal.org/events. We welcome comments and suggestions and really look forward to continuing this conversation. Please send those to research@fcltglobal.org. Thank you so much.
Thanks, everyone.
Thank you.
Thank you.