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TD Cowen 44th Annual Health Care Conference 2024

Mar 6, 2024

Moderator

All right. I think it's about 1:30 P.M., so we'll get started. Can you hear me? Are we okay? All right. Well, once again, I know it's late in the afternoon or getting late in the afternoon on the third day, but let me once again welcome you all to TD Cowen's 44th Annual Health Care Conference. I'm joined today by some of the industry's esteemed colleagues. I have John Jacobs, the CEO of Novavax, to my right. And to his right is Dr. Filip Dubovsky, who's the president of R&D at Novavax. And then all the way to the end is going to be Jim Kelly, CFO and treasurer of Novavax. So thank you guys for joining.

John Jacobs
CEO, Novavax

We try to signal by attire who the scientist, who the CFO, and who the business leader is. That's what we're trying to do.

Moderator

Awesome. So obviously a lot to talk about here with Novavax, right? We're just coming off of the 2023 into 2024 season, maybe in the tail end of it, depending on where you're talking about and who you're talking to. But maybe let's just start high level first off. What are kind of the most important takeaways for you guys from the way that the launch went in the fall through the winter and now kind of where we are today?

John Jacobs
CEO, Novavax

Great question. You know, it marked my one-year anniversary back in end of January, friend, right, with the company. Coming in, I knew we had a significant mission to control costs and get the company streamlined and improve our processes from strain selection to shots and arms and how we compete in the marketplace. Novavax was still going through many firsts that were material that our competition had already achieved, like the strain change study. Study 311 for us last year was a first while competitors had done that the year before, playing a little bit of catch-up and cleanup in order to position us well for ongoing commercial execution. So just if you take back a look at the year, guys, right, we were able to remove approximately $1 billion out of our expense basis in just 12 months without hurting our capabilities.

In fact, in parallel to that expense reduction, we were able to improve our capabilities and show that we could get the vaccine out in season instead of a year plus behind competition. So significant improvement. We were also able to reduce current liabilities. We had a significant number of one-time significant liabilities from the take-or-pay days on the initial growth spurt through the pandemic to the tune of hundreds of millions and most recently resolved our prior disagreement with Gavi, which allows both organizations to look forward to the future and put the past behind us in a way that enables us to manage cash.

Chapter one post-pandemic, stabilize, improve the cash runway, clean up the balance sheet, convert it from these large take-or-pay liabilities to a typical accounts payable on your current liabilities, which is a sign of improving health, and give us a really good shot on goal in chapter two, which is the next two seasons and our last two seasons by our intention to be a standalone COVID company where we continue to grow market share, presence, prominence, and improve our systems and cut expenses even further to our midpoint target of $750 million. Expenses were about $1.7 billion at the end of 2022 annually. When I joined in January, we'll have taken almost $1 billion out of our ongoing annual expense basis, Jim, by the time we get there. Lessons learned in the fall.

So we've achieved all of those things, which are great things for the company. We continue to get the majority of our revenue, as you know, Brendan, from outside the U.S. through APAs that will be ongoing through 2026. Over the next three years, we migrate away from APA to a fully commercialized marketplace by 2027. It's very important that we begin to penetrate and perform well in commercial markets this coming year in the U.S. as well as in Europe where we move to tenders in countries like Italy and Spain that we're targeting, private pharmacy markets in France and U.K. which we're targeting and believe we'll have success in. So the lessons learned, certainly get beyond the rest of these firsts, have a better presentation of our products. So we're targeting a prefilled syringe in 2024 from a 5-dose vial.

What everybody learned about COVID was that IDNs or physician groups were not distributing any shots in 2023 in the U.S. marketplace. Everyone assumed it would be roughly 25%-35% of the market, similar to flu. They didn't make the choice to participate with any manufacturer's vaccine. It was about 95% retail-based in the U.S. marketplace. So we've redeployed our team against retail, started those conversations for contracting much earlier and fully anticipate to be more broadly covered in the normal workflow on the schedulers in a prefilled syringe. And this year, our intention is also to be under a BLA instead of an emergency use authorization.

Where we were on an even playing field, even with a 5-dose vial, key learning, even a few weeks behind the mRNAs, although we were in season, we were able to get to a 10-share on certain retailers in 15 business days from launch. In other pharmacies, we either weren't covered or weren't on an even playing field yet. So that was with a 5-dose vial, under an emergency use authorization, a few weeks behind mRNAs in a first-time commercial market for us. Now our awareness levels are 2x where they were before including prefilled syringe, BLA, on-time launch, much more broad coverage. Possibilities are very good for us to perform much better in 2024 than 2023.

Moderator

Great. Okay. So there's a lot to unpack there, right? A lot of learnings, but a lot of kind of looking forward here. So I guess first thing that kind of jumps to mind when you're talking about BLA and I know we'll kind of get into each of these. When you're talking about actual BLA for the vaccine, I mean, first of all, where are you at right now in kind of the process for next season's BLA? I know it's obviously very early. But also give us maybe a sense of what difference that would tangibly make in the kind of launch trajectory and what you could actually do from a commercial perspective.

John Jacobs
CEO, Novavax

Okay. Filip, do you want to start with maybe timing and where we are?

Filip Dubovsky
President of Research & Development, Novavax

Sure. So we've talked about the fact that we are in the process of rolling our BLA into the FDA, which is an advantage for us because it means they're actively reviewing our data right now. The intent is to have it all wrapped up before the season because we want to be under a BLA as we enter into the season. That's not a make-or-break for us because they also have an EUA avenue open to us if we need it. But we feel like we want to be under the BLA, and that's our intent to do it, and that's where the data's pointing us right now.

John Jacobs
CEO, Novavax

Second part of your question was, what does it do for you? It certainly allows you to market your product as a traditional marketed product using brand name and other things like that versus an EUA where you're limited by the emergency use authorization language and the timing on how you can promote. There are some advantages to commercial, but the material advantages for us really come from access and presentation of our product and timeliness of our approval. That's really the lever that we want to pull in 2024 to drive share. Having a BLA will be important. Even if we were out under an EUA, that's fine, but we fully anticipate a BLA.

Moderator

Okay. All right. Yeah. I mean, this all makes good sense. I mean, the other thing, I guess, that you also touched, John, that I feel like maybe is a little bit underappreciated here is kind of the difference with a prefilled syringe. Between different vials, between multidose vials, I guess, you know, in a perhaps different non-infectious disease context, you kind of think of this as a traditional drug delivery, IV, subQ, prefilled syringe. But when it comes to the actual vaccine, I mean, what's left for you from maybe a regulatory perspective, from where you are now to kind of get prepared for a prefilled in the fall? Is there any differences that are important to kind of shout out?

Is there any kind of weather testing or what have you that's kind of going to be important to make sure that that's what's actually available in the fall?

John Jacobs
CEO, Novavax

We're well underway with that right now. Michelle or Jim, any color you want to add to that?

Jim Kelly
CFO, Novavax

Yeah. I mean, a couple of points. One is there's nothing particularly magical about a prefilled syringe. In fact, we were authorized through our partner SK in Korea in a PFS. The regulatory process is being rolled into our BLA. So when the BLA hits, it's going to be the variant strain that's selected in the spring. It's going to be in a PFS.

Moderator

Okay. I guess now we're talking about strains. So what's the latest? Understandably, this is going to change, right? Changes every day. But where are you kind of now? What's the latest strain that we should expect that you'll be targeting? And I guess, is there anything that you think is lurking out there on the horizon that could potentially shift that conversation by the time the VRBPAC happens?

John Jacobs
CEO, Novavax

Well, Filip, why don't you comment? But nature could always throw a curveball at you. But the virus has been mutating in a more predictable and a bit slower fashion right now as it has fit with human population, right? So through natural selection, you expect that. So something starts as a pandemic, it's rapidly morphing and changing. And then as it seeks fit with human population, you start to see a more predictable mutation and can get into more of a seasonal rhythm, Brendan, right, like you do with the flu. That's what we're starting to see. Filip, I don't know if you want to comment further.

Filip Dubovsky
President of Research & Development, Novavax

Yeah. I guess just to step back a tiny bit, I mean, we've been talking to the global regulators over the past 10 days a week. We've talked to the FDA, EMA, WHO, Health Canada about the various strains and the data we have on the strains. So a couple of things to point out. Right now, JN.1 is well over 90%, 95% of all strains globally. The XBB.1.5 vaccines work quite well against it. We see that in our own immunodata as well as the effectiveness data that the CDC published on February 1st. The reason the change isn't for what's circulating now, but what's going to circulate next. So you want to get close enough to that so that the broad immune responses are relevant to that. And you're future-proofing the vaccine for the next set of mutations. Right now, we have JN.1 in commercial manufacture.

We've heard from some of the other mRNA competitors, same thing. The VRBPAC has been moved up in time this year. It came from June to a month earlier, so the 16th of May.

Moderator

It's in May.

Filip Dubovsky
President of Research & Development, Novavax

Yeah. In Europe, it's in April. They shifted those to allow non-mRNA vaccine companies an opportunity to participate in the markets.

Moderator

All right. So I guess the other thing, I know you guys were very proactive about this last year, but in terms of kind of looking at the at-risk variants, right, and developing which kind of strains would potentially go into the VRBPAC, I mean, it seems like that's a little less necessary maybe this year because it's a bit earlier. But I guess how is that process for you guys?

Filip Dubovsky
President of Research & Development, Novavax

Yeah. We are a protein vaccine company. We make dozens and dozens of these. And we cross-test them against each other. So I can tell you that our JN.1 vaccine works fine against JN.11, JN.11, JN.4, JN.17. So we know this ahead of time. And this is the kind of data that we can bring to the FDA and VRBPAC, the choices we make.

John Jacobs
CEO, Novavax

One of the questions asked early on of Novavax, it was like, "You're a protein-based vaccine. How do you guys do this? It takes you six months from the time you identify a strain to get your vaccine out the door. mRNAs can do it in three or four months." So how do you take a six-month timeline and make it three or four? You do the work of the first two to three months ahead of time. And then from go, it's the same time as your competition, which is exactly what we did last year. It's not brain surgery. I'm not a scientist. I play one on TV, right?

But it's pretty simple to me that if that's what it was, it was to develop these few strains and take that two or three months off of your timeline, then from go, you're the same time as your competition. So that's a change we made. It doesn't sound complex, but it's not how we were thinking as a company at the time. So we got everyone in a room about this size, filled the chairs, talked through it for a day, and applied more of a flu-like strategy to COVID where we can produce these antigens very quickly to Filip's point, make them all see the data cross-reference at all, and have it ready at a limited commercial scale at a de minimis impact on the PNL. So by the time you get go, we kind of know what's coming. We can see it in the data.

But if we happen to miss something or a new variant JN.1 pops up, we've already got it at a certain scale. It can move very quickly. So that enabled us to streamline approach and be more efficient.

Moderator

Okay. All right. Great. So now you gave some guidance for 2024 on the Q4 call. Maybe give us a sense of when you're talking about that $800 million-$1 billion in revenues this year, maybe walk us through the breakdown of that, APAs versus commercial market, and kind of where some of these existing APAs you would ship to.

John Jacobs
CEO, Novavax

I'll let Jim provide some detailed color, but it's $500 million-$600 million range for APA business outside of the United States, a large majority of that coming from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, right, our European APA ended last year. Then you have commercial revenues, $300 million-$400 million range, midpoint $350 million, between U.S. and select European countries. But Jim, you may want to add an additional color.

Jim Kelly
CFO, Novavax

Sure. You know, we continue to be in that unique situation where we have the pandemic-era APAs to not only support markets where we want to be, but offer supportive cash flow to the company. And so when you look at the APAs at $500 million-$600 million, midpoint $550 million, about $100 million has already been delivered in the first quarter. And that represented the closeout of the European APA. I think John just mentioned Europe's going to be more of a traditional commercial market this fall. And I'll come to that in a moment. So when you look at the remaining amounts, you got $450 million remaining, a little over 80%, Australia, New Zealand, Canada. And they've been exceptional partners for us. So the Australia, New Zealand, that will occur upon authorization.

They're still reviewing our XBB right now, of course, southern hemisphere, and it's our intent to be on time and importantly be there during their season. Turning then to the commercial or non-APA, you do have a slice in there for potential R21 economics, royalties or reimbursement. I'll just talk about that real quick. It is a great proof of concept for our technology. Serum Institute, one of our partners, has developed a new malaria vaccine. They expect to launch it sometime this year. It's a game-changer, lifesaving vaccine. Just multiple thousands of children die every day in Africa. So we have some economics there. The vast majority of the non-APA is from the commercial markets of the U.S. and Europe. You look at U.K. and France, they're primarily going to be retail markets, kind of traditional retail markets. Then with Italy and Spain, tender markets.

And while I think many folks have looked to Europe and they've seen, for example, Pfizer has quite a high amount of share in Europe based on the renegotiated APA there, these tenders that we're describing, they're protein. And so we think we've got the right answer for those APAs or, excuse me, tenders in Spain and Italy. When you look at the retail, the private market in both the U.K. and France, they're looking to do spring campaigns. So we have doses in France right now. We're working. We just got added to the Green Book in the U.K. So we're looking forward to compete in those markets potentially this spring. This is all new news and, in fact, had not been included in our guidance. So we're waiting to learn more. But I think it's a beginning of the evolution of the commercial marketplace in Europe.

Moderator

Okay. All right. So I guess that's great. That's a lot of good detail. So when you're talking about southern hemisphere deliveries and talking about authorization, right? I mean, instinctively, we're thinking these would be booked in Q2, Q3, right, with the northern hemisphere then coming into Q4. So with that guidance then for the year, fairly steady cadence. Is that fair to kind of assume based on what you're looking at now and based on the proportion coming from APAs?

Jim Kelly
CFO, Novavax

It's right. The next stop is going to be this Australia, New Zealand based on that authorization. You're right. It's the end of the XBB shipments, and then we transition over to the new updated vaccine for the fall.

Moderator

All right. So I guess the other thing that does come up sometimes in conversations with some of these existing APAs, I think there's just people want to understand a little bit more any potential risks that there are to whether they're not fulfilling them or pushing them off to later this year or next year. I mean, not even just with you guys, I think the past couple of years, some of these APAs, it's just kind of a constant conversation, right? And I'm sure the stipulations are slightly different each time. But I guess just give us a sense of how at risk any of these numbers are, if they are at all, for you this year.

John Jacobs
CEO, Novavax

But I'd say there's no guarantees on anything in life except death and taxes, right? And in business, no guarantees. Relatively, though, an APA has a more secure, at least stated demand that's contractual. So you agree on demand through an APA with the government. They agree to purchase a certain number of doses of vaccine contractually from you as long as the company meets our obligations, which include aligning with our regulatory authorities on what they expect, getting timely approvals of that, producing the vaccine, having it released on their soil in a timely manner. If we execute against that, the understanding is they will execute against their side of the commitment. And that's been proven time and time again on APA. Is there risk?

There's execution risk on our side if we fail to deliver on those expectations, if we're late, if we can't get the doses produced in line with our regulatory authorities, if we had a miss on a strain change or something else. It's not guaranteed money, but it's demand that's contractually committed to as long as we meet our end of the bargain. On the commercial side, obviously, you're in a traditional competitive marketplace. You've got to drive your own share. You've got to pull that through and pull the revenues that are associated. So there's relatively more risk in commercial, relatively less risk in APA. There's execution risk across all of it.

Moderator

Okay. So I guess to your point about commercial then, when we're looking at some of the Australian and New Zealand regions of the world where you have outstanding APAs, do you have a sense of when those markets could switch to commercial?

John Jacobs
CEO, Novavax

We do. We actually have timing, Jim, on that. Our APAs run through 2026 with the bulk of the opportunity in 2024 into 2025 and then a trailing tail of that into 2026. So by 2026, we expect to have a full conversion away from APA to commercial. And that's when we intend to launch, actually, our combination vaccine, our second product, where we get to introduce our flu vaccine to the world. And Filip, you shared some data, Q3 earnings call on our Phase II with our flu and our COVID vaccine, but just some remarkable results. I don't know if you want to add color on our confidence around our flu vaccine that we'd introduce in the form of a combo with COVID.

Yeah. Do you want me to jump right in there?

Moderator

Sure.

Filip Dubovsky
President of Research & Development, Novavax

Okay. Yeah. So we are planning a Phase III study at the end of this year and the second half of this year. That's a licensure-enabling study for us. We've gotten concurrence with the FDA about the design of the study, the sample size, the safety database, the endpoints, etc. What they've shared with us is that should we meet those endpoints and we show meaningful clinical benefit, then we have a pathway open for advanced accelerated approval pathway for the vaccine. That would imply filing that data in 2025 with being in the market in 2026. We're going into this study with a fair amount of confidence because the study is basically a mimic of what we did in a Phase II design. There we had some very supportive results, which would allow us to achieve the endpoints that FDA is interested in.

Moderator

Okay. So when you're talking about combo, I think everybody who's looking at a combo, whether right now or in the future, I think, are thinking about it slightly differently. Is this in one vial, both vaccines, or is it in two vials? Have you decided?

John Jacobs
CEO, Novavax

It's not a bedside mix. It would be one prefilled syringe where you would have both components in that syringe.

Moderator

Okay. Has FDA commented on that? Is that their preferred method of this, or this is kind of coming from your internal?

John Jacobs
CEO, Novavax

Certainly, commercially, that's preferable. And we feel, Filip, you may want to comment on what we feel is a potential development and an R&D advantage to our platform. You can pack our platform, multiple antigens, into one vaccine while we believe maintaining a very nice reactogenicity profile. You may want to comment on that.

Filip Dubovsky
President of Research & Development, Novavax

Yeah. I think the best way to think about this is by referencing the data we've shared. I mean, the previous study, we had a combination vaccine that we had head-to-head against two licensed influenza vaccines. And the reactogenicity was clinically indistinguishable between the three vaccines. So we're going in with an immune response, which looks great to us, and a reactogenicity profile, which is favorable to what we think the competition's going to look like.

Moderator

You think about some vaccines, some consumers will avoid getting their follow-up booster or another shot just because they want to avoid the side effects or having to miss a day or two of work because of that, etc. To have the ability to put and the potential to put multiple antigens for multiple diseases into one shot and have a very nice tolerability and side effects profile where you're delivering some impressive efficacy results and immunogenic responses, we feel is an advantage for us, yet to be proven out in the study that's pending. But certainly, we're optimistic about it. So I mean, Filip, you made a point of saying that the Phase III is very comparable in a lot of ways to the Phase II.

Are there any important distinctions from the actual design perspective other than N that we should be aware of as you're kind of getting this underway later this year?

Filip Dubovsky
President of Research & Development, Novavax

Yeah. None that we've disclosed. We're still in a competitive space, and we have a couple of tricks up our sleeve.

Moderator

Sure. Okay. So I guess then next natural question, when you're looking to fund pivotal study, launch a new product next year, the year after, from the existing APAs that you have, from the existing funds that you have going on, and we'll get to Gavi in just a second, I mean, what is kind of the financing strategy for this over the next 12, maybe to 24 months to just make sure that that study gets completed the way it needs to?

John Jacobs
CEO, Novavax

Everything we've projected already contemplates the inclusion of a standalone go-forward with our Phase III study. Very importantly, when I first joined last year, you heard us saying that we would almost need a partner to be able to bring that study forward. Through our successful cost reduction efforts, Brendan, that we've talked about over the last year, we put the company in a position to do that independently now in our base operating plan. That's really important because we want leverage. If we're going to consider business development deals or opportunities in the future for Novavax, we would only want to consider those from a position of leverage where we don't need to do that. So we can consider if we'd like to do something like that. It's beneficial to our shareholders and to our company.

So we put ourselves in a position of leverage now according to the base operating plan where we can bring that study forward on our own and expect a data readout actually in the first half of 2025 on that.

Jim Kelly
CFO, Novavax

Okay. That's right. It's a year quicker than we were even thinking a year ago.

Moderator

Yeah. Okay. Are these conversations with potential partners, maybe not even for the CIC study, but just in regards?

John Jacobs
CEO, Novavax

Well, I didn't say we weren't having those conversations.

Moderator

Well, that was my question now. So I guess, but to your point, where's the strategic priority for those conversations? When you talk to somebody who's maybe interested in the vaccine-based NVX platform, I mean, just where's your head at when you're entering those conversations?

John Jacobs
CEO, Novavax

It's a very good question. And look, our pillar three that we talked about all year was really expanding the value of our technology platform, showcasing it to the world. One great example was the R21 malaria vaccine authorized by the WHO, launching this year in Africa. Jim, you mentioned 1,300 children dying needlessly every day in Africa. One of the good reasons and most important things, actually, just personally for me and for the team, was getting beyond the Gavi dispute because that was a distraction from saving these kids and shame on us if another day went by without us providing our Matrix-M and saving these lives. You can imagine the interest is significant in our Matrix-M from multiple sources. We actually have multiple collaborations around the world with universities.

We announced publicly in the public domain, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. We signed an agreement with them on a technology approach to them to work with Matrix-M on several vaccines. They've expressed even more interest in continuing that partnership. So those are just some examples. Obviously, we'll be open to things that drive shareholder value and help us achieve our vision of becoming a leader in the global level vaccine innovator. And eventually, through the successful launch of our combination vaccine, should we succeed there and do that, our vision is that drives enough revenue and it brings us to profitability where we can inorganically grow a portfolio as well.

Moderator

Okay. So maybe walk us through the Gavi settlement. Because to your point, it really was kind of a distraction for a lot of people. But I mean, the way that the structure is kind of played out now, I mean, how has this impacted your financial outlook for this year, but also just strategically how you're now planning the capital that you have on board now to get you through the next 18, 24 months?

John Jacobs
CEO, Novavax

Certainly, removing uncertainty is critical for any business if you can do it. That permanently removed that uncertainty from our books. That was really important to be able to make that move and do so in an amicable way with an organization we, frankly, and truly respect, who has a new CEO who came after that disagreement. I came after the disagreement originally occurred, though it was communicated after I arrived, which is part of our going concern that we put on the company. I'd say that we put the past behind us, and it's a look forward. It allows us to better manage our cash, Jim. It allows us to pay down the settlement importantly with doses.

The original intent of the agreement was to provide our vaccine, which is the alternative to mRNA in the COVID world, to consumers and people who need it in low and middle-income countries. So the way we contemplated the agreement with Gavi, our partner in this, was to make sure that we could provide doses at our COGS and also at a retail price that we set in alignment with the spirit of providing things through UNICEF to low and middle-income countries without being egregious about that. But we get to control that price and therefore the margin that goes there. And we would pay down the settlement at that actual retail price, including that margin, not at our COGS. So in other words, if we're able to pay it all off with doses, it's even less for us to pay that off, and it preserves cash.

I don't know, Jim, if you wanted to add anything else?

Jim Kelly
CFO, Novavax

I'll begin with what we're hearing from investors. They were exceptionally interested in learning more and investing in our commercial activities with COVID and commercial markets. And also on kick, they didn't want to invest on an outcome of an arbitration. So having a better characterization in a business-like manner that John described, it does so much to make the company more investable, and it certainly aligns our respective missions. When you look at what the economics are of the settlement, we have it as estimated a present value, cost of capital of that settlement in the $300 million-$400 million range. It can get better when you deliver doses instead of cash. And so for our mission and for our desire to build markets in the AMC 92, of course, we'd love to deliver doses.

When you think about what it means for our cash flow, my goodness, spreading out any potential payments over half a decade does wonders, right, for just cash management. So now we're back focused on, hey, COVID market this fall, advancing CIC. A lot of questions come up about our going concern. We still have the going concern. I think the best opportunity to lift the going concern comes with evidence of our performance this fall in the commercial markets. So really look forward to this fall.

Moderator

Okay. So I mean, I do want to ask a little bit about just the annual vaccine credit for the actual settlement, right? Maybe how does this work? And maybe more importantly, if you're able to pay down the settlement through the annual vaccines, does this have any kind of impact on your ability to kind of deliver those doses to commercial markets, to your APAs? Do you anticipate any of that?

John Jacobs
CEO, Novavax

We're not concerned about capacity. We actually started competing for the UNICEF RFP. They had a 90 million dose RFP that went out last year. Before we had reached any settlement with Gavi or had this level of contemplation around it, we were already competing for that and understand we have full capacity and more to meet any needs that would come from that. Now, in anything we've projected on revenues, we have not included any potential win of a portion of that RFP from UNICEF. So that would be upside to us. Go ahead, Jim.

Jim Kelly
CFO, Novavax

That's exactly right. We started with that RFP last year. It came out mid-last year. A couple of things. When it comes to our capacity, the key to capacity is not antigen. We got plenty of antigen. It's about drug product, right? If you think about the drug product that could go to UNICEF, it's five-dose vial. Our commercial markets are single-dose presentations, so they don't conflict with each other. And that's important. In addition to the RFP in discussion, as John noted, hey, what's our price? We also talk about capacity and when. And so you address both as a part of the RFP process.

Moderator

All right. Great. I think in the last minute or so here, I do want to ask, I mean, you mentioned this at the beginning, some pretty aggressive cost-cutting measures that were, frankly, impressive to get to where you are now. But obviously, you've laid out a plan to do even more, right? So from an external perspective, we obviously don't have all of the insight into the day-to-day, what you've actually focused on. But what else is there left for you to continue to cut like that in the same time, in the same breath as then increasing and, frankly, maximizing your commercial?

John Jacobs
CEO, Novavax

Two things along those lines. I mean, when I joined the company last year, we had an immediate conversation with leadership that we certainly want to be cautious about what we promise externally and put ourselves in the best position to deliver and exceed expectations wherever possible. So when we shared our cost-cut targets, we came off a $1.7 billion expense basis at the end of 2022. When we shared our targets with everyone last year, when we ended the year, we exceeded those targets by $150 million. So we showed that we can do it. We can do more than we said we could do and do so while improving our systems, our processes, and our ability to execute. Through that journey, I myself, as well as the leadership team, looked into every corner of this organization around the world with a microscope, if you will, for an analogy.

We saw additional opportunity to continue to scale and cut. The goal is to continue to do so without hurting our capabilities from strain selection to shots in arms and our clinical capability to bring the next vaccine forward. So we'll make appropriate investment and maintain scale there, plenty of room to hit the targets we intend, including about $100 million in supply chain through rationalization, including the contemplated sale of our CZ plant, which we talked about, and about $200 million or more in SG&A and R&D.

Jim Kelly
CFO, Novavax

Focused ex-US markets, exceptionally focused U.S. market. This learning about retail meant, hey, you don't need to invest in non-retail. And then in other areas, it's just about scaling it right.

Moderator

Okay. All right. I think with that, we're just about over time a little bit. So thanks for sticking around for an extra minute. I know everybody's had a long day. So thanks for joining us.

John Jacobs
CEO, Novavax

Thanks, everyone, for joining us late in the day. Appreciate it.

Jim Kelly
CFO, Novavax

Thank you.

Moderator

Great. Great to see you.

John Jacobs
CEO, Novavax

Thank you.

Moderator

Bye.

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