Good day. Welcome to the LNP Litigation Update conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Stephanie Lee. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, and thanks for joining today's call to review Genevant and Arbutus $2.25 billion global settlement with Moderna. I'm Stephanie Lee with Roivant. Presenting today, we have Matt Gline, CEO of Roivant. For those dialing in via conference call, you can find the slides being presented today, as well as a press release announcing these updates on our IR website at www.investor.roivant.com. We'll also be providing the current slide numbers as we present to help you follow along. I'd like to remind you that we will be making certain forward-looking statements during today's presentation. We strongly encourage you to review the information that we filed with the SEC for more information regarding these forward-looking statements and related risks and uncertainties. With that, I'll turn it over to Matt.
Thank you, Stephanie. Thank you, everybody, for joining on what I'm sure was short notice. I appreciate it. I'm going to go through the presentation here. It should be a relatively quick discussion. I'll take one second at the end to make a comment on the brepocitinib NDA acceptance, then I'll open it up for a brief Q&A as well. I'm sure there are questions. I'm gonna start on slide three in the presentation. Look, before I get to any of the specifics, I just want to acknowledge this is a process that has been years in the making. The litigation itself, we have a timeline on here, went back to 2022. Actually, you know, this really started truly decades ago when the first pre-predecessors of Genevant got to working on lipid nanoparticles.
It's a momentous day for truly dozens of people who worked on this technology, including the inventors listed at the bottom of the slide. The Genevant team today and lots of iterations of that team over time have contributed here, in part because today represents the first real acknowledgement that team and those scientists have gotten. That their technology was instrumental in the COVID-19 vaccines, or at least the Moderna vaccine, as we're announcing today, with the settlement. I wanna acknowledge and appreciate, obviously, all of those scientists, their hard work, and obviously the patients and other scientists at other companies, including Moderna, who were involved in bringing that vaccine to market and did a lot of work on it.
On slide four, what we're announcing today is a global $2. 25 billion settlement with Moderna that resolves the global patent litigation between us and them on the COVID vaccine. That includes a $950 million upfront payment that will be made to us in July, as well as a $1.3 billion payment that is contingent on a narrow legal appeal of one specific question, the applicability of Section 1498. We can talk more about that, but that, as a reminder, is an issue that the district court ruled in our favor at pretrial, but Moderna felt it was important that they have that appeal right. It's an issue that has been resolved in our favor thus far at a few different opportunities pretrial.
That appeal will proceed from here. If that appeal is resolved in our favor, they'll make that second $1.3 billion payment. This covers Moderna's global market share of COVID vaccines. That's about 1/3 of the total market. We'll talk a little bit more about what it means sort of from here. On slide five, a couple of key pieces here. Again, I mentioned the $950 million upfront payment that will be made in July. Moderna, in turn, receives a global non-exclusive license to our technology for SM-102 containing mRNA vaccines for infectious disease. We're agreeing not to sue for certain of our patents on Moderna's products.
The $1.3 billion payment is a contingent payment that we get paid on an appellate ruling that Section 1498 doesn't apply in this case. Moderna has the right to appeal solely on that question. They're not allowed to appeal anything other than the specific question of the applicability of Section 1498. If there is some partial affirmance, if the court ruled that it applies on some portion of the doses, they make a partial payment. We receive that payment on the first win of an appeal at the Federal Circuit, but would return it to them if it were subsequently overturned, for example, by the Supreme Court.
That they are entitled to pursue claims in the Court of Federal Claims for any doses that are ultimately not ruled under Section 1498. We get to claim this value or what the Court of Federal Claims agrees, even if we lose this appeal. Again, we are we're confident in this appeal based on the case so far. Notably, this agreement includes robust credit protections on that $1.3 billion payment, including minimum cash covenants from Moderna and other protections to make sure that that is secure from a credit perspective.
I am sure that one of the questions I will get is why not more from some people in the world, and it's a reasonable question, given the wide range of potential outcomes. I just wanna highlight one brief bit of information on slide six, which is that this is historically for patent cases, this is a very large outcome. It is among cases that have gone to jury, the single largest outcome in a case was Idenix, the Gilead, over hepatitis C programs. That was about a $2.5 billion jury verdict that was subsequently overturned. The next largest was a Pfizer Teva case that was $2.15 billion that was paid out in a settlement.
If we receive the $1.3 billion, we will be right in between those two, and therefore, we will be, at least among cases that would have gone to a jury, the largest paid-out case. Among all of the cases we can find from a patent perspective across all industries, this is the second largest lump sum case that we can find. It is a large outcome, and it reflects the value of our technology. Obviously, these were also unprecedented circumstances, but I wanted to highlight the historic nature of this outcome if it all comes together as planned. On slide seven, just a little bit of backup detail. $950 million of the settlement proceeds will be paid in July 2026.
We expect our effective tax rate on that to be between 10% and 15%. Then, 60%-70% of that is attributable to Roivant, and the remainder goes to Arbutus and others. What we intend to do with the settlement proceeds is to continue doing what we've been doing to invest in our current pipeline, and upcoming launches that we are excited about to continue to invest in new opportunities, and we are excited about a number of things ahead of us.
And then also, because we've already indicated that we are trying to be capital efficient and have quite a lot of cash in our balance sheet, we are today expanding our share buyback program up to $1 billion, and we intend to be fairly aggressive in returning some of this capital starting immediately with that increase in order to continue running in a capital efficient manner. Notably on page eight, before we wrap up, this is the end of the Moderna process, or at least the end of the beginning of the Moderna process. There remains this one appeal issue that we'll go through, and that's important. That contingent payment we'll see it through. I'm sure we'll get some questions about the timeline there.
The sort of most likely paths to resolution in our view run from sort of 18 months- 36 months or something like that, and we'll start to get information pretty quickly on how the federal court thinks about the case. As a reminder, that issue was decided in our favor 3 x thus far in the course of the proceedings by two different judges. That said, it's the end of that part of the case, but the Pfizer-BioNTech case remains outstanding, following the favorable market ruling early last year. As a reminder, on slide nine, Moderna is about 1/3 of the total global COVID vaccine market. Pfizer has thus far not asserted Section 1498 as a defense.
If you take the total value of this settlement and you impute it, there's quite a lot of value potentially attributable to the Pfizer case, the Pfizer-BioNTech case, and we intend to pursue that aggressively as we feel we've contributed there as well. More to come on that in the upcoming weeks, months, and probably a year or two. The last thing I'll comment on before I open it up for Q&A and wrap up the short call today is a totally unrelated announcement on slide 11. We announced this by press release this morning, brepocitinib's NDA filing was accepted by FDA with priority review. This is incredibly exciting for us.
It puts us on the map for a potential commercial launch for brepocitinib and dermatomyositis this year, bringing that event into 2026, and not even very late in 2026. We said, we expect to launch by the end of September, which is really exciting. The Priovant team, Ben, and all those folks are incredibly hard at work, taking advantage of this news by working towards that launch date. And we are really looking forward to getting out there and helping those patients. More to come on that as well, but it turns 2026 now, into an even bigger year for us, where we get to start to prove what we can do commercially, with the drug that we are very proud to work on.
I'm gonna wrap it up here and open it up for Q&A in a moment. I just wanna say thank you again to obviously all of the scientists who have worked on this technology, the large team of people, including many people on the Genevant leadership team, Lindsay and the Arbutus leadership team, the predecessors of both that organization, both those organizations who have worked on this prior to, prior to them taking it home in each case. It truly takes a lot of work to get to this point, and I'm pleased to be able to put this issue behind us. I'm sure Moderna is as well, and to be able to turn our attention to lots of other great things to come. With that, I'll say thank you, and I will hand it over to the operator for any Q&As.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, press star one one again. One moment while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question will come from the line of Dennis Ding with Jefferies. Your line is open.
Hey, guys. Congrats on the news, and I'm really glad things worked out after what seemed like many, many, many years in court. I have two questions for you. On Section 1498, do you have any factual statistics on the success rate in terms of Section 1498 decisions being upheld on appeals? Number two, can you comment on, you know, which patent or argument in the Moderna case that, you know, really broke the camel's back? In the Pfizer case, if we should be focused on the '378 patent, because that obviously impacts the amount of COVID-19 revenue that's eligible for a royalty to apply? Thank you.
Thanks, Dennis. I appreciate it. Both great questions. On the first question on Section 1498, I think the answer is the number of Section 1498 cases in aggregate that have gone to appeal in the pharmaceutical industry is very low, and the facts of our case are specific. I don't think there's a lot of precedent. I think the best presidential tools that we have to make an analysis here come back to the fact that we have won this issue at several different stages of the proceedings up until now in front of the district court. It's a narrow legal argument at this point. There's no factual dispute in front of the court. It's just a question of the interpretation of the law itself, and obviously, we believe we have the better end of that. I think that's an important thing.
On the Pfizer, in terms of which patent applied, I can say there's no last straw to point to. To be honest, the way settlement discussions work, we don't know exactly what prompted this set of discussions or what Moderna has thought about. You know, I think overall, we're pleased with the acknowledgment of our contribution that the settlement represents. Obviously, it's helpful that as a part of this judgment of validity or of no invalidity has been entered on these patents, which allows us to then use all of them to the extent that we need to in the Pfizer case. Thank you.
Perfect. Thank you.
One moment for our next question. That will come from the line of David Risinger with Leerink Partners. Your line is open.
Thanks very much. Let me add my congrats, including for the brepocitinib news this morning. I have a number of questions, Matt, but they're pretty straightforward. First, when do you expect the appellate court decision on Section 1498? Second, Moderna stated in its statement today that the company has concluded that a loss related to the pending Section 1498 proceedings is not probable, so it's not taking a reserve. Can you comment on that conclusion by Moderna and its legal team? Third, when do you expect the Pfizer litigation to go to trial? Thanks so much.
Yeah. Perfect. Thanks. Thanks, Dave. Appreciate the congratulations and appreciate all the good questions, which I'm sure others have in mind as well. On the first question, when do we expect an appellate decision? Look, it's not totally clear, but the process for filing an appeal is relatively straightforward, and the agreement lays out that everybody's gonna move as quickly as they possibly can and not ask for any extensions. This should move at a good clip. I think, you know, 18 months-36 months is a reasonable guess for resolution of the entire thing. Obviously, there's ways it could drag out longer, et cetera, and ways it could be resolved in theory on the fast end of that, but I think that's like a reasonable guess. That appeal should be filed relatively soon.
In terms of the Pfizer litigation, look, we've said it's approximately a year behind the Moderna one. We don't have a trial date yet. There is some, you know, overall progress on discovery and other things, and there are obviously also things that can happen that are not sort of publicly visible there. We are moving forward there and will continue to be aggressive, but I don't have a date to give right now. Then, look, I can't comment on what judgment Moderna used to reach the idea that this, that the payment was improbable. What I can say, again, is during the district court proceeding, this issue has come before the court three times, and in all three cases, the court has ruled in our favor. We are optimistic about our prospects there.
Thanks very much.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
One moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Brian Cheng with JPMorgan. Your line is open.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking our questions this afternoon. Congrats on the settlement. Maybe just first, how much read-through, Matt, do you see to the Pfizer-BioNTech case? Does the outcome today put more pressure on Pfizer to come to the settlement table if that is indeed your ultimate goal? Second, you know, as you noted on the difference in terms of vaccine sales volume between BioNTech versus Moderna, can you remind how much damage are you actively seeking in damage from Pfizer and BioNTech? Then third, maybe just walk us through the timeline here. Did Moderna proactively reach out for a settlement? I'm just curious how the interaction went. Thank you.
Thanks, Brian. All good questions. On the first question, how much read-through in the Pfizer case? Look, I think some of the facts in the Pfizer case are different, but certainly what we know from this is that Moderna, in deciding whether or not to enter this settlement, knew the evidence we had, knew their prospects for validity and invalidity on our patents and decided that this was the better course of action. Again, some of the facts may be different in the Pfizer case, but certainly my view is, it's helpful both to have that having been entered to the court and also just to get the confirmation that somebody else in Moderna, in this case, saw the facts similarly to how we did. That's about as much as I can say.
In terms of whether it adds pressure, that's really a question for Pfizer, not for us. In terms of how much we're seeking in damages from Pfizer, those briefings are not anywhere public at this point, so there's nothing to point to there to say. If at any point that becomes public, we will let everybody know. On the timeline, I think I probably shouldn't comment on the process through which this came together. It was a productive confidential discussion as between us and Moderna. Thank you for the questions.
Thanks, Matt.
One moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Andy Chen with Wolfe Research. Your line is open.
Hey, thank you for taking the question. Here it looks like if Moderna loses Section 1498, they will pay $1.3 billion more cash. It also looks like, after that, they can pursue further, like, there are additional avenues of appeal. Just can you maybe remind us, like, for us, that who are not litigation experts, how likely are these appeals going to be favorable for Roivant eventually? Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks. It's a good question. Just to be clear, those appeals all specifically relate only to the narrow legal question on Section 1498. If they lose at the Federal Circuit, they make the payment to us, and then they're allowed to go, for example, seek cert from the Supreme Court to appeal up from there. Look, it's hard to opine on the practical questions. Obviously, our view as stated is, we expect to win on this issue, and we believe we have the right side of the law here. You know, whether the Supreme Court decides to hear a case like this is obviously up to them and difficult to predict. That's sort of the nature of the appeal.
There are other corner cases where the Federal Circuit remains the decision to some other court to answer some other related question. In general, I think the most linear path here is to the Federal Circuit and then to the Supreme Court, and then it wraps up.
Thank you, Matt.
Thank you.
One moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Corinne Johnson with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
Hi, this is Eric Ng for Corinne Johnson. Thank you for taking the question. I just wanted to double-click a little bit on that last question. Thinking about like, you know, assuming the Section 1498 goes your way and Moderna does pursue an additional appeal, any thoughts on a timeline or how long it could potentially take for a definitive resolution, and you know, how long it could potentially get drawn out? Given the fact that it could get drawn out, is there any risk to the amount of, is there any thoughts on the way that you would treat the $1.3 billion payout in terms of the potential for paying that amount back plus interest?
Yeah, thanks. I appreciate the question. I think I follow. In terms of the timeline, the 18 months-36 month estimate I gave was inclusive of some cushion for a straightforward resolution of those appeals. Obviously, there are conceivable scenarios where it takes longer than that, but I think there are many likely scenarios where it's resolved within that timeframe to finality, and we'll see. If you're asking about sort of accounting for the $1.3 billion, I think the accounting for the $1.3 billion will be, we're still working through exactly how we're going to account for it if it is paid to us on Federal Circuit, and we'll figure it out, between now and the time we receive such a payment.
In terms of practically how we'll treat it, I don't have a time to say other than that I think the period between that initial payment and final resolution is not so long that it's going to be a major issue for us, at the time.
Makes sense. Thank you.
Thank you.
One moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Yaron Werber with TD Cowen. Your line is open.
Hi, guys. Congrats on the amazing news and also on brepocitinib data that was announced this morning. This is Sarah on for Yaron. Just two quick questions from us. Does today's settlement kind of, include the future royalty payments or eliminate them, or how should we be thinking about those future royalty payments? Secondly, on the $1 billion in share buybacks, can you just share a little bit more about the expected timing or cadence that we should be expecting for the buybacks? I know that includes the $500 million that was already announced in June of last year. That'd be great. Thank you.
Thank you. I appreciate both the questions. They're good questions. On the first one, sorry, your line is a little bit noisy. If you wouldn't mind going on mute while I'm answering, that'd be helpful. On the first one, this settlement is a lump sum that covers everything. It includes, in essence, any future royalties. It's just these two numbers are sort of it in terms of the way the settlement is structured. That's how this settlement is arranged. On the share buyback, look, we have felt for a while that we have excess cash. That was the nature of the extra $500 million authorization.
You know, I think we're still working out the details of exact method, but I think you can expect us to be more aggressive in returning that capital to shareholders than we have been, over the last months. Look, I think we're looking to be capital efficient, and we know, at this point that we are overcapitalized relative to, even our own lofty expectations as to what we can do with cash in terms of new opportunities. I think you should expect us to be fairly aggressive from here. Thank you.
Great. Thank you.
One moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Sam Slutsky with LifeSci Capital. Your line is open.
Hey, I appreciate the questions, congrats on the update. Turning to brepocitinib real quick. When considering the timing of the PDUFA, when might you expect to establish reimbursement with payers? Could you just discuss the work being done on patient identification and physician education going into launch?
Thanks, Sam. I super appreciate the question. It's nice to get some on brepocitinib as well. We're obviously super excited about this morning's announcement. Look, on pricing and reimbursement, obviously, ultimately, those final decisions aren't made until the would-be approval of the product. That work had already begun in earnest to the best of our ability prior to having a PDUFA date in terms of evaluating what we could evaluate. That work is even easier and more of it can be done now. The Priovant team is super hard at work making sure that we make the right decisions there. I think we are sort of fully on track to have made decisions we feel really good about well, well before launch at this point, other than the final steps that can't take place until after. Feeling overall good about that.
Then the second question on patient identification is, look, I think we had said at our investor day some things that team is working on in terms of getting ready for launch. Among them is a lot of patient education work, the launch of the dermatomyositis.com website, which is a sort of hub for patient engagement, and just like a ton of outreach and work with the doc community in DM who are profoundly hungry for new therapies and who are very excited as we get closer to the potential availability of this drug. The Priovant team is hard at work at all of that, and obviously at the heart of those efforts is making sure that we know where these patients are.
Th at we have relationships with their treating physicians, and that everybody is set up to take advantage of the drug as best we can ahead of time, by the time it's approved in terms of our conduct activities. Thanks. Really good questions.
One moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Yatin Suneja with Guggenheim. Your line's open.
Hey, guys. Thank you for taking my question. Just a quick one. In terms of your share, I think the range that you have said is 60%-70%. Can you maybe just help us understand that range, maybe narrow that a little bit? Like, how much is attributable to you versus Arbutus? Just a quick one on brepocitinib , if I may. I mean, we do get a lot of questions around how we should think about pricing. Any sort of reasonable benchmark for us to think about from pricing standpoint? I know it's early, but love your comment there. Thanks.
Yeah, thank you. Both great questions. On the first one, look, I think what I can say is, this didn't come together slowly over a long time. It came together quickly. I think we just still have a little bit of outstanding work to do on mechanics and distribution questions and things like that. We will give a more precise answer on the exact flow of funds in every direction, between now and July when the money is expected to come in. That's about what I can say on that now, and there are various sort of puts and takes in some of the mechanics. That range is a reasonable range.
In terms of how we think about pricing on brepocitinib , as I just said in the previous question, we're doing that work now. We don't have a concrete answer, obviously you don't set a price until approval. That said, I think what we've said before on this issue is IVIG in DM is a $250,000-ish product. If FcRns come in, efgartigimod is, you know, sort of $500+ in terms of annual price, I think those bookends set a range for what we think the dermatomyositis market, given disease severity and the lack of options and other available treatment options coming, something that range is kind of what might be relevant.
We haven't chosen a price within that range or elsewhere. Thank you. It's a great question.
One moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Samantha Semenkow with Citi. Your line is open.
Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks very much for taking the question, and congrats on the settlement and the brepocitinib NDA acceptance. Just Matt, you mentioned that this was the largest settlement for a patent case, and given that the Pfizer share of their vaccine is higher than the Moderna vaccine, I'm just wondering how we should think about the magnitude of a potential favorable Pfizer outcome in that litigation? Thanks very much.
The regrettable thing about only settling one of two cases is I still sometimes have to give the following answer to questions, which is that it's difficult to comment on outstanding or pending litigation. It's hard to say. We're we continue to believe that our technology is used in the Pfizer vaccine, that Pfizer and BioNTech are infringing on our patents. While the facts are unique to each case, we're gonna continue to pursue our rights there aggressively. You know, stay tuned. Thank you.
One moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Prakhar Agrawal with Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open.
Hi, congrats on the news today, and thank you for taking my questions. You've decided to do a share buyback with most of the Moderna upfront money. As we think about the Pfizer case, and in the scenario you get cash settlement there, what will be the capital allocation priorities there, in terms of share buyback, investing in the pipeline and the launch and BD? Secondly, on brepocitinib, given the imminent launch of brepocitinib in DM this year, what should we think about the uptake curve there? Are there any analogs you can point us to for the uptake in dermatomyositis? Thank you so much.
Thank you. Those are both great questions. On the first one from a capital allocation perspective, I think, I hope my hope for Roivant is that we can develop and maintain a reputation of being efficient stewards of capital and that we use our cash wisely, both in terms of increasing our ownership by share buybacks of things we're really excited about, like the dermatomyositis launch, like the mosliciguat data, like the NIU data, like the Graves data next year, et cetera. Obviously, share buybacks help us own more of all of those outcomes going into an event-packed year.
We have a team that has proven over and over again that we can find interesting programs to work on, and if we have more capital, we'll continue to think big about what those opportunities look like. Obviously, as brepocitinib has continued to declare itself, and as I expect IMVT-1402 and mosliciguat will continue to declare themselves as amazing programs, there will be more indications, more work to do, more ways to invest in their success. I think we will continue to invest in all three of those things. I think we don't wanna run highly overcapitalized. So I think to the extent that we have excess cash, we're gonna continue to be thoughtful and aggressive about returning it to shareholders.
I think you can see that with the timing of today's announcement concurrent with this settlement. In terms of like how a hypothetical future payment of uncertain amount gets distributed among those buckets, it's a little bit difficult to say on today's facts. In terms of launch trends for brepocitinib, all I'll say is we are committed to getting that drug to as many patients as possible. We think dermatomyositis is a large market opportunity with lots of unmet need and lots of patients. We've talked about it in other settings. It's hard to say as the first sort of new targeted therapy for dermatomyositis in a very, very long time, exactly what that curve looks like. I promise that the Priovant team is doing everything they possibly can to maximize the opportunity.
Kelly, who's sitting next to me in the room, was looking at me and mouthing the words slow and steady. I'm also gonna add, I think that's like a reasonable way to think about the launch. Thank you.
Thank you. One moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Douglas Tsao with H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open. Mr. Tsao, you're on mute. Please unmute your line. We'll move on to the next question. Mr. Tsao, you can press star one one again if you'd still like to ask your question. Our next question will come from the line of Chi Fong. Your line is open with Bank of America.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking our question. Congrats on the update. The first one on today's settlement. As the settlement requires Moderna for the court to enter judgment of no invalidity, does this have any legal bearing on the Pfizer case or does this prevent Pfizer to push through any invalidity arguments in their own cases? My second question is, given the cash infusion or the expected cash infusions, I'm wondering if you have any updated thoughts on bringing Immunovant fully in-house under the Roivant umbrella. Just a quick follow-up on brepocitinib. Can you talk about launch preparation and sales force hiring ahead of the anticipated launch in September? Thanks so much.
Thank you. I appreciate the questions. On the settlement, in terms of the judgment of no invalidity, look, the obvious legal precedent that it sets for the Pfizer case is in the event that we had gone to trial, there was a possibility that Moderna could have invalidated one of our patents. Obviously, we didn't expect that. The judgment of no invalidity fully takes that off the table and stands in the record as a win on validity challenge. Pfizer is not precluded from making any validity challenge, but they'll have seen the result here, and they'll make their own decision. This has no sort of binding rule on what they can and cannot pursue in their own alternative.
In terms of whether this gives us an updated view on Immunovant or anything else, look, we continue to love the Immunovant franchise, the programs there. I am excited to continue to be a large owner and continue investing in those programs. We continue to think all the time about ways to own more and do more there, and I don't think today's news is any particular change, at least as of now, in our view. In terms of the launch prep for brepocitinib, look, we've talked a lot about this in different settings in terms of getting ready across a bunch of axes.
One thing I'll say is I think the Priovant team is actively right now building a really high-quality field force, especially on the medical engagement side, where we can be out there today, meeting with physicians, talking about the treatment of dermatomyositis, making sure we build those relationships, understand their practice, talk about published medical data, et cetera. I think that team is growing and of excellent quality, and I think we're really excited to continue to invest in that as we get closer to the PDUFA date. Thank you. I appreciate the question.
Great. Thank you, Matt. Thank you. One moment for our next question, and that will come from the line of Douglas Tsao with H.C. Wainwright. Your line is open.
Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions, and sorry about that earlier. I guess, Matt, you know, I'm just curious in terms of how you're thinking about capital allocation. Obviously, you know, you don't wanna sort of count your chickens on the Pfizer case, in advance. If we think of, you know, sort of, the events today certainly being a positive sign towards a additional cash coming into the company, should we look at sort of share buybacks as how you're prioritizing it? Or should we think about potential cash coming from, you know, the Pfizer cases, you know, maybe having alternative uses? Thank you.
Thanks, Douglas. It's a great question. I think you know us well enough to know that our plan is not to buy a jet or a corporate retreat anywhere. Look, I think we wanna be viewed as efficient stewards of capital and thoughtful about how we deploy it. We've talked a lot on this call about some of the things we're excited to be deploying capital on. I would not presume from anything we've said here that the Pfizer dollars are in a specific bucket pre-allocated. Again, we don't know what the outcome in the Pfizer case is gonna be. I think as and when we figure that out, we'll make a decision based on the facts in front of us.
We are spoiled for choice with good places to put capital, including indication expansion for existing programs, including BD opportunities. That field could look different at any time, including after receiving settlement money in this case or another case. I think we're sort of reserving judgment on all of the great options we've got. We're gonna continue to invest to deliver valuable medicines to patients that need them. I think that ultimately is the thing that's created the most value for us in our history and the thing that I believe will continue to create the most value for us going forward. Thanks, Dennis.
And then if I can.
Oh, yeah, go ahead.
If I can ask a follow-up. I mean, if, you know, does your success here change your risk reward in terms of how you approach the Pfizer litigation in any way?
No, I don't think it does. I think the answer is, our view is we feel confident of our facts in that case, and we intend to pursue aggressively, and I'm hopeful for a good outcome there as well.
Okay, great. Thank you so much.
Thank you. That is all the time we have today for question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Gline for any closing remarks.
Thank you again. Thank you everybody for listening today. We're obviously glad to have reached this spot. There's certainly a part of us that would have found it satisfying to see it through to its logical end, ultimately, this is a good outcome and a great risk return, risk reward trade-off for us to have taken. We're pleased to be here. Again, appreciate everybody listening. I appreciate the enormous contributions of, as I've said many times in this call, an enormous scientific team that dedicated literally their entire careers and cases, some of whom up to and including in recent weeks as they prepared to testify in this case, just to get us to this point.
They truly deserve kudos, applause, and recognition for their contribution to the COVID vaccines, which has now been recognized. Thank you again to everybody for listening. Thank you to those scientists and all the other people who worked around them, supporting them, all who worked on this case. Looking forward to catching up again soon with many updates on our business from here and an action-packed year ahead. Thank you.
This concludes today's program. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.