Thank you very much for joining us this afternoon. My name is Chris Shibutani, a member of the Goldman Sachs research team. We are thrilled to have Royalty Pharma present with us once again. Today, we have Terry Coyne back for a repeat performance. You were with me last year also, and it looks like you brought a friend this time. You have Christopher Hite, the Vice Chair, and I see. Is Marshall running around, or did he hide from me this year?
He's back.
Huh? Oh, he's back at home doing deals. Okay.
Yes.
That's perfect. Terrific. I think, you're probably, to a certain extent, familiar to folks, but I always find that these are discussions at a moment in time between a couple of people, so I'd love to get a snapshot. You and I actually secretly go back, like, many years. You were at JPMorgan for a while, so reveal the dark history of your professional journey.
My personal professional journey?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Who are we talking to?
Yes.
Who are you?
Yeah, I've been at Royalty Pharma for 13 years now.
Mm-hmm.
Been a CFO for 4 years, I worked on the research and investment team alongside Marshall for 9 years.
Mm-hmm.
Worked on a lot of our transactions over that period. It's been a pretty amazing journey. I've seen the company grow a lot, in terms of, you know, the amount of capital that we've deployed, in terms of our revenue, in terms of the people. Now we're obviously in. I still kinda consider it a fairly new public company.
Mm-hmm.
We've been public for 3 years.
Right.
It's been a lot of fun, and we're continuing to learn every day, and it's always great to be at these conferences and talking with our shareholders.
Yep. I think one of the ingredients is that you wearing the CFO hat, actually, we're sitting in one of the engine room seats within research when you root for the Marshall there.
Yeah.
I think that ability to cross-pollinate and the gathering across your C-suite of people who have multitasked and bring to bear all sorts of vocabulary and experiences is one of the things that makes things feel unique and strong in public.
For sure.
When we talk about the team, it's because you're all, you know.
Well, at the end of the day, you know, we're all kind of investors.
Mm-hmm.
Capital allocators.
Sure.
Really, it's a unique culture.
Mm-hmm.
Where I'm not, I'm not sure how it works at, you know, maybe a traditional pharma company, but, you know, I suspect there's not a lot of companies where the CFO is actually, like, in the Excel model. Sorry, the CEO is in the Excel model.
Uh-huh.
saying, "Well, should the share be this?
Uh-huh.
Should it be that?" We really have, like, an amazing debate internally, because we've all been doing this for a while, too.
Right.
We have a pretty good feel for it over the years.
Exactly. Well, in my team, they all know that actually, "Don't send Chris the real version. Send him the version he has, because he's gonna throw off something, and it's.
Yeah.
All of a sudden, you're gonna have these hashtag error bars throughout. They know how to protect the franchise and the key tools there. Christopher Hite, tell us your journey.
Thank you for having us, by the way. I joined Royalty Pharma, just over 3 years ago. Previously to RP, I was at Citigroup.
Hmm.
I ran their global healthcare investment banking team for 12 years. I was the Vice Chairman there and on the operating committee of banking. Prior to Citi, I ran the global healthcare investment banking team at Lehman Brothers.
Okay. That transition, I'm just kind of curious, you interact with global clients everywhere, across many different cuts of healthcare, and clearly there was something that was especially tangible for you to sort of the light bulb to go on and for you to vote with your feet. What was that, and how has that been relative to your expectations?
I've known, Royalty Pharma for a long time.
Mm-hmm.
I've worked across the table for, from them on several transactions. Always had great respect for the way that they invested, the team, the camaraderie that I saw. Since joining, it's definitely, you know, my expectations have been met. I mean, it's been a wonderful experience. I've learned a lot. I think Terry's correct in the way he describes, you know, investing in capital allocation...
Mm-hmm.
A way to generate outsized returns for our shareholders. It's been really a great journey for the last 3 years.
Mm-hmm.
Super excited about it.
I kind of asked that in part because certainly over the time that I've been covering you guys, I come across so many investors who are trying to figure out what you guys are. How does it walk like a duck? You know.
Mm-hmm.
There's aspects of it that have clear rhymes with large cap pharma. You know, when the IPO came out, People were thinking about how the growth structure compares, et cetera. The attractiveness of being able to be agnostic to having more than 1 asset, if you and Marshall and everybody wanted to really lean in on something, right? There was that flexibility as well. The absence of a comp, so to speak.
Mm-hmm.
you know, makes it so that it, everybody has a version. They're one of the 6 or 16 blind men and an elephant, understanding that they're, you know, basically engaged with something that's very novel, unique, the leadership is unquestioned, the track record is absolute, but as a result, people are still just trying to little bit figure out what that is. I asked you about that question in particular, because you were coming in naturally from an advisory role.
Mm-hmm.
You know, you would have probably a little bit more intimate insights in there. Letting you to go in there. When you meet with investors in these types of forums, is there something that you think that maybe that they could just get it? Is there some morsel of uncertainty that is unnecessary, or is there something that is key to understanding of who Royalty is? George and I talk about this all the time.
Yeah.
Kind of like the crux of it's like, it's cool to be special, but then, you know, people sometimes still struggle.
That has certainly been, you know, one of the interesting challenges that we've faced as a, as a public company.
Public stock.
Yes.
Yep.
You know, we're an N of 1.
Yeah.
There is no clear comp. We have similarities to pharma, similarities to other. You know, there's other.
Mm-hmm.
royalty companies out there in different sectors. There is, you know, there's a big education process.
Mm-hmm.
To explain to people why this business is unique, the power of the business model, why it's sustainable, the moat that we've built around the business in terms of, you know, our capital structure, our cost of capital, the incredible team that we have. I think that has been a really, you know, interesting part of the process.
Mm-hmm.
is that, you know, we need to continue to educate investors about the size of the opportunity.
Mm-hmm.
and our ability to continue to deploy capital at scale and generate very consistent long-term compounding growth, but also, you know, making value-enhancing investments, which is sort of core to-
Mm-hmm.
what we do.
Right. Exactly. You know, I would say that often the rubber meets the road in the healthcare specialist community when you're dealing with something, often with investors, who, by the nature of their mandate, may often have shorter term time horizons.
Mm-hmm.
It's like, "Oh, it's a quarter.
Yeah.
We're getting into ASCO, or by year-end, I've got to make my book and make all these decisions and position left, right." The reality is that, you know, we're talking actually investing with a capital I and capital allocation and a longer term arc to the way you guys are thinking about these things, discounting risk and looking at portfolio balance. I often tell investors that it's a, it's an opportunity to get an insight to a really smart cluster of portfolio managers and sort of there's an element of an open book or flashes of that. Everyone can't see the funnel, per se, and we'll get to that in a little bit, but the kinds of decisions that you're making in the terms, make it very attractive.
Perhaps people should realize that when they're looking at you, that in some respects, there's elements of looking into a mirror because you're doing many of the things in parallel.
Mm-hmm.
When you talk about being able to allocate capital, the fundamental sort of fields of play are sort of therapeutic innovation and scientific innovation broadly, which is progressing at a quite astounding rate, but also tell me about the realities of the fact that we're talking about getting involved with skin in the game and in essence, helping finance this.
Mm-hmm.
We're certainly coming through a couple of years, long, cold winter-type years for the cool innovation, but perhaps, leaner resourced efforts. I think there was this hypothesis that you guys would be able to almost, like, really capitalize there, and that's probably overly simplistic, but can we talk about that a little bit? Did the, this long, cool winter of the XBI play to your favor?
Certainly, you know, I think, Chris can weigh in, but at the top of the funnel, you know, we've been looking at more stuff than we ever have.
Right.
As you can imagine.
Okay.
The bar hasn't changed.
Okay.
There's a lot of things, for various reasons, a lot of investments out there for various reasons, that we're not going to fund, whether it's early or whether it's undifferentiated.
Mm-hmm.
There could be a number of reasons why those opportunities are not attractive to us, and maybe it's, you know, not now, but later we would, but it's now is not the right time. You know, I think that overall, we feel like the innovation is there. The role of royalties as a mechanism that the industry uses to fund itself is growing and more and more established. Predicting, you know, exactly when the things are gonna come out at the bottom of the funnel is a little bit more challenging, but that's why we always look at the world in multi-year periods.
Mm-hmm.
We've sort of been driving this point home since our IPO, is that the sort of investing cadence can be uneven. You know, that's by design, because we wanna make sure that we maintain that really high bar, and where we do decide to pull the trigger and deploy capital, we're confident that that product's gonna, you know, ultimately work and be commercially successful. Maybe Chris wants.
Yeah, the only thing I would add to that, and we get that question actually a lot, which is: does the, you know, tough capital markets provide us more at the top of the funnel? The answer is sure. Of course, you know, companies that struggle to raise capital because they're earlier stage and the capital markets are rocky, absolutely will call us, but that's not necessarily our sweet spot, right? We're investing in post proof of concept, typically, or approved drugs, and those companies actually have access to the capital markets. If you think about just, you know, our recent transactions, and what I like to say is, you know, think about existing royalty streams being created every day. The M&A market, or excuse me, the pharmaceutical market is extraordinarily fragmented around R&D.
You know, you have that research happening at academia, universities, they're out licensing to pharma, biotech, that creates a royalty. You have biotech and pharma, cross-licensing, that creates a royalty or a profit share interest. That's been our tried and true marketplace for 25 plus years. It will continue to be. Those entities are spending in the trillions of dollars over the next decade, in R&D, and they're every day creating partnerships, and that's really a great opportunity for us in addition to these newer sort of synthetic royalty opportunities that we did with Biohaven and Immunomedics and Cytokinetics, those stories as well. I think if people, you asked at the very beginning, is there something people maybe forget or don't focus on, is think about all the R&D invested in the sector by all of these global institutions.
They're every day partnering with themselves, and every time they do that creates an opportunity for us. If you think of all the LPA investments we did.
Mm-hmm.
-that's, those were partnership opportunities. Evrysdi, that was PTC to Roche. Cabo, that was Exelixis and GSK. you know, Trelegy, that was Theravance and Innoviva partnering with GSK years and years ago.
Mm-hmm.
That's been our tried and true investments, and we see that as a massive opportunity and 1 we'll continue to play in.
Has the sort of tone of the conversation of folks on the other side of the table changed at all? Greater receptivity?
Yeah
Understand how those conversations are going.
Yeah, I mean, that's for sure. You know, I gave you my brief professional background as an investment banker for 25 years. You didn't, you know, when a company had good phase II or phase III data, they went off, and they did an equity deal or convertible bond financing, and off to the races. I think those companies now, with the help of us, obviously, marketing what we do, shareholders of us telling companies, "Hey, you may want to talk to Royalty Pharma about the potential financing," and the bankers themselves actually raising us as an alternative form of capital.
The idea of an alternative way to raise money instead of just an equity deal or a convertible bond deal, you know, that is absolutely the forefront of companies today. It really wasn't there 5 years ago.
Mm-hmm.
I think it's a confluence of events that has made that happen. We see a lot more engagement, receptivity to discussing, just not doing a straight equity deal once they have good data or an approval or a launch of a drug.
I can tell you when I first started, you know, we were not top of mind.
Mm-hmm.
For a company that had an exciting product that maybe was post-phase III, and they're thinking about how they're gonna fund the launch.
Mm-hmm
or manufacturing build-out or whatever, you know, we were not seeing those opportunities. Now, you know, we're seeing a lot of that. I think it's, you know, for all those reasons that Chris mentioned, it's really grown a lot, and that's a, that's a great thing. I mean, I think we see a future where the best companies, the most successful biotech companies, have royalties as a piece of their, you know, overall capital structure.
Mm-hmm.
We think that for a lot of reasons, we should be their partner if they get there. Some of the most attractive business models, financing models, naturally become a magnet for imitation. Naturally, investors, everyone's thinking of the Porter's Five Forces and what kind of barriers to entry there are, which is something I think that is very important for you guys to emphasize to a certain extent, 'cause some of those barriers to entry are intangible aspects, like, the intellectual capital of your people, right?
Mm-hmm.
I think there's this notion that I often hear from investors is like, well, if this is so cool, then why can't this big block of capital also replicate this?
Yeah.
There are certain other, not household names, but within the financial industry, other big houses that also think it's just like, "Well, this would be a cool tile to have within our business and to apply capital in this way and diversify our portfolio." Clearly, it ain't that easy.
Yeah.
What are the factors, and do you have enough Andy Grove in you guys to sort of, like, always be aware that there's a risk of competition, imitation, et cetera? Talk about that dynamic.
you know, we've been hearing about competition for 20 years, and, you know, it's there, but it hasn't changed in any material way.
Why? That's 1 thing, a little counterintuitive, if there's so much there, just...
But-
You know.
it's a couple of things. You know, it's hard. This business is hard.
Mm-hmm.
A lot of pharmaceutical investors.
Yeah
Out there in this crowd right now, it's a tough business. You know, you have to be willing to take risk, and that risk appetite doesn't always exist at other places. That's 1 factor. Another factor is that our portfolio today is irreproducible. There's only 1 cystic fibrosis royalty. There's only 1 Xtandi royalty. There's only 1 Tremfya royalty. You can't go out there and create the same portfolio that we have today. We have this 20-year advantage in terms of scale, and scale allows us to fund the business efficiently with debt and low-cost debt. We're investment grade rated. It allows us to invest in the biggest assets, where others would have a much harder time making a $1 billion, $2 billion, $3 billion investment.
It also allows us to take, you know, appropriate but and manageable risk, where we can invest and, you know, with the potential that something doesn't work, and we lose our investment. In the context of our overall portfolio, which has this stable, growing cash flow stream that's long duration, we think that makes sense as part of the mix.
Mm-hmm.
All of those factors make it really, really challenging. We have an amazing team. The team, you know, we have practically no turnover. It's gotten a lot easier, actually, to recruit really talented people since we've gone public, as our profile's increased.
Mm-hmm.
All of that creates a really strong moat. The reality, though, is it's huge.
... it's trillions of dollars of capital needs.
Mm-hmm.
There's, there's plenty to go around. But for us, if we see an asset that we like, we should be able to win.
Mm-hmm.
We do have that lowest cost of capital, and we are able to generate that conviction that I'm not sure others can generate.
If we see assets that we like, Marshall kind of identified kind of 4 themes that underpin your investment sort of thinking and guidelines. He talked about taking particular interests. For instance, he talked about sort of under-innovated large markets, et cetera, and we can sort of just scan through the types of deals that you've been involved with. Cardiovascular, in particular-
Yeah.
is one of those areas.
Yep.
For those of us who have been around, et cetera, and might be willing to give it a lowercase R renaissance.
Mm-hmm.
It's like more things are happening there, right?
Yeah.
Finally. Things that are always gonna be unmet needs, but are just undeniably sizable, like, drugs for mood disorders and depression and mental health, et cetera.
Mm-hmm.
Just the scope of possibility there with assets. I think that's been shaping some of that. Talk to us about some of these investment themes and sort of how locked in these are, or is this sort of Marshall talking about what Marshall wants to do, or, you know, should we think about it thematically?
Yeah
This is where you're at, because I have corollary questions about some other areas as everyone scampers to OBC and stuff like that.
I think those were meant to be, illustrative and not the only themes of the types of investments we make.
Okay.
Just to be clear.
We'll take down the page.
No, I mean, that's It was more of an example of the way we think and the way we approach the world.
Mm-hmm.
You know, we're gonna continue to invest in oncology just like others.
Sure. Mm-hmm.
You know, we wanted to sort of highlight that there are opportunities out there that, you know, maybe have been more overlooked in the past.
Mm-hmm
-5, 10 years, 20 years.
Mm-hmm.
So.
Okay. As far as thinking about risk profiles, stage of development, you know, commercial versus, marching in a little bit earlier, where there may be some clinical data cards. Maybe scientifically, we've been relatively de-risked, but still ultimate factors that will determine competitiveness, have yet to be revealed. Talk about the current portfolio and your appetite for taking on more risk going earlier stage versus you're very satisfied with where the balance is now.
I mean, well, you know, what we've done historically is about 60% in approved investment dollars.
Mm-hmm
in approved assets and about 40% in unapproved. The vast majority, overwhelming majority of that 40% has been, you know, phase III or under review by the regulatory agencies.
Mm-hmm.
No, we don't take. When I say we don't really take pre-proof of concept risk or, you know, phase I or pre-IND risk.
Yes
-that's, for the most part, you know, very accurate, and we don't see that mix changing. The opportunity set, as I referenced before, if you take a step back and just think about it, you know, there's lots of points along the along the way to make the investments in existing royalties or just, or creating our own royalty set. We just think the opportunity set is tremendous in that sort of, I would say, de-risk from a proof of concept perspective onwards, and that's not gonna change.
I mean, every year, you know, could be uneven. It could be a year where we're a little bit more tilted towards approved commercial products and a year where we have, for whatever reason, made more pre-approval investments.
Mm-hmm.
Over the last couple of years, it's actually kind of skewed more towards commercial. It's not really by design. We really take a holistic approach, look at the best assets.
Mm-hmm
You know, the data and the patient need, and that's where we focus our energy.
Talking about focusing that on energy, I do believe that there's a pretty well-outlined, defined process, right? The funnel.
Mm-hmm.
Quantify some things in terms of. Some of this is rate limited by how much talent and brain power you have in-house, which has been growing. What do the numbers at the top of the funnel look like? By the time we talk a little bit about the various sort of go/no-go stages, and then what does that yield at the bottom of the funnel where, you know, George is putting out a press release?
Chris, I.
I'm trying to get George into the.
-as much as possible here, so.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, you know, we showed the funnel at our investor day, and a lot of people talk about the funnel. You know, the opportunity set is quite large. I think last year, what did he say? 350 opportunities in an initial review.
Right.
Sort of that could be an inbound call, that could be an outbound call. Then, you know, we sort of dissected the funnel as we went down. Did we sign an NDA? Did we do in-depth diligence? Did we make a proposal? Did we execute on the deal? I think the numbers we had last year was 350 around initial reviews, and it culminated in about 8 transactions. You know, with maybe 20 something proposals that we submitted. When you think about it, you know, Marshall had a great slide at the analyst day that showed inbound versus outbound, and how that sort of resulted in in-depth reviews.
We get a lot of inbounds. We make a lot of outbounds. When you look at the ratio of in-depth reviews, of inbound versus outbound, it's skewed very heavily. An in-depth review is typically associated with an outbound call we make.
Mm-hmm.
You know, we're pre-selecting before we make that outbound call on something we want.
... that looks very interesting that we want to invest in. I think the LP low A transactions are an example of that. you know, the capital market situation being as it is, there's a lot of early-stage companies that are looking for capital, and those might be the inbounds. That doesn't mean we won't make an investment in those companies at some point along the way. For us right now, many of those companies are just too early, and it sort of goes to that risk stratification. I'm talking about 60/40. Even the 40% of investment dollars we make in unapproved assets are much later stage in development. They are proof of concept, phase III or beyond, and that's not gonna change.
Yeah, for example, Karuna. Karuna is a great example.
Mm-hmm.
They had positive phase III data. You know, we think that very high probability of regulatory approval, and so that risk is, you know, a lot different than, you know, a phase 2 clinical trial.
Right. I was gonna make sure that we included in our discussion specific deals, now that you've brought this up in particular, Karuna is.
[cross talk], I should mention.
Yeah, KarXT.
KarXT.
Like, from Karuna, which is part of PureTech and Daphne and her crew, which is a very creative, you know. Actually, it was a meeting of like 2 really innovative, kind of creative entities, which was kind of fascinated me there. It also seems to rhyme with some of the thematic areas that you are invested in from a sort of like a CNS-
Mm-hmm.
You know, neurologic behavioral disease standpoint. What can you share in terms of the deal, and where do you see additional upside potential, particularly as KarXT could move into other indications? Talk about how you structure that upside opportunity so that it is a partnership in essence.
Yeah. No, I mean, well, any deal that we do, you know, we have to come up with a structure that kind of works for us and works for the seller.
Right.
I think that's a great example of, you know, where we made a $100 million upfront payment, and then could be, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of milestone payments based on, you know, various factors, you know, over time. That would be great. Our typical philosophy is we're really happy to pay milestones.
Mm-hmm.
that means that we're winning.
Mm-hmm.
We also want our, you know, the seller to win.
Right.
Otherwise, we would stop. People would stop selling things to us.
Mm-hmm.
It sort of needs. We want to try to create these win-win.
Mm-hmm.
-situations.
Right.
We do see, you know, we're excited about the schizophrenia market, but we do see, you know, potential opportunity beyond that. You know, I think that we'll wait and see. We hope that we pay some of those milestones out over time.
Mm-hmm.
If we don't, it's still gonna be a great investment for us.
Got it. That makes sense. As long as we're talking about certain specific deals, 1 that's very important to consider in terms of the pros and cons and various considerations, cystic fibrosis. This, for a long time, has been a very, very relevant aspect. As you've grown, diversification has made the exposure less, but there's actually a dispute that's ongoing in terms of the data that could emerge from the next-generation triplet combination, and 1 that would need to be resolved. Walk us through a little bit in terms of what your point of view is and any sense of updates there in particular for timing. I do find that when I have conversations with investors, that this is one of the clouds in the sky that would be great-
Mm-hmm.
-to sort of, like, push away a little bit.
Yeah. No, that's for sure. Just to be clear, there's no current dispute. I think that there is a, you know, there is a difference of opinion in terms of what we believe is royalty-bearing for the next-generation triple combo.
Mm-hmm.
Vertex is developing. At a high level, Trikafta, which is the sort of core to the CF franchise right now, is an amazing product that has totally transformed the treatment of cystic fibrosis. For us, we think that it will be an important long-term contributor to our business, and we're very confident of that. We've seen the data, the phase II data, just like everyone else, for the next generation triple. At this point, you know, we didn't see anything to suggest that it was clearly differentiated, and we'll see, I guess, the phase III data later this year. We believe that from a royalty perspective, we know that Tezacaftor, 1 component of that new triple, is royalty-bearing.
Mm-hmm.
That would take our royalty on the new triple to 4%. We believe that the deuterated Kalydeco portion.
Mm-hmm.
-of that new triple is the same thing as Kalydeco, and that it should have the same royalty rate. That is the area, you know, where we might not see eye to eye. We've tried to also frame the potential impact if we're wrong. If the new triple is approved, and if it takes substantial share, and only the Tezacaftor portion is royalty-bearing.
Mm-hmm.
we've said that we see it as a $200 million headwind to our top line towards the end of this decade. If you sort of put that in the context of our overall business and the sort of guidance or, you know, outlook that we've given, that we expect to grow our top line by 10% or more over this decade.
Mm-hmm.
It's gonna be a very small sort of overall impact either way. To put it in another way, from a sort of value perspective, on our current portfolio, that downside scenario is $1 or $2 from an NPV perspective. It's really, you know, pretty de minimis, but it has been an area of investor focus.
Mm-hmm.
-and investor debate. Overall, you know, we feel very good about our position, but feel very good about the long-term potential of this business, regardless of what happens there.
Very helpful.
No-
No update on timing?
I don't have, you know.
Sure.
It's just tough to say right now.
Sure. No, that was a very clear explanation, and clarifying, and I think very balanced in terms of how to think about the fact set and the potential implications. It's just, I think it's the nature of investors to sort of often just have some element of fear and excuse, et cetera.
Yeah.
you did talk about sort of like the 10% growth. Let's talk about some of the capital deployment and allocation guidance that you've given on deals.
Mm-hmm.
In essence, allocating capital is kind of like driving your top line prospects here. Year to date, I have you accomplishing deals worth $1.6 billion thus far, and since 2022, that comes to $5 billion. You talk about a 5-year deployment target, which was announced during the analyst meeting, of $10 billion-$12 billion. How are you feeling about that guidance and the progress? There's always an element of lumpiness...
Yeah.
I know that that tends to be a factor in characterizing it.
We feel great about it. You know, nothing's changed about our outlook. What we've also said is that, you know, over the longer term, we see the potential to grow that significantly. We haven't put, like, a time frame on that.
Mm-hmm.
We wanna let it happen naturally, but we feel like there is a clear line of sight to that happening. You know, I think overall, we feel really good about the opportunities and the capital deployment, opportunities that we're seeing. We'll continue to be patient. We think that's in the best interest of, you know, our investors, to not deploy capital just for the sake of deploying capital, but to make sure we're investing in the right things.
Mm-hmm.
We feel really confident in our ability to do that. I don't know, Chris, if there's anything to add?
I You know, as I said before, the opportunity set is enormous, and the total addressable market, once again, I do think investors sometimes lose sight of just how much fragmentation occurs in the pharmaceutical sector.
Mm.
around the steps to get a drug approved from academia or NIH to biotech to pharma. There's just so much partnering that occurs. We can absolutely play in that ecosystem in a significant way. It's just a very large market opportunity.
Thinking about, again, sort of like capital markets, capital allocation priorities, share buyback plans, dividends, put your CFO hat on firmly and just walk me through just a little bit of how you think people should understand some of the recent announcements and the allocations that you have?
Yeah.
How you're thinking about applying that.
Yeah. We've been pretty clear, our number 1 capital allocation priority is buying royalties, and that's not gonna change. We see a lot of opportunity to continue to do that. For a business that generates, you know, the cash that our business does, we think that, is, having a returning capital to shareholders, is also important. We've actually, as a private company, we paid a dividend for 20 years and grew the dividend, and, you know, we're on that same trajectory as a public company. Dividend is an important element. More recently, we announced a $1 billion share repurchase authorization as an additional tool to return capital to shareholders. You know, I think that it's no secret that, you know, our, the, our ...
We believe our equity value has been depressed, and we see a lot of value in our stock. We think that, you know, using that tool is important for shareholders and to create sort of long-term value for them.
Amongst your shareholder base, I mean, this is a company that's been around for several decades, probably going way back, right?
Yeah.
Thinking about the folks who are involved prior to the IPO and then since as a public company, there was some natural history type of evolution transition.
Yeah.
in that shareholder base, including some folks who had been there for a length of journey.
Yeah.
I think, as a function of the mandates of their portfolio construction, made certain decisions. Inevitably, the messaging and the interpretation as such is not even, but perhaps can you talk to that aspect of the evolving shareholder base, and then ultimately maybe make a pitch for who you think is in the sweet spot, the right person to be thinking about being a longer-term patient shareholder, particularly at the, what we consider a.
Yeah.
As well?
Yeah. Okay, it's a great question. We were a private company for a long time, and we had a lot of investors that were there from the very beginning. We have seen a pretty significant turnover in our shareholder base, where it was held by our, you know, the private investors were high-net-worth individuals, family offices, endowments and pension funds, and then management. It's not surprising, I guess, that, you know, when we went public, especially those endowments and the pension funds, when we were a private company, we fit in an alternatives bucket.
Mm-hmm.
We go public, we're now a single stock. They generally do not own single stocks.
Mm-hmm.
They're sort of forced selling. You know, we've also seen that from the high-net-worth individuals and the family offices. That has been a bigger headwind than I think we would have anticipated. If you asked us at the IPO, we probably would've said, "Oh, no, it's never gonna sell.
Mm.
That, you know, that's not, that's not reality. It, it's definitely been a bit of a headwind. We think that, you know, 60%+ of our shareholder base has turned over. Management and the board own north of 30%, so there isn't really much left there.
Mm-hmm.
But that has definitely been a little bit of a headwind. To answer your question in terms of who the right investor is for Royalty Pharma, you know, I think that we should be attractive to a lot of investors. Investors who want sort of access to a great portfolio of products that have long duration, diversified, and the ability to invest in this sector, which has such tremendous innovation. Chris highlighted the opportunity, but to do it in a diversified way.
Mm-hmm.
We think, you know, should be really attractive to people who wanna invest in a business that's gonna compound over many, many years.
Mm-hmm. Okay.
Did I-
You covered it really well.
Excellent. Unique can be beautiful and attractive, especially when it's on sale. Terry, Chris, thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Yeah. Thanks.