Richard Francis, CEO at Teva, joins NYSE Floor Talk to discuss its new Pivot to Growth strategy

Well, thanks for having me, Judy. Pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Well, thank you for asking. So yeah, the Pivot to Growth strategy is a way of taking Teva back to growth. It's based on four fundamental pillars. One of those is to deliver on our growth engines. One is Step Up Innovation, the other one is Create a Generics Powerhouse, and the final one is to Focus the Business. So all of those will drive growth. And the two probably I want to refocus on are our organic growth drivers, and that's taking the products we currently have on the market and investing in them more and driving more growth going forward. Austedo, Ajovy, all treatments for neurological disorders and mental health. And then our pipeline. Now, the pipeline got a lot of interest today when we launched the strategy. So people do not know Teva as an innovative company, we're more a global leader in generics, which we're very proud of. But we have got this innovative pipeline, and some of the assets we told people about today, the compounds, they've got a lot of questions because they're very excited. We have a new treatment for schizophrenia coming out, a new treatment for asthma, and then another treatment, TL1A, for Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. So these are exciting areas where there's a big unmet need. So that's something we're looking forward to. As we bring these to the market, then we'll start to see our top line grow and also our bottom line.

Well, I think the ones that are most exciting to me, and actually seem to be exciting to some of the analyst investors today, are olanzapine long-acting for schizophrenia. Now, this is a product where there are nearly two and a half million people with some form of schizophrenia in the United States, and the majority of those are on oral therapies. Now, if you think about schizophrenia as a condition, you want to make sure you can adhere to that medicine so you get control of your schizophrenia over the course of a year. The best way to do that is a long-acting injection that lasts one month or two, and that's what olanzapine will bring to the market. As we bring this to the market, patients will be able to move off tablets and move to a long-acting subcutaneous injection. So we've been talking to psychiatrists, they believe this is a significant step forward for treating patients with schizophrenia. So that's one. The other one which is getting a lot of discussion is this product we call TL1A. It's more of a mechanism, actually the target. And the reason why people are excited about this is this is going to be used in predominantly two conditions: Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. These are conditions which affect about three million people in the United States, and there are no real treatments for them. So there's a lot of excitement. It's quite a distressing, debilitating disease, and so if these come to the market, one, we can help a lot of patients, and obviously, once again, Teva can actually start to grow sales in those products as well.