Simon Dingemans
Management
Yes, I think Steve, as we’ve talked about before, that the complexity of the Advair modeling, if you like, is because we’ve got a relatively steady now decline in the existing product, and then you have to layer on top when and how does a generic arrive, so we’re anticipating this year that we’ll see Advair decline 20, 25% - that’s a slightly higher number than we had last year, where I think we guided 15 to 20%. If you kind of look through the different RAR true-ups during the course of 2017, we were pretty much from an underlying perspective within that range to maybe the slightly higher end of it, and then off a smaller base we’re going to continue to decline, hence the bigger number. Overall, though, I think the pattern hasn’t changed, and equally when a generic arrives, we’re going to go from roughly £1.6 billion of U.S. Advair sales in 2017 to £750 million. That is very, very high margin business, and when that drops through the P&L it is going to have an impact on the operating margin for the pharma business, and it’s also going to have an impact on the operating margin for the group and therefore the earnings position that we’ve described in the past. That is factored into the guidance. That obviously falls at a point when we’re also trying to invest and have decided positively to invest in the pipeline, but also in Nucala, Trelegy and Shingrix, and the continuing growth of Breo, Anoro, et cetera. We think that’s the right thing to do for the long term value of the company, but it does create a particular [indiscernible] during the course of 2018, so I think that’s really the answer to your question. On the patent box, the dynamic we have here is Advair is in the patent box, or Advair/Seretide is in the patent box, so as Advair goes we lose quite a lot of the benefit that we’ve been seeing to date, and then clearly the benefit from the newer products is taking some time to build up the other side of that transition, so that is why we were seeing some more upward pressure on the rate previously. Obviously, again, it depends on exactly how Advair falls, but we are expecting to see more benefit from the patent box going forward as the new products kick in bigger revenues and we see increased benefits from those going forward. But I think all that is factored into--all that transition is factored into the now 19 to 20% flat guidance that we’ve given you.