Dan O’Day’s to-do list for Gilead: Re­cruit a Kite CEO, press the ped­al on next-gen cell ther­a­pies and start buy­ing stuff

Dan O’Day has had a chance to kick the tires at Gilead and take it out for a spin. And he took con­sid­er­able time in his first ap­pear­ance as CEO dur­ing the much-an­tic­i­pat­ed Q1 call on Thurs­day night to ex­plain his strat­e­gy for the bell­wether biotech.

Just don’t look for a lot of ex­cit­ing de­tail from his first per­for­mance, which drew a few muf­fled yawns and mixed re­views from an­a­lysts who have been wait­ing years for Gilead to do some­thing even half as ex­cit­ing as hep C again.

Trans­lat­ing the dry par­lance of biotech fi­nance, which O’Day mas­tered at Roche’s Basel head­quar­ters, he’s de­ter­mined that one of the best ways to stay on top of the cell ther­a­py busi­ness is to bring in a new CEO specif­i­cal­ly for his CAR-T com­pa­ny Kite, where they ex­pect to bring on next-gen tech­nol­o­gy like off-the-shelf ther­a­pies as com­pe­ti­tion breathes down their back.

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