Gilead $GILD CEO John Mil­li­gan is out.

In a com­plete­ly un­ex­pect­ed an­nounce­ment, the big biotech com­pa­ny re­port­ed right af­ter the mar­ket close Wednes­day evening that Mil­li­gan will re­main in his po­si­tion un­til the end of the year, as the board looks for his suc­ces­sor.

He’s step­ping down, but Mil­li­gan clear­ly has an­oth­er ca­reer chap­ter in mind.

“It has been an hon­or to work at Gilead for my en­tire pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer and, now that the com­pa­ny is on sol­id foot­ing for the fu­ture, the Board and I have agreed it is a good time to turn the reins over to a new leader,” said Mil­li­gan in a state­ment. “I’m look­ing for­ward to a well-de­served break and will then move on to new and dif­fer­ent op­por­tu­ni­ties.”

Al­so out is Chair­man John Mar­tin, who pre­ced­ed Mil­li­gan at the helm. He plans to leave once the new CEO ar­rives.

The up­com­ing change at the top has big im­pli­ca­tions, notes Leerink’s Ge­of­frey Porges, who’s been watch­ing this com­pa­ny for years. His note:

These an­nounce­ments come as a sur­prise to in­vestors giv­en Dr. Mil­li­gan’s 28-year ca­reer at Gilead and his rel­a­tive­ly short 2-year stint in the long-await­ed CEO po­si­tion, and no in­ter­nal suc­ces­sor has been iden­ti­fied. These an­nounce­ments clear­ly sig­nal a de­ci­sion by the com­pa­ny’s board to “go in a dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion” and while we don’t be­lieve the or­der­ly de­par­tures sug­gest any im­me­di­ate is­sue, the ba­sis for these changes and their im­pli­ca­tions are like­ly to dom­i­nate in­vestor con­ver­sa­tions about the com­pa­ny for sev­er­al months. In­vestor chat­ter is like­ly to switch from “what’s Gilead go­ing to buy” to “who’s Gilead go­ing to hire,” and giv­en the com­pa­ny’s mixed hir­ing record, the ap­pointee may not nec­es­sar­i­ly be an in­di­vid­ual with im­me­di­ate in­dus­try or in­vestor cred­i­bil­i­ty. Cer­tain­ly these tran­si­tions con­firm our view that de­spite the ob­vi­ous need for sig­nif­i­cant new pipeline and prod­uct op­por­tu­ni­ties, Gilead won’t be mak­ing any ma­jor strate­gic moves for po­ten­tial­ly a year or more.

To­geth­er, Mar­tin and Mil­li­gan made biotech his­to­ry at Gilead. They led the team that pro­vid­ed a pain­less cure for he­pati­tis C, cre­at­ing a huge, if tem­po­rary, mega-mar­ket to prof­it from. And they con­tin­ued to dom­i­nate the HIV space, of­fer­ing new block­buster com­bi­na­tion drugs that re­main the stan­dard ther­a­py in the field over ca­reers that spanned decades.

Faced with the de­cline of the hep C fran­chise, Mil­li­gan ag­gres­sive­ly snapped up Kite to be­come a leader in CAR-T, buy­ing new tech­nolo­gies along the way.

Mar­tin and Mil­li­gan al­so en­dured end­less crit­i­cism for their ag­gres­sive pric­ing strat­e­gy, par­tic­u­lar­ly when they priced their he­pati­tis C drug at $84,000, trig­ger­ing out­rage from Wash­ing­ton DC to the Bay Area. That con­tro­ver­sy nev­er re­al­ly died out, leav­ing the in­dus­try with the worst rep it’s ever had.

They’ll be missed by in­vestors, but not by every­one.

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.

The mRNA player Moderna is further cementing its presence on the African continent.

Moderna announced on Thursday that it has finalized an agreement with Kenya’s government to partner up and bring an mRNA manufacturing facility to the east African nation. The new facility aims to manufacture up to 500 million doses of vaccines annually. Moderna also said the new facility will have the ability to spike its production capabilities to respond to public health emergencies on the continent or globally.