END­POINTS WE­BI­NAR: CD­MOs’ crit­i­cal role in a rapid­ly evolv­ing bio­phar­ma land­scape

In an en­gag­ing in­ter­view with End­points News’ John Car­roll, Catal­ent CEO Alessan­dro Masel­li shared his own in­sights around the com­pa­ny’s pend­ing $16.5 bil­lion sale to No­vo Hold­ings and its po­ten­tial to have a trans­for­ma­tive im­pact on cus­tomers, em­ploy­ees, and Catal­ent’s ro­bust pipeline. Masel­li high­light­ed the deal’s re­sound­ing share­hold­er ap­proval dri­ven by the im­mense growth op­por­tu­ni­ties and a strong align­ment with No­vo Hold­ings’ mis­sion. He reaf­firmed the com­pa­ny’s stead­fast com­mit­ment to its cus­tomers, at­tribut­ing cus­tomer loy­al­ty to Catal­ent’s high qual­i­ty as­sets and top-tier cus­tomer ser­vice.

Re­flect­ing on Catal­ent’s dy­nam­ic jour­ney, Masel­li dis­cussed the rapid scal­ing of vac­cine pro­duc­tion dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and the sub­se­quent adap­ta­tion to shift­ing de­mand. De­spite these chal­lenges, Catal­ent achieved re­mark­able mile­stones, in­clud­ing se­cur­ing sig­nif­i­cant ap­provals like part­ner Sarep­ta’s DMD gene ther­a­py and de­liv­er­ing im­pres­sive dou­ble-dig­it growth in Q1 2024. Look­ing for­ward, Masel­li and Car­roll ex­plored up­com­ing chal­lenges such as the Biose­cure Act’s im­pact on Chi­nese man­u­fac­tur­ers and Catal­ent’s strate­gic plans for nav­i­gat­ing fu­ture ac­qui­si­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties post-deal.

Key Take­aways

• Catal­ent’s $16.5 bil­lion deal with No­vo Hold­ings re­ceived strong share­hold­er sup­port and aligns with its growth strat­e­gy and cus­tomer com­mit­ment.
• Catal­ent suc­cess­ful­ly nav­i­gat­ed pan­dem­ic-re­lat­ed chal­lenges, lead­ing to sig­nif­i­cant pipeline ap­provals and dou­ble-dig­it growth in Q1 2024.
• Fu­ture strate­gies in­clude care­ful­ly nav­i­gat­ing po­ten­tial leg­isla­tive im­pacts and con­tin­u­ing to ex­pand ser­vice of­fer­ings for clients

Q&A: End­points’ John Car­roll and Catal­ent CEO Alessan­dro Masel­li

This con­ver­sa­tion has been edit­ed for length and clar­i­ty.

John Car­roll: Well, thanks to every­body for join­ing us to­day. We’re in a con­ver­sa­tion with Alessan­dro Masel­li, the CEO of Catal­ent, one of the world’s largest CD­MOs, and a com­pa­ny that’s been un­der­go­ing some ma­jor changes over the 14 years of your ca­reer there, and the last two years as CEO. And it’s re­al­ly fas­ci­nat­ing to watch this thing, but let’s fo­cus on this deal ini­tial­ly, about what you’ve done here with No­vo Hold­ings and the kind of unique cor­po­rate struc­ture that you’re work­ing with here. Then we can get in­to the im­pli­ca­tions for what’s go­ing on for Catal­ent and all of its cus­tomers. No­vo Hold­ings has agreed to ac­quire Catal­ent, tak­ing it pri­vate. No­vo Hold­ings man­ages the as­sets for No­vo Foun­da­tion and al­so has a con­trol­ling in­ter­est in No­vo Nordisk, which has had ex­plo­sive growth with We­govy, the obe­si­ty med­i­cine, and semaglu­tide.

Tell us a lit­tle bit about No­vo Hold­ings’ deal to ac­quire Catal­ent. And then, let’s get in­to the im­pli­ca­tions about what’s go­ing on with Catal­ent as a re­sult of this deal.

Alessan­dro Masel­li: So first of all, thanks for hav­ing me here, John. It’s great to see you again. We hap­pened to talk a few times over the [last] 12 months, and it’s al­ways ex­cit­ing, al­ways very, very thought­ful con­ver­sa­tions, and I’m glad to be here at this very ex­cit­ing time. And re­al­ly, Feb­ru­ary 5th, which is the day which we an­nounced the trans­ac­tion with No­vo Hold­ings, was a very ex­cit­ing day for us and should be one where we have an­nounced some­thing that is very in­ter­est­ing for our in­dus­try.

No­vo Hold­ings has a his­to­ry of in­vest­ing in life sci­ences. Sure­ly, al­so in the past, they’ve in­vest­ed in oth­er CD­MOs, and so this is not the first time they are look­ing at this space. And sure­ly, they see the op­por­tu­ni­ty that lies ahead of the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ser­vices space. The way the deal is struc­tured is that No­vo Hold­ings, once they close the deal, they’ve agreed to sell three sites. And let’s re­mind our­selves, these are 3 out of 50. So Catal­ent is a big net­work of sites. We’re on­ly talk­ing about three sites, which would be sold by No­vo Hold­ings to No­vo Nordisk, in or­der to sup­port the scale-up and re­al­ly the pro­duc­tion of the very much-need­ed dos­es of these obe­si­ty drugs. At the same time, No­vo Nordisk has con­firmed that, as they take own­er­ship of these three sites, they will con­tin­ue to serve the con­tracts in ex­is­tence with our cus­tomers. So it’s very ex­cit­ing news for all of us, one that has sure­ly trig­gered a lot of at­ten­tion from our cus­tomers. And yes, our cus­tomers did have some ques­tions about it at the be­gin­ning, what it all meant to them.

Car­roll: The re­la­tion­ship that ex­ists be­tween CD­MOs and their cus­tomers is one of ex­tra­or­di­nary trust, one in which you’re re­spon­si­ble for mak­ing sure that they have the prod­uct to sell, or to test and they’re en­trust­ing you with a huge amount of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. So there’s al­ways a tremen­dous amount of at­ten­tion paid by phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, as well as biotech com­pa­nies in their CD­MOs, se­lect­ing their CD­MO and go­ing with their CD­MO. And I’m cu­ri­ous — what do you hear from cus­tomers about this deal? What did they say to you?

Masel­li: Look, clear­ly they had the ques­tions and we knew about it. So we are a ser­vice com­pa­ny, we need to have an ob­ses­sion to be al­ways there for our cus­tomers when they have ques­tions and pro­vide an­swers. I had my­self and my whole lead­er­ship de­ployed on the field, be­ing able to speak with cus­tomers at all times, and we were able to ad­dress their ques­tions. And I do be­lieve that af­ter the ini­tial ques­tions, the cus­tomer re­al­ly saw the op­por­tu­ni­ty, which is sim­i­lar to the one that you were men­tion­ing be­fore. You men­tioned one word be­fore that is very im­por­tant in this in­dus­try for cus­tomers, which is sta­bil­i­ty, right? Cus­tomers need to see in­to the fu­ture a lot of sta­bil­i­ty. They want to make sure that you’re there for the long haul, then you can con­tin­ue to pro­vide them ex­cel­lent ser­vices, no mat­ter what, no mat­ter how. And this is what we’ve done for the last sev­er­al decades.

And sure­ly, this deal pro­vides in­creased sta­bil­i­ty in­to the fu­ture, to pro­vide that very ser­vice. So all in all, I be­lieve that, af­ter the ini­tial ques­tions, the re­ac­tion has been over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive from cus­tomers. And this has al­so trans­lat­ed in­to a num­ber of new wins. We’ve seen both in the first three months of this cal­en­dar year, 2024, but al­so con­tin­u­ing in the fol­low­ing three months, very good mo­men­tum on the com­mer­cial front, with the cus­tomer en­trust­ing us with a lot of new pro­grams. So I would say that where I stand to­day, I see all pos­i­tives com­ing out of this.

Car­roll: Why is this im­por­tant for Catal­ent right now? What adds to the em­pha­sis that you’ve got here in terms of com­plet­ing this deal, which is now un­der re­view, and mov­ing on ahead in­to the next chap­ter?

Masel­li: Well, first of all, look, No­vo Hold­ings, since the be­gin­ning, showed val­ues and mis­sions, which are very aligned to the mis­sion of Catal­ent and our core val­ues. And our first core val­ue is pa­tients first. We have val­ues in and around in­tegri­ty, un­com­pro­mis­ing qual­i­ty, and these are all val­ues that are very rel­e­vant for No­vo Hold­ings, what they’ve done. Let’s re­mind our­selves, this is a fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion that in­vests ex­clu­sive­ly in life sci­ences. So not on­ly they have the set of val­ues that are nec­es­sary to be suc­cess­ful in life sci­ences, they al­so are ex­perts of this sec­tor, which is very spe­cial and so we spoke since the very be­gin­ning with peo­ple that do un­der­stand us and do un­der­stand what it takes to be suc­cess­ful in the ser­vice in­dus­try. So since the very be­gin­ning, there was a large amount of align­ment. Al­so, I be­lieve that, at this point in time for our in­dus­try, be­ing pri­vate and hav­ing a very long-term strate­gic fo­cus is very im­por­tant to us, but it’s al­so very im­por­tant to our cus­tomers. And this was al­so a win-win for our share­hold­ers. On­ly a few weeks ago we re­ceived over­whelm­ing sup­port from share­hold­ers, with more than 99% sup­port for the deal in share­hold­er votes. So I be­lieve that this deal was re­al­ly check­ing a lot of box­es for us, and we are ex­cit­ed about this op­por­tu­ni­ty go­ing for­ward.

Car­roll: The deal with No­vo Hold­ings oc­curred af­ter you had gone through a strate­gic re­view for the com­pa­ny. There have been a lot of changes at Catal­ent. There was a tremen­dous im­pact when the pan­dem­ic hit, you had a huge role to play in terms of the vac­cines that were rolled out to deal with the pan­dem­ic and to con­tain it. And then, just as sud­den­ly, vir­tu­al­ly the mar­ket for the vac­cines dis­ap­peared. It was this huge glob­al de­mand, clam­or­ing for vac­cines, fol­lowed by an end to the clam­or. So tell me, what kind of im­pact has that had on the com­pa­ny, and how does this deal af­fect Catal­ent in terms of its strate­gic re­sponse as a re­sult of every­thing that’s been go­ing on?

Masel­li: I be­lieve that, for me as an in­di­vid­ual, and for Catal­ent as a whole, it will re­main an hon­or, and I would say the pride of our life­time and ca­reers to have served what we’ve done dur­ing the vac­cine, and dur­ing the pan­dem­ic with the vac­cine pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion, re­al­ly. The im­pact that we had in the world, on the lives of many, many peo­ple, in­clud­ing our own par­ents, or rel­a­tives, or friends, fam­i­lies, it was some­thing that we nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced be­fore and prob­a­bly will nev­er ex­pe­ri­ence in the fu­ture, I hope will not ex­pe­ri­ence in the fu­ture. And sure­ly, from a busi­ness stand­point, we had the vac­cine, we had to work hard to get the vac­cine out there, as many dos­es as pos­si­ble, and there was a sharp cor­rec­tion of it. And it was not an easy tran­si­tion, but we man­aged through, we got bet­ter, of course, we spent a lot of time in re­fash­ion­ing the op­er­a­tions of the com­pa­ny so that we could move for­ward. But al­so, at the same time, we had a lot of good things hap­pen­ing to us, some very con­se­quen­tial ap­provals, our pipeline re­al­ly start­ed to play out. The ma­tu­ri­ty of our pipeline re­al­ly start­ed to dri­ve growth. When you think about the last quar­ter, our pub­lished re­sults, we post­ed dou­ble-dig­it growth, which in the cur­rent en­vi­ron­ment is not very com­mon. And this is ex-COVID, which means that our core busi­ness was able to grow dou­ble dig­its. And re­al­ly, what is dri­ving it in a biotech fund­ing en­vi­ron­ment, which is still kind of mixed, was re­al­ly the ma­tu­ri­ty of the pipeline. And very re­cent­ly, we had these very con­se­quen­tial ap­provals for Sarep­ta, one of our key part­ners, which is part of it. So I be­lieve it’s been, as I said, an in­tense pe­ri­od, but one that al­so brought a lot of op­por­tu­ni­ties for the fu­ture.

Car­roll: And there’ll be a tremen­dous amount of change com­ing, right? Part­ly be­cause of this deal that you’ve done, and every­thing else that’s go­ing on with­in the CD­MO in­dus­try glob­al­ly. It is in­ter­est­ing to me, it’s def­i­nite­ly a glob­al in­dus­try, you can’t look at this in a lo­cal­ized ver­sion at all. Meet­ing a glob­al de­mand is some­thing that’s re­al­ly quite ex­tra­or­di­nary. And when there are these sharp changes in di­rec­tion in terms of who’s do­ing what and why, but right now, there’s the huge move in­to obe­si­ty and obe­si­ty drugs, by the part of No­vo as well as one of its ri­vals. And then, there’s this whole in­flux of peo­ple who would love to take a piece of this mar­ket, and are de­vel­op­ing just a whole host of new drugs in hopes that they can do some­thing that could grab a piece of this in­cred­i­ble mar­ket. Re­al­ly, what’s ex­tra­or­di­nary about the semaglu­tide mar­ket is­sue is that it’s so dif­fi­cult to make enough of this in or­der to meet what is glob­al de­mand, and the de­mand ob­vi­ous­ly is re­al­ly quite ex­tra­or­di­nary.

So look­ing for­ward to this in terms of where you are strate­gi­cal­ly and how you deal with this post-deal, af­ter this whole thing hap­pens, you’re a pri­vate com­pa­ny, deal­ing with biotech, bio­phar­ma com­pa­nies around the world. How do you see the com­pa­ny chang­ing? What are the ma­jor strate­gic im­per­a­tives here that you have to look at?

Masel­li: First of all, what is not chang­ing is that we are a ser­vice com­pa­ny. So the un­der­ly­ing key el­e­ment of the suc­cess of the com­pa­ny is to have a cus­tomer ob­ses­sion and un­der­stand­ing that maybe cus­tomers come to us the first time be­cause of our tech­ni­cal abil­i­ties and the qual­i­ty of our as­sets, but they stay with us, and they come again and again to us be­cause of the ex­pe­ri­ence we are able to give to them. That is not go­ing to change. That is go­ing to be con­tin­u­ing to be the key of our suc­cess, which is a foun­da­tion­al cul­ture at our com­pa­ny. And so I do be­lieve that, in the last cou­ple of years, we de­cid­ed in­ten­tion­al­ly to go a lit­tle bit ear­li­er in the cy­cle, with our ac­qui­si­tion, ac­quir­ing as­sets which were a lit­tle bit more quote/un­quote “im­ma­ture” or ear­li­er in the life cy­cle. That was an in­ten­tion­al choice. Clear­ly, we’ve been spend­ing the last pe­ri­od in bring­ing these as­sets to op­er­a­tional ma­tu­ri­ty, ful­ly in­te­grat­ing them in the Catal­ent ecosys­tem. And clear­ly, af­ter the clos­ing of this deal, we ex­pect our­selves to con­tin­ue to look at op­por­tu­ni­ties for fur­ther en­hance­ment of our ecosys­tem of ser­vices for our clients. At the end of the day, the way I see Catal­ent is one play­er that helps and en­ables the cus­tomer to bring in­no­va­tion to pa­tient out­comes. And so, as much as we can help our cus­tomers to do that, like we’ve done re­cent­ly al­so with our part­ner Sarep­ta, that’s our job to be done, and I be­lieve that this deal is al­so en­hanc­ing our op­por­tu­ni­ties to do so.

Car­roll: Well, let’s talk about Sarep­ta for a sec­ond. What hap­pened at Sarep­ta? Ob­vi­ous­ly, there was a big an­nounce­ment re­cent­ly re­gard­ing Sarep­ta. What hap­pened at Sarep­ta and how does that af­fect Catal­ent?

Masel­li: Well, first of all, what hap­pened is I be­lieve more [than] to Sarep­ta is the great news for these pa­tients. So let’s re­mind our­selves, Duchenne [mus­cu­lar dy­s­tro­phy], is some­thing that gets di­ag­nosed very ear­ly in life, it’s es­sen­tial­ly a death sen­tence, and is a sen­tence that doesn’t have a good de­vel­op­ment over the years. So peo­ple very eas­i­ly, very soon stop walk­ing, they be­come non-am­bu­la­to­ry, and it goes on and on, with a very slow dis­ease pro­gres­sion, which leads to a very dif­fi­cult death. And so I be­lieve what hap­pened is great news for pa­tients, first of all. I do be­lieve that our job is to be ready and to con­tin­ue to be there for Sarep­ta, to con­tin­ue to scale up the man­u­fac­tur­ing, and make sure that now that there is ac­cess, there is no short­age of avail­abil­i­ty. And from where we see to­day, we have plen­ty of sup­ply avail­able for these pa­tients, so to start get­ting treat­ed, and this goes on for all the sup­ply chain. So we are here, ready for them, as for all the oth­er part­ners, and we’re go­ing to play a role in this.

Car­roll: Where do you see new growth com­ing from Catal­ent? What are the ar­eas that you look at where you say this is like­ly to have a big im­pact in terms of your busi­ness and the CD­MO busi­ness broad­ly?

Masel­li: So twofold: One is, as I said be­fore, the ma­tu­ri­ty of our pipeline. So when you look at our drug sub­stance busi­ness, when you look at our gene ther­a­pies, when you look at some of the oth­er of­fer­ings, we still have a very good pipeline. In 2023, we were the num­ber one CD­MO by num­ber of ap­provals. So be­ing the num­ber one CD­MO for ap­provals is some­thing we’re very proud of. It means that we have re­al­ly not on­ly served a lot of cus­tomers but have been al­so se­lect­ing the right as­sets to fo­cus on, which came to a pos­i­tive out­come. I al­so be­lieve that some of the dy­nam­ics, in­clud­ing geopo­lit­i­cal dy­nam­ics, are bring­ing more cus­tomers to us. And in gen­er­al, this is a trans­for­ma­tive time – trans­for­ma­tive mean­ing more un­cer­tain­ty. And Catal­ent has been known al­ways for be­ing a very re­li­able, ag­ile, and flex­i­ble part­ner. So these are three at­trib­ut­es that are very, very im­por­tant through these times. The abil­i­ty to adapt very rapid­ly as we have demon­strat­ed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, as we have demon­strat­ed with GLP-1s. So we re­al­ly are a com­pa­ny that can adapt very fast and very quick­ly to new cir­cum­stances, and this is some­thing that is very valu­able to cus­tomers. So I be­lieve the com­bi­na­tion of the ma­tu­ri­ty of the pipeline and more and more cus­tomers com­ing to us is re­al­ly dri­ving that growth.

Car­roll: Agili­ty, ma­tu­ri­ty, and sta­bil­i­ty are all key as­sets in CD­MOs, right? Be­cause when you’re mak­ing a drug for a mar­ket or you’re test­ing a drug for ap­proval or any­thing like that, you’re en­gaged in this epic jour­ney, an epic jour­ney of as­sess­ing, and find­ing de­mand, and meet­ing de­mand on a glob­al ba­sis, which is ex­tra­or­di­nary.

So one of the oth­er back­drops to every­thing, and you men­tioned some of the geopo­lit­i­cal as­pects of what’s go­ing on with­in the in­dus­try right now that’s hav­ing an ex­tra­or­di­nary ef­fect, is the BIOSE­CURE Act, pro­pos­als re­lat­ed to Chi­nese pro­duc­ers, man­u­fac­tur­ers, and how that’s go­ing to play out with­in the broad in­dus­try. And ob­vi­ous­ly, that’s been in­cred­i­bly dis­rup­tive. So tell me, from your own per­spec­tive, what’s go­ing on here with BIOSE­CURE, geopo­lit­i­cal is­sues, and how it’s go­ing to af­fect Catal­ent?

Masel­li: You and I have talked about this in the past, with this re-shoring, bring­ing back in­to the West, some of the pro­duc­tion and so on, and I be­lieve it’s now hap­pen­ing. This has been talked about be­fore the pan­dem­ic, it be­came a re­al top­ic dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, and now, af­ter the pan­dem­ic. What we have re­al­ized dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and a few ad­di­tion­al items that are hap­pen­ing as we speak, is re­al­ly be­com­ing a re­al­i­ty. So our pres­ence is most­ly in the West­ern part of the world. So of course, we are well po­si­tioned to grasp the op­por­tu­ni­ty that comes with these dy­nam­ics. I would say al­so the pipeline it­self, the struc­ture of the busi­ness, and some­what al­so the IRA, are all dy­nam­ics that are push­ing to­wards more out­sourc­ing. This is a dy­nam­ic that is true for all CD­MOs, right? The out­sourc­ing rates are in­creas­ing. I pre­dict that they will con­tin­ue to in­crease, be­cause, when you’re look­ing at these modal­i­ties and you look at most of the clients are play­ing more and more in the un­met need space, there are less and less com­pa­nies that are out there do­ing the me too play, right? And this means that once you get the ap­proval, there are a lot of pa­tients out there that don’t have a cure and don’t have a treat­ment. And so you need to scale up very, very fast. So you need the abil­i­ty to scale up fast. Sure­ly, IRA puts some more pres­sure in mak­ing sure that you go in­to the mar­ket as fast as you can. So these are all things that CD­MOs can do very, very well. And so when you com­bine that with the fact that most of the pipeline is with com­pa­nies that don’t have a lot of man­u­fac­tur­ing foot­print and de­vel­op­ment ex­per­tise, when it comes to for­mu­la­tion, clear­ly, all of these dy­nam­ics all com­bined to­geth­er, brings more out­sourc­ing in­to the space, which is good news for CD­MOs. And sure­ly, great news for a CD­MO like Catal­ent that has a track record of be­ing able to do these fast scale-ups and sell to cus­tomers to get in­to the mar­ket at laser speed.

Car­roll: You men­tioned ear­li­er in our con­ver­sa­tion here to­day, that you had, as a com­pa­ny, fo­cused on bring­ing a lot of com­pa­nies to­geth­er in con­sol­i­da­tion. You’ve had to work to ma­ture the or­ga­ni­za­tions, to bring them up to speed where they need­ed to be, fit them with­in the larg­er or­ga­ni­za­tion that you have cre­at­ed at Catal­ent. So it is in­ter­est­ing, and it would be in­ter­est­ing to clar­i­fy, No­vo Hold­ings has in­cred­i­bly deep pock­ets right now, and has had for quite some time. So in terms of their di­rec­tion and the con­sis­ten­cy of their di­rec­tion, they don’t do things light­ly, and they don’t tend to fly from thing to thing. They tend to get with it and they tend to stick with it. And that’s al­ways been their MO, they’ve al­ways done that. It’s just me com­ment­ing, but it must be en­cour­ag­ing for you that you’re deal­ing with an own­er now that has a very clear idea of what it wants and what it ex­pects, and al­lows you the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pur­sue this prob­a­bly on your own?

Masel­li: Well, look, John, I couldn’t stress how im­por­tant it is at this point in time in our in­dus­try to have a long-term fo­cus, right? There are in­cred­i­ble op­por­tu­ni­ties, but they’re com­ing from modal­i­ties that are still in the im­ma­ture phase, both from the way you should think about clin­i­cal tri­als, but al­so the way you should think about the pro­duc­tion process­es, the man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es. This will all come to a great fu­ture, but it’s go­ing to take time. And so hav­ing a part­ner with some­body that shares the need for long-term fo­cus and for strate­gic fo­cus is some­thing very, very ex­cit­ing at this point in time.

Car­roll: So I’d like to talk a lit­tle bit about you here. You’ve had an op­por­tu­ni­ty re­cent­ly to meet with a lot of peo­ple at the com­pa­ny. Ob­vi­ous­ly, meet­ing with cus­tomers and talk­ing with cus­tomers is a big part of this, but at the same time, it’s a very large or­ga­ni­za­tion, and I’m sure you’ve had a lot of ques­tions from your own own em­ploy­ee group, an enor­mous group of peo­ple, about what’s hap­pen­ing and what kind of im­pact it’s go­ing to have on them. And there are al­ways con­cerns in any kind of an ac­qui­si­tion about what the cul­ture has been and what the cul­ture will be. So tell me a lit­tle bit about how you dealt with that: I mean, on an in­ter­nal ba­sis, is this some­thing that’s tak­en a lot of your time and what do you say when peo­ple say, “Who are we and what are we go­ing to do?”

Masel­li: Well, look, I’m a big be­liev­er that the lead­ers need to be on the front line. And to me, my front line are cus­tomers and em­ploy­ees. So the more I spend time speak­ing with my em­ploy­ees and my cus­tomers, the bet­ter the out­come. That’s my biggest be­lief. So yes, since the an­nounce­ment, I’ve spent prob­a­bly 90% of my time be­tween cus­tomers and em­ploy­ees, trav­el­ing around the world. I’ve been in Asia, I’ve been in North Amer­i­ca, I’m now trav­el­ing in Eu­rope, be­ing there, show­ing your face, be­ing gen­uine and trans­par­ent. Ac­knowl­edge that this news can bring some ques­tions, and ad­dress those ques­tions. But I be­lieve this is al­so a good sto­ry to tell, right? So first of all, you read in the news about No­vo Hold­ings, it’s a long-term hold­er, they tend to stick with what they do. The fact that they be­long to the biggest phil­an­thropic or­ga­ni­za­tion in the world, and the fact that some of the re­turns you gen­er­ate go back for phil­an­thropic work, which is, again, some­thing again aligned with what we do as an or­ga­ni­za­tion and what we want to do as an or­ga­ni­za­tion. The fact that our mis­sion is to help peo­ple live bet­ter and health­i­er lives, which is aligned with what they do, I be­lieve res­onates with our em­ploy­ees. And sure­ly, they see the op­por­tu­ni­ty here that is ahead of us. They un­der­stand how we came to this point, but al­so, it’s easy to ex­plain to them the strat­e­gy and why that strat­e­gy is so ex­cit­ing to them. So I be­lieve this is one sto­ry that has res­onat­ed well with our cus­tomers.

Car­roll: Well, on that note, we’re go­ing to wrap it up. I re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate tak­ing this op­por­tu­ni­ty and hav­ing this con­ver­sa­tion. It’s al­ways in­ter­est­ing. I mean, I think we get to­geth­er, every six months or so, for one rea­son or an­oth­er, and have a con­ver­sa­tion about the in­dus­try and what’s go­ing on. Al­ways fas­ci­nat­ing to get your views on that. I re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate your tak­ing the time, and I ap­pre­ci­ate the au­di­ence tak­ing their time to join us to­day. Thanks very much.

Masel­li: Thanks a lot for hav­ing me again. I’m very thank­ful for the time, but al­so very thank­ful for what our em­ploy­ees are do­ing around the world. I would like to take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to thank them for their en­gage­ment, pas­sion, and pro­fes­sion­al­ism in serv­ing our cus­tomers. I would [al­so] like to thank our cus­tomers for the trust that they con­tin­ue to put in us. So we are very ex­cit­ed where we are in the in­dus­try and the op­por­tu­ni­ties ahead of us. And again, thanks for your time, John. Al­ways a plea­sure.

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