transforming sanofi-aventis

A friend put me onto this over the week-end. It's a speech made at the SA AGM by the new CEO, Chris Viehbacher. The link is below. It's about 45 minutes long, but worth the listen in terms of further understanding who our partner is, where they are now, where they are going and how they are going to get there.

Viehbacher's speech was called, "Transforming Sanofi-Aventis

Here are some nuggets I unearthed.

"None of the businesses we are in have less than 40-50% margins."

"We are throwing off 4 billion euros before dividends. You can do a heck of a lot with that. We will have disciplined M&A and licensing activities."

"In the (flu) vaccine market, first out the door is best."
(Remember Top Dog, first-mover advantage?)

"In the vaccine market generally it is hard to compete because capital intensity and technical competencies are natural barriers to entry. (Rememeber SA are #1 in vaccines.)

"We see huge growth in vaccines. For example, we have spent 350 million euros on one factory for our Dengue Fever Vaccine programme."

"While the US and Europe are core markets, the emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India, China, Mexico and Africa provide huge growth opportunities for SA."

"To provide growth, we have to provide value to patients and physicians."

"The days of bolt-on acquisitions to maintain growth are gone. So where do we find new resevoirs of growth?"

"We can spend gazillions and buy someone or we can spend gazillions, take lot of risk and try to do it ourselves. Or we can find someone who is good at what they do and partner with them."

He then describes 12 Transformation Projects and says,

"We have not looked outside the walls of our company enough. There are some fabulous bio-tech opportunities out there. We need to be able to capture the best science we can."

"We need to ask oursleves, what new technologies do we need to be in?"

"We need to foster innovation and creativity to have an impact on productivity."

"There are 250-300 small companies that roll up into SA. It is often difficult for small companies to deal with big ones. We have to be good at dealing with small companies."

"We need to get good at partnering."

"Alliance management is critical to long-term growth. The companies that get their partnering capabilities right are the ones that will win going forward."

"We want to bring back innovation to our R&D initiatives and strengthen our growth platforms."

"I have certainly seen in my background, if you come up with a device that is differentiated and really means something to the patient, you will beat the competition."

Gotta say, it spun my wheels!

The link is: http://proxy.clients.dbee.com/sanofi/20090211/en/live.php?debit=high&player=wm

Click on the Chris Viehbacher, Transforming Sanofi link.

Happy reading. The accompanying charts on their business segments and market shares are also very interesting reading.