Thank you very much for that kind introduction and also thank you for the opportunity to be here today. It's a great honor.

We're talking about what makes great companies. Obviously you would all feel that return to shareholders is one. I would claim contribution to society is another.

And for company like Nor Nordisk and all pharmaceutical companies that is linked to innovation and that's what will be the topic of my speech today.

We typically look at companies at a snapshot and assess a company but when it comes to innovation in our sector these are actually journeys that takes 10 20 30 years and as was mentioned my speech will be built on the more than 30 years of experience I have from Nordisk.

I'll start by talking a bit to what are some of the choice you can make when it comes to innovation strategy.

I'll deep strength and then give a few examples of how we have apped that in some real innovation programs.

So starting first on the innovation strategy. For me that's linked to having a clear purpose an opportunity to address some real unmid need in society.

And then you have to figure out how do you address that purpose. And at Norisk we are very keen on making some selective choice about some core capabilities where we where we develop distinct capabilities with the eye to be the best or among the say few best companies in the world within that narrow area.

So if I unfold purpose first the purpose of Nordisk is to drive change to defeat serious chronic diseases.

So there's a chronic disease part and there's a drive change part.

If you look at healthcare systems today, they are typically designed for acute care. I typically say that the best way to enter the healthcare system is to arrive in an ambulance with, you know, a lot of lights around you because then the whole system gets in effect in a very effective way right away.

So that's how we designed healthc.

The reality today is that most burdens to the healthcare system come from chronic diseases, people living with diabetes, cardovasc disease, obesity etc.

And these are complex diseases multidisciplinary in terms of how they are treated and the systems are not designed for that.

So in most countries the state of chronic disease is actually jeodizing the longevity of healthc systems and that is the exact purpose that we are trying to address.

To take the burden of the healthc system and of course strength the health resilient for the individual citizens.

The driving chains we also take very seriously. Obviously our largest contribution is the innovation we make, but we also focused on preventing the diseases we serve.

So how can we organize large cities in a way where we prevent type two diabetes, we prevent obesity to create capacity in the healthc system to actually pay for the products we come up with.

And if the system is challenged in doing that today, prevention is as important as coming up with innovation.

So that was our purpose turning to core capabilities.

We have painful experience in innovation that has t us that when we actually make the clear choice stay within our core capabilities we are more likely to succeed than when we attempted by the latest and the greatest innovation and chase some new technology in a disease area. We do not understand that well.

So over the years we have focused a lot on working with the molecules in the areas we are in and building leading technologies to do that.

So when it comes to to protein engineering, taking an insulin molecule, taking a GLP1 molecule or another large biological molecule being able to modify that to improve the pharmaceutical benefits of that we are among the leading companies in doing that.

So we have a very simple strategic innovation grid where on one axis we have technologies.

So a select few technologies we master really really well and then we apply those up against a few set of diseases diabetes you know aye commitment.

And then we have based on adjacency thinking gone into obesity card vasc disease and a few other diseases that are linked to that whole cardiometabolic space.

And you can say the same in a few rare diseases where we also had unique capabilities.

So a very tight strategic innovation map where we can build strength and it actually also leads to synergies across our value chain where those capabilities lend itself for synergy across that value chain.

Now that sounds maybe a bit tight and based on Davis comment I will also bring in culture because we do allow for a bit of say experimentation.

And I have to admit that while this grid is really good at guiding our researchers behind most products there's actually a very stub researcher that that decided to break some of the rules on the way.

To a bit go against what management thought was the right thing to do and if you Think about our whole GLP one venture which I'll talk a bit about in in a minute that came after seven years of success in insulin.

So you can imagine when somebody suggested let's focus on something else most of management felt maybe that was not a good idea.

I would say however that it was driving against the same purpose the same unmmet need and it was leveraging the same set of core capabilities. So it was actually on strategy I have to say.

So leaving a bit innovation strategy and then going to some of the examples. I already started on GLP1 glucogon like peptide one.

This is the molecule behind say the strong growth of Noris right now. It's a natural hormone that all of us have in our body right now.

It helps regulate your glucose level after lunch. It also has a lot of other additional benefits which creates it creates one of the biggest opportunities in terms of addressing many of these cardiometabolic diseases.

The natural G1 you have in your body if you extracted that and want to use a medicine it doesn't work because it only lasts for very very short time.

So our bodies are designed to produce it all the time. So from a research point of view, it doesn't work as a medicine because if you take it somehow it would last only for a few seconds.

So that's where our core capabilities came in.

So the protein engineering modifying first to make it last for one day so you can make it a daily injection and then continue the innovation game to make it a once weekly.

So a weekly injection with even improved pharmaceutical benefits and also safety benefits and also the quest to make it a tablet which was from a textbook point of view impossible.

So if you ask any scientist if you take a protein formulate it into a tablet put it in the stomach will that be absorbed into the bloodstream?

People say no because the enzymes in your stomach that just broke down the steak you had will also kill this tablet because it's a protein and enimes will kill it.

So an example of how our core cabilities come into play is what you then do with that how can you actually make a unique formulation together with a partnership with a biotech company that creates a local pH environment that actually you know fenders off the enzymes. So there's time for the Gilp one to be released, go through the membrane and into the bloodstream.

So that was a major revolution and that is now in the market for type two diabetes and we have submitted it for approval in obesity in the US.

So the Gilbon journey started in in diabetes we saw that you also lose weight.

We were worried about actually pursuing the obesity indication because back then development of medicines for obesity was a graveyard of failed interventions.

Some of the products even turned out to be dangerous and were taken off the market.

So we had this fantastic hope in type two diabetes but we saw that patients also lost weight.

So we felt we actually had to study that and was actually a bit say decision made from say a respect for patients.

Because if if there was a weight loss observed we knew that it would be used for weight loss so we had to study it to show what was actually the safety of that.

So it was actually a risk taken to support patient safety and then I think as we all know it turns into a fantastic commercial opportunity.

Att weight loss agent and down the road also shown that it reduces risk cut vascular disease, kidney disease, liver disease.

And later this year will have data on potential use in Alzheimer's disease.

So the quest to continue invasion in Gilb one continues. We have more great ideas and we also now combining it with other biologies.

Biology we believe lot is is amin so we believe it's complementary to gp1 and we have late state clinical trials going on there so the journey continues.

Another example of how the core capabilities and the purpose comes into play is weekly insulin.

So nog nye history of making insulins as we all know and when you live with type one diabetes or type two diabetes you need to inject insulins on a regular basis.

Longer produce insulin no longer produce enough insulin and that takes place once a day or several times a day and obviously it's a big burden for for the patients because you have to combine that with constant glucose monitoring.

So would it be possible to make a weekly insulin that would take the burden away from these daily treatments?

And again most of the key opinion leaders the clinicians we work with say that's impossible because who would like to inject insulin that stays for week because that's dangerous you can get too low glucose level, it can kill you.

Uh, so we said, well, let's again work a bit with this insulin molecule. How can we leverage our protein engineering capabilities?

And we actually made it. We are now launching the first the world's first weekly insulin where people with type two diabetes goes from 365 injections to 52.

We proved that it regulates glucose level as well as st injections and even at a very attractive safety profile.

So there are many of these impossibles that when you have a strong purpose in terms of serving a defined set of of patients with the unmit needs and you have the deepest capability in the world in a narrow field you can overcome conventional barriers.

The next quest when it comes to insulin is actually developing a glucose sensitive insulin.

When you live with diabetes, wouldn't it be fantastic to get a insulin injected that's actually glucose sensitive?

So when you eat it will switch on, bring the glucose level down and when it's brought down it switches off. So a smart insulin.

Parents writing to me. I have a particular parent who already lost one child because of a very very difficult to control type one diabetes.

And he is really really interested in our clinical development of this because he has another child with type one diabetes. So any buffering effect can be very important for these patients.

We have proven that we can make the switch work so it start releasing insulin and it stops releasing insulin when the glucose level is high.

It's still too shortlift to be a drug but going back to the first example I gave with GP1 we we solved that down the road.

So I start blossoming when I talk about it because this is very emotional for these patients.

So I hope I have made the point that innovation is essential for our industry.

Uh, I took as CEO 7 and a half years ago and during this tenure I've seen the advent of obesity marking market opening up.

Uh being the only company more less our share price eight doubling and then coming a bit down it's still a three times up since I since I took over.

So clearly there's link between innovation and shareholder return.

I hope I also made the point that by having guidance by clear purpose addressing unmade need for patient and society compared to others you have a better likelihood of success than others.

And by saying to to that I'm quite convinced that will be a successful company for the future also and hopefully be one of the best companies for the future. Thank you very much for listening.