Biotech Values

[dewophile]

If this is the exchange being referenced I would say it is misleading to say the company is in any way prioritizing NASH and oncology for business development. If anything just the opposite - an analyst asked about these areas and the CEO said they are not constrained to just these areas as BD targets:

..where are you focusing your priorities on, how should we think about your next area, whether that's in NASH or oncology, how should we think about that, maybe just give us a little state of union there.

Daniel O'Day -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

..In terms of therapeutic area, I would say our approach to external partnerships and M&A will be very much the same of what you saw in the past. So, first and foremost, it will be driven by science, driven by where we think the most unique opportunities are. Secondarily, it will be informed by our own expertise. As you know we play across four therapeutic areas today and strong scientific understanding in a base in antivirals and immuno modulation. And there is no one size fits all, of course. I mean, at times it makes sense to just do a partnership, but other times it makes sense to do a full acquisition and other times it makes sense to do something like a Galapagos arrangement where we have a deep partnership associated with that.

So we'll continue on in that area. I think more to come as the team comes together as we continue to evaluate. Certainly, the areas that you mentioned are areas that we're looking at carefully to complement our internal expertise, but we're not driven by any one therapeutic area, we're driven much more by where is the next innovation going to come from in science and how do we complement that portfolio with an acknowledgment by the way that we understand that we have to accelerate the development of our later stage pipeline as well and that can happen by both accelerating our internal pipeline or having partnership arrangements with companies outside of the Gilead today.