Novartis Highlights Focus on Creating Value for Stakeholders and Society in New Integrated Report
At Novartis, we work to build trust with society and deliver long-term value to our stakeholders by embedding environmental, social and governance (ESG) topics into the core of our business strategy and operations.
In February, we released our first Novartis in Society Integrated Report 2021, a new approach to reporting that describes how we create value for our stakeholders through our purpose to reimagine medicine to improve and extend people’s lives. The report is intended for all Novartis stakeholders, while meeting the specific needs of investors and ESG professionals through comprehensive and downloadable data on our performance.
The Novartis in Society Integrated Report 2021 contains three main sections:
- Our approach, including details of our business environment, stakeholders, strategy and risk management
- Our performance, including financial performance and performance against our five strategic priorities: deliver transformative innovation, embrace operational excellence, go big on data and digital, unleash the power of our people, and build trust with society
- Corporate governance and our approach to executive compensation
2021 HIGHLIGHTS
- Significant impact on the world: Our medicines reached 766 million patients in 2021, with 56.2 million of those reached through our various access-to-medicine approaches.
- Delivering transformative innovation to patients: We received 21 approvals for new medicines or new indications for existing medicines in the US, EU, Japan and China. This includes two novel medicine (New Molecular Entity) approvals from the US Food and Drug Administration: one for chronic myeloid leukemia, a type of blood cancer, and the other a new cholesterol-lowering therapy for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, a substantial public health burden affecting 30 million Americans.
- Advancing a strong pipeline: Our pipeline of investigational treatments, which spans around 50 diseases, has the potential to transform the standard of care for millions of patients worldwide. Around 85% of our treatments in development have the potential to be first-in-class or first in a specific indication. By 2026, we expect approval of more than 20 pipeline assets with the potential to become blockbuster medicines with annual sales of more than USD 1 billion.
- Addressing critical global health challenges: We helped develop a potential new treatment option for the COVID-19 pandemic, the most urgent public health issue in the world today, and advanced two compounds with the potential to become the next generation of antimalarial medicines. In 2021, we also reached the milestone of 1 billion treatments of our existing antimalarial medicine delivered to patients in endemic countries since 1999, with more than 90% supplied without profit.
- Breaking new ground in access to medicines: Value-based pricing, sustainable business models, zero-profit models and donations are all approaches we use to support the affordability of our medicines. We are also breaking new ground in access: we announced a world-first agreement with the National Health Service in England to enable broad access to our cholesterol-lowering medicine Leqvio® through a population health management approach.
- Delivering sustainable financial growth: We delivered a solid financial performance, supported by sales growth in key products. Group net sales rose by 4% from 2020 when measured in constant currencies to remove the impact of exchange rate movements (cc).
- Transforming our culture: Our people bring our purpose to life. Employee engagement at Novartis stayed consistently higher than the industry benchmark in 2021, as we continued to offer our a flexible work policy to meet the changing needs and expectations of our people during the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, Novartis was also included in the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index for the third year in a row.
- Reducing our environmental footprint: We strengthened our environmental targets, with a new commitment to be net zero in terms of carbon emissions across our value chain by 2040. We also further reduced our environmental footprint with a 34% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (Scope 1 and Scope 2), a 40% reduction in water consumption and a 56% reduction in waste sent for disposal (all percentages vs. a 2016 baseline).
Commenting on the company’s 2021 performance, Novartis Chief Executive Officer Vas Narasimhan said: “Our impact on the world remains extraordinary. As we reimagine medicine at Novartis, our unwavering focus on our strategy and purpose enabled us to continue creating value for patients, healthcare professionals, healthcare systems, employees, shareholders and society.”
The Novartis in Society Integrated Report is prepared in accordance with leading frameworks and guidelines for corporate reporting, including the GRI Standards Core Option, SASB Standards, Integrated Reporting Framework, and Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).
Access and download the full report at: reporting.novartis.com
Novartis Media Relations
Central media line: +41 61 324 2200
E-mail: media.relations@novartis.com
This communication contains forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. This communication also contains non-IFRS measures. For more information and an explanation of non-IFRS measures please see the Novartis Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2021 Condensed Financial Report.
