As we have grown, our strong financial position has enabled us to leverage corporate partnerships to build our portfolio of commercial products and investigational compounds. The 2006 acquisitions of Corus and Myogen added late-stage clinical candidates to our pipeline, providing near- and long-term revenue potential and placing Gilead in an excellent position to enter the respiratory and cardiopulmonary markets.
LONG-TERM GROWTH
We have created an extraordinary product portfolio that is improving the lives of hundreds of thousands of people with unmet medical needs. Innovation in every aspect of our business has enabled us to develop these best-in-class therapeutics and to successfully commercialize them worldwide. We remain focused on developing and commercializing therapies that will continue to transform treatment paradigms in HIV, hepatitis, respiratory and cardiopulmonary diseases.
I would like to thank our employees for their contribution to our achievements this year. Ours is a team of inspired individuals who are as committed to improving patients’ lives as the physicians who are our primary customers. Quite simply, it is why we are here at Gilead. We are pleased with what we have accomplished this year and look forward to reporting our progress in 2007.
John C. Martin, PhD
President and Chief Executive Officer
WORLDWIDE REACH
As our company continues to grow, we are increasingly focused on the commercialization of our brands and products worldwide. In 2006, we began opening additional commercial operations in Europe to lessen our reliance on distributors and to capture greater revenue from European Union product sales. This expansion will give us the ability to more effectively control the launch and commercialization of our products in these important markets.
We recognize the need to enhance access to our HIV medications worldwide and have stepped up our efforts this year to extend their availability to resource-limited parts of the world where the epidemic has hit the hardest. By the end of 2006, we completed regulatory submissions for Viread in nearly all the 97 access program countries and reached non-exclusive license agreements with 11 Indian generic manufacturers to produce and distribute generic versions of Viread in resource-limited countries. We also established a partnership with Merck & Co., Inc. to distribute Atripla in the developing world. In addition, through our Advancing Access™ program, we continue to support access for patients in the United States who cannot afford to pay for our medications.
