LLY, §1A diff (2018 → 2019)

Item 1A. Risk Factors In addition to the other information contained in this Form 10-K, the following risk factors should be considered carefully in evaluating our company. It is possible that our business, financial condition, liquidity, cash flows, or results of operations could be materially adversely affected by any of these risks. Certain of these risks could also adversely affect the company's reputation. • Pharmaceutical research and development is very costly and highly uncertain; we may not succeed in developing or acquiring commercially successful products sufficient in number or value to replace revenues of products that have lost or will soon lose intellectual property protection or are displaced by competing products or therapies. There are many difficulties and uncertainties inherent in pharmaceutical research and development and the introduction of new products. There is a high rate of failure inherent in new drug discovery and development. To bring a drug from the discovery phase to market can take over a decade and often costs in excess of $2 billion. Failure can occur at any point in the process, including in later stages after substantial investment. As a result, most funds invested in research programs will not generate financial returns. New product candidates that appear promising in development may fail to reach the market or may have only limited commercial success because of efficacy or safety concerns, inability to obtain or maintain necessary regulatory approvals or payer reimbursement or coverage, limited scope of approved uses, changes in the relevant treatment standards or the availability of new or better competitive products, difficulty or excessive costs to manufacture, or infringement of the patents or intellectual property rights of others. Regulatory agencies continue to establish increasingly high hurdles for the efficacy and safety of new products. Delays and uncertainties in drug approval processes can result in delays in product launches and lost market opportunity. In addition, it can be very difficult to predict revenue growth rates of new products. We cannot state with certainty when or whether our products now under development will be approved or launched; whether, if initially granted, such approval will be maintained; whether we will be able to develop, license, or otherwise acquire additional product candidates or products; or whether our products, once launched, will be commercially successful. We must maintain a continuous flow of successful new products and successful new indications or brand extensions for existing products sufficient both to cover our substantial research and development costs and to replace revenues that are lost as profitable products lose intellectual property exclusivity or are displaced by competing products or therapies. Failure to do so in the short-term or long-term would have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, cash flows, and financial position. See Item 7, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis - Results of Operations - Executive Overview - Late-Stage Pipeline,” for more details. • We depend on products with intellectual property protection for most of our revenues, cash flows, and earnings; we have lost or will lose effective intellectual property protection for many of those products in the next several years, which has resulted and is likely to continue to result in rapid and severe declines in revenues. A number of our top-selling products have recently lost, or will lose in the next several years, significant patent protection and/or data protection in the U.S. as well as key countries outside the U.S., as illustrated in the tables below: Certain other significant products no longer have effective exclusivity through patent protection or data protection. For non-biologic products, loss of exclusivity (whether by expiration of legal rights or by termination thereof as a consequence of litigation) typically results in the entry of one or more generic competitors, leading to a rapid and severe decline in revenues, especially in the U.S. Historically, outside the U.S. the market penetration of generics following loss of exclusivity has not been as rapid or pervasive as in the U.S.; however, generic market penetration is increasing in many markets outside the U.S., including Japan, Europe, and many countries in the emerging markets. For biologics (such as Humalog, Humulin, Erbitux, Cyramza, Trulicity, Taltz, and Emgality), loss of exclusivity may or may not result in the near-term entry of competitor versions (i.e., biosimilars) due to many factors including development timelines, manufacturing challenges, and/or uncertainties in the regulatory pathways for approval of the competitor versions. There is no assurance that the patents we are seeking will be granted or that the patents we hold will be found valid and enforceable if challenged. Moreover, patents relating to particular products, uses, formulations, or processes do not preclude other manufacturers from employing alternative processes or marketing alternative products or formulations that compete with our patented products. In addition, competitors or other third parties may assert claims that our activities infringe patents or other intellectual property rights held by them, or allege a third-party right of ownership in our existing intellectual property. See Item 7, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis - Results of Operations - Executive Overview - Other Matters - Patent Matters,” and Item 1, "Business - Patents, Trademarks, and Other Intellectual Property Rights," for more details. • Our long-term success depends on intellectual property protection; if our intellectual property rights are invalidated, circumvented, or weakened, our business will be adversely affected. Our long-term success depends on our ability to continually discover or acquire, develop, and commercialize innovative new pharmaceutical products. Without strong intellectual property protection, we would be unable to generate the returns necessary to support the enormous investments in research and development and capital as well as other expenditures required to bring new drugs to the market. Intellectual property protection varies throughout the world and is subject to change over time, depending on local laws and regulations. Changes to such laws and regulations could reduce protections for our innovative products. In the U.S., in addition to the process for challenging patents set forth in the BPCI Act, which applies to our biologic products, the Hatch-Waxman Act provides generic companies powerful incentives to seek to invalidate our other pharmaceutical patents. As a result, we expect that our U.S. patents on major pharmaceutical products will continue to be routinely challenged in litigation and may not be upheld. In addition, a separate IPR process allows competitors to request review of issued patents by the USPTO without the protections of the Hatch-Waxman Act. Our patents may be invalidated via this review process. Although such a decision can be appealed to the courts, in certain circumstances a loss in such a proceeding could result in a competitor entering the market, while a win provides no precedential value - the same patent can still be challenged by other competitors. We face many generic manufacturer challenges to our patents outside the U.S. as well. The entry of generic competitors typically results in rapid and severe declines in revenues. In addition, competitors or other third parties may claim that our activities infringe patents or other intellectual property rights held by them. If successful, such claims could result in our being unable to market a product in a particular territory or being required to pay significant damages for past infringement or royalties on future sales. See Item 1, “Business - Patents, Trademarks, and Other Intellectual Property Rights,” Item 3, "Legal Proceedings," and Item 8, "Financial Statements and Supplementary Data - Note 16, Contingencies," for more details. • Our business is subject to increasing government price controls and other public and private restrictions on pricing, reimbursement, and access for our drugs, which could have a material adverse effect on our reputation or business. Public and private payers are taking increasingly aggressive steps to control their expenditures for pharmaceuticals by placing restrictions on pricing and reimbursement for, and patient access to, our medications. These pressures could continue to negatively affect our future revenues and net income. We expect pricing, reimbursement, and access pressures from both governments and private payers inside and outside the U.S. to become more severe. For more details, see Item 1, “Business - Regulations and Private Payer Actions Affecting Pharmaceutical Pricing, Reimbursement, and Access,” and Item 7, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis - Results of Operations - Executive Overview - Other Matters - Trends Affecting Pharmaceutical Pricing, Reimbursement, and Access.” • We face intense competition from multinational pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, and lower-cost generic and biosimilar manufacturers, and such competition could have a material adverse effect on our business. We compete with a large number of multinational pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, and generic pharmaceutical companies. To compete successfully, we must continue to deliver to the market innovative, cost-effective products that meet important medical needs. Our product revenues can be adversely affected by the introduction by competitors of branded products that are perceived as superior by the marketplace, by generic or biosimilar versions of our branded products, and by generic or biosimilar versions of other products in the same therapeutic class as our branded products. Regulation of generic and biosimilar products varies around the world. Particularly for biosimilars, changes to such regulations could make it easier, less expensive, and less time consuming for competitor products to enter the market, some of which could be substituted for our products at the pharmacy. Our revenues can also be adversely affected by treatment innovations that eliminate or minimize the need for treatment with our drugs. See Item 1, “Business - Competition” and "Business - Research and Development," for more details. • Changes in foreign currency rates or devaluation of a foreign currency can materially affect our revenue, cost of sales, and operating expenses. As a global company with substantial operations outside the U.S., we face foreign currency risk exposure from fluctuating currency exchange rates. While we seek to manage a portion of these exposures through hedging and other risk management techniques, significant fluctuations in currency rates can have a material impact, either positive or negative, on our revenue, cost of sales, and operating expenses. In the event of an extreme devaluation of local currency, the price of our products could become unsustainable in the relevant market. See Item 7, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis - Financial Condition” for more details. • Unanticipated changes in our tax rates or exposure to additional tax liabilities could increase our income taxes and decrease our net income. We are subject to income taxes in the U.S. and numerous foreign jurisdictions, and in the course of our business, we make judgments about the expected tax treatment of various transactions and events, including the separation of Elanco. Changes in the relevant tax laws, regulations, administrative practices, principles, and interpretations, as well as events that differ from our expectations, could adversely affect our future effective tax rates. The U.S. enacted tax reform legislation significantly revising the U.S. tax law, effective January 2018, and a number of other countries are actively considering or enacting tax changes. Modifications to key elements of the U.S. or international tax framework could have a material adverse effect on our consolidated operating results and cash flows. See Item 7, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis - Results of Operations - Executive Overview - Other Matters - Tax Matters” and Item 8, "Financial Statements and Supplementary Data - Note 14, Income Taxes," for more details. Lilly has taken the position on the separation from Elanco, based on an opinion of tax counsel, that the divestiture of Elanco common stock qualifies as a transaction that is tax-free for U.S. federal income tax purposes. If any facts, assumptions, representations, and undertakings from Lilly and Elanco regarding the past and future conduct of their respective businesses and other matters are incorrect or not otherwise satisfied, the divestiture may not qualify for tax-free treatment, which could result in significant U.S. federal income tax liabilities for both Lilly and its shareholders who exchanged their stock for Elanco stock. • Failure, inadequacy, or breach of our information technology systems, infrastructure, and business information or violations of data protection laws could result in material harm to our business and reputation. A great deal of confidential information owned by both us and our business partners is stored in our information systems, networks, and facilities or those of third parties. This includes valuable trade secrets and intellectual property, clinical trial information, corporate strategic plans, marketing plans, customer information, and personally identifiable information, such as employee and patient information (collectively, “confidential information”). We also rely to a large extent on the efficient and uninterrupted operation of complex information technology systems, infrastructure, and hardware (together “IT systems”), some of which are within the company’s control and some of which are within the control of third parties, to accumulate, process, store, and transmit large amounts of confidential information and other data. We are subject to a variety of continuously evolving and developing laws and regulations around the world related to privacy, data protection, and data security. Maintaining the confidentiality, integrity and availability of our IT systems and confidential information is vital to our business. IT systems are vulnerable to system inadequacies, operating failures, service interruptions or failures, security breaches, malicious intrusions, or cyber-attacks from a variety of sources. Cyber-attacks are growing in their frequency, sophistication, and intensity, and are becoming increasingly difficult to detect, mitigate, or prevent. Cyber-attacks come in many forms, including the deployment of harmful malware, exploitation of vulnerabilities, denial-of-service attacks, the use of social engineering, and other means to compromise the confidentiality, integrity and availability of our IT systems, confidential information, and other data. Breaches resulting in the compromise, disruption, degradation, manipulation, loss, theft, destruction, or unauthorized disclosure or use of confidential information, or the unauthorized access to, disruption of, or interference with our products and services, can occur in a variety of ways, including but not limited to, negligent or wrongful conduct by employees or others with permitted access to our systems and information, or wrongful conduct by hackers, competitors, certain governments, or other current or former company personnel. Our third party partners face similar risks. The failure or inadequacy of our IT systems, the compromise, disruption, degradation, manipulation, loss, theft, destruction, or unauthorized disclosure or use of confidential information, or the unauthorized access to, disruption of, or interference with our products and services that rely on IT systems, could impair our ability to secure and maintain intellectual property rights; result in a product manufacturing interruption or failure, or in the interruption or failure of products or services that rely on IT systems; damage our operations, customer relationships, or reputation; and cause us to lose trade secrets or other competitive advantages. Unauthorized disclosure of personally identifiable information could expose us to significant sanctions for violations of data privacy laws and regulations around the world and could damage public trust in our company. To date, system inadequacies, operating failures, unauthorized access, service interruptions or failures, security breaches, malicious intrusions, cyber-attacks, and the compromise, disruption, degradation, manipulation, loss, theft, destruction, or unauthorized disclosure or use of confidential information have not had a material impact on our consolidated results of operations. We maintain cyber liability insurance; however, this insurance may not be sufficient to cover the financial, legal, business, or reputational losses that may result from an interruption or breach of our IT systems. We continue to implement measures in an effort to protect, detect, respond to, and minimize or prevent these risks and to enhance the resiliency of our IT systems; however, these measures may not be successful. If they are not successful, any of these events could result in material financial, legal, business, or reputational harm to our business. • Significant economic downturns or international trade disruptions or disputes could adversely affect our business and operating results. While pharmaceuticals have not generally been sensitive to overall economic cycles, prolonged economic slowdowns could lead to decreased utilization of our products, affecting our sales volume. Declining tax revenues attributable to economic downturns increase the pressure on governments to reduce health care spending, leading to increasing government efforts to control drug prices and utilization. Additionally, some customers, including governments or other entities reliant upon government funding, may be unable to pay in a timely manner for our products. Also, if our customers, suppliers, or collaboration partners experience financial difficulties, we could experience slower customer collections, greater bad debt expense, and performance defaults by suppliers or collaboration partners. Similarly, in the event of a significant economic downturn, we could have difficulty accessing credit markets. Significant portions of our business are conducted in Europe, including the U.K.; Asia; and other international geographies. Trade disputes and interruptions in international relationships, including pandemic diseases, such as the coronavirus, could result in changes to regulations governing our products and our intellectual property, or otherwise affect our ability to do business. While we do not expect either circumstance to materially affect our business in a direct manner, these and similar events could adversely affect us, or our business partners or customers. • Pharmaceutical products can develop unexpected safety or efficacy concerns, which could have a material adverse effect on revenues, income, and reputation. Pharmaceutical products receive regulatory approval based on data obtained in controlled clinical trials of limited duration. After approval, the products are used for longer periods of time by much larger numbers of patients; we and others (including regulatory agencies and private payers) collect extensive information on the efficacy and safety of our marketed products by continuously monitoring the use of our products in the marketplace. In addition, we or others may conduct post-marketing clinical studies on efficacy and safety of our marketed products. New safety or efficacy data from both market surveillance and post-marketing clinical studies may result in product label changes or other measures that could reduce the product's market acceptance and result in declining sales. Serious safety or efficacy issues that arise after product approval could result in voluntary or mandatory product recalls or withdrawals from the market. Safety issues could also result in costly product liability claims. • We face litigation and investigations related to our products and our pricing practices and are self-insured; we could face large numbers of claims in the future, which could adversely affect our business. We are subject to a substantial number of product liability claims involving Actos®, Axiron®, Byetta®, Cialis, and Cymbalta among other products, as well as litigation and investigations related to the pricing of our products. See Item 8, “Financial Statements and Supplementary Data - Note 16, Contingencies,” and Item 3, “Legal Proceedings,” for more information on our current product liability litigation, as well as pricing litigation, investigations, and inquiries. Because of the nature of pharmaceutical products, we are and could in the future become subject to large numbers of product liability claims for these or other products, or to further litigation or investigations into pricing or other commercial practices. Such matters require substantial expenditures to resolve and, if involving marketed products, could adversely affect sales of the product. Due to a very restrictive market for liability insurance, we are self-insured for product liability losses for all our currently marketed products, as well as for litigation or investigations related to our pricing practices or other similar matters. • Regulatory compliance problems could be damaging to the company. The marketing, promotional, and pricing practices of pharmaceutical manufacturers, as well as the manner in which manufacturers interact with purchasers, prescribers, and patients, are subject to extensive regulation. Many companies, including us, have been subject to claims related to these practices asserted by federal, state, and foreign governmental authorities, private payers, and consumers. These claims have resulted in substantial expense and other significant consequences to us. We are and could in the future become subject to such investigations, the outcomes of which could include criminal charges and fines, penalties, or other monetary or non-monetary remedies, including exclusion from U.S. federal and other health care programs. In addition, regulatory issues concerning compliance with cGMP regulations (and comparable foreign regulations) for our products can lead to product recalls and seizures, fines and penalties, interruption of production leading to product shortages, and delays in the approvals of new products pending resolution of the issues. See Item 1, “Business - Government Regulation of Our Operations,” for more details. • Manufacturing difficulties or disruptions could lead to product supply problems. Pharmaceutical manufacturing is complex and highly regulated. Manufacturing difficulties at our facilities or contracted facilities, or the failure or refusal of a contract manufacturer to supply contracted quantities, could result in product shortages, leading to lost revenue. Such difficulties or disruptions could result from quality or regulatory compliance problems; natural disasters or pandemic disease; mechanical or information technology system vulnerabilities, such as system inadequacies, operating failures, service interruptions or failures, security breaches, malicious intrusions, or cyber-attacks from a variety of sources; or inability to obtain sole-source raw or intermediate materials. In addition, given the difficulties in predicting sales of new products and the very long lead times necessary for the expansion and regulatory qualification of pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity, it is possible that we could have difficulty meeting unanticipated demand for new products. See Item 1, “Business - Raw Materials and Product Supply,” for more details. • Reliance on third-party relationships and outsourcing arrangements could adversely affect our business. We rely on third parties, including suppliers, distributors, alliances with other pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and third-party service providers, for selected aspects of product development, manufacture, commercialization, support for information technology systems, product distribution, and certain financial transactional processes. For example, we outsource the day-to-day management and oversight of our clinical trials to contract research organizations. Outsourcing these functions involves the risk that the third parties may not perform to our standards or legal requirements; may not produce reliable results; may not perform in a timely manner; may not maintain the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of our confidential and proprietary information; may experience disruption or fail to perform due to information technology system vulnerabilities, breaches, or cyber-attacks; or may fail to perform at all. Failure of these third parties to meet their contractual, regulatory, confidentiality, privacy, security, or other obligations to us could have a material adverse effect on our business. Item 1B.