Speaker 1:
From the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, welcome Inside the ICE House. Our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange is your go-to for the latest on markets, leadership, vision, and business. For over 230 years, the NYSE has been the beating heart of global growth. Each week we bring you inspiring stories of innovators, job creators, and the movers and shakers of capitalism, here at the NYSE and ICE's exchanges around the world. Now let's go Inside the ICE House. Who's your host? Kristen Scholer.
Kristen Scholer:
The pharmaceutical industry is experiencing an era of extraordinary innovation, fueled by breakthroughs in science, technology and data analytics. Novartis NYSE, ticker symbol, and VS stands as a driving force in this wave of transformation dedicated to improving global health through groundbreaking advancements. From gene and cell therapies to targeted cancer treatments and immunology, Novartis consistently deliver solutions for some of the world's most complex medical challenges. By emphasizing research, collaboration, and sustainability, the company is shaping the future of healthcare and setting new standards for excellence in the pharmaceutical space. Joining us today is Vas Narasimhan, CEO of Novartis. Since joining the company in 2005, Vas has held key leadership roles including global Head of Development and Chief Medical Officer before taking the helm as the chief executive officer in 2018. Under his leadership, Novartis has undergone significant growth and transformation, sharpening its focus on innovative medicines while fostering a culture of sustainability and collaboration. Vas, thanks so much for joining us Inside the ICE House.
Vasant Narasimhan:
Great to be here. Thank you.
Kristen Scholer:
It's really wonderful to have you and I'm looking forward to hearing more of your story. Now over the course of our discussion, we'll explore innovation and future opportunities for your company. But as we begin in present day 2025, how would you evaluate the company's current standing in the innovative medicines industry and its prospects for achieving significant milestones over the coming year?
Vasant Narasimhan:
We feel like we're in a really strong place. We're coming out of a pretty significant transformation starting in 2018, and actually even a few years before that, we sat on this journey to refocus Novartis as a pure play company. We're a company with over 200 years of history, lots of twists and turns starting out in the world of dye making, moving into chemicals, shifting into agrochemicals, and then medicines. So a long history of being a conglomerate in various shapes and forms. But we decided in 2018 that we needed to get to become a pure play medicines company because we thought that's where we could have the biggest impact. And that took us really six years to achieve. We did about a $130 billion of transactions, and we took one company and we turned it into four companies.
We turned it into HALion together with GSK, a leading consumer health company. Sandoz, a leading generics company. Alcon, a leading eye care company, and now Novartis, the standalone innovative medicines company. Where right now we're having actually our best financial performance possibly in the company's history. And I think that really shows that this was the right move to focus us down as a pure play. So I think looking ahead now, we've got a great pipeline. So a lot of exciting things looking forward for us.
Kristen Scholer:
Congratulations. You stepped into your role as CEO in 2018, leading a diverse company with multiple areas of focus, and seven years later under your leadership, Novartis has evolved as you just discussed there, into a pure play medicines company. What was the strategic rationale that you can share in terms of more behind this transformation and how it's positioned you and the company for greater growth ahead?
Vasant Narasimhan:
It's a great question. When you think about why innovative medicines companies try to stay as conglomerates, it's primarily because innovative medicines has the challenge of patent expertise. We in a sense, as an industry, have to replace all of our sales every 14 to 17 years. Because our medicines go generic, they largely disappear from the market, particularly in the United States, and we have to re-innovate to create new medicines. That's a tall task. When you're like us, a 50 billion plus revenue company, regenerating your sales can be scary. And so what you do is you diversify. And we were a diversified company, got more diversified really between 2000 and I'd say 2014. And the idea was to soften the ups and downs of the innovation cycle.
But what really happened is it led to us to, I think not optimally deploy our capital. We ended up having to invest in lower return businesses like generics and eye care, lose focus on the core innovation, which is what we're best at. So when we looked at it in 2018, we said, look, there's so much innovation happening in innovative medicines, so much innovation happening in that world of early science. We cannot afford to split our capital across all these different businesses. And so we really then decided we need to focus down, it was a long journey, but I think it was the right one. But it was really about saying, look, what are we great at? Where do we want to focus our capital? And that's what we should be doing.
Kristen Scholer:
Now with over 78,000 associates operating across hundreds of countries, Novartis does reach more than 250 million at patients annually, quite a large number. How do you approach culture building and organizational alignment to ensure that regardless of the location, patients consistently get that same high level of care?
Vasant Narasimhan:
Culture, I think ultimately is what a leader leaves is the legacy you leave that culture is going to be what continues to drive Novartis performance for decades to come. In 2018, when I started, we decided we wanted to make a significant shift in the culture from one that was more top-down to one that we called inspired, curious, and unbossed. Inspired by our purpose, curious about the world, and people who are unbossed with the ability to pursue their work and with leaders who take more of a servant leader mindset. Now, that's a big task as you outline. At the time then we were actually 135,000 people because we had all of those other businesses operating in over a hundred countries. So I'd say we've come a long way on that culture journey, and I think now that we are a more focused company, it gets easier.
But the thing I've learned about culture is it's all about starting the great conversation in the organization. If you take the example of unboss, when we rolled that word out, most people didn't know what we meant. Lots of debate in the organization, lots of different interpretations. But in having those discussions about what kind of leaders do we want, what kind of associates and employees do we want? Actually, I think our culture got stronger and we got more clarity that we actually want people to feel empowered, but within guardrails. And we want leaders to create clarity but also remove obstacles for their people. And I think we've done a pretty good job of really transforming the culture. Now it's a challenge. What unbossed means in China versus what it means in the United States is a very different thing or in different parts of the world. But I'd say the spirit in the company has really been transformed over these years.
Kristen Scholer:
So your journey with Novartis started in 2005, and you've had roles obviously spanning vaccines and drug development, also spent time during your studies and career addressing critical global health issues including HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria in regions like India, Africa, and South America. How is this early focus on tackling some of the world's most pressing health crises shaped your leadership approach at Novartis?
Vasant Narasimhan:
Well, I think early on in your career is where you build your value system. And I was very fortunate in my early part of my time in medicine to work with really pioneers people like Paul Farmer, Richard Cash, Jim Kim, I mean these are really public health giants and working on really big public health programs like the first antiretroviral treatment program in Africa, some of the largest efforts on malaria and tuberculosis. And it instilled in me a deep passion for public health, a deep passion to improve the health of patients around the globe, which I still carry with me today. The realization that you can use technology to make big jumps in the quality of life and hopefully life expectancy in people, that's what we've seen in everyone of those diseases. And also I think a realization that you have to inspire large groups of people to really make big things happen. And that's what each one of those leaders did.
So it was amazing time working on the ground, but it was tough. I mean, back in those days, HIV AIDS was a death sentence. I mean, malaria was tough to treat in those clinics. But I think it gives still for me today, a lot of motivation to say we've moved so far on human health around the globe, and we can move so much further if we stay the course. And I would say right now, I mean Novartis truly is one of the leaders in global health and in access to medicines, we were actually ranked number one in the world in the access to Medicines Index. So for me, that's very fulfilling to say today I work in a role where we're having a massive impact on malaria, massive impact on access to medicines. So I think that's carried through my career.
Kristen Scholer:
Well, shifting to artificial intelligence, I know right now only one in 10 medicines in development currently succeed. So across industries, AI has shown immense potential to boost efficiency and accelerate processes. In the context of drug development, do you believe that AI and its capabilities bring us closer to achieving two in 10, maybe even a three in 10 success rate compared to where we stood before, of course, the artificial intelligence boom?
Vasant Narasimhan:
That's a big question. And we are investing, of course, in all of these technologies, but I think it's still early days. Actually I'm just coming back from Davos where actually AI was the topic, and AI in drug discovery was actually a really big topic, many big statements being made. But I think the tricky thing here is we know AI can accelerate many steps in drug development. We hopefully will find that it actually designs better medicines, but we won't really know what it's doing until five, seven years from now. And the reason for that is that we actually have to take every one of these generative medicines that AI creates and take them through the process of animal testing, early preclinical testing, clinical testing in humans, and then we'll know did AI actually make a better medicine maybe than we would have in the past. So I think all of the potential is there, but there's still a lot to learn as the years progress.
But then there's one other element of the story which I don't think is adequately described by many of the tech companies who are working in AI. We probably only understand different people have different views, around two to 4% of what's going on in the human body. And so there's so much we don't understand, and yet AI can only make its projections based on what we know. And what it's projecting about the 96% we don't know could all be wrong. In fact, even when you look at some major tools like AlphaFold, they rely on a lot of what they would call synthetic data, synthetic proteins that they've made, and predicted will be a certain way, but we don't know yet. So I think it's important that we approach this with humility. I think there's a lot of potential. I hope it doubles the success rate. I hope it takes two to three or four years off of the timelines. But I think we should also go in with reasonable expectations and learn as we go and keep adapting.
Kristen Scholer:
So certainly it sounds like it would have an impact on patients globally based on the timeline that you just shared.
Vasant Narasimhan:
I think it might have an impact, but we're going to see in a couple of years.
Kristen Scholer:
Yeah. How do you see it transforming the traditional R&D process for the pharmaceutical industry?
Vasant Narasimhan:
Well, I think in kind of our core process in generating productivity, there I think it's certainly having an impact. If we put aside fundamental drug discovery and say, can you move a medicine now faster into the clinic? Can you run a clinical trial more quickly? Can you identify physicians who could recruit a clinical study more quickly? Can you generate documents more efficiently? All of these things, yes, there's no question AI is having an impact. Now that impact is probably six months to a year on the overall timelines, and maybe that will compound over time. But certainly we're trying to embed AI in every step of the R&D process so we can actually accelerate drugs through our pipeline.
Kristen Scholer:
It does offer AI, the promise has been that it offers immense potential, but does obviously require very careful navigation to ensure that it's used ethically, responsibly, and with as few risks as possible. How is Novartis balancing that?
Vasant Narasimhan:
What we've put in place is a clear AI code of ethics within the company. So we're very clear on how we will use AI and how we won't use AI, really ensuring that patient data is protected, that we are identifying sources of bias and making sure that bias doesn't propagate through our systems. So I think we're doing all the right things to ensure AI is used in the right way, but I think it's going to be something we have to keep looking at because as these systems get more and more powerful, the complexity also increases on the guardrails we need to put in place. I think it'll also be interesting to see in our world how regulators start to think about the use of AI. How will FDA think about AI-generated data? How will other regulators around the world think about that? I think those are all things that are in play. But I think I feel pretty good that we have good guardrails in place and are being thoughtful about how we use AI in our company.
Kristen Scholer:
We mentioned obviously its massive potential. But early last year, Novartis did enter a collaboration with Isomorphic Labs, a digital biology company, revolutionizing drug discovery through AI. What made Isomorphic Labs right for this collaboration, and how do you think that the partnership is going to advance AI-driven drug discovery?
Vasant Narasimhan:
I think Isomorphic Labs is an extraordinary organization. I think it's well known now. Their founder, Demis Hassabis, has won the Nobel Prize, and I think that's a testament to the impact of the work they've had. Isomorphic Labs is really an outgrowth of Google DeepMind, and the accomplishment that they had a couple of years ago was to be the first organization to figure out with AlphaFold how to predict the structure of all 20,000 known human proteins. And this was an immense accomplishment. There are now millions of researchers around the globe using AlphaFold day in and day out in their research work. And what that does is it opens up the possibilities of using that technology to say, we can really understand the structure of a protein now using AI. Maybe AI can help us find a drug to actually modulate or stop the function of that protein.
And so what we are doing with Isomorphic Labs is we picked three of these protein targets that are really hard to create a drug for using traditional approaches. And we're asking the question, can AI solve this? And I say, we're seeing positive trends already. And now we're going to hopefully expand that collaboration over time to more and more targets. And this is what I meant with my earlier comments. I mean, this is the potential, right? If we can start drugging the what we call undruggable targets within the human body using AI, we open up whole new areas of medicine. Of course, the tricky thing is it will be a few years till we know did this work, and then animal models did it work in humans. But we're very excited about this collaboration. They are really, I think, the leading minds in really predicting how molecules in the body, their structure and potentially their function.
Kristen Scholer:
Is there any more you can share Vas about how this would shorten the timeline for new medicines?
Vasant Narasimhan:
I think it could be substantial. I mean, if you look at it right now from getting an early drug that we first have an idea around and then getting that into humans can take anywhere from three to five years. And with AI maybe we can shorten that in half, which is already a big, big advantage. I think over time we also hope, as you mentioned earlier, could this actually increase the probability of success of these medicines? And then actually we have less failures, which is also a huge gain.
Kristen Scholer:
Novartis is a global leader in radioligand therapies. That's a groundbreaking approach to cancer care. And with cancer remaining the second leading cause of death among Americans as of 2023. Walk us through the science behind this and how it stands apart from traditional treatments like a chemotherapy.
Vasant Narasimhan:
Look, I think this is really cool science. You know that many of our listeners will know that cancer is often treated by radiation, but that radiation is just really radiating the body. It hits healthy tissue, it hits cancerous tissue, lots of side effects, very difficult for patients to tolerate. So the idea here is what if you could take a drug that goes to a cancer and link that drug to a radioactive particle. And you have very, very small doses of radiation go directly into the tumor and really only impact the tumor with minimal impact to the rest of the body? And that's what we've done. And we already have two drugs approved with this technology, one for prostate cancer, one for neuroendocrine tumors. And what we see is efficacy shrinking the tumors. And then we also see very good safety. And what's amazing about this technology as well is you can see how the treatment is working.
Because it uses nuclear technology, you can do a scan of the patient's body, see where the tumors are, treat, scan again, and you see the tumor start to disappear. And that's very important I think, for patients and for oncologists. So right now we have a very big effort. We have manufacturing sites around the world. We have, I think about 15 different candidate drugs that are being advanced in our pipeline at various stages to tackle different types of cancer. As I mentioned, two drugs already in market. We've recently announced a hundred million dollar investments in China and separate one in Japan to expand our manufacturing network. So a tremendous potential with this technology, I mean we estimate this could be a $30 billion market over time.
Kristen Scholer:
Wow. What are the biggest challenges, Vas, or barriers to expanding the adoption of this technology? And if these obstacles are addressed, how do you think the role of this can evolve in terms of cancer treatment over the next 10 years?
Vasant Narasimhan:
Always when you introduce a technology like this, there's a paradigm shift, and that takes time to move through the healthcare system. We already have the capacity to use radioligand therapies in large hospital systems and academic medical centers. And now we're trying to move this capacity further and further out into the community. But that takes educating oncologists, getting them comfortable with referring patients, understanding the safety and the benefits of the technology, hopefully making it simpler to use. Most of the challenge here is not that the medicine or the data or the supply chain, it's really getting the clinical pathways in place so that patients get routed to the right place and are able to get the medicine that they need. So we're making progress on this in the U.S., also in Europe, in China, in Japan step by step. So I'm very confident that in the five to 10 year period, this will become something that's very easily and commonly used within clinical practice. I do think over the next five years, that's the great task for Novartis is to actually now build a capacity within the healthcare system to use the medicine effectively.
Kristen Scholer:
Radioligand therapy, as you've been discussing here, a prime example of how cancer care is advancing. And so while the goal remains finding a cure, do you believe that we are closer to significantly reducing mortality rates through improved treatments, better drugs, and preventative measures, even if a single cure still does remain elusive?
Vasant Narasimhan:
For some cancers now, we've made tremendous progress. If you look for many blood cancers, B-cell cancers and related cancers, we can move patients into remission for very long periods of time. So if you take the example of Novartis's CAR-T therapy, KYMRIAH in children, I mean 80% of the children who received this therapy who would otherwise have had either death or repeated therapies with very toxic therapies over time, 80% of these patients go into full remission. I mean, it's absolutely extraordinary. So we've seen those great gains now in blood cancers and getting even better gains over time. Now I think the big challenge is in the world of solid tumors, places like breast cancer, lung cancer, gastrointestinal cancers, et cetera. And there the key is can we get to earlier diagnosis and then earlier treatment? That's something the whole industry has been working towards. Diagnostics are getting better, early treatment is getting better.
We have a great example with one of our medicines, Kisqali, which is now used in women with early breast cancer. And I think we're going to have more examples like that. I mean Kisqali could be Novartis's largest drug over time. So I think we have a lot of opportunity now with these technologies to hopefully get to earlier diagnosis, earlier treatment and better outcomes. And I think that's what the whole industry has to work towards. And step by step, then maybe we get to the C-word, maybe not the cure, but maybe what we would say long-term remissions.
Kristen Scholer:
I think many people around the world would be happy about that Vas. Novartis has made significant investments also in advancing gene and cell therapies, including pioneering treatments for conditions like spinal muscular atrophy. As these therapies continue to evolve, how do you envision their role in transforming medicine from primarily reactive care to a more preventative and curative approach?
Vasant Narasimhan:
What we see now is pretty extraordinary on the side of gene therapy, at least with Zolgensma, which is our medicine for spinal muscular atrophy. This is a disease that can affect children, genetic disease that affects children and children with the most severe form of the disease will not even live to their second year of life. And so we've seen it now successfully rolled out in over 50 countries around the globe, and our hope is to find additional gene therapies for severe diseases in children over time. Now, separate from that in cell therapy, this was an exciting space. I mentioned KYMRIAH, other companies as well have found cell therapy to be a pretty transformative medicine in the world of blood cancers. But we've recently had a breakthrough actually driven by scientists in Germany that showed that cell therapy can actually treat severe diseases of the immune system. These are diseases like systemic lupus, perhaps rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma. And what these scientists found is when you give a cell therapy, you can actually almost reset the immune system so that the immune system no longer attacks the patient's own healthy cells.
And it's like moving back a disease that has affected this patient for 25, 30 years, almost to year one or year two, in some cases even complete remission. Absolutely extraordinary results. We saw this and a few other companies saw these results, and we've been chasing them now very fast. We've actually got seven different clinical trials ongoing with cell therapies to basically say, can we get more and more patients to a remission who are in the late stages of this disease? And of course, other technologies now are coming out that also pursue this whole area of immune reset. I think 10 years from now, we'll be thinking not just how can we chronically treat people with severe immune diseases, but how can we reset their immune system and get them back to normalcy? And that's again, a tremendous breakthrough in medicine. So we're excited not only to be working in the worlds like RLT and gene therapy, but now in this whole new world of cell therapy for immune diseases.
Kristen Scholer:
It's quite impressive Vas. So in October 2024, the CDC reported that nearly 86 million U.S. adults ages 20 or older, have total cholesterol levels above 200. And traditionally managed cholesterol has relied on daily medications. How is Novartis using SI RNA based therapies, revolutionized treatment for high cholesterol and provided innovative alternatives to some of these more conventional daily medicines.
Vasant Narasimhan:
Yeah, SI RNA technology is really exciting and it builds off of pioneering work that actually won the Nobel Prize in the 1980s, but took many years to really mature. What it enables you to do is instead of taking a pill every single day as you outlined, whether it's to reduce your cholesterol or to reduce your blood pressure, is to take an injection once every six months, perhaps over time, once a year, and get extraordinary reductions in your cholesterol or in other elements of your cardiovascular system. So we have one medicine already launched, it's called LEQVIO. It takes on a target called PCSK9 in patients who are already on cholesterol lowering therapy, it reduces cholesterol another 60% with only two injections a year. And the idea here is to take one of the fundamental challenges we have around the globe in cardiovascular disease, is that even when patients know they're at high risk for a heart attack or a stroke or a cardiovascular event, only around 30 to 40% of patients stay on their medicines.
Because it's hard to take a medicine every single day, twice a day, sometimes more, and stay on that medicine day in and day out if there are side effects, the cost, etc., etc. And so the idea with SI RNAs is can we get more and more of those medicines to once, twice a year, maybe once a year injections? And we think that could be transformative to public health over time. So we've seen very strong uptake for our first SI RNA of LEQVIO, as I mentioned, for cardiovascular risk reduction. We have a portfolio of over 10 of these medicines now we're bringing forward, all with the idea to say we take known drug targets that are pills or things that have to be taken every day, and we try to make them every six months or every one year.
And we hope maybe 10 years from now, maybe a patient could take an injection cover all of the bases. And could you imagine then, your loved ones who need to prevent heart attacks and strokes could just take one injection a year, and how much better the compliance would be, and hopefully how much better the outcomes would be.
Kristen Scholer:
Well, in addition to organic investments and advancements in these various treatments, how do you approach evaluating potential M&A opportunities to strengthen and expand your pipeline within the key therapeutic areas?
Vasant Narasimhan:
We're always asking ourselves is how do we complement a strong internal pipeline? Novartis invests between nine and a half and $10 billion a year in R&D. And our goal is to always be relying on our own research labs for a strong base. But we also know around 40 to 45% of our medicines at any given point in time come from external opportunities, biotech companies that have made fundamental discoveries. So we always ask, is it something that fits a gap we have in one of our four core therapeutic areas, or is it an exciting new technology? The way we enter gene therapy was through an acquisition. The way we entered radioligand therapy was through two acquisitions. The way we've built out our small interfering RNA portfolio with a large $9 billion plus acquisition and a series of smaller deals. And so its deals have allowed us to bring in these technologies and then we scale them in-house. So fit with TAs, fit with technology, that's what we're looking for.
Kristen Scholer:
So I mentioned earlier your previous work tackling some of the world's most significant how the crises, and it is impressive. So to continue championing access throughout the world, that is something that I know you'll be focused on. And I'm curious in terms of how Novartis is working to expand access to innovative medicines in developing countries.
Vasant Narasimhan:
This is a area of high passion for me, as we talked about at the outset of our conversation. When you look back in time, Novartis has been part of the journey of access to medicines. Going back to the late-nineteen seventies, early-nineteen eighties, we started out primarily working on drug donations. So we, for instance, donate the entire global supply of medicines to treat leprosy everywhere in the world. Over time, we expanded that into doing work in R&D. So we actually made one of the most important discoveries in malaria medicines, the discoverer of that, a Chinese scientist actually won the Nobel Prize. Novartis developed that medicine into a drug called COARTEM, which has created a whole class of malaria treatments. But then we evolved our thinking. We realized that most of our work is in innovative medicines in areas like cancer and cardiovascular disease and immunology. So now our focus is how to make those medicines accessible in low and middle income countries as fast as possible.
And we're getting better and better at that, we can always get better. But as I mentioned, we were ranked number one in the access to medicines index with our work in getting those medicines to Africa, Latin America, Asia, et cetera. So that's hard work. We'll continue that journey, but it's something that's a huge priority for our company. The other thing I'll say is we invest $250 million into finding the next wave of medicines for neglected tropical diseases. These are diseases like leishmaniasis and Dengue fever, because we believe it's part of our mission as an organization to keep generating the R&D and innovations needed to help those patients all around the globe.
Kristen Scholer:
So as we wrap up Vas, and of course look ahead to Novartis's near and long-term future, what opportunities are you excited about and what do you see as the company's role in shaping the future of medicine?
Vasant Narasimhan:
First on the future of medicine, I think our company is all about doing the hard things that many other companies shy away from. If you look at our history, we've been pioneers in many different therapeutic areas and many different technologies. And I think today is no different. We're pioneering cell therapies, we're pioneering gene therapies, pioneering RNA therapeutics, pioneering radioligand therapy. It's not easy to be a pioneer to be the first one through. You have to build the capacity within the healthcare system. You have to solve a lot of the technical and scientific challenges. But I really view Novartis as a company, truly reimagining medicine by pioneering these new technologies. And I think we have to keep that ethos. That's what makes our company different, that's what makes our company special. And I'm really excited in the coming years to see many of these technologies start to mature.
I think in the coming years we're going to see that these technologies really lead to breakthroughs in cancer, in cardiovascular disease, some of the biggest killers on the planet, hopefully breakthroughs for patients with immunological diseases, maybe being able to tackle childhood diseases that have no solution right now with the gene therapies. So if we can look back five years from now and say, these bets we made in these new technology areas lead to real transformations for patients. I mean, that's the legacy we leave. I always think to myself, the only legacies we really leave in a world like Novartis are the medicines we leave the planet because those medicines impact generations of people and last for decades, and that's what we have to keep pioneering every single day.
Kristen Scholer:
Vas, thank you so much for joining us Inside the ICE House.
Vasant Narasimhan:
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:
That's our conversation for this week. Remember to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen, and follow us on X @ICEHousePodcast. From the New York Stock Exchange, we'll talk to you again next week Inside the ICE House. Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties express or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information, and do not sponsor, approve or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the preceding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.
