Economic Performance: Customers

Bristol-Myers Squibb’s core businesses share a common focus on health care and on forming important and lasting relationships with both consumers and health care providers.

The company's products are sold principally to the wholesale and retail trade. Certain products are also sold to other drug manufacturers, hospitals, and the medical profession. In addition, Bristol-Myers Squibb is committed to improving access to our medicines for those who cannot otherwise afford them.

Sales

Bristol-Myers Squibb's worldwide sales (restated) are shown in the following table:

2004	2005	2006	2005-2006 change
$19,380 million	$19,207 million	$17,914 million	-7%

Bristol-Myers Squibb products are available in virtually every country in the world. The company's largest markets include the United States, France, Japan, Germany, Italy, and Canada.

2006 Sales by Region

United States	55%
Europe, Mid-East, Africa	25%
Pacific	11%
Other Western Hemisphere	9%

2006 Sales by Business Segment

Pharmaceuticals	77%
Nutritionals	13%
Other Health Care	10%

Access to Medicines

As Bristol-Myers Squibb seeks to ensure a healthier future for people everywhere by developing innovative pharmaceuticals and related health care products, we have intensified our efforts to find ways of making those therapies available to those who need them most. For example, through our company’s own patient assistance programs in the U.S. — among the oldest and most generous in the industry — we provided more than $600 million in free medicines in 2005 to more than 800,000 people.

While such programs have long been central to Bristol-Myers Squibb’s efforts to lift barriers to treatment, a number of new initiatives were launched in 2005 to go further.

Access in the U.S.

In April, the company joined with its industry counterparts to make industry access programs more accessible and comprehensible. The new nationwide Partnership for Prescription Assistance offers a “one-stop shopping” approach for people to more easily navigate through the multitude of industry and government programs that can help them gain greater and more affordable access to medications. It links over 475 prescription assistance programs across the U.S. and already has helped more than 2.4 million people. A new website, www.pparx.org, and toll-free number (1-888-477-2669) have been set up to help patients, caregivers and health care providers.

Other domestic patient assistance initiatives include free ConvaTec ostomy products and the Mead Johnson Helping Hand for Special Kids program, which provides infant nutrition to babies and children with special needs, regardless of financial status, and which has assisted more than 50,000 families over 15 years.

In January 2005, the company joined with nine other companies in Together Rx Access, a program that offers meaningful savings to millions of non-Medicare eligible, uninsured Americans not eligible for other discount or access programs. The Together Rx Access Card is the latest innovation in our ongoing quest to broaden the access to medicines for patients in need. Overall, across the 10 manufacturers participating in this program, eligible recipients qualify for discounts of 25 to 40 percent or more on over 275 brand name prescription medicines and products, as well as a wide range of generics.

Many of the company's prescription medications are provided without charge in the U.S., Puerto , and the U.S. Virgin Islands by the Bristol-Myers Squibb Patient Assistance Foundation to patients with a financial hardship who have no public or private prescription drug insurance and are not eligible for prescription drug coverage. Physicians enroll patients in the program on a yearly basis. Company oncology and virology products are available to eligible patients without charge through the Bristol-Myers Squibb/AmeriCares Oncology Virology Access Program.

Access in Developing Countries

Our efforts continue to focus on enhancing the capacities of countries and communities to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS and to support and sustain those affected by it. Providing access to medicines alone will not be sufficient to address this global pandemic. Health care infrastructures must be developed and enhanced, stigmatization must be overcome, health care worker capacity must be built and preserved, and local people must be empowered to generate and sustain local solutions to this global problem.

Outside the United States, the company works with governments and other interested organizations to improve access to medicines. Through a unique partnership of several pharmaceutical companies and United Nations agencies, Bristol-Myers Squibb continues to expand a program that offers HIV medications at significant discounts. The company assists developing countries with discounts of up to 93 percent off the U.S. prices of HIV drugs Videx (didanosine) and Zerit (stavudine). To date, more than 36 developing countries have participated. And in sub-Saharan Africa, these products are being provided at no profit to the company.

Bristol-Myers Squibb also has broken new ground in philanthropic programs focused on the HIV/AIDS crisis in southern and West Africa through the $150 million SECURE THE FUTURE program—an innovative, comprehensive, public-private initiative that Bristol-Myers Squibb and the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation launched in 1999. As part of that effort, we have paid special attention to address the needs of a vulnerable group that has too long been given low priority—the children of the region—affected and infected by HIV/AIDS.

In last 2003, partnering with local governments and the Baylor College of Medicine, we opened Africa’s first treatment center focused exclusively on AIDS treatments for children and their families – in Botswana. It is the largest such center in the world today. In Lesotho in 2005 and in Swaziland in 2006, we opened two additional pediatric AIDS centers, in countries where an estimated 36,000 children are infected with HIV. We also announced plans to build centers in Uganda and Burkina Faso. Also in 2005, we funded, along with our partner at Baylor, the world’s first Pediatric AIDS Corps of physicians—250 U.S. pediatricians who will work in our treatment clinics as well as in remote areas of Africa to deliver care to up to 80,000 infants and children with AIDS over a five-year period. These physicians will also train local health care practitioners to provide the specialized care that children with HIV require.

As that work continues in Africa, the company and the Foundation have been supporting programs in other hard-hit areas of the world, including Asia, the former Soviet Union and Latin America, to expand capacity and create sustainable solutions to this terrible pandemic.

Bristol-Myers Squibb in February 2006 announced an agreement for technology transfer and voluntary license with generic manufacturers Aspen PharmaCare and Emcure Pharmaceuticals for atazanavir, the company's once-daily protease inhibitor for HIV/AIDS that was initially approved in the U.S. in June 2003 for use in combination therapy with other anti-HIV medicines. Bristol-Myers Squibb will grant a royalty-free license to Aspen and Emcure to manufacture and sell atazanavir in sub-Saharan Africa. A separate agreement has been concluded with Emcure covering India.

Under the agreement, Bristol-Myers Squibb will provide a royalty-free license to operate under relevant patents and will transfer to Aspen and Emcure its technical know-how related to the manufacturing, testing, packaging, storage and handling of the active pharmaceutical ingredient and the finished dosage form of atazanavir. Bristol-Myers Squibb staff will provide technical training at its manufacturing facilities for Emcure and Aspen, and will also travel to Aspen's and Emcure's facilities in South Africa and India to provide further hands-on training. In addition, Bristol-Myers Squibb will provide support for regulatory filings to the two companies.

In August 2005, Bristol-Myers Squibb ranked third among the top corporate charitable contributors, according to a new survey by The Chronicle of Philanthropy. The company was one of four pharmaceutical companies making up the list of the top five largest corporate donors in combined cash and product giving. The company donated more than $750 million in product donations and cash contributions and programs, providing disaster relief following the tsunami in South Asia in late 2004, Hurricane Katrina in the U.S., Hurricane Stan in Central America and after the massive earthquake in Pakistan in 2005.

For more information on access to medicines, visit the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation and Corporate Philanthropy website.

Intellectual Property

Intellectual property law provides incentives for innovative pharmaceutical research, and this research benefits patients by establishing the basis for approval of important new treatment for diseases. By pursuing these incentives, Bristol-Myers Squibb fulfills its obligations to its stockholders, and, at the same time, advances the company's mission to extend and enhance human life. It is important that, in making decisions on intellectual property matters, we keep these dual objectives in mind. It is entirely appropriate for the company to seek and secure rights to its employees' inventions. Also, in order to offer physicians and patients a wider variety of therapies, we can and should license the inventions of others. Finally, the company is entitled to own the data that we generate about our medicines.

In evaluating what intellectual property rights to seek and how to enforce them, Bristol-Myers Squibb will consider the following criteria:

The extent to which the invention or research contributes significantly to the improvement of patient care (e.g., greater safety, efficacy, comfort and convenience, etc.).
The extent to which the invention or research improves the quality or efficiency of the manufacturing process.
Whether the invention improves the research process itself (e.g., allows us to screen or evaluate more potential new medicines).
Whether the invention or research can provide a return on investment, and whether the intellectual property rights sought would benefit the shareholders.
Whether the invention or research can provide valuable new information on how better to use existing products to benefit patients (e.g., new uses for medicines).
In circumstances in which patients may not be able to obtain adequate access to our products (e.g., in the poorest countries), whether any intellectual property rights obtained should be licensed to others and/or product should be made available by the company at a reduced price.

At the same time, in deciding how to exercise our legitimate intellectual property rights, the company will consider all aspects of our company's Pledge. For example, we are committed to fair dealing and conscientious citizenship. This means that Bristol-Myers Squibb will seek to obtain intellectual property only by lawful and ethical means, and to enforce only those intellectual property rights that we believe to be valid. We will place the highest priority on obtaining intellectual property for those innovations that provide the greatest medical benefit to patients. And we stand by our series of initiatives—from our patient assistance programs to SECURE THE FUTURE®—to make Bristol-Myers Squibb medicines widely available to patients who cannot afford them.

Last updated August 27, 2007 . Italicized product names are registered trademarks of Bristol-Myers Squibb Company or one of its divisions or subsidiaries. Copyright © 1998-2006 Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. Your use of the information on this site is subject to the terms of our Legal Notices.