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• Chairman's and CEO's summary

Chairman's and CEO's summary

Every day we are involved in a race that unites more than 100,000 people at GSK: in finding new medicines and vaccines that meet unmet medical needs; in ensuring that patients have access to these new medicines regardless of their financial circumstances; and in meeting the expectations of our many stakeholders, including you - our shareholder. It is a race with many stages and we won't win them all. But, as we take part, we never forget the real focus of our efforts: the human race.

2006 was a year of positive achievement for GSK as we continued to make progress on all fronts. Sales growth is coming from an ever-widening portfolio of fast-growing products that, combined with good cost control, has enabled us to deliver a strong financial performance. We also have very healthy momentum in our pipeline, with ten new products added to our late-stage development efforts in the last 12 months. For all these reasons, we look to the future with confidence.

Financial performance and outlook

Your company delivered a strong financial performance in 2006. Turnover of £23.2 billion is an increase of 9 per cent at constant exchange rates (CER)*. Earnings per share (EPS) were 95.5 pence, with growth of 19 per cent.

This performance was driven by sales of key pharmaceutical products including Seretide/Advair for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the Avandia group of products for diabetes, Coreg for heart disease, Lamictal for epilepsy and bipolar disorder, Valtrex for herpes, and our vaccines.

Although we performed well in a tough environment, the US political climate together with investor concern over pipeline delays resulted in our share price ending the year 9 per cent lower than at 1 January 2006.

Looking ahead, we expect new clinical data to help deliver growth from Seretide/Advair and the Avandia group of products, and continued good performance from our vaccines business. We plan to launch new products in both our Pharmaceutical and Consumer Healthcare businesses. In addition, we expect to continue to achieve savings through improved operational efficiency. The combination of new products and enhanced efficiency will help offset the impact of generic competition to Zofran and Wellbutrin XL during the coming 12 months and we expect to deliver 2007 EPS growth of 8 to 10 per cent in CER terms.

Delivering our pipeline for patients

Our pipeline is significant, with 158 projects in clinical development at the end of February 2007.

Although we had some setbacks during the year, including cancellation of Redona for diabetes, we have a great ability to reload our pipeline. And it is beginning to flow strongly, delivering much-needed new treatments for patients and opportunities for us. We now have 31 major product opportunities in phase III development or registration and we plan to launch five major new pharmaceutical products in 2007: Tykerb for breast cancer, Cervarix to prevent cervical cancer, Allermist/Avamys for allergic rhinitis, Coreg CR for heart conditions and Trexima for migraine.

Our Consumer Healthcare portfolio will also be strengthened in 2007 with the launch of ten products, including alli, the first FDA-approved OTC treatment for weight loss in the US.

Best place to work

We work hard to create a working environment where the best people can do their best work and the results of our biennial employee opinion survey demonstrated that we are enjoying real success. For overall satisfaction, GSK scored higher than any of our peers in the benchmark group of major companies and 90 per cent of managers are proud to work for GSK.

Playing our part

In 2006, our global community investment contributions were valued at £302 million, equivalent to 3.9 per cent of Group profit before tax. This is a significant sum, but such commitment is no less than should be expected from a company in our industry. We have the capability and the desire to reach out to patients and to find solutions to healthcare challenges worldwide, helping people do more, feel better and live longer.

 

* The Group´s practice is to discuss its results in terms of constant exchange rate (CER) growth (see Business operating review).