The thing I like the most about my job is the fact that it's global, it's dynamic and I have the chance to work with the most talented people in Teva's Finance and in the banking industry.
My name is Amit Hazan and I'm working in Teva's headquarters in Tel Aviv, Israel. I'm managing Teva's corporate financing activities and banking relations. In other words, it means that I work with the world's largest banks in order to make sure Teva has enough access to liquidity and to the debt and capital markets at any given point in time.
The 3 trends I'm excited about are the evolution of green financing solutions, cash flow optimization and continuous hedging against macro-economic headwinds.
The first trend I'm watching is about the evolution of green financing solutions. Two of the world’s greatest challenges these days are climate change and lack of access to affordable medicines in certain parts of the world. We in Teva do a lot of work in order to tackle and to address these two concerns. I'm proud to say that in Teva's Finance we managed to accelerate Teva's sustainability journey by linking between our financial results and our environmental results. Back in 2021, we issued 5 billion dollars of sustainability linked bonds, followed by another 2 and a half billion in 2023. Issuing sustainability linked bonds creates a strong link between your financial results and your sustainability targets and by that, it incentivizes the company to achieve its sustainability targets.
The second trend I'm watching is cashflow optimization. We in Teva, and you can see it across all the industry, are working to strengthen our cashflows and by that creating growth opportunities. Given the recent developments in the markets, especially the dramatically increasing interest rates, money became more valuable. This means that the cost of funding from external resources became more and more expensive. So companies, instead of going to seek for external funding which is now more expensive, will first seek to optimize their internal cash flows by unlocking working capital.
The third trend I'm watching is the continuous hedging against macro-economic headwinds. In the past few years, the world is facing tremendous macro-economic headwinds, unprecedented and unexpected. It started with COVID, followed by high energy prices, high inflation and then followed by higher interest rates. In Teva, our number one priority is to ensure that our 200 million patients have access to their medicines every day, anytime, anywhere. We in Teva Finance engage in multiple hedging strategies through various hedging instruments in order to protect the company's financials against foreign exchange risks, interest rates risks and higher energy prices. Securing the company's financials allows Teva to keep supporting its patients every day.
