CSL Ltd Annual Report 2021

Chair message Dear Fellow Shareholders, I am pleased to share our results and operating review for FY2021. Over the last year, the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to challenge the world. For our business, it added an enormous amount of complexity as we worked to protect the lives of our patients – who are heavily reliant on an uninterrupted supply of our products – while taking every measure to keep our employees safe and well. Our people have risen to these challenges and our performance has been strong, delivering a reported net profit after tax of $2.375 billion, up 13%. On behalf of the Board, I express my deepest thanks to CEO Paul Perreault, to CSL’s management team and to all 25,000 employees for keeping our operations and commercial networks running efficiently while navigating changing pandemic management conditions across the countries we operate in. While the pandemic continues to evolve, I am optimistic for a global recovery in the not too distant future. The productivity we have seen from the scientific community to make this a possibility in a mere 18 months has been remarkable. Our Company also rose to the challenge and played a meaningful part in the broader global response, collaborating across organisations, geographic borders and political lines to contribute to solutions. Early in 2020, we worked with the University of Queensland during the primary stages of its UQ-CSL v451 COVID-19 vaccine candidate. While Phase I clinical trials showed promising results, at the time the candidate was deemed unsuitable to progress to Phase II/III clinical trials; a large-scale study that would have been led by Seqirus. Although this was a disappointing decision, the progress made through this collaboration in just 10 months of work was an impressive achievement. CSL Behring co-founded the CoVIg-19 Plasma Alliance, an unprecedented industry group of 11 companies across more than 13 countries and five continents, to develop a potential plasma-derived hyperimmune therapy for treating COVID-19. The collaboration concluded in April 2021 as the research program did not meet primary endpoints, but we felt the learnings from the collaboration were worth every effort made. As the pandemic emerged, along with a global shortage of vaccine, we offered our skills, breadth and capabilities to a number of leading COVID-19 vaccine developers in support of onshore vaccine manufacturing for Australia. We were very pleased to have been able to partner with AstraZeneca and the Australian Government so that AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine could be produced for our home country. Our contribution builds on our 100-year history as a proven pandemic partner to Australia and demonstrates the deep skills and expertise in biotech manufacturing. CSL’s Board and Management Team are cognisant of the opportunities that may be unlocked for our industry, and organisation, from the pandemic. One is the ‘acceleration’ of science. Public confidence in scientific research has never been higher. We have clearly seen the benefits of an investment in science, and business, industry, academia and governments must now capitalise on this to make breakthroughs in other areas, with the aim of advancing newmedicines to support human health. For CSL, this goal has been in our DNA for over 100 years through our commitment to improving the lives of our patients. US$2.375 billion in reported net profit after tax US$2.22 dividend per share for 2021 CSL Limited Annual Report 2020/21 2 1 Chair and CEOmessage