Diane Weiser
Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs

Hello, everyone. I’m Diane Weiser, Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs. I’m pleased to welcome everyone to our investor event to discuss the primary results from ACACIA-HCM, the pivotal Phase III clinical trial of aficamten in nonobstructive HCM. Today’s event is being hosted in a hybrid fashion. I’d like to welcome those here in the room with us in Munich as well as those joining online.

I’m pleased to introduce from Cytokinetics, Dr. Fady Malik, Steve Heitner and Robert Blum. And I’m also thrilled to welcome 3 leading experts in HCM for our panel discussions today, Dr. Martin Maron, Dr. Ahmad Masri and Dr. Christina Paitazoglou. Today’s agenda will begin with — is it on the slide? Today’s — we’re going to pause for a minute. Turning to today’s agenda. Fady Malik will provide some brief opening remarks. Next, Dr. Masri and Maron will provide an encore presentation of the ACACIA-HCM results that were presented earlier today in the hotline session at the Congress.

Then Steve will facilitate a panel discussion and Q&A session. And finally, Robert Blum will close us out providing some remarks. For those online, today’s slides are available for download in the webcast. You can submit questions to the panel at any point

For years, comparing a phone chip to a laptop processor felt like an apples-to-oranges exercise. That gap has narrowed considerably with Apple’s latest generation of iPhones, and benchmark data on the standard iPhone 17 shows just how far the company’s custom silicon has come relative to hardware found in mainstream Windows laptops.

The iPhone 17, which Apple released in September alongside the iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Pro models, runs on the company’s A19 chip. According to benchmark listings compiled from user-submitted results on the Geekbench Browser, the standard iPhone 17 recorded a single-core CPU score of roughly 3,608 and a multi-core score of about 8,810 on the Geekbench 6 test. Its graphics performance, measured using Geekbench’s Metal test for Apple hardware, came in at roughly 37,014, which the review site GSMArena reported was a 33% improvement over the previous year’s iPhone 16.

Those single-core numbers are notable because they land in the same range as, or in some cases exceed, single-core scores from many current Windows laptop processors, including some higher-end chips. Independent testing from Tom’s Hardware found that the A19 Pro, the more powerful chip used in the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, actually beat AMD’s desktop Ryzen 9 9950X processor in single-thread Geekbench 6 testing, while GSMArena separately reported the same chip outperforming Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite. The standard A19 chip in the base iPhone 17 trails its Pro sibling but still performs competitively against many laptop CPUs in single-core tasks.

Multi-core performance tells a different story, and this is where laptops still hold a clear advantage in most cases. Intel’s Core Ultra 9 185H, a high-end mobile processor found in many premium Windows laptops, posts Geekbench 6 multi-core scores in roughly the 12,000-to-17,000 range depending on the specific test and cooling setup, according to benchmark data from Notebookcheck and CPU-Monkey, well above the iPhone 17’s multi-core score of 8,810. That gap reflects a fundamental design difference: laptop chips like the Core Ultra 9 185H pack 16 cores and 22 threads built for sustained, heavier workloads, while Apple’s A19 favors a smaller number of highly efficient cores optimized for a phone’s power and thermal limits.

On the graphics side, a like-for-like comparison is harder to draw because Apple’s Metal benchmark and the OpenCL or Vulkan tests typically used to measure Windows laptop GPUs are different testing frameworks. Still, independent GPU benchmark trackers, including data compiled by PassMark’s video card benchmark database, place the iPhone 17’s graphics performance in a similar general tier to entry-level discrete laptop GPUs such as Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU, a chip commonly found in budget-to-midrange gaming laptops. The iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Pro, which use variants of the more powerful A19 Pro chip, score meaningfully higher, with Metal scores as high as 45,657 for the Pro Max, putting their graphics performance closer to what a laptop equipped with a low-to-midrange discrete GPU could achieve in short, less demanding workloads.

Memory is another area where the comparison is straightforward. The base iPhone 17 ships with 8 gigabytes of LPDDR5X RAM, while the iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Pro models were bumped up to 12 gigabytes of faster LPDDR5X 8533 memory, according to specifications published by GSMArena. Mainstream Windows gaming laptops in the same performance tier as the iPhone 17 typically ship with 16 gigabytes of DDR5 memory as a baseline configuration, giving them roughly double the iPhone 17’s memory capacity, though phone and laptop memory architectures are not directly interchangeable in terms of how software uses them.

Translating those specifications into an actual laptop purchase, a machine with performance roughly comparable to the iPhone 17, pairing a mid-tier laptop CPU such as an AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS or an Intel Core i7 with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU and 16 gigabytes of DDR5 memory, generally sells in the 900-dollar-to-1,100-dollar range at major retailers including Newegg and Best Buy, based on current listings. Budget configurations pairing similar GPUs with lower-tier processors can be found for a few hundred dollars less, while laptops that step up to a Core Ultra 9 185H or comparable high-end mobile chip, which would exceed the iPhone 17’s multi-core performance by a wide margin, tend to start closer to 1,300 dollars to 1,500 dollars depending on the rest of the configuration.

The comparison ultimately highlights a broader trend in mobile computing: Apple’s custom silicon has closed much of the single-core performance gap with laptop-class chips, largely because so much everyday computing, opening apps, browsing the web, running lightly threaded software, depends more on single-core speed than on raw multi-core throughput. Laptops still maintain a substantial edge in sustained, heavily multi-threaded workloads such as video encoding or large-scale data processing, along with far more flexible memory and storage configurations, but the days of dismissing a smartphone chip as fundamentally weaker than a laptop’s processor are increasingly behind us.

For consumers, the practical takeaway is that an iPhone 17 can handle many computing tasks, from responsive app performance to casual gaming, at a level that rivals a mainstream Windows laptop costing several hundred dollars more once the surrounding hardware is factored in, even as that laptop retains a clear advantage for demanding, multi-threaded professional workloads.

Available for over a year

For years, China’s property boom helped drive the country’s extraordinary economic growth. At the centre of it was Evergrande, which grew from a regional developer into a sprawling corporate empire, and one of the world’s most indebted companies.

Then the debts caught up with it. Evergrande’s collapse exposed the vulnerabilities of China’s property model, helping push the wider housing market into crisis and weighing on the country’s economy.

Now its founder, Hui Ka-yan, has been sentenced to life in prison for crimes including bribery and illegal use of funds.

Will Bain and Rahul Tandon are joined by Jennifer Pak in Beijing to explore how Evergrande became so big, what went wrong, how its collapse exposed the problems in China’s property model, and what it means for the wider global economy.

(Photo: China Evergrande Group then-Chairman, Hui Ka Yan, attends a news conference on the property developer’s annual results in Hong Kong, China 28 March, 2017. He has short black hair with a side parting and wears a white shirt with a red patterned tie and a black suit jacket. In the background is a city skyline of skyscrapers, reflected in blue water. Credit: Bobby Yip/Reuters)

You can email the team: businessdaily@bbc.co.uk

Presenter: Will Bain, Rahul Tandon and Jennifer Pak
Producer: David Cann

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From growing up poor and fatherless in a tough Italian neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, likened to that of the film “Goodfellas,” to building a Burger King franchise empire in the mountainous West of Utah, John Gullo’s story is a quintessential example of the classic rags-to-riches tale.

Yet for this entrepreneur-turned-philanthropist, the “riches” never equated to the money he made. Gullo innately knew early in life that it was about giving back.

“It’s more important to be happy than it is to make money. And that’s a belief of mine. And when you ask me about my business, I never got into it to make money,” he told Fox News Digital.

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Now 82, Gullo, who during his career opened a total of 54 franchises in Utah, Arizona and Wisconsin — including the first-ever Burger King attached to a gas station, in Hurricane, Utah — is sharing his life’s journey.

John Gullo tells his rags-to-riches tale in his new memoir “Extraordinary Adventures of an Ordinary Man.” (John Gullo / Unknown)

From his first stint as a night manager at the fast-food chain to establishing the nonprofit American Dream Foundation with seed money from his business success and becoming the designated “Father of Professional Pickleball,” it’s all in his memoir, “Extraordinary Adventures of an Ordinary Man.” 

Gullo refers to the title as “the caption for my life.” He wrote the book, which can be found on Amazon, with the help of author Bridget Cook-Burch.

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The reason he decided to sell his restaurants, he said, was because he wasn’t working with the kids anymore.

“I wasn’t actively involved in the day-to-day operation, and I missed that,” he said.

“Everything I do with kids is a life lesson, so when I wrote the book, I did life lessons after each chapter with the hope that kids are going to read this thing and people are going to see it, and they’re going to learn from it,” Gullo added, noting his belief that, for some reason, he has been spiritually inspired all of his life.

“Giving is just very important to me — it’s very rewarding to me,” he said, noting that the philanthropy piece of his life has always been there. “…Maybe it’s because when you have nothing, you appreciate everything so much more.”

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As documented in the recent Deseret News article “How Utah’s Burger King king became the king of giving back,” Gullo has, for the last quarter-century, focused strictly on helping people and organizations that help people. In essence, his projects have served children, teens, families, classrooms, firefighters and those with disabilities.

Basketball pro Karl Malone with John Gullo at the opening of a new Burger King. (John Gullo)

His philanthropic efforts have gone to dozens of charitable endeavors and organizations, including Prevent Child Abuse and the Children’s Justice Center. He’s been behind the Ogden, Utah-based Enable Industries, which serves people with disabilities, as well as the American Fallen Fire Memorial, Youth in Transition, the Ogden Police Department’s Let’s Play Program, and the Treehouse Children’s Museum.

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The latter includes the American Freedom Trail, which every fifth-grader in Weber County can take a field trip to. It’s just one piece of what Gullo’s American Dream Foundation has funded since 2002, with more than $2 million going toward charitable causes.

Gullo is all about emphasizing the freedom to have your own opinions and the opportunities this nation has afforded him, which he’s expressed in patriotic videos featured on his foundation’s website.

“I think it’s important that the kids know the price that was paid to give them the right to burn the flag. The patriotism that existed at that time, the love of country at that time, it’s disappearing,” he explained. “We’re so segmented right now, and I do everything I can to offset that.”

Gullo himself said he has a lot of friends on both sides of the political aisle, but regardless of their beliefs, they’re able to remain friends.

“We disagree, that’s OK,” he said.

He specifically noted his friendship with former NBA player Thurl Bailey, who now does color commentary for the Utah Jazz and wrote the foreword for Gullo’s book. The two have collaborated for 20 years on charitable events.

“What this country needs more of is to have a relationship like ours,” Gullo said, noting that the two are totally different but are “brothers from another mother” and are united in how they care about people.

“We care about things and we work together. And there’s just not enough of that in the United States anymore,” Gullo said, noting his pursuit to bring organizations and people together.

Burger King plans to expand Patty to 500 U.S. stores this year, with a nationwide rollout targeted by year’s end. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images / Getty Images)

Bailey called meeting Gullo at a charity event where Gullo purchased an auction item that involved Bailey giving a keynote speech at an Ogden youth program for underprivileged kids “fortuitous.”

“That’s when I really started to find out what a charitable man he was — a man successful in business in his own right, but you would never know it because he’s just so giving,” Bailey told Fox News Digital.

Later, during some country music concerts in Ogden sponsored by Gullo, the two would realize they had parallel lives growing up.

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“We clicked on a lot of levels when it came to our backgrounds, even though mine turned into sports and his into business and philanthropy. We both connected on the giving side,” he said.

So where does pickleball come into Gullo’s story?

John Gullo has been dubbed the “Father of Professional Pickleball.” (John Gullo)

He has credited the sport with saving his life after heart failure and first discovered the game while recovering from quintuple bypass heart surgery in 2008.

It helped him lose 100 pounds and inspired him to get courts built throughout Northern Utah — hundreds of them, in fact. He went on to found the Professional Pickleball Federation and the Tournament of Champions, a national event with prize money donated from his own pocket.

All of that has led to his induction into the Pickleball Hall of Fame in 2024 for his contributions to the growth of the sport, which has skyrocketed in popularity. He’s officially been dubbed the “Father of Professional Pickleball.”

“This is the most social game ever invented. You just got to show up. You don’t have to get three guys to play golf or tennis or anything like that,” Gullo said. “…What other sport do you know where a guy like me can partner with a 24-year-old kid in a tournament and be part of it? That’s what makes this sport so great.”

A proud father of two sons, Gullo continually emphasizes the difference between positive mistakes and negative ones to the younger set.

John Gullo with his two sons. (John Gullo)

“A positive mistake is when you’re trying to do something and you make a mistake. I can live with that. A negative mistake is when you screw up because you don’t do anything. It’s that simple,” he said, noting he also tries to keep his own grandkids on track.

“After COVID, I sat down with them and said, ‘What did you learn?’ And after some discussion, I said, COVID taught you the difference between wants and needs. What did you go without that you really don’t need in your life? Because when I was a kid, everything was a want, everything was a need because we had nothing.”

He credits the Jaycees, a civic and leadership training organization for young adults, with bringing him out of his shell and instilling in him the importance of leadership through community service.

“When I joined the Jaycees, I was an introvert, but the Jaycees really turned me around… and that’s where I learned a lot about my business and charity life because all of a sudden you’re in charge of a project and you have to get people to help you,” he said. “You’re not paying them, and you might not even like them, so I learned that part of human relations through that process …”

John Gullo as a Jaycee. (John Gullo)

Now, as he undertakes a program with Thurl at Ogden High School featuring his book and leadership training, Gullo looks back and is still amazed at what he’s been able to accomplish, sometimes even making fun of certain triumphs, like being the first to put a fast-food restaurant in a gas station of any kind.

“…I went to Russia and I saw McDonald’s and a gas station and I said, ‘Father, forgive me, I know not what I do,’” he quipped.

Mostly, it’s when he realizes his American Dream Foundation has donated more than $2 million since 2002 that he stands in disbelief. In true Gullo style, all the proceeds from his book will go to charity.

“I didn’t go to college, barely got out of high school… you’re talking to a guy that grew up in poverty,” Gullo said. “I realized it took the same amount of energy to cry as it does to laugh, and the choice is mine.”

“The power of one means one person can do a lot,” he added.

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“John’s a man who cares about a lot of things, but is passionate about giving,” Bailey added. “He’s a giver. The world needs more John Gullos.”