Amgen Inc.

My name is Julianne and I will be your conference facilitator today for ArabGen's second quarter 2023 financial results conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. There will be a question and answer session at the conclusion of the last speaker's prepared remarks. In order to ensure that everyone has a chance to participate, we would like to request that you limit yourself to asking one question during the Q&A session. To ask a question, please press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 again. I would now like to introduce Arvind Sood, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Sood, you may now begin.

Thank you, Julianne. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our call to discuss our results for the second quarter. We continued down the path of strong unit volume growth during the quarter that led to an improved outlook for the rest of the year. This also sets the stage for growth longer term, augmented by some meaningful pipeline updates, particularly with an oncology development. Our chairman and CEO, Bob Bradway, will lead the call with some prepared remarks, followed by a broader review of our performance by other members of our leadership team. You should have received a link to our slides that we posted. Through the course of our discussion, we will make some forward-looking statements and use non-GAAP financial measures to describe our performance. And just a reminder that actual results can vary materially. So with that, I would like to turn the call over to Bob. Bob?

Okay, thank you for joining our call. It was an excellent quarter across the board for Amgen and one that demonstrates why we remain very confident about our ability to deliver attractive long-term growth in sales and earnings. We delivered $7 billion in quarterly revenue, up 6% from a year ago, along with record non-GAAP earnings per share of $5 a share, up 8% over the prior year. Volume growth globally was 11% in the quarter, and that reflects all three of our therapeutic areas and all three of our geographic regions contributing to performance. For example, volume in our general medicine business grew by 21% in the quarter, while volume in our Asia-Pacific region, which we have previously identified as a key source of growth for us, was up 46%. At a time of product shortages in the industry, our world-class manufacturing capabilities have enabled us to meet growing demand for our products, and continue our longstanding tradition of serving every patient every time. Nine of our medicines generated record sales in the quarter. This is consistent with my comments from our first quarter call in April when I said we see the potential for many of our currently marketed products to reach significantly more patients over time and to contribute substantially to our long-term growth. In April, I spoke about Repatha and the growing contribution it's making in the fight against cardiovascular disease. Today, I'll highlight Prolia, which achieved a billion dollars in quarterly sales for the first time, up 11%. Prolia is one of the first biologics to be widely prescribed by primary care physicians to treat a chronic disease, something we expect to see replicated over time in other categories like cardiovascular disease. To all of Prolia's success, though, we know that osteoporosis remains an underdiagnosed and undertreated disease, placing millions of elderly women at risk for life-changing fractures. With recently generated real-world data, we've established that Prolia is superior to alendronate, the most frequently prescribed bisphosphonate treatment in the U.S., in reducing fractures, and not by a little, but by a lot. To give you one data point, In May, we announced that in a real-world study, Prolia reduced the risk of hip fracture by 36% compared to Alendronate. That's superior. Prolia and Avenity, which achieved 47% sales growth in the quarter, give us a powerful one-two punch against osteoporosis, a disease that will only become more prevalent as the world grows older. You'll hear more from Murdo shortly about our very strong commercial performance through the first half of 2023. We're seeing strong momentum in our pipeline, too. As you'll hear in detail from Dave Reese, we're sharing positive data today for our BITE tarlatumab in small cell lung cancer and for Lumicrast in combination with Vectavix in colorectal cancer. We are especially excited about the tarlatumab readout, not only because of what it may mean for patients whose prognosis is otherwise exceptionally poor, but also because it adds to our growing convictions that bispecific T-cell engagers are an effective way to treat solid tumors as well as liquid tumors, as we have demonstrated with Lin-Syto. Elsewhere in our pipeline, we continue to advance registration-enabling trials for several potential new first-in-class medicines, including lopaziran in heart disease, rocatinimumab in atopic dermatitis, and, of course, emiratuzumab in gastric cancer. We look forward to additional readouts from our pipeline in the second half of the year. Turning to our planned acquisition of Horizon Therapeutics, we remain very enthusiastic about what our companies can achieve together for patients suffering from rare, serious diseases. Horizon has certainly accomplished a great deal as an independent company. Amgen's global commercial, manufacturing, and R&D capabilities, especially for biologic will enable Horizon's medicines to reach even more patients more quickly than Horizon could have achieved on its own. As you know, this combination has been approved by regulators around the world, with the exception of the Federal Trade Commission in the United States. The FTC's arguments in this case are based on speculation and hypothetical notions. Their arguments are not grounded in long-established antitrust law. Notwithstanding that, In choosing to pursue this case, they've ignored the commitments we made to address their stated concerns. Life-changing medicines that Amgen and Horizon offer treat different diseases and different patient populations. Simply put, there are no competitive overlaps and no incentives to bundle our drugs with theirs. We look forward to making our case in court in September, and I'm confident, rather, that we will prevail. In the meantime... We're working closely on integration plans with Horizon so we can hit the ground running by mid-December, which is when we anticipate being able to close the deal. Let me just reiterate one more point before I hand over to Murdo. As the second quarter illustrates, Amgen's business is performing very well, and our organic outlook for growth is strong. Adding Horizon will serve to enhance our growth prospects even further. And let me close by thanking my Amgen colleagues around the world for their unwavering commitment to patients and to our business. We're excited about the future and our ability to serve many, many more patients than we do today. Murdo?