AstraZeneca PLC

Good morning to those joining from the UK and the US. Good afternoon to those in Central Europe. And good evening to those listening in Asia. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to AstraZeneca's Q1 2023 results webinar for investors and analysts. Before I hand over to AstraZeneca, I'd like to read the safe harbor statement. The company intends to utilize the safe harbor provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Participants on this call may make forward-looking statements with respect to the operations and financial performance of AstraZeneca. Although we believe our expectations are based on reasonable assumptions, by their very nature, forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, and may be influenced by factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statements made on this call reflect the knowledge and information available at the time of this call. The company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements. Please also carefully review the forward-looking statements disclaimer in the slide deck that accompanies this presentation. There will be an opportunity to ask questions after today's presentations. Please use the raise a hand feature to indicate you wish to ask a question at any time during the call. And with that, I will now hand you over to the company.

Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, everyone. It's Andy Barnett here, Head of Investor Relations at AstraZeneca, and I'm very pleased to welcome you to AstraZeneca's first quarter 2023 conference call. As usual, all materials presented are available on our website. This slide contains our usual safe harbor statement. We will be making comments on our performance using constant exchange rates, or CER, core financial numbers, and other non-GAAP measures. A non-GAAP to GAAP reconciliation is contained within the results announcement. Numbers today are in millions of US dollars, unless otherwise stated. This slide shows our agenda for today's call. Following prepared remarks, we will open the line up for questions. We will try and address as many questions as we can during the allotted time, although I would ask that participants limit the number of questions you ask to allow others a fair chance to participate in the Q&A. As a reminder, to ask a question, please use the raise a hand function in Zoom. Alternatively, you can click on the Q&A button and write your question. With that, Pascal, over to you.

Thank you, Andrew. Andy, hello, everyone. Please advance to slide five. We delivered total revenue of $10.9 billion in the first quarter, which was stable compared to the prior year. This performance is really quite remarkable when you consider that a 15% growth in revenue from our ex-COVID medicines offset a decline in revenue from our COVID-19 medicines of $1.5 billion in the quarter. Co-earnings per share grew 6% compared to the first quarter of 2022. This growth reflects both the decline in COVID-19 medicine revenues as well as important investments we are making in our business to advance our pipeline and deliver on the full promise of our recently launched medicines. Based on our strong fundamentals and outlook for the year, we are reiterating our 2023 guidance. Please move to the next slide. Excluding our COVID-19 medicines and in addition to our broad base of growth across these areas, we delivered strong growth across all regions. Importantly, in the emerging markets, our ex-COVID-19 medicines grew by 22%. In China, we have now seen three successive quarters of growth as we continue to launch innovative medicines and growth outpaces anticipated declines in some of our older medicines. This growth is a clear reflection of the value of our board portfolio and our sustained focus on emerging markets over time. Our business is highly resilient with pipeline momentum accelerating as a result of both internal and external innovation. Please move to slide seven. One illustration of this momentum is our focus on initiating 30 phase three trials in 2023. I'm pleased to announce we have already dosed patients in six new phase three trials since the start of the year. This includes two trials of DatoDxD in combination with IO medicines, reflecting our confidence in the promise of this regimen to enhance outcomes for patients with lung cancer. Given that inflammatory cells play a key role in eosinophilic esophagitis, and with T-Sleep being at the top of the inflammatory cascade, we've initiated the crossing trial for T-SPIRE, our anti-T-Sleep antibody, in EOE. Supernova is a trial of our novel antibody, AZD3152, for the prophylactic treatment of COVID-19, with potential approval in the second half of this year. Here our aim is to protect people who don't mount an effective immune response to vaccination, which represents about 2% of the population. Cambria-1 is our first trial investigating camisestrant, our next generation oral CERB, in the adjuvant breast cancer setting where there is significant opportunity to improve long-term outcomes. Finally, we initiated a trial of Ultomerase for the prevention of acute kidney injury associated with cardiac surgery. This represents an area of high unmet need with currently no approved therapies. Acute kidney injury can occur in up to 20% of patients undergoing cardiac surgery. but the risk increases to over 60% in patients with chronic kidney disease. The ARTEMIS trial focuses on those patients with ischemia, where complement plays a key role. While we plan to provide an update each quarter on our new Phase III trial starts, we expect a majority to those in the second half of this year. Now, please turn to slide eight, and Aradna can take you through our financial highlights in the quarter, as well as provide some insights into how we are fully embracing artificial intelligence and machine learning across our business. Over to you, Aradna.