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 to AstraZeneca's half-year and Q2 results 2024 webinar for investors and analysts. Before I hand over to AstraZeneca, I'd like to read the safe harbour statement. The company intends to utilise the safe harbour 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 would now like to hand the conference over to the company.

A warm welcome to AstraZeneca's half year and second quarter 2024 presentation, conference call and webcast for investors and analysts. I'm Andy Barnett, head of investor relations. And before I hand over to Pascal and other members of our executive team, I would like to cover some important housekeeping points. Firstly, all the materials presented today and additional resources, including updated epidemiology tables and our recent investor day materials are available on our investor relations website. This slide contains our safe harbor statement which I'd encourage you to take time to read. 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 and all numbers quoted are in millions of U.S. dollars unless otherwise stated. This slide shows the agenda for today's call. And following our prepared remarks, we'll open the line for questions. We will try and address as many questions as we can during the allotted time, although I don't ask the participants to limit the number of questions you ask to allow others a fair chance to participate in the Q&A. And with that, Pascal, I'll hand the floor over to you.

Thank you very much, Andy. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everybody. In the first half of the year, total revenue grew by 18%, driven predominantly by strong underlying demand for our medicines across key therapy areas and geographies. We record the second quarter with almost $13 billion of revenue. Cooperating profit increased to $8.4 billion, while core EPS increased 5% to $4.03. On both measures, it is important to recall that in the first half of 2023, the company benefited from one-time other cooperating income totaling $1.1 billion. Adjusting for other operating income, growth in co-operating profit and core EPS in the first half would have been higher. And this shows that we continue to work on leverage with faster operating margin growth and revenue. With the strength of our underlying business, I'm pleased to announce we've upgraded our full year guidance. We now expect both total revenue and core EPS to increase by mid-teens percentages. It is a strong upgrade. They rely on the underlying strength of our business. Collaborative revenue, as you've probably noted, are not growing. Haradna will provide you with additional details shortly in our prepared remarks. Please move to the next slide. Taking a closer look at our total revenue performance in the first half, we continue to benefit from our diverse broad-based business. We deliver double-digit growth in the U.S., in Europe, in emerging markets, ex-China, And in China, we delivered a growth of 15 percent, nearly 30 percent ex-China. Oncology, biopharmaceuticals, and rare disease all delivered double-digit growth in the first half of the year, supported by increasing demand for our leading medicines. Please move to the next slide. We saw continued pipeline momentum in the first half of the year, delivering several potentially transformative phase III trials readouts and new approvals across our therapy areas. Since our investor day in May, we reported positive results for the phase III Niagara trial of INFINSI, which marks an important step towards building our presence in bladder cancer. We received FDA approval for IMFIN-Z in endometrial cancer, based on the DOE trial, and we received breakthrough designation for Adriatic in limited-stage small cell lung cancer. Additionally, breakthrough designations were granted for TESPIRE and COPD, following the encouraging results from the Phase IIb course trial. and Eniboparatide in hypoparathyroidism, with Phase III results expected in the first half of next year. Taken together, the collection of Phase III redarts and new launches listed on this slide will support underlying momentum in the future growth potential of our business. With that, please advance to the next slide, and I will hand over to Arad now who will take you through our financials.