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 2025 results conference call 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. This meeting may contain 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 conference call. 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. I must advise you, this presentation is being recorded today. And with that, I will now hand you over to Andy Barnett, Head of Investor Relations.

A warm welcome to AstraZeneca's first quarter 2025 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'd like to cover some housekeeping items. Firstly, all of the materials presented today are available on AstraZeneca's investor relations website. This slide contains our safe harbor statement, which I'd encourage you to take the 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. All numbers quoted are in millions of US dollars, unless otherwise stated. This slide shows our agenda for the call, and following our prepared remarks, we'll open the line for questions. As usual, we'll try to address as many questions as we can during the call, although please limit the number of questions you ask to allow others a fair chance to participate in the Q&A. And with that, I'll hand over to Pascal.

Thank you, Andy, and welcome, everybody. We have made a strong start in the first quarter of the year, building on the momentum through 2024. Total revenue growth was 10% in the quarter, reflecting increasing demand for our innovative medicines. Co-operating profit increased by 12% and core EPS increased by 21%, reflecting our continued focus on operating leverage. Although core EPS in the first quarter did benefit from a lower tax rate due to settlements in certain jurisdictions. Since our full year results in February, we've secured 13 approvals in key regions across our diverse portfolio, a clear illustration of the value our medicines bring to patients globally. In addition, we continue to see strong delivery from our pipeline, and in the past few months, announced five positive phase three results, including two NMEs, camisestron and eniboparatide, and multiple high-value indication expansion opportunities across gastric and breast cancers. We're making excellent progress towards our ambition to deliver at least 20 NMEs by 2030, with the recent approval of Bayantra, formerly known as Acoramidis, marking the ninth novel medicine approval towards our goal. We continue to benefit from our broad-based, diverse business with a robust growth outlook for each of our therapy areas and across key geographies. We saw strong performances across key regions, despite anticipated headwinds, including Medicare Part D redesign in the US. Importantly, we continue to deliver impressive growth in the emerging markets, with ex-China revenues up 17%. reflecting the benefit of our sustained presence in this market. Our growth in China was also encouraging, up 5% or 9% when adjusting for the decline of Pulmicort sales. This growth is driven by increasing demand for innovative medicines, with additional launches in China achieved in the first quarter. We are aiming to deliver sustained growth well beyond 2030, investing in transformative technologies. In the first quarter, we announced several business development transactions that strengthen our pipeline and our capabilities, which we believe have potential to support our long-term growth ambitions. Our proposed acquisition of EzoBiotech brings the potentially best-in-class in-vivo cell therapy platform in-house, increasing accessibility of potentially curative cell therapies with applications across oncology and autoimmune diseases. Next, we announced our portfolio of novel modalities, accelerating the development of multispecific biologics and microcyclic peptides across a wide range of diseases. We also announced an exclusive license for ALTB4 with Altheogen to deliver subcutaneous formulations of multiple oncology assets with the aim of making our treatments easier to administer and more convenient for patients. Finally, we announced a recent investment in Beijing, China, where we will establish our sixth strategic R&D center. The pace of medical and scientific innovation in Beijing is impressive, and our new R&D center will enable us to foster and strengthen collaborations within the local ecosystem, as well as attract world-class talent in China to discover and develop new transformative medicines. To support our growth across the major geographies around the world, over the last few years we have been building a broad manufacturing network covering the US, Europe and China. Our global presence makes our business highly resilient to regional disruptions, effectively providing a natural hedge. We now have 31 manufacturing sites globally and dual source supply for the vast majority of our medicines. Our supply chains for China and the US are largely segregated, and we have very limited commercialized Finnish medicines imported from the US to China, meaning that our exposure to the current China tariffs on pharmaceuticals is not material in the context of the group. We have a substantial and growing manufacturing footprint in the U.S. We currently have 11 manufacturing sites in the country, and the vast majority of our medicines sold in the U.S. are made domestically. We do import a minority of medicines sold in the U.S. from Europe. However, mitigations are already underway. As a result, we believe that if tariffs were implemented in the range we've seen recently in other industries on medicines imported from Europe to the US, we would remain within the guidance range we indicated for 2025. in part due to our ongoing inventory management. Beyond 2025, the impact on the minority of medicines imported from Europe would be time-limited, as we are shifting manufacturing of these medicines to sites in the US. We will of course provide updates as appropriate, and with that I will hand over to Aradna to take us through our financials. Please advance to the next slide.