Fortrea Holdings Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Fortria Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Hima Nguva, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead.

Good morning and thank you for joining Fortria Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. I am Hima Nguva, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Development in Fortria. Before we begin, I want to share that this will be my last call leading Fortria's Earnings Call as I've decided to leave the company to pursue other opportunities. I'm incredibly proud of what we've built here and deeply grateful for the support of our investors, the commitment of our teams, and the opportunity to work alongside such a high caliber team. We have a robust transition plan for investor relations. It's my pleasure to introduce Tracy Krumme, a new head of IR who will be joining the call. Welcome Tracy. I'd also like to welcome our new CEO, Anshul Tukral, who joined Fortria on Monday. Anshul, we're excited to have you here. With all that said, I'm pleased to introduce our Chairman, Peter Newport, who served as our interim CEO in the second quarter, and CFO, Jill McConnell, as our speakers of the call today. The call is being broadcasted and the slides accompanying today's presentations have been posted to the investor relations page of our website, Fortria.com. During this call, we'll make certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to significant risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. We strongly encourage you to review the reports we filed with the SEC regarding these risks and uncertainties. In particular, those that are described in the cautionary statement concerning forward-looking statements and risk factors in our press release and presentation that we posted on the website. Please note that any forward-looking statements represent our views as of today, August 6, 2025, and that we assume no obligation to update the forward-looking statements even if estimates change. During this call, we'll also be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP measures are not superior to or replacement for the comparable GAAP measures, but we believe these measures help investors gain a more complete understanding of results. A reconciliation of such non-GAAP financial measures is a key factor in the development of our are more likely to be used to the most directly comparable GAAP measures available in the earnings press release and earnings call presentation slides provided in connection with today's call. With that, I'd like to turn it over to our chairman, Peter Newpert. Peter.

Thank you, Hema, and good morning, everyone. I'll add my welcome to Anshul and Tracy today. We're very pleased to have you both on board and hitting the ground running. Now let's turn to the second quarter, which showed another solid quarter of delivery. For TRIA revenue for the second quarter was $710.3 million, with adjusted EBITDA of $54.9 million, supported by our continued progress against the company's margin optimization initiative. The team continues to make progress with its transformation efforts, including reshaping the organization to align with its evolving pipeline mix and customer needs. Backlog as of June 30, 2025 stood at $7.5 billion, and the -to-bill ratio for the quarter was 0.79x, resulting in a 1.1 times -to-bill for the trailing 12 months. While for TRIA did not achieve the level of net new business wins we would have wanted, there are positive signals in the quarter. The volume of RFP opportunities remains high, and cancellations continued to be in line with our historical trends, although the company experienced some customer hesitancy in the quarter, primarily in -to-for TRIA biotech customers as the team navigated the CEO leadership transition. Win rates remain consistent for existing large pharma and biotech customers, but decline for -to-for TRIA biotech customers. For TRIA experienced a similar phenomenon prior to the spin, and then saw that in a reasonably brief period of time, it was able to return to solid net new business wins with new customers once they saw that the focus on delivery remained strong, and for TRIA's leaders and employees were committed to their best interests. Other highlights from the second quarter include positive cash flow as expected, the company's liquidity is sound, and its capital structure is balanced. Further, for TRIA provided updated guidance for the remainder of the year, increasing the revenue range, and re-infirming its EBITDA range. For TRIA's business fundamentals are steadily improving as demonstrated in this quarter's performance. This progress reflects its strengthened operational delivery and position. For TRIA's leading clinical pharmacology services reporting unit is in high demand, with a combination of leading science and robust delivery. For example, the team delivered a bioequivalence trial ahead of schedule, from first subject in to database lock for more than 500 participants in exactly one year, earlier than expected. The trial will enable regulatory submission for oral formulations of life changes changing therapeutic that is currently only available in injectable form. In later phase clinical projects, second quarter delivery also was strong. The team had a flawless track record, and by that I mean early on time, in its delivery of site initiation visits, as well as patient enrollment at the halfway mark of the study. Similarly, the metrics for ready to enroll sites and last patient in, were all better than our benchmark targets. In an environment of global complex studies, this level of operational performance stands out, and is reflected in our strong customer NPS scores. The company continues to invest in innovation and in its people. The second quarter saw the introduction of three new modules in the award-winning Accelerate software platform. One example, RiskRadar is an AI powered agent designed to enhance risk-based quality management in clinical trials. It uses AI machine learning to automate risk identification and suggest mitigation strategies. RiskRadar reduces manual effort, improves operational efficiency, and strengthens patient safety protection. I'll wrap up my prepared remarks by thanking Fortria employees for their commitment and hard work over the quarter. I've seen this organization evolve over many years now in my role on the board. Over the past few months, I've gained a unique perspective serving as its interim CEO. I can tell you that this team is not only dedicated to advancing research, but it's also remarkably resilient. They have definitely navigated a challenging journey to independence by staying focused on what matters most. Motivated by a shared mission to bring new treatments to patients faster. Supported by a seasoned and collaborative leadership team of industry veterans, they are forward-facing and looking to the future with optimism. I'm very pleased to have Anshul joining the team as CEO this week. Let me just say a few words about Anshul. He brings deep experience in life sciences, knows the CRO industry from the inside out, not only as an executive, but also as a customer. He also has a proven record of building companies and delivering profitable growth. Anshul is an outstanding and hands-on leader, and I know the entire board joins me in welcoming him to Fortria. Anshul, now that you've been here for full 48 hours, would you like to make any comments before we hand the call over to Jill?