GE HealthCare Technologies Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the GE Healthcare fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call. My name is Michelle, and I'll be your conference coordinator today. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would like to turn the program over to your host for today's conference, Carolyn Borders, Chief Investor Relations Officer. Please proceed.

Thanks, Michelle. Welcome to GE Healthcare's fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings call. I'm joined by our President and CEO, Peter Arduini, and Vice President and CFO, Helmut Zotto. Our conference call remarks will include both GAAP and non-GAAP financial results. Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP measures can be found in today's press release and in the presentation slides available on our website. During this call, we'll make forward-looking statements about our performance. These statements are based on how we see things today. As described in our SEC filings, actual results may differ materially due to risks and uncertainties. And with that, I'll hand the call over to Peter.

Thank you, Carolyn, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our first earnings call as an independent, publicly traded company. I'm incredibly proud of the work our team has done to complete the spinoff of GE Healthcare. The energy across the company is palpable, and there's tremendous excitement and focus around our purpose to create a world where healthcare has no limits. I want to thank all of our team for their commitment to the customers and patients we serve as we chart our own path forward and execute on our precision care strategy. Let's start with our fourth quarter 2022 performance. We delivered strong organic revenue growth of 13% year over year, reflecting an acceleration from prior quarters in 2022. These results were driven by continued robust demand, backlog fulfillment, and improved pricing. In addition, supply chain pressures that we experienced earlier in the year eased, continuing the trend that we experienced in the third quarter. Adjusted EBIT margin was 17.1%. Volume and price improved in the fourth quarter, but this was offset by inflation, mixed planned R&D investments, and some foreign exchange headwinds. We saw sequential margin improvement as volume and price grew and logistics cost eased, with the disciplined optimization actions we've taken across the business. This result is equivalent to 16.1% on a standalone basis. Adjusted EPS was $1.31, impacted by incremental interest from debt issuance, partially offset by volume and price. In order to facilitate comparability on a go-forward basis, we've also provided a standalone adjusted EPS result of $1.06. Free cash flow was $987 million in the fourth quarter as we start to see supply chain issues ease and we improve collections year over year. Total company book to bill, which is a calculation of orders to revenues growth, was 1.07 times, led by strong orders growth in imaging and ultrasound. For the full year, organic revenues grew 7% year over year at the higher end of our mid single digit growth target. And while China was impacted by COVID for most of the year, we saw increased momentum coming out of the fourth quarter, and we expect that to continue. Globally, we have a healthy backlog heading into 23 as customers continue to invest in imaging, ultrasound, as well as PCS. 2022 adjusted EBIT margin was 15.6%, impacted by inflationary pressures and planned R&D investments. This is equivalent to the 14.5% on a standalone basis. Looking ahead, we have several levers to expand margins through strategic pricing, enhancing volume and mix, and increasing variable cost productivity, as discussed at our investor day. Adjusted EPS for the full year was $4.63, and our standalone adjusted EPS result was $3.38. Free cash flow was $1.8 billion in 2022, and Helmut will discuss guidance in greater detail here later in the call. Overall, we're pleased with the strong performance we delivered in 2022. We're encouraged by the easing supply chain pressures and the resilient end market demand we're seeing across our portfolio, and we remain confident in our ability to drive sustainable value creation in 2023. I'd also like to highlight an important announcement we recently made with the appointment of Dr. Taha Khashoggi as our Chief Technology Officer. Taha is leading our science and technology organization, as well as our efforts to drive growth through clinical research and the advancement of our digital and machine learning capabilities, specifically our Edison Digital Health Platform. He joins us with deep clinical, digital, and machine learning experience. Taha was most recently vice president of machine learning and chief medical officer at Amazon. Taha also served as the FDA's first informatics leader, and he's joining the team at a perfect time as we accelerate investments in digital products and software. As we invest in our business, we're continuing to make progress on enhancing our operating model to better serve customers through a simplified, more decentralized model. and we're reducing bureaucracy in the organization, optimizing our geographic footprint, and implementing platforming initiatives across key product lines. And with that, let me hand the call over to Helmut to walk through our financials and business segment performance.