GE HealthCare Technologies Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the GE Healthcare second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. My name is Olivia, and I'll be your conference coordinator today. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to send the program over to your host for today's conference, Carolyn Borders, chief investor relations officer. Please proceed.

Thanks, Olivia. Welcome to GE Healthcare's second quarter 2023 earnings call. I'm joined by our President and CEO, Peter Arduini, and our Vice President and CFO, Jay Saccaro. 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. With that, I'll hand the call over to Peter.

Thanks, Carolyn. First, let me welcome Jay, who's joining us for his first earnings call with GE Healthcare. Since he arrived last month, he's hit the ground running to immerse himself in our business and has been meeting with our global teams. You'll hear more from Jay shortly. Now, let's look at our results for the second quarter. We delivered strong performance with 9% year-over-year organic revenue growth. This was driven by strong demand for NPIs and the continued value that we bring to our customers. We were also pleased to see global demand improve sequentially, delivering 6% orders growth in the second quarter, up from 3% in the first quarter. We're encouraged by healthcare providers' continued investment globally in capacity to improve patient care and productivity. Volume remains strong for surgical procedures, which drives demand for imaging, services, and surgical equipment. In the U.S., customers are investing in products to improve productivity and enhance overall competitiveness. In the rest of the world, we're seeing solid demand in hospitals and in buying behaviors associated with increased procedures, as well as the need for more productivity to address labor constraints. We've made good progress on our operating priorities, including increased discipline utilizing lean as a management capability and rigor in areas such as variable cost productivity. This resulted in a 14.8% adjusted EBIT margin, which was an improvement of 70 basis points from Q1. Adjusted EBIT margins were down slightly year over year on a standalone basis as we continued to invest in the business. with R&D spending up 16% year over year in the second quarter. Some areas where we've invested include photon counting, next-gen MR, and artificial intelligence optimized interventional cardiology. We're also further developing machine learning capabilities across all modalities to build interoperable ecosystems of devices and applications. We expect our investments to deliver value for our customers while laying the groundwork for the advancement of precision care. Turning to capital allocation, we're focused on pursuing a balanced strategy with the goal of creating value for shareholders. This includes investing organically, acting on the right inorganic opportunities, deleveraging over the near term, and initiating a dividend. With markets improving globally and strong execution in the first half of 2023, we have confidence in our ability to deliver on the full year. As a result, we're raising our full year guidance range for organic revenue growth by one percentage point and 10 cents in adjusted EPS at the midpoint. Jay will now take you through our financials. Jay.