Opko Health, Inc.

Good afternoon and thank you for standing by and welcome to the Opco Health Incorporated First Quarter 2021 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in the 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 on your telephone keypad. Please be advised that today's conference call is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Ms. Yvonne Briggs. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon. This is Yvonne Briggs with LHA. Thank you all for joining today's call to discuss Opco Health's financial results for the first quarter of 2021. I'd like to remind you that any statements made during this call by management other than statements of historical fact, will be considered forward-looking and, as such, will be subject to risks and uncertainties that could materially affect the company's expected results. Those forward-looking statements include, without limitation, the various risks described in the company's SEC filings, including the annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, and in subsequently filed SEC reports. Importantly, This conference call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of the date of the live broadcast, today, April 28, 2021. Except as required by law, OPCO undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this call. Before we begin, let me review the format for today's call. Dr. Philip Frost, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, will open the call. then Steve Rubin, OPCO's Executive Vice President, will provide a business update and pipeline review, and then Dr. John Cohen will discuss bioreference laboratories. After that, Adam Logel, OPCO's CFO, will review the company's first quarter financial results, and then we'll open up the call for questions. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Dr. Frost.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining the call today. I'm happy to share our first quarter results with you. Revenues, earnings, and cash flow from operations were strong. Our reference laboratories continues to be recognized as a national leader in COVID testing, as demonstrated by recently announced high profile professional sports and school contracts. COVID-19 PCR testing volume remained strong during the first quarter, even with a significant decline in cases nationwide. As the country starts to emerge from the pandemic, we're seeing an overall shift from diagnosis to surveillance, and we're seeing BRL's routine business improving towards historical levels. While we anticipate that COVID-19 test volumes for the general public for diagnostic purposes may decline, There is still strong interest in BRL's COVID-19 capabilities for large-scale screening and its ability to provide customized solutions across a broad spectrum of customer requirements. BRL consistently tries to differentiate itself from other laboratories. You will hear John Cohen tell you about a novel program to make it easier for patients to have blood drawn. This is part of a bigger vision to have our laboratory interact more directly with healthcare providers, such as telemedicine and large physician groups, to achieve better patient outcomes. Our pharmaceutical business continues to advance nicely. The European regulatory submission was recently announced for somatrogon, our long-acting human growth hormone. This is in addition to previously announced submissions in the U.S. and Japan. To create further awareness of this important drug candidate, earlier in the quarter we participated in several endocrinology conferences to highlight Somatrogone's clinical data profile. Reality's prescription and sales growth continue to be impacted by the pandemic. As COVID-19 related limitations lessen, We expect reality to return to pre-pandemic levels and to resume its previous growth trajectory. The COVID-19 trial is ongoing. Too early for optimism, but literature data support the notion that sufficiently elevated vitamin D levels help prevent more severe forms of the infection, and reality is quite efficient in raising vitamin D levels. This would be important in the general population but even more so for chronic kidney disease patients who tend to have more unfavorable outcomes. As you may know, APCO has a small but excellent unit, APCO Iberoamericana, with business units in Chile, Mexico, and Spain. Under the leadership of its general manager, Hans Berner, it continues to grow in revenues and profits. Up-close pharmaceutical chemical business in Israel, although quite small, also continues to do well. I'll now turn the call over to Steve Rubin, who will provide further discussion on our pharmaceutical business.