Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Walgreens Boots Alliance Incorporated's second quarter 2020 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 on your telephone keypad. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero on your touch-down phone. Thank you. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Gerald Granville, for the prepared remarks. Please go ahead.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our second quarter earnings call. We here at Walgreens Boots Alliance are strictly adhering to the recommended social distancing, so we're doing this call with our executives in different locations. And I would ask you to bear with us if you experience any minor delays or mixed audio quality on the call. On the line with me today is Stefano Cassina, our Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Walgreens Boots Alliance, James Kehoe, our Global Chief Financial Officer, and Alex Gurley, Co-Chief Operating Officer of Walgreens Boots Alliance. Before I hand you over to Stefano to make some opening comments, I will, as usual, take you through the legal safe harbour and cautionary declarations. Certain statements and projections of future results made in this presentation constitute forward-looking statements that are based on our current market, competitive, and regulatory expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to vary materially. We undertake no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statement after this presentation, whether as a result of new information, future events, changes in assumptions, or otherwise. Please see our latest Form 10-K for a discussion of risk factors as they relate to forward-looking statements. And note in particular that these forward-looking statements may be affected by risks related to the spread and impact of the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. In today's presentation, we will use certain non-GAAP financial measures. We refer you to the appendix in the presentation materials available on our Investor Relations website, the reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures and related information. You'll find a link to the webcast on our investor relations website at investor.walgreenboostalliance.com. After the call, this presentation and webcast will be archived on the website for 12 months. I'll now hand you over to Stephanie.

Thank you, James, and good morning, everyone. Clearly, today, everyone's attention is very focused on the global COVID-19 pandemic. As you would expect, our priority has to be to protect the health and well-being of our customers and our people. And we focus on playing our part to address the needs of the community we serve. And, as a key part of the healthcare system in many countries around the world, forming part of the frontline or healthcare delivery. Our teams are working tirelessly to provide medicines and advice to our patients, and to ensure the supply chain operates as well as possible in these times, both to our own families and our other on-sale customers. So, I want to start today by thanking our people, personally, and on behalf of my fellow management and board members, for their outstanding efforts and dedication, despite frequently facing extremely challenging situations in the service of their communities. And for our customers, I want to assure you that we will continue to work hard to help you manage your hands and get through these very difficult times. I myself, alongside all our executive team, have been very fortunate on facilitating and coordinating our response to the current pandemic of the recent weeks. And we continue to do so until we can see the end of the immediate need. But I can assure you that despite the challenges of this difficult time, we continue to exercise our usual management control over all areas of our company. That said, as you have seen from our announcement today, We have had a course slightly ahead of our expectations. The change will take you through in detail in a moment. And we have continued to make good progress in the delivery of our four strategic priorities, which we remain convinced will give us the capabilities we need for our business to thrive in the long term. While we deal with the immediate priorities, we continue our work to deliver our strategic initiatives and drive our company forward. However, the current situation may lead to some delays in the work to renew and reform our business. We reported a second-course performance demonstrating the company was well on track to deliver against our expectations for the full year. It is, however, much further to confirm the full financial impact of the actions we are taking now. progress of the COVID-19 virus, as James will explain. I will ask James to give you an overview of the second quarter results, and then me and Alex will discuss the impact of COVID-19 so far. James.