AbbVie Inc.

Good morning, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the ADVI fourth quarter 2023 earnings conference call. All participants will be able to listen only to the question and answer portion of this call. You may ask a question by pressing star 1 on your phone. Today's call is also being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to introduce Ms. Liz Shea, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Good morning, and thanks for joining us. Also on the call with me today are Rick Gonzalez, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Rob Michaels, President and Chief Operating Officer, Jeff Stewart, Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer, Scott Rentz, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Carrie Strum, Senior Vice President, AbbVie and President, Global Allergan Aesthetics, and Rupal Thakkar, Senior Vice President, Chief Medical Officer, Global Therapeutics. Joining us for the Q&A portion of the call is Tom Hudson, Senior Vice President, Chief Scientific Officer, Global Research. Before we get started, I'll note that some statements we make today may be considered forward-looking statements based on our current expectations. ABBYY cautions that these forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in our forward-looking statements. Additional information about these risks and uncertainties is included in our SEC filings. ABBYY undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements except as required by law. On today's conference call, non-GAAP financial measures will be used to help investors understand AbbVie's business performance. These non-GAAP financial measures are reconciled with comparable GAAP financial measures in our earnings release and regulatory filings from today, which can be found on our website. In addition to the news release issued this morning, we have also posted slides on our website at investors.abbvie.com that supplement some of the content we'll be covering this morning. Following our prepared remarks, we'll take your questions. So with that, I'll turn the call over to Rick.

Thank you, Liz. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Our performance this quarter tops off another excellent year for AbbVie, with results well above our initial expectations. I'm particularly pleased with the performance of our growth platform, the base business excluding Humira, which delivered full-year sales growth of more than 8%, with revenue growth accelerating to more than 15% in the fourth quarter. The strength of our diversified growth platform has not only enabled us to successfully absorb the largest loss of exclusivity event to date across our industry, but has also supported continued investment in our business for long-term growth. These investments include higher adjusted R&D expense, which was increased by nearly $600 million in 2023, and will be raised substantially again in 2024 to support several promising pipeline programs like 383 and multiple myeloma, 400, our next generation ADC for several solid tumor types, and Ludi for HS as well as inflammatory bowel disease. The proposed acquisition of Immunogen and their portfolio of ADCs accelerating our entry into the solid tumor space and strengthening our oncology pipeline, as well as the proposed acquisition of Ceravel, a unique opportunity to augment our presence in neuroscience with a pipeline of differentiated assets. We also increased our quarterly dividend, which we announced in October. Since our inception, we have grown our dividend by more than 285%. In summary, our operational execution has been outstanding. and we have considerable momentum heading into 2024, including an expected return to operational sales growth just one year following the U.S. Jumeirah loss of exclusivity driven by our growth platform. We remain confident in our long-term outlook, including a return to robust growth in 2025 with a high single-digit CAGR through the end of the decade. With that, I'll turn the call over to Rob for additional comments on our business performance.