Abbott Laboratories

Good morning, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Abbott's second quarter 2019 earnings conference call. All participants will be able to listen only until the question and answer portion of this call. During the question and answer session, you will be able to ask your question by pressing the star 1 keys on your touchtone telephone. Should you become disconnected throughout this conference call, please redial the number provided to you and reference the Abbott earnings call. This call is being recorded by Abbott. With the exception of any participants' questions asked during the question and answer session, the entire call, including the question and answer session, is material copyrighted by Abbott. It cannot be recorded or rebroadcast without Abbott's express written permission. I would now like to introduce Mr. Scott Leinenweber, Vice President, Investor Relations, Licensing and Acquisitions.

Good morning and thank you for joining us. With me today are Miles White, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer Robert Ford, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Brian Yor, Executive Vice President, Finance and Chief Financial Officer. Miles will provide opening remarks, and Brian will discuss our performance and outlook in more detail. Following their comments, we'll take your questions. Before we get started, some statements made today may be forward-looking for purposes of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including the expected financial results for 2019. Abbott cautions that these forward-looking statements are subject to the risk and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. Economic, competitive, governmental, technological, and other factors that may affect Abbott's operations are discussed in Item 1A, Risk Factors, to our annual report on Securities and Exchange Commission Form 10-K, for the year ended December 31st, 2018. Abbott undertakes no obligation to release publicly any revisions to forward-looking statements as a result of subsequent events or developments, except as required by law. Please note that second quarter financial results and guidance provided on the call today for sales, EPS, and line items of the P&L will be for continuing operations only. On today's conference call, as in the past, non-GAAP financial measures will be used to help investors understand Abbott's ongoing business. These non-GAAP financial measures are reconciled with the comparable GAAP financial measures in our earnings news release and regulatory filings from today, which are available on our website at abbott.com. Unless otherwise noted, our commentary on sales growth refers to organic sales growth, which is defined in our earnings news release issued earlier today. With that, I will now turn the call over to Miles.

Thank you, Scott. Good morning. Today we reported results of another strong quarter with ongoing earnings per share of 82 cents above our previous guidance range and reflecting double-digit growth. Sales increased 7.5% on an organic basis in the quarter with all four businesses exceeding expectations. I'm particularly pleased with our ability to consistently achieve these types of strong results. Over the past two years, our quarterly organic sales growth has averaged more than 7%, and importantly, we're well-positioned with our portfolio and new product pipeline for this type of strong growth going forward. Based on our performance and momentum in the first half of the year, we're raising our full-year outlook, and we now forecast adjusted earnings per share of $3.21 to $3.27 this reflecting nearly 13% growth at the midpoint on a reported basis, and even faster growth when excluding the impact of foreign exchange. While we achieved broad-based growth across several areas of our portfolio, I'd like to highlight just a few areas where we continue to perform exceptionally well. I'll start our medical devices business with Freestyle Libre, where we achieved sales of $430 million and continue to add significantly to our global user base, as reflected by organic sales growth of more than 70% in the quarter. We also continue to make excellent progress expanding reimbursement and access in the U.S., where Libre is now reimbursed for approximately 75% of people with private pharmacy benefit insurance. Libre offers a unique value proposition, and that's by design. It provides great clinical benefits, and we priced it to ensure affordability. Fares recognize that value recognize that value and are increasingly providing reimbursement coverage for Libre, which helps lower out-of-pocket costs even further for patients. As I mentioned before, we've been investing significantly to expand our manufacturing capacity for Libre to meet demand. The first wave of that expansion will come online in the next couple of months, followed by a cadence of incremental capacity after that. There's a massive population that needs help managing their diabetes, and our intent is to make Libre broadly accessible to all of them. Turning to our structural heart business, where we achieved mid-teens growth. This was led by MitraClip, our market-leading device for the treatment of mitral regurgitation, which had global sales growth of more than 30% in the quarter. And MitraClip grew more than 50% in the U.S., where we recently received a new expanded indication. Earlier this week, we announced U.S. approval of our fourth-generation MitraClip device, which builds on this leading platform with enhanced features and new clip sizes, providing physicians further options when treating disease. We've been building our position in structural heart for more than a decade and have a deep pipeline of technologies in development, including Tendine and Cephia, which are minimally invasive devices to replace faulty mitral heart valves. Triclip, a first-of-its-kind device for the repair of a leaky tricuspid heart valve. and Amplaster Amulet, our left atrial appendage device, to reduce the risk of stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation. With the rapid adoption of MitraClip in a highly underpenetrated market, as well as a pipeline of technologies targeting new growth areas that will launch over the next several years, our structural heart business is well positioned for strong, steady growth for years to come. Next, diagnostics, where we remain focused on the global rollout of our Alinity suite of instruments for every area of diagnostics in which we compete. We're making great progress with our systems for immunoassay and clinical chemistry testing in Europe, where the launch of Alinity is helping to drive double-digit growth in our international core laboratory business. We're now also in the early stages of launching Alinity instruments for hematology and molecular testing in Europe. In the U.S., we're making steady progress, achieving regulatory approvals for our broad menu of core laboratory tests. And just last week, we announced FDA approval of Alinity S for blood and plasma screening. Abbott screens the majority of the world's blood supply, and this system is designed to be faster and more efficient within a smaller amount of space while maintaining the highest levels of accuracy. The global rollout of Alinity is an ambitious undertaking that positions our diagnostics business for sustainable strong growth going forward. So in summary, all four of our businesses exceeded expectations in the quarter. Our growth is strong, it's accelerating, and it's sustainable. We've strategically positioned ourselves in some of the most attractive areas of healthcare, and our key growth platforms are delivering impressive results. And today we're adding to what was already a strong growth forecast by raising our outlook for the year. I'll now turn the call over to Brian to discuss our results and outlook for the year in more detail. Brian? Thanks, Miles.