Abbott Laboratories

Good morning, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Abbott's third quarter 2021 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 phone. 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.

Scott Leinenweber Good morning, and thank you for joining us. With me today are Robert Ford, President and Chief Executive Officer and Bob Funk, Executive Vice President, Finance, and Chief Financial Officer. Robert and Bob will provide opening remarks. 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 expected financial results for 2021. Abbott cautions that these forward-looking statements are subject to 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 Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020. 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. On today's conference call, as in the past, non-GAAP financial measures will be used to help investors understand Abbott's ongoing business performance. 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 excludes the impact of foreign exchange. With that, I will now turn the call over to Robert.

Thanks, Scott. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. Today, we reported results of another very strong quarter. Ongoing earnings per share were $1.40, reflecting nearly 45% growth compared to last year, and sales increased more than 22% on an organic basis. Excluded COVID testing-related sales, which totaled $1.9 billion in the quarter, organic sales increased 12% versus last year. As we've seen since the start of the pandemic, our diversified mix of healthcare businesses continues to prove highly resilient, Even as COVID case rates surged in the U.S. and other geographies during the third quarter, strong growth in our more consumer-facing businesses, nutritionals, established pharmaceuticals, and diabetes care, mitigated the modest impacts we saw from the surges in certain areas of our hospital-based businesses. This has been a consistent theme throughout the pandemic, as evidenced by an increase in total company sales, excluding COVID tests, of 11% on an organic basis through the first nine months of this year compared to our 2019 pre-pandemic baseline, which highlights that our growth is real and not simply a function of easy comps versus last year. As a result of our strong performance and outlook, today we increased our full-year adjusted earnings per share guidance range now at $5 to $5.10 which reflects nearly 40 percent growth compared to last year. I'll now summarize our third quarter results before turning the call over to Bob, and I'll start with nutrition, where sales increased 9 percent compared to last year. Strong growth in the quarter was led by U.S. pediatric and international adult nutrition. In pediatric nutrition, Sales grew over 8.5% in the quarter, led by strong growth in the U.S. from continued share gains in our infant formula and toddler portfolio. Sales of Pedialyte, our market-leading rehydration brand, once again grew strong double digits, driven by market uptake of several recently launched new products, as well as investments we're making in direct consumer promotion. In adult nutrition, sales grew over 9% in the quarter, including mid-teens growth internationally as we continue to see strong demand for our Ensure and Glucerna brands, including new users entering these categories and existing customers increasing their usage. Turning to diagnostics, sales increased more than 45% overall and 12.5% excluding COVID testing-related sales. During the quarter, as the Delta variant spread and COVID cases surge, particularly in the U.S., demand for testing increased significantly, most notably for rapid tests. In total, during the quarter, we sold more than 225 million COVID tests globally and have now shipped over a billion tests since the start of the pandemic. Over the last several months, we've learned that COVID vaccines, while a powerful tool, are not the lone solution needed in our global fight against this virus. Testing, particularly rapid testing, which is fast, affordable, and easy to use, is an important companion to vaccines and therapeutics. Abbott has established a global leadership position in rapid testing, including a supply capacity of more than 100 million tests per month. Moving to established pharmaceuticals, where sales grew more than 15%, driven by strong execution and a steady cadence of new product introductions. Strong sales performance in the quarter was broad-based across several countries, including double-digit growth in China, Russia, and India, which led to overall sales growth of 18% in our key emerging markets. And lastly, I'll cover medical devices. where sales grew 13% in the quarter compared to last year and more than 16% compared to pre-pandemic sales in the third quarter of 2019. Strong performance in the quarter was led by double-digit growth in rhythm management, structural heart, heart failure, and diabetes care. In structural heart, we continue to enhance our portfolio in large, fast-growing markets with the recent U.S. FDA approvals of Amulet, which closes the left atrial appendage in the heart to help reduce the risk of stroke in people with atrial fibrillation, and Portico for transcatheter aortic valve replacement. In heart failure, we announced results from the GUIDE-HF trial of our Cardiomem system. As with many other recent and ongoing clinical trials across the healthcare industry, a portion of the CardioMens trial overlapped with the COVID-19 pandemic. After adjusting for this impact, CardioMens demonstrated a 28% reduction in heart failure hospitalizations. And we filed with the U.S. FDA for label expansion based on the trial data in the middle of this year. During the quarter, we also added an attractive growth platform to our vascular device portfolio with the acquisition of Walk Vascular, a commercial stage company with a minimally invasive thrombectomy system called JEDI that removes peripheral blood clots. Peripheral thrombectomy is a large, high-growth area where we could leverage our existing commercial presence. And I'll wrap up with diabetes care, where strong, Growth was led by Freestyle Libre sales of nearly $1 billion. During the quarter, we added over 200,000 new users, bringing the total global user base for Libre to well over 3.5 million users. So in summary, we continue to achieve strong, well-balanced growth across all of our major businesses, which is being fueled by strong execution and a steady cadence of new products. COVID testing particularly COVID testing, remains an important companion to vaccines and therapeutics, and Abbott has established a strong leadership position in this area. And based on the strength of our performance and outlook, we're raising our EPS guidance for the year, which now reflects growth of nearly 40% compared to last year. I'll now turn over the call to Bob to discuss our results and outlook for the year in more detail.