Alcon Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Alcon first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Dan Cravens, Vice President, Investor Relations for Alcon. Thank you. You may begin.

Welcome to Alcon's first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Yesterday, we issued a press release, an interim financial report, and posted a supplemental slide presentation on our website to enhance today's call. You can find all these documents in the investor relations section of our website at investor.alcon.com. Joining me on today's call are David Endicott, our Chief Executive Officer, and Tim Stonecipher, our Chief Financial Officer. Our press release, presentation, and discussion will include four looking statements. we expressly disclaim any obligation to update forward-looking statements as a result of new information or future developments, except as required by law. Our actual results may vary materially from those expressed or implied in our forward-looking statements. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those in our forward-looking statements are included in Outcomes Form 20F, and our earnings press release and interim financial report on file with the Securities Exchange Commission and available on the SEC's website at sec.gov. Non-IFRS financial measures used by the company may be calculated differently from and therefore may not be comparable to similarly titled measures used in other companies. These non-IFRS financial measures should be considered along with but not as alternatives to the operating performance measures as prescribed per IFRS. Please see a reconciliation between our non-IFRS measures with directly comparable measures presented in accordance with IFRS and our public filings. For discussion purposes, our comments on growth are expressed in constant currency. With that, I will now turn the call over to our CEO, David Endicott.

Thanks, Dan. Welcome to Alcon's first quarter 2022 earnings call. Before I begin my prepared remarks on the quarter, I want to take a moment to recognize the current events that we're seeing impacting the world today. Many parts of the world continue to face slow recovery from the pandemic, including recent COVID-19 restrictions in China. We also acknowledge the hardship brought on by the war in Ukraine, where our focus continues to be on the safety of our associates and their families. I'm very proud of the Alcon team who's led with compassion and done heroic things to help our associates. Now I'll give a brief update on our first quarter results, overall market dynamics and recent performance. And after my comments, Tim will discuss our first quarter performance and our outlook for the remainder of 2022. Then I'll wrap up with closing remarks and we'll open it up for Q&A. We're very pleased with our first quarter results. Despite broad economic headwinds, the Alcon team delivered strong revenue performance with sales growth of 18%. We also saw significant improvement in quarterly profitability with a core operating margin of 20.6% and core diluted earnings per share of 68 cents. These results were driven by our innovative product portfolio, solid execution by our commercial organization, and continued market recovery. Now at Surgical, Vividi and Panoptix are allowing surgeons to address the needs of a wide patient population. We continue to gain market share in the first quarter on the strength of our PCIOL portfolio. Alcon now has approximately 60% of the global PCI well market. This is up approximately 7 percentage points versus prior year and driven by international share gains. In the U.S., we have a PCI well market share of approximately 80% despite new entrants in the market. In the quarter, we also announced a geographic expansion of our Clarion portfolio of IOLs. Clarion delivers excellent vision, exceptional clarity, and predictable outcomes in a glistening-free IOL material. We recently launched Clarion monofocal, panoptics, and Vividi IOLs in the U.S., and we will bring our Clarion portfolio to additional markets throughout 2022 and 2023. Now, early in the first quarter, we closed the acquisition of Ivanis and brought the Hydrus MicroStent into our portfolio of implantables. We're delighted to welcome the Ivanis associates to the Alcon family. Integration of the sales force is going smoothly, and it was great to see the combined teams working together on our recent national sales meeting. As we've said in the past, Hydrus is a differentiated product in the $500 million mild to moderate MIGS market. It's also the only MIGS device with five years of safety and efficacy data from a pivotal study. We recently attended the American Glaucoma Society and the ASCRS conferences where we heard positive feedback as we continued the commercial expansion of this product. We also continue the introduction of our Smart Cataract Planner in the United States, which is part of our broader digital equipment ecosystem. The data recently presented at ASCRS, which was well received, highlights that Smart Cataract delivers substantial time savings during the evaluation, planning, OR, and postoperative workflows. With procedural volumes expected to grow at a higher rate than practicing surgeons, we know doctors are looking to drive efficiencies. and also reduce manual data entry and improve accuracy. In vision care, we continue to see momentum in our contact lens business driven by our SI-HI lenses. Precision One's visual acuity, ease of handling, and comfort make it a favorite of eye care professionals and patients alike. We're also gaining share in the daily SI-HI TORIC lens category and now have two options available for astigmatic patients, Precision One and Daily's Total One TORICs. Precision 1 Toric continues to be rolled out across our international markets following its introduction in the U.S. We're also excited to bring Daly's Total 1 Toric to various European markets later this year following its successful U.S. rollout. We're also innovating in what's still the largest patient population of contact lens wearers, the reusable market, with T30. Total 30 leverages the same water gradient technology of Daly's Total 1, which makes the lens uniquely comfortable even at day 30. Total 30 is now available in the US and Europe, and while it's still early in the launch, customer and patient feedback has been very positive. Lastly, in ocular health, we're pleased to have the three multi-dose preservative-free formulations of our popular, sustained family of artificial tears now available. Preservative-free formulations are generally preferred by doctors. Now with multi-dose formulations, we have more convenient and cost-effective products available for consumers. We're supporting these products as well as our Pataday and Simbrenza drops with a dedicated sales force delivering eye drops into the ophthalmic channel. This sales force has been in the market working with doctors for a few months now, and we're pleased with their progress. Now let me provide an update on our end markets. In surgical, global cataract procedures were up low teens in the first quarter versus prior year, led by strength in select international markets. Keep in mind, the procedures in the first quarter of 2021 were still impacted by COVID-19, which makes year-over-year comparisons easier. We expect market growth rates to decelerate in the remainder of the year as we now have lapped the low base from 2021. Additionally, there was a notable one-time increase in demand for PCI wells in South Korea due to changes in reimbursement requirements that were implemented on April 1st. Against this backdrop, our implantables business did outpace the market driven by the strength of our products and our commercial teams. In vision care, we estimate that the contact lens market grew mid-single digits in the first quarter, driven primarily by ongoing recovery in Europe. Our contact lens growth outpaced the market for another quarter, and we continue to see gains in new and switch fits, which is a strong indicator of potential future sales. So in summary, we feel very good about our strong start to the year, and we're encouraged by our full-year outlook. With that, let me pass it to Tim. We'll take you through our financial results and provide an outlook for the rest of the year.