Alcon Inc.

Greetings. Welcome to Alcon's first quarter 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in listening mode. The question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone today should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero from your telephone keypad. Please note that this conference is being recorded. At this time, I'll turn the conference over to Dan Cravens, Vice President and Global Head, Investor Relations. Thank you. You may now begin.

Welcome to Alcon's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Yesterday, we issued our press release, interim financial report, and earnings presentation. All of these documents are available on 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. Before we begin, please note that our press release, presentation, and remarks today are will include forward-looking statements, including statements regarding our future outlook. We undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events, except as required by law. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in these forward-looking statements. Please do not place undue reliance on them. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ are included in our Form 20F, Earnings Press Release and Interim Financial Reports, each of which is on file with the Securities Exchange Commission and available on their website at sec.gov. We will discuss certain non-IFRS financial measures. These measures may be calculated differently from and may not be comparable to similar measures used by other companies. They should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for IFRS prescribed performance measures. Reconciliation between our non-IFRS measures and the most directly comparable high FRS measures to be found in our earnings press release. For discussion purposes, our comments on growth rates are expressed in constant currency. In a moment, David will begin with highlights from the first quarter. After his remarks, Tim will walk through our financial performance and outlook for the remainder of 2026. David will then return with closing comments before we open the line for Q&A. Before I turn the call over, I'd like to share that Alan Trang has accepted a new finance leadership role within Alcon, supporting our surgical business in Singapore. On a personal note, I want to thank Alan for his deep expertise, sound judgment, and the partnership and friendship he has brought to our team and to our engagement with the investment community. He has made a meaningful impact on Alcon, and while we'll miss him in his current role, we're excited to see him take on this next chapter within the company. and we expect to announce Alan's replacement in the near future. With that, I'll turn the call over to our CEO, David Endicott.

Good afternoon, and thanks for joining us. Let me start by recognizing the incredible work of our talented teams around the world. Your ongoing dedication, innovation, and commitment to our customers continue to move Alcon forward and make a meaningful difference in patients' lives. Now, the first quarter was an important step forward for our new products, demonstrating strong market acceptance and share gains. In a quarter marked by uneven market conditions, particularly in Cataract, our teams stayed focused and delivered results that reflect the strength of our innovative portfolio. Our recent product launches contributed meaningfully to top-line growth in the first quarter, and we expect that contribution to continue to build as the year progresses. Importantly, we're seeing market share gains across key categories, particularly in U.S. ATI wells, surgical equipment, and consumables, and contact lenses, as well as dry eye. That momentum was clear at the ASCRS meeting last month. Across more than 60 presentations and peer-to-peer sessions, we saw strong surgeon engagement driven by impactful scientific data and hands-on demonstrations. Discussions focused on consistency, workflow integration, and matching technology to patient and doctor needs. This real-time feedback reinforces our confidence in our ability to translate innovation into real-world clinical value. I'll now move to discussing recent innovations, starting with our Unity FACO-VIT device. As we've discussed in the past, the Unity platform represents our most significant equipment upgrade opportunity in more than a decade, and the scientific community continues to recognize that. In addition to previous top innovation awards, I'm pleased to report that Unity VCS was named an Edison Award winner last week. This is one of the most recognized honors for market-ready innovation and reflects its meaningful impact on surgical technology. Launched in 2025, Unity VCS is engineered to enhance surgeon control, improve efficiency, and streamline the surgical workflow. VCS has been introduced across most major markets worldwide and continues to build momentum and perform well in the quarter. Late last year, we expanded the platform with Unity CS, our standalone cataract system. It's designed to increase surgical throughput while maintaining precision and safety. Unity CS has also been very well-received. Surgeons have noted its seamless workflow and next-generation energy delivery that help optimize case efficiency without compromising outcomes. With a substantial installed base of legacy machines and a compelling value proposition across both efficiency and clinical performance, Unity represents a significant technology upgrade. Beyond the replacement market, Unity is also showing strengthening share and actually expanding our installed base. As a result, our order pipeline remains robust, especially post-ASCRS. We'll continue to work closely with customers to manage OR installations with the quality, service, and support they expect from Alcon. Alternative and plannable is where our innovation is strengthening our competitive position and driving solid performance. In fact, in the U.S., we gain share in every IOL category in the first quarter. I'll start with Panoptix Pro, our latest trifocal IOL. Pro builds on the proven success of Panoptix, which is already the world's number one most implanted trifocal with over 4 million implants. Pro introduces new features that reduce light scatter and delivers greater quality of vision. In the U.S., this lens has helped to drive almost two share points of growth in the PCIOL category. Internationally, we're just getting started. We recently had an upcoming launch in Australia, Japan, South Korea, and now Europe, Feedback from these launches has been positive, and we're confident that Panoptix Pro will bolster our presbyopia-correcting IOL leadership globally. Building on Panoptix Pro's momentum, we launched TruePlus, our new enhanced monofocal IOL. This lens extends the range of vision of a traditional monofocal, providing enhanced intermediate vision without compromising distance performance. TruePlus is designed for surgeons who want enhanced monofocal options. It enables us to compete more effectively while defending our clarion monofocal base. Importantly, TruPlus launches with a toric version from day one, and having a toric modality is a meaningful advantage for competing in the astigmatism correcting segment and growing our ATI well share. Finally, we remain on track to launch an upgraded version of Vividi, our extended depth of focus IOL, in early 2027. With more than 2 million implants, Vividi is already the world's most implanted eat-off lens, and this enhancement is designed to improve near vision while preserving Vividi's low visual disturbance profile. Now I'll move to retina, where Valeda, our photobiomodulation device for intermediate dry AMD, continues to see encouraging early adoption. Valeda is the first and only therapy clinically shown to maintain vision improvement in dry AMD patients, with some patients achieving about a one-line gain in visual acuity. This technology uses three specific wavelengths of light to improve mitochondrial activity and retinal health, giving retina specialists a non-invasive treatment option for dry AMD that they've never had before. Importantly, reimbursement is progressing with all but one Medicare administrative contractor covering Valeda, and we're actively engaging private payers and expanding physician education. The LADA complements Voyager by expanding our office-based procedures, enabling practices to operate more efficiently by offering patients convenient, non-invasive options. Now I'll move to Cutback Lenses, where we continue to gain traction with our innovative reusable portfolio. More than half of new wearers start in reusables, which is a segment that supports strong patient retention and delivers highly attractive margins. Given our under-indexed share position, this category remains an important growth opportunity for us. Our reusable portfolio is anchored by Total 30, the industry's first and only monthly lens with water gradient technology, which delivers exceptional comfort for 30 days of wear. Last year, we expanded the Total 30 family to cover all major modalities, sphere, toric, and multifocal. And in February, we introduced Total 30 Multifocal for Astigmatism, which is our first multifocal toric contact lens. This lens fills an important, unmet need for presbyopic patients with astigmatism, a group that historically has had very few options. Initial feedback has been excellent, with ECPs highlighting crisp vision at all distances and long-lasting comfort. Alongside Total 30, Precision 7 broadens our portfolio with a high-quality, accessible, one-week replacement lens. Designed for patients where daily disposables are not an option, Precision 7 delivers a comfortable experience at an attractive price point while introducing a replacement schedule that many optometrists view as more intuitive than traditional two-week lenses. Combined, these innovations drove share gains in the quarter, and we are expected to continue to do so in this category. Now, finally, in ocular health, we continue to strengthen our leadership in the expanding dry eye category through innovation in both our over-the-counter and pharmaceutical products. On the other side, our sustained family of artificial tiers delivered another quarter of high single-digit growth. Most notably, last year we launched Sustained Pro, our most advanced artificial tier. Its triple action formula is designed to hydrate, restore, and protect the oculus surface, delivering long-lasting relief. Early performance has been strong, contributing to continued share gains in U.S. artificial tiers and reinforcing our leadership as that category expands. In pharmaceuticals, Triptir continues to perform well. Doctors appreciate its rapid onset and novel mechanism of action. Importantly, Triptir is already capturing share with approximately four share points in just eight months into the launch. We've also made great progress with payers. In the first quarter, we expanded coverage to more than half of our commercial lives. Our focus for the remainder of the year is on broadening the prescriber base and securing future Medicare Part D coverage which will significantly expand patient access and make Triptir easier to prescribe. Triptir and SustainPro together represent significant innovation in dry eye, extending our reach across the full spectrum of dry eye sufferers and reinforcing Alcon's leadership in this category. Looking ahead, our innovation pipeline remains strong, with upcoming launches including a new entry into the eye whitening category, as well as UnityM, our newest microscope. And Unity DX, our whole-eye diagnostic device. And these programs build on the momentum we're seeing across the portfolio and reflect our continued focus on advancing differentiated innovation. Together, they reinforce our confidence in the durability of our pipeline and our ability to drive sustained growth over time. Now, I'd like to turn to operational improvements where we are making a number of things happen internally. As we scale innovation across the portfolio, artificial intelligence has become an important enabler at Alcon, helping us operate faster and make better decisions. We started applying AI selectively where it enhances productivity, quality, and speed. In R&D, we've deployed solutions that we expect will increase speed to approval while working on AI-enabled modeling and simulation for accelerating design and development. In operations and quality, we are leveraging AI solutions to improve yield and perform automated inspections. And on the commercial side, AI-assisted analytics are enabling deeper customer insights and more personalized engagement. So while it's still early in our journey with AI, these advancements are fortifying our operational foundation at a pivotal moment and enabling us to leverage a more stable cost structure and seize emerging opportunities. Now, before I close, I want to share a few observations on the market environment. In cataract surgery consistent with prior quarters, we estimate the global procedure volumes grew low single digits. While this relative softness has persisted for several quarters, we continue to believe that market growth will return to historical levels as healthcare systems adapt to increasing demand. However, for 2026, our guidance continues to assume that current trends continue. On the other hand, we estimate the global ATI well penetration was up 130 basis points to approximately 17%. there was broad-based strength in most regions of the globe, which was pressured by weakness in China. If you were to exclude China, global penetration was up approximately 220 basis points. In contact lenses, we estimate the global market grew at the low end of mid-single digits, led by strength in the United States. In summary, while market conditions remain mixed, our strong portfolio of innovation is performing well and continues to deliver solid results. We're operating from a position of greater strength, backed by a deeper innovation engine and a more resilient commercial model. This positions us to deliver durable, profitable growth and create meaningful long-term value for shareholders. With that, I'll turn the call over to Tim, who will walk you through the financials.