AptarGroup, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to APTAR's 2022 Third Quarter Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. Introducing today's conference call is Ms. Mary Scafidis, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Hello, everyone, and thanks for being with us today. Joining me on today's call are Sifan Tanda, President and CEO, and Bob Kuhn, Executive Vice President and CFO. A press release and accompanying slide deck have been posted to our website, where we will also post a replay of this call as is our practice. Today's call includes some forward-looking statements. Please refer to our SEC filings to review factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we are discussing today. And now I would like to turn the conference call over to Stephane.

Thank you, Mary, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us on our call today. Beginning on slide three, I'm happy to report that amid a seemingly worsening economic backdrop, Aftar achieved core sales growth of 9% and delivered adjusted EPS of 95 cents per share, which is the midpoint of our previously given guidance range. The majority of the growth in the quarter was driven by our pharma segment. Later on in our call, Bob Kuhn, our CFO, will provide additional details on the quarter. I would like to cover a few key items now. Our adjusted earnings per share includes a previously announced one-time inflation payment made to certain European employees that equates to approximately $0.05 share. Our industry-leading pharma segment grew across all end markets with prescription, consumer health care, and active materials being particularly strong. We were pleased to announce that our investments in digital health are beginning to bear fruit as we recently entered into a contract with a major European pharmaceutical company. This is another validation of our strategy and our capabilities in this exciting field. Beauty and home achieved strong growth in Europe, especially in prestige fragrance, fueled in part by Western travel retail. In addition, pandemic-related lockdowns in China affected parts of the business. Core sales in food and beverage were flat due to difficult comparisons with the prior year period and were impacted by softening consumer demand in North America, which is causing certain customers to work through inventory levels. Our pricing initiatives to recover increased costs resulted in a net positive inflation impact in the quarter. However, we are still facing a variety of rising costs. Even though resin prices decreased, other costs are on the rise, including energy, primarily in Europe, and labor and transportation around the world. Currency headwinds continue to be significant, especially for our pharma segment. While we remain focused on pricing initiatives with customers, we are also diligently scrutinizing and managing our costs. Now turning to slide four, I want to highlight an announcement made earlier this month by our newest division within pharma, Aftar Digital Health. This division entered into a contract with Kiase Group, an international research-focused biopharmaceutical and healthcare company, to bring to market a disease management platform for asthma and COPD. Our digital health platforms combine mobile and web applications, connected drug delivery systems, patient onboarding, training, and advanced data analytic services to actively empower patients and create the positive treatment journey, bringing together healthcare, software, and device expertise is unique to Aftar. Over several years, we have made a number of bolt-on acquisitions to expand our pharmaceutical services and digital health offerings, the largest of which was Volantis, a pioneer in digital therapeutics. We acquired Volantis in the second quarter of 2021 for approximately $100 million. This was a significant step in building our foundation in the fast-growing digital healthcare space. If we have learned anything from the pandemic, it is that advancement in healthcare are rapidly accelerating, and things like remote patient engagement and patient monitoring, whether for clinical trials or real-world treatments, will be a big part of our future. Turning to slide five, in addition to our investment in digital healthcare solutions, We have also increased our offerings in pharmaceutical services. This is part of our long-term strategy to build an even stronger position around our leading delivery devices. Our recent acquisition of Metaphase Design Group adds the capabilities of ergonomic product design and human factors engineering, meaning how people think, how they feel, behave, and respond when using devices and systems. More than half of all drugs being developed today are developed by small to mid-sized biotech labs or universities, what we affectionately term as two people in the molecule. These early developers have limited experience with the long regulatory approval process and the hurdles they will face when bringing a new drug to market. It can take anywhere from five years to 12 years or more for a new drug to come to market if the journey is successful. Our portfolio of services allows us to partner with healthcare companies earlier in the drug development process. These strategic capabilities further enable us also to deliver on our pharma segment's growth and margin targets. Our stated compound annual growth rate target for pharma is 6 to 10%, and while the pandemic interrupted the consistency of our trajectory, It is important to note that the segment achieved an annual sales compounded rate of 8% over the previous decade. Turning to slide six, we create value by leveraging our technology platforms across our three business segments. On the slide, you can see some examples of recent launches on the market, including innovative and sustainable solutions. In our food and beverage segment, our straight technology is being used to dispense oils and salad dressings. Our nasal spray system with child-resistant features was chosen for children's afrin no-drift decongestion. In the beauty market, our same spray technology for fragrance is featured on perfume brands including Yves Saint Laurent, Guerlain, and Calvin Klein in Europe, along with the Boticario Group in Latin America. Let me also briefly highlight a sustainable solution that has been very successful in the quarter, our award-winning, fully recyclable monomaterial pump called Future. It is featured on several products, ranging from hand soap to lotions to cleansers. These are only a few examples of some of the new applications brought to market during the quarter. On slide 7, I want to briefly comment on the strength of our balance sheet and our capital allocations. As you know, Apter has historically maintained a strong and relatively conservative balance sheet. This approach has certainly served our customers and shareholders well during challenging economic times. More recently, we have focused our investments in the business and M&A towards our high-margin, fast-growing pharma segments. Dividends and share repurchases are also part of our balanced capital allocation strategy, and for the first nine months of 2022, we returned approximately $147 million to shareholders. Before handing over to Bob, I just want to mention, as previously announced, we were very pleased to welcome Matt Ferratola to our Board of Directors in September. Matt is the CEO of Innovis, a medical technology company. He brings a breadth of experience in medical devices, as well as a proven track record of driving product innovation, profitability, and continuous improvement in prestigious enterprises like Danaher and DuPont. With that, I will now turn it over to Bob, who will share detailed comments on our quarterly results.