Avantor, Inc.

Good morning. My name is Emily and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Avantor's fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings results conference call. After the prepared remarks, you will have the opportunity to ask a question by pressing start followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to turn the call over to Christina Jones, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Mrs. Jones, you may begin the conference. Good morning. Thank you for joining us. Our speakers today are Michael Stubblefield, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Tom Flozek, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. The press release and a presentation accompanying this call are available on our Investor Relations website at ir.avantoursciences.com. A replay of this webcast will also be made available on our website after the call. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the line for questions. During this call, we will be making some forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including statements regarding events or developments that we believe or anticipate may occur in the future. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those set forth in our SEC filings. Actual results might differ materially from any forward-looking statement that we make today. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date that they are made. We do not assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events, or other developments. This call will include a discussion of non-GAAP measures. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures can be found in the supplemental disclosures package on our IR website. With that, I will now turn the call over to Michael.

Thank you, CJ, and good morning, everyone. I appreciate you joining us today. I'm starting on slide three. Fourth quarter results were in line with the guidance provided during our Q3 call. Our business grew 2.7% on a core organic basis, and we expanded adjusted EBITDA margin by over 60 basis points. As customer demand and supply chains continue to normalize as we transition from the COVID-19 pandemic, the temporary headwinds we have faced largely played out as expected. For the full year, we delivered core organic revenue growth of 6%, at the high end of our long-term target of 4% to 6%, with growth across all geographies and product groups. We expanded adjusted EBITDA margin by 110 basis points above our long-term target of 50 to 100 basis points and delivered $1.41 of adjusted EPS, outpacing our updated guidance of $1.38 to $1.40. We continue to execute on our long-term strategy and growth drivers, including advancing a robust innovation pipeline, expanding our manufacturing and distribution capacity, enhancing our digital capabilities, and leveraging the Avantour business system to drive operational rigor. More than 70% of our revenue is in life sciences. And over the course of the year, we introduced a number of new products to support our customers in growing biologics platforms, including monoclonal antibodies, cell and gene therapy, and mRNA. We enhanced our proprietary consumable offering with the extension of our precision plastics portfolio under our JT Baker brand. We also introduced innovative kits and flow cells from Oxford Nanopore. which helped generate next generation sequencing data at the highest consensus accuracy. During the fourth quarter, we further augmented our global footprint and strengthened our ability to provide essential products and services to local biopharma customers as we opened our new CGMP distribution center in Dublin, Ireland, and produced our first commercial batches in our new CGMP manufacturing hub in Singapore. In addition, we continued to improve supply for bioproduction customers, and reduced lead times for a broad range of products across our portfolio. We also completed a number of contract renewals with our largest customers, including our recently announced multi-year agreement with Catalent that significantly expands our relationship, making Avantor their primary supplier across a broad range of lab supplies and services. Continuous improvement is in our DNA, and in 2022, we completed more than 450 Kaizen events focused on improving critical business processes, a 50% year-over-year increase. We also introduced enhancements to our organizational structure to strengthen commercial leadership, and we made significant progress in building out our strategy and corporate development team. We remain focused on execution, and our 14,500 associates are aligned with our enterprise priority of driving growth. We made significant progress in 2022 with our Science for Goodness platform, improving our ESG metrics from four major rating agencies. We are on pace to exceed our 2025 greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets and are accelerating our climate-related commitments in alignment with the latest science and look forward to sharing updates on our progress in this area in the coming months. Looking ahead, our long-term algorithm remains fully intact and highlights the strength and resilience of our business. Our guidance for 2023, which Tom will cover shortly, reflects our confidence in the fundamental growth drivers for life sciences, as well as the headwinds we face in the current operating environment. With that, let me turn it over to Tom to walk you through our financial results in more detail.