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 2025 earnings results conference call. After the presentation, you will have the opportunity to ask any questions, which you can do so by pressing start, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I will now turn the call over to Chris Fedick. Chris, you may begin the conference.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thank you all for joining us. Our speakers today are Emmanuel Ligner, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Brent Jones, 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. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. A replay of the call will be made available on our website later today. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements within the meeting of the U.S. 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 may differ materially from any forward-looking statements 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 press release and in the supplemental disclosures package on our investor relations website. With that, let me hand the call over to Emmanuel.

Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I'll cover three topics to begin the call. First, project revival and our progress to date, Then our strategic objective for 2026 and how we will track our progress. And finally, my observations about the health of our end markets. I will then end the call over to Brent. We will discuss our financial performance and 2026 guide in more detail. And after Brent comments, I will make some concluding remarks. On our previous earning call, I introduced the Aventor Revival program, which is designed to sharpen our strategic focus and to improve execution across the organization. Revival consists of five pillars, evolving our go-to-market strategy, improving our operation, optimizing our portfolio, simplifying our processes, and lastly, strengthening talent and increased accountability. We are executing this plan with urgency, and in the three months since launching the program, we have already made important progress. Our top priority has been the go-to-market pillar, and recently, we made a fundamental shift in how we run the company. We now operate Aventor with two new business units, a product-agnostic channel and a channel-agnostic product business. Customers and their needs are at the center of this reorganization, and we believe that this delineation maximizes the possibility that every product and every service is delivered in a way that delights customers. Effective in Q1, we will alter our reporting segments to reflect this go-to-market approach and align external reporting with how we now manage the business internally. Next, we have recommitted to the VWR brand for our channel business. One of my earliest observations when meeting with supplier, customers, and our associate was that everyone refers to the channel as VWR. So as of a few weeks ago, the distribution channel of Aventor is once again known as VWR. We intend to capitalize on VWR tremendous brand recognition and longstanding goodwill with customers around the world. In Q4, we launched an important update to VWR e-commerce platform, and we have committed to invest in addition 10 to $15 million in 2026 to upgrade our customer's interface. Enhancing our digital capabilities is one of our highest priority given their importance to so many of our customers. In the operations pillar, our new chief operating officer, Mary Blen, has hit the ground running. Mary and her team have thoughtfully identified $20 million of investment to enhance our ability to serve customers. Next, we have established a revival project management office led by Ali Hozak that will coordinate our collective effort and will ensure accountability. Lastly, Our team across the world have embraced revival, and I am thrilled by their willingness to make the changes necessary to maximize our potential. While I am optimistic as ever about the future of Aventor, I want to be crystal clear that 2026 will be a year of transition and investment as we reinforce the foundation of this great company. Significant investment will be made across the organization with our strategic priority in mind, driving sustainable profitable top line growth we will compete vigorously but rationally and we will work relentless to ensure customers are delighted about Avento as such the most important metric to track our progress will be organic revenue growth rate and we intend to demonstrate improvement over the course of 2026. we have a significant amount of work ahead but the fruits of our label will be meaningful when we execute our revival plan successfully. We believe that Advantor can grow at a faster rate, generate attractive margin, produce strong free cash flow, and do all of this in a fair, more consistent manner. Before Brent discuss the financial, I want to share what we are seeing across some of our key markets. First, Let me echo recent comments from others in our industry. After a challenging 2025, our end markets feel more stable, though, naturally, some areas are in better shape than others. The biopharma end market contributes to be healthy, with production level growing at attractive rates, and many companies identified investments that will expand capacity or improve efficiency. The body is well for future demand from this important customer cohort. The primary growth driver of our bioprocessing business is patients' demand for biologics, which has remained strong. We expect demand for biologics to grow in 2026 and beyond based on customer development pipelines, the number of recent FDA approvals, and the pace at which existing therapies are being adopted. Customer inventory level across Jackie Baker and other processed chemicals appear to be reasonable normal, and we expect demands for our products could improve modestly in 2026, having exceeded 2025 with a book-to-bill ratio of more than one. On the MasterFlex fluid handling side, we remain well positioned in areas aligned with customer preferences, including single-use assemblies, fluid management, and modular process solution, which support flexibility and faster deployment when customers choose to invest. 2025 was a difficult year for our early-stage biotech, education, and government customers, but we are cautiously optimistic that those end markets are near the bottom. While it is difficult to predict if or when Aventura might see improved demands, we are pleased that certain headwinds facing those customers may be dissipating. The fourth quarter was one of the best quarters for biotech funding in recent years, and these momentums continue in January. Across the educational government and market, which we serve primarily with VWR, we have seen indicators of an improved funding environment in Europe and Japan, but there remains uncertainty in the U.S. which represent a large percentage of our education and government business. While we are encouraged by expectations for an NIH budget in 2026, customers remain hesitant to spend money even when it is committed and received. This, coupled with reduction in headcount and program cuts over the past year, leads us to believe that we will not see noticeable increase in customers' spend until we have an extended period of funding and outlay stability. Before I turn the call over to Brent, I want to note that we are pleased to welcome Sanjeev Mehra and Simon Diggermans to our board of directors. Sanjeev and Simon add deep global leadership, financial expertise, and strategic insight.