Avantor, Inc.

Good morning. My name is Krista, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Edvanter's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question at that time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. And if you'd like to withdraw your question, again, press star one. Thank you. I will now like to turn the conference over to Chris Fiddick, Vice President of Investor Relations. Chris, you may begin.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Our speakers today are Emmanuel Ligner, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Steve Eck, Senior Vice President, Interim Chief Financial Officer, and Chief Accounting Officer. The press release and our presentation accompanying this call are available on our Investor Relations website at ir.avantoursciences.com. Following our prepared remarks, we'll 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 meaning 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 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. I will now turn the call over to Emmanuel.

Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our call today. I will begin with a high level update on our second quarter performance. I will then reflect on the actions we've taken since I came into this role nearly 12 months ago and discuss the progress we are making in executing Revival, our comprehensive program to sharpen strategic focus and improve execution. Turn into slide four. Let me highlight a few key messages. First, we remain highly focused on executing revival, and I am very happy with the progress we made to date. Revival deliver measurable results and put us on a path to sustainable growth. Second, I'm pleased that our second quarter results exceeded expectation across several key financial metrics. Those results were driven by improved performance in our VWR distribution and service segments, which returned to positive organic revenue growth during the quarter. Our bioscience and medtech product segments performed near the high end of our expectation and is positioned to return to growth in the second half. Third, we delivered excellent free cash flow, enabling us to invest in the business while also paying down debt. We remain committed to reduce our adjusted net leverage ratio below three times. Finally, we raise our 2026 organic revenue growth and adjusted EPS guidance. Our updated outlook reflect both our second quarter performance as well as higher expectation for the second half of the year. Turn to slide 5, where I will review our Q2 performance highlights. In Q2, we generated $1.69 billion of revenue, which declined 0.4% on organic basis and was up 0.5% on a reported basis. Revenue was stronger than we had anticipated, driven primarily by VWR, which grew 1.7% organically in the quarter. VWR returned to growth earlier than we anticipated, reflecting the deliberate action taken by segment president Corey Walker and his team to strengthen the business. The segment entered the second half of 2026 with broad-based momentum, and we continue to expect growth to accelerate through the remainder of the year. I will talk more about the driver of VWR return to growth later in my remarks. Turning to BNP, revenue was near the high hand of our expectation, driven by solid execution across the segments. On a year-over-year basis, revenue declined 5.6% organically reflecting the impact of the discrete factors we had discussed previously. Importantly, BMP delivered sequential revenue growth from Q1 to Q2 and, as anticipated, demonstrated a stable trend. In BMP, we saw strong order intake and improving operations in the second quarter. Those leading indicators provide evidence that our revival initiatives are gaining traction and When combined with reduced comparison headwinds from discrete factors, give us confidence that BNP will return to organic growth during the second half of 2026. I will discuss revival impact on BNP shortly. Moving down the P&L, adjusted EBITDA grew more than 15% sequentially from Q1, driven by increased volumes in both segments. Adjusted earning per share was 21 cents above our expectations for the quarter. Finally, one of Avento's key strengths is our ability to consistently generate strong free cash flow. In the second quarter, excluding cash restructuring costs, we generated $152 million of free cash flow. This reflected strong conversion of adjusted net income and keep us on track to achieve our full year free cash flow guidance. We use this strong cash generation to repay $112 million of debt during the quarter, further strengthening our balance sheet and underscoring our commitment to reduce our adjusted net leverage ratio to below three times. Please turn to slide six. Last year, we launched Avento Revival, our comprehensive program to sharpen strategic focus and improve execution across the enterprise. Revival is built on five pillars, commercial excellence, operation performance, portfolio optimization, simplification, and talent. Guided by insights from customers, suppliers, and associates at Gemba, we have launched initiatives across each pillar that are producing measurable results. Some examples are on slide seven. We have made important go-to-market changes We are resegmented at Vantor into VWR and BMP to sharpen our focus, simplify the organization, and better serve customers. We revived the VWR brand and accelerated our digital roadmap, including the relaunch of VWR.com, which has driven stronger customer engagement and e-commerce performance. Across both segments, we are extremely focused on commercial excellence to drive every product and service in a way that delights customers. In BNP, our commercial teams are executed with greater consistency and focus, resulting in stronger customer engagement and higher win rates. This translates into double-digit order growth for BNP and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.1 during the second quarter, while also expanding our funnel of future growth opportunities. Those go-to-market FO are reflected not just in BNP's order momentum, but also in VWR's return to growth. In the manufacturing pillar, we have invested across our supply chain to improve productivity and strengthen customer service. Those investments, combined with the ongoing implementation of a new sales and operation planning process, are driving execution improvements. For example, during the quarter, we increased the throughput of certain key product lines at a large manufacturing site by more than 25% on average versus the first quarter. This progress is the direct result of revival initiatives, including the use of Lean and Six Sigma tools to enhance equipment uptime, reliability, and overall productivity. The Simplify How We Work pillar delivers benefits both inside and outside the organization. One example is the recent redesign of our customers' onboarding process. Growing on insights from multiple Gamba walks and a cross-functional Kaizen event, we redesigned the process from end to end, reducing onboarding from 14 steps to just 8, and cutting completion time from up to four days to as little as two days for complex accounts or to just minutes for simple accounts. Finally, as I have said before, revival begins and ends with people. We move quickly to complement our strong internal talent with experienced external leaders, refreshing approximately 25% of our and the senior leadership team, and we are driving a cultural transformation across Advantor. We are communicating more effectively, collaborating more closely in the field, holding ourselves more accountable through a disciplined focus and measurable outcomes, and putting customers at the center of all what we do. The positive impact of Revival is evident not only in our improved second quarter results, but also in leading indicators such as the strength of our order book and the expansion of our commercial funnel that will ultimately lead to sustainable, profitable growth. Please turn to slide eight. VWR return to growth in Q2 marks an important milestone for the segments. While the growth inflection itself is encouraging, The underlying drivers are broad-based, as I will describe, giving us confidence that we are building sustainable momentum. The leadership team Cori has built over the past year has implemented meaningful changes to VWO organization structure and operating model, setting the stage for segments' improved performance. With the team structure and operating model in place, We made deliberated decision to strengthen our capabilities, operation, brand, and commercial excellence. Together, those actions have led the foundation for the stronger performance we are seeing today. Customers turn to VWR for our global scale, the depth and breadth of our product agnostic catalog, strong supplier relationship, and excellent service. Combined with the changes, We have taken over the past year our strengths are translated into stronger financial results, including stronger growth across key customer segments. Let me review the key factor driving VWR's return to growth in Q2. The first factor was stronger performance with large global customers. As a reminder, Revenue from new business win is realized gradually due to the complexity of customer implementation processes, so we can take time before the benefits of strong commercial performance are reflected in our results. Previously, we discussed several elements impacting our large global customer segments, including re-contracting activity and other industry dynamics. While our commercial focus and execution has improved significantly over the past year, those historical pressures phased in over the course of 2025, with their cumulative impact moderating in the first quarter of this year. While they continue to represent a headwind in 2026, their impact is diminishing as we move forward and offsetting actions have been successful in driving stronger than anticipated results in these segments. Accordingly, year-over-year comparison will become increasingly favorable as the year progresses, allowing our results to more fully reflect our underlying commercial momentum. Our growth rate in the second quarter benefited modestly from this improving comparison dynamic. Over the past year, PWR team has taken thoughtful and deliberative steps to expand our relationship with large global customers. The team focused on retaining and expanding large global customer relationships, strategically developing our new customer pipeline, and accelerating the onboarding process for new contracts. We have executed Well, again, the growth opportunity that our efforts have generated and this new business is contributing to our results sooner and more meaningful than we anticipated. Another important driver of EWR performance is improving growth in our small and mid-sized customer segments with better e-commerce outcome playing an important role. On our last earning calls, we highlighted early signs of improving trends following multiple upgrades to our platform, as well as successful relaunch of VWR.com. We advanced our digital roadmap in the second quarter, and customers have responded positively to those enhancements, driving direct traffic, higher conversion, and improved daily sales, particularly among smaller customers would tend to have higher margin. As a result, e-commerce growth accelerated as the quarter progressed and was accretive to the segment growth for the quarter. Although our recent progress is encouraging, our digital transformation remains in the early stages. We continue to see substantial opportunity to enhance the customer's experience, deepen engagement, and drive sustained growth in the channel, particularly in Europe. Finally, why deliberate action drove the majority of VWR improved performance, an increase in pharma and biotech customer activity provided a modest tailwind during the quarter, reinforcing our decision last year to focus significantly commercial resources on those customers' groups. It is important to note that activity level in several Important end markets, such as education and in certain geographies, particularly Europe, remain stable but at a lower level than we would like to see. An improvement in those end markets could represent an additional tailwind to our growth. Overall, we are pleased by VWR's improved results but remain focused on execution to sustain and build the positive momentum. I will now turn the call over to Steve to discuss the number.