Baxter International Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Baxter International's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Your lines will remain in a listen-only mode until the question and answer segment of today's call. At that time, if you have a question, you will need to press the star 1 key on your touchtone phone. If anyone should require assistance during the conference, please press star then 0 on your touchtone phone. As a reminder, this call is being recorded by Baxter and is copyrighted material. It cannot be recorded or rebroadcast without Baxter's permission. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Kevin Moran, Vice President, Investor Relations at Baxter International. Mr. Moran, you may begin.

Good morning and welcome. Today we'll discuss Baxter's second quarter results along with our updated financial outlook for the full year 2026. This morning, A press release was issued with our preliminary earnings results and updated outlook. The press release and investor presentation are available on the investor section of the Baxter website. Joining me today are Andrew Hider, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Anita Zielinski, Interim Chief Financial Officer, Chief Accounting Officer and Controller. During the call, we will be making forward-looking statements, including comments regarding our updated financial outlook for the full year 2026 and the anticipated drivers of the third quarter and second half 2026 performance. The anticipated impact of various regulatory and operational matters, including ones related to our infusion pump platform and ongoing supply chain challenges and commentary regarding the global macroeconomic environment Thank you for joining us. Thank you for joining us. On the call, we will reference organic growth, which excludes the impact of foreign exchange, MSA revenues from Vantiv, and the impacts associated with business acquisitions or divestitures. Unless otherwise noted, all financial results on today's call reflect continuing operations and exclude Baxter's former kidney care business, which is reported as discontinued operations. Finally, Andrew, Anita, and I will take questions following the prepared remarks, and we kindly ask that you limit yourself to one question and one brief follow-up so that we can give as many people in the queue an opportunity. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Andrew.

Thank you, Kevin, and good morning, everyone. I am encouraged by our second quarter financial results that came in ahead of expectations. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for joining us. Let me provide some highlights of our performance in the quarter. Second quarter global sales totaled approximately $3 billion, representing an increase of 5% on both a reported and organic basis. We saw growth across the portfolio, led by advanced surgery and drug compounding. Every segment and division contributed, with sales increasing in both the U.S. and internationally. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for joining us. We continue to expect margins to expand in the second half of the year, driven by higher volumes consistent with typical seasonality, benefits from our cost structure actions, and the roll through of higher cost inventory. Shifting now to our turnaround efforts. We continue to show progress on our three strategic priorities. The first of those priorities is stabilizing the business. Thank you for joining us. Overall, we are seeing encouraging progress and are focused on building greater consistency across the portfolio. As part of our efforts to stabilize and improve performance, earlier this year, we brought together our pharmaceuticals and infusion therapies and technologies businesses under a single leader. Our new reporting structure reflects that change, with a combined business now reported as infusion therapies and platforms, or ITP. We believe the combination will support stronger coordination, execution and innovation across businesses that share common customers, capabilities and workflows in the pharmacy space. Moving on to our second strategic priority, which is strengthening the balance sheet. During the quarter, we again saw positive free cash flow generation. Bringing our year-to-date total to $257 million. This is another positive step forward and reflects our continued focus on improving working capital and strengthening cash flow generation across the organization. There is still significant work ahead. The strides we have made in the first half give us increased confidence in our ability to achieve our net leverage target of approximately 3x by the end of the year. Achieving a stronger and more flexible balance sheet unlocks more optionality to drive shareholder value, including strategic tuck in M&A that enhances our customer offerings and growth profile, as well as the option to return capital through share repurchases. Turning to our third priority, driving continuous improvement. Now in its third quarter since deployment, The Baxter Growth and Performance System or Baxter GPS has taken hold in the company culture and is becoming increasingly embedded in how each division operates. Through the first half of the year, we have completed over 400 continuous improvement events held across Baxter. We have nearly 200 in flight and another 400 planned in the pipeline. While no single event will define our future, Small improvements over time should lead to big improvements. Cross-functional teams are using Baxter GPS tools to identify execution risks earlier and implement mitigating actions sooner. Continuous improvement activity is supporting working capital, commercial, manufacturing, and R&D priorities with early examples of improved efficiency and simplification across the business. We are also making focused investments in innovation to drive growth across the portfolio. We recently launched Peerview, a differentiated digital benchmarking application that enables hospitals to compare infusion data and drive infusion therapy best practices. This is strategically important for the ITP business. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for watching. In care and connectivity solutions, early momentum for Dynamo, our smart hospital stretcher, continues with a strong commercial funnel and positive customer feedback. Additionally, we recently launched Dynamo in Canada, our first international expansion of the stretcher. And beyond product development, innovation is being advanced broadly across the company. Thank you for joining us. and conversations with our customers have validated the opportunity I saw when I decided to join the company. Baxter sits on a foundation of good businesses with leading positions and time trusted brands with clear opportunities for more rigorous execution to unlock our full potential and deliver consistent and sustainable earnings growth and long-term value for our shareholders. I will now turn the call over to Anita to provide more detail on our second quarter results, including segment level performance, as well as our 2026 guidance. Anita, over to you.