Becton, Dickinson and Company

Hello and welcome to BD's first fiscal quarter 2019 earnings call. At the request of BD, today's call is being recorded. It will be available for replay through February 12, 2019 on the Investors page of the BD.com website or by phone at 800-585-8367 for domestic calls and area code 404. I would like to inform all parties that your lines have been placed in a listen-only mode until the question and answer segment. Beginning today's call is Ms. Monique DeLecke, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Ms. DeLecke, you may begin.

Thank you, Crystal. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to review our first fiscal quarter results. As we referenced in our press release, we are presenting a set of slides to accompany our remarks on this call. The presentation is posted on the Investor Relations page of our website at bd.com. During today's call, we will make forward-looking statements, and it is possible that actual results could differ from our expectations. Factors that could cause such differences appear in our first fiscal quarter press release, and in the MD&A sections of our recent SEC filings. We will also discuss some non-GAAP financial measures with respect to our performance. Reconciliations to GAAP measures can be found in our press release and its related financial schedules and in the slides. A copy of the release, including the financial schedules, is posted on the BD.com website. As a reminder, to provide additional revenue visibility into the new BD, inclusive of BARG, We will speak to our fiscal 2019 first quarter revenue results and fiscal 2019 revenue guidance on a comparable currency neutral basis. The comparable basis includes BD and BARD in the current and prior year periods and excludes intercompany revenues and revenues associated with divestitures as detailed in the financial schedules in our press release. Leading the call this morning is Vince Forlenza, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Also joining us are Chris Reedy, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Administrative Officer, Tom Poland, President and Chief Operating Officer, Alberto Mas, Executive Vice President and President of the Medical Segment, Simon Campion, Executive Vice President and President of the Interventional Segment, and Patrick Kaltenbach, Executive Vice President and the President of the Life Sciences Segment. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Vince.

Thank you, Monique, and good morning, everyone. As many of you already know, in December, we celebrated the one-year anniversary of the closing of the Bard transaction. Together with Bard, we accelerated our strategy to provide our customers and their patients with leading medical technologies and innovative solutions. We are extremely proud of our achievements over the past year. It is evident that the combination of BIDI and BARD is delivering value to our customers, patients, and shareholders. Turning to slide five and our first quarter highlights. We are very pleased with the strong start to fiscal 2019. As we stated in our pre-announcement in mid-January, our first quarter results were ahead of our previous expectations, largely driven by the timing of certain tax items, as well as better than expected performance across all three segments. Our results reflect continued momentum across our businesses and regions and strong margin expansion after a very strong Q4 in 2018. Our integration of BART is on track and we are continuing to realize cost and revenue synergies as expected. During the quarter, we held our first combined sales training meetings. In every region of the world, there was tremendous energy and excitement about the opportunity we have to make a difference in the lives of others. We are already seeing traction with our combined biosurgery and infection prevention sales force in Europe, which is evident in our financial results. We are also making good progress integrating and simplifying our systems and processes, which delivers cost savings and helps associates work more efficiently. We are leveraging BD shared service centers and the infrastructure investments we made during the CareFusion integration by bringing legacy BARD associates onto our IT, finance, and HR operating systems and technologies. We've also made progress with supply chain efficiencies and also with our real estate footprint, combining BD and BARD sites in several key locations, including our New Jersey headquarters. Looking forward to the total year, we expect continued momentum and are reaffirming our fiscal 2019 revenue and EPS guidance. I will now turn things over to Chris for a more detailed discussion of our first quarter financial performance and our fiscal year 2019 guidance.