Bausch Health Companies Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Bausch Health second quarter 2019 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star then zero on your telephone keypad. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Art Shannon, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Global Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Andrew. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our second quarter 2019 financial results conference call. Participating on today's call are Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Joe Pava, and Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Paul Herendine. In addition to this live webcast, a copy of today's slide presentation and a replay of this conference call will be available on our website under the investor relations section. Before we begin, we would like to remind you that our presentation today contains forward-looking information. We would ask that you take a moment to read the forward-looking statement legend at the beginning of our presentation as it contains important information. This presentation contains non-GAAP financial measures. For more information about these measures, please refer to slide two of the presentation Non-GAAP reconciliations can be found in the appendix to the presentation posted on our website. Finally, the financial guidance in this presentation is effective as of today only. It is our policy to generally not update guidance until the following quarter and not to update or affirm guidance other than through broadly disseminated public disclosure. With that, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Joe.

Thank you, Art, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I'll begin with the second quarter highlights before turning the call over to Paul Herendien, our CFO, to review the financial results in detail and update our 2019 guidance. We'll then review the segment highlights and our positioning for the future and how we plan to drive long-term shareholder value before we open the line for questions. Beginning with slide four, Our strong second quarter results demonstrate that our team's efforts to pivot to offense continue to gain traction. With 3% organic revenue growth, the second quarter of 2019 was the sixth consecutive quarter of total company organic revenue growth. B&L International and Salix, which now represent 80% of our total revenue, grew organically by 6% on a combined basis. This was B&L International's 11th consecutive quarter of organic revenue growth, and Salix reported more than $500 million in total quarterly revenue for the first time. Our most important products, or our top 10 products, grew organically by 13% in the aggregate compared to the second quarter of 2018. And our continued focus on improving operational efficiency through Project CORE is expected to deliver more than $75 million of operating profit during 2019. Moving over to the right of slide four, Trulianth, a constipation IBS treatment that we acquired last quarter, is off to a great start. It generated $17 million of revenue in its first full quarter since our acquisition. We continue to launch new products as well, including Lodamax S-Fem in April, Duopri and Ultra multifocal lenses in June, and our Occuvite eye performance vitamins in July. Finally, we continue to strategically manage debt and allocate capital. We generated $339 million of cash from operations during the quarter. We increased R&D spend by approximately 24% in the second quarter. We refinanced $1.5 billion of 2023 senior unsecured notes. In year-to-date, as of August 6th, we have used $550 million to reduce the debt by approximately $350 million, complete the acquisitions of Trulance and Delcanatide, and license Amicelamon for development and commercialization. Overall, a very strong quarter, thanks to a great team effort. and the continued engagement of 21,000 employees of Bausch Health companies who are truly motivated to launch new products, improve operations, and keep delivering on commitments to help improve patients' lives. With that, I'll turn it over to Paul.