Bausch Health Companies Inc.

Welcome to the Bosch Health fourth quarter 2024 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Garen Serafian, Investor Relations of Bosch. You may begin.

Good afternoon, and welcome to Bosch Health. fourth quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Participating in today's call are Thomas Appio, Chief Executive Officer of Bausch Health, and JJ Sharon, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that our presentation today contains forward-looking information. We ask you to take a moment to read the forward-looking statement disclaimer at the beginning of the slides that accompany this presentation, as it contains important information. Our actual results may vary materially from those expressed or implied in our forward-looking statements, and you should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. Please refer to our SEC filings and our filings with the Canadian Securities Administrators for a list of some of the risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our expectations. We use non-GAAP financial measures to help investors understand our operating performance. Non-GAAP financial measures may not be comparable to similarly titled measures used by other companies and should be considered along with, but not as an alternative to, measures calculated in accordance with GAAP. You will find reconciliations to our non-GAAP measures in the appendix of the slides that accompany this presentation, which are available on Bauschoff's Investor Relations website. Finally, the financial guidance in this presentation is effective as of today only. we do not undertake any obligation to update guidance. Our discussion today, Wednesday, February 19th, will focus on Bausch House, excluding Bausch and Lomb. However, we will briefly comment on Bausch and Lomb's results announced this morning. We will refer to year-over-year comparisons with the same period last year, unless otherwise noted. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to our CEO, Tom Appio. Tom?

Tom Appio Thank you, Garen, and welcome to everyone joining our earnings call today. We closed out 2024 with a strong fourth quarter, executing on our strategic priorities and reinforcing our focus on patient-centered outcomes. Bausch Health continues to deliver, marking our seventh consecutive quarter of revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth. This performance is a testament to our strong operational execution, disciplined approach, and relentless focus on value creation. We made tremendous progress as a company in 2024, as I could not be more proud of what the Bow Shell team accomplished and the momentum we have heading into 2025. While JJ will discuss our financial results in more detail, I will touch briefly on our performance, our progress driving our strategic priorities forward, and key business highlights from the quarter, starting with our strong fourth quarter and full year results. Revenues for Bausch Health, excluding Bausch and Long, increased 4% on a reported basis and 7% on an organic basis when compared to the fourth quarter of 2023, with strong organic growth in our Salix and Salta segments. Full-year revenues for Bausch Health, excluding Bausch and Long, increased 5% on a reported basis and 6% on an organic basis. For Bausch Health, excluding Bausch and Long, Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of 2024 increased by approximately 7% compared to the prior period. For the full year of 2024, all four segments delivered revenue and segment profit growth, demonstrating our ability to drive performance across our diverse businesses. Our success translated into strong cash flow from operations for the company in 2024. Bausch Health, excluding Bausch & Lomb, generated approximately $1.3 billion in adjusted operating cash flow for the full year. For Bausch Health, excluding Bausch & Lomb, revenue and organic growth were at the high end of our guidance range, and both adjusted EBITDA and adjusted operating cash flow exceeded our guidance. These results would not be possible without the hard work and dedication of all our colleagues across the globe, across all segments throughout the year. We will carry this momentum into 2025 and look forward to updating you on our performance in the quarters ahead as we execute against the guidance that we provided today. Our 2025 outlook builds on the framework we laid out last quarter, which aims to drive value through the organization. So how do we continue generating value and accomplishing our goals? By centering on our value creation efforts around three fundamental pillars. First, we are relentlessly focused on enhancing the value of Bausch Health's operational assets, driving innovation, strengthening execution, and maximizing the growth potential of a diverse global portfolio of brands. Second, We are actively exploring all avenues to unlock the full value of our Bausch and Lomb equity stake, ensuring the greatest benefit for Bausch Health shareholders. And third, we are committed to optimizing our capital structure, strategically reducing debt leverage and extending maturities to fortify our financial position for long-term success. It is these value creation pillars that will contribute to the success of our long-term strategic priorities. In 2024, we made substantial progress against our five strategic priorities, highlighting the success we saw across the company and reinforcing the importance of staying focused on maximizing shareholder value as we head into 2025. Our strategic priorities, people, growth, innovation, efficiency, and unlocking value are at the core of everything we do at Bausch Health. Our first priority is people. The success of the company begins with our people. We added experienced leaders to our executive leadership team in three critical areas. This summer, JJ Chiron joined us as CFO and Amy Lenard joined us as the leader of our U.S. pharma business. In December, we appointed a new chief medical officer and head of R&D, Jonathan Sadeg, who we are excited to welcome to the team. In addition to these senior leadership appointments, we are strengthening our teams with exceptional talent by continuing to drive a culture of business ownership, accountability, and compliance. We aspire to be principal leaders, creative thinkers, problem solvers, and result seekers. We strive to attract the best talent, fostering a purpose-driven mentality and a sense of urgency in everything we do. with an all in together open and collaborative workplace. Our second priority is the long-term growth of our business with a focus on operational excellence. As I mentioned earlier, this is our seventh consecutive quarter of top and bottom line growth with a strong closing quarter to the year. We have achieved this through focused execution against our plans. Innovation. Our next strategic priority is another critical driver of our long-term growth objectives. We have made great progress here, and I am excited to continue to move our innovation efforts forward in the years ahead. The approval of Thermage FLX as a medical device in China earlier in 2024 have been well received. We have developed tools and algorithms that apply AI and machine learning to our sales process for Xifaxon, and we believe this has been one of the drivers of the performance for the product in 2024. While we are still in the early stages of leveraging artificial intelligence in our business, we are exploring other opportunities to leverage AI-enabled capabilities to drive profitable long-term growth. As our performance demonstrates, our investments in innovation are contributing to our growth. our key pipeline programs continue to progress. Our Red Sea program for the prevention and delay of the first episode of hepatic encephalopathy remains on track. We successfully initiated and are in the midst of two global phase three trials with top line results for each expected by early 2026. As a reminder, This program for our solid soluble dispersion rifaximin product may enable us to address an unmet need to a novel therapy for cirrhotic patients globally and continues to be an exciting opportunity for us. In our SALTA business, Clear Imbilion Touch has been approved in additional markets in Asia Pacific with regulatory submissions in Canada and EMA in 2024. We also received FDA clearance for the next generation Fraxel in the U.S., which we anticipate launching commercially in 2025. Overall, I am energized by the prospects for the innovation that lie ahead for Bash Health. We continue to drive the success of our business forward through our R&D efforts, maximizing opportunities to best serve patients across the globe. This brings me to our next priority, executing with efficiency, a cost mindset, and operational excellence across the business. We are laser focused on serving our patient populations and their healthcare providers and utilizing our strong supply chain expertise to be nimble in meeting unexpected industry supply needs as they arise. We have consistently demonstrated that our pharmaceutical manufacturing and supply chain capabilities are agile and can fulfill patient needs globally. This includes the efforts during the fourth quarter to meet unanticipated Wellbutrin demand in Canada. The four priorities I just discussed propel our company forward and help drive shareholder value at Bausch Health. And to that end, let me touch upon our last strategic priority, unlocking value as i outlined through our value creation pillars this remains a core objective that we continue to pursue across all avenues with a strong sense of urgency and we are fully committed to delivering on this key priority we look forward to keeping you updated on these key initiatives throughout 2025. to summarize bausch health delivered a solid performance throughout 2024 and has now grown revenues and adjusted EBITDA for seven consecutive quarters. Our success in the fourth quarter was broad-based. Xifaxin delivered 16% revenue growth and with solid volume growth across all channels, resulting in a fourth consecutive quarter of growth. Salta grew 34%, again, led by Asia Pacific regions. Our durable and underappreciated international business continued to deliver, where Canada again had double-digit growth in promoted brands, and EMEA business achieved its eighth consecutive quarter of organic growth. And we continue to look for ways to grow our international business. In the fourth quarter and in January of this year, we signed two business development deals. By expanding into the potentially large cardiometabolic market, which for Mexico alone is over a $2 billion market. This will allow us the opportunity to broaden our portfolio of assets across Mexico and the rest of our Latin American markets for multiple years, as well as in Canada. Both of these strategic collaborations are good examples of Bausch Health leveraging partner expertise in portfolio development and our robust market footprints to serve patients globally. In summary, Bausch Health had a strong fourth quarter, capping off a great year with contributions from all of our businesses and every one of our valued colleagues across the globe. This momentum sets us up for a great year ahead in 2025. With that, I'll hand it over to JJ to provide additional commentary on financial results. JJ. Thank you, Tom.