Quest Diagnostics Incorporated

Welcome to the Quest Diagnostics First Quarter 2022 Conference Call. At the request of the company, this call is being recorded. The entire contents of this call, including the presentation and question and answer session that will follow, are copyrighted property of Quest Diagnostics with all rights reserved. Any redistribution, retransmission, or rebroadcast of this call in any form without the written consent of Quest Diagnostics is strictly prohibited. Now I'd like to introduce Sean Beddick, Vice President of Investor Relations for Quest Diagnostics. Go ahead, please.

Thank you, and good morning. I'm joined by Steve Roszkowski, our Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President, Jim Davis, CEO-elect, and Mark Guinan, our Chief Financial Officer. During this call, we may make forward-looking statements, and we'll discuss non-GAAP measures. We provide a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to comparable GAAP measures and tables to our earnings press release. Actual results may differ materially from those projected. Risks and uncertainties, including the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic that may affect Quest Diagnostics' future results include, but are not limited to, those described in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, and subsequently filed quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and current reports on Form 8-K. The company continues to believe that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on future operating results, cash flows, and or its financial condition will be primarily driven by the pandemic severity and duration, healthcare insurer, government, and client payer reimbursements for COVID-19 molecular tests, the pandemic's impact on the U.S. healthcare system and U.S. economy, and assigning scope and effectiveness of federal, state, and local governmental responses to the pandemic, including the impact of vaccination efforts, which are drivers beyond the company's knowledge and control. For this call, references to reported EPS refer to reported diluted EPS, and references to adjusted EPS refer to adjusted diluted EPS. Any references to base business, testing, revenues, or volumes refer to the performance of our base business, excluding COVID-19 testing. Growth rates associated with our long-term outlook projections, including total revenue growth, revenue growth from acquisitions, organic revenue growth, and adjusted earnings growth, are compounding annual growth rates. Finally, revenue growth rates from acquisitions will be measured against our base business. Now, here is Steve Ruskowski.

Thanks, Sean, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. Well, we're off to a good start in 2022. We drove a strong year-over-year growth in our base business, which excludes COVID-19 testing. COVID-19 volumes remained strong early in the quarter and decreased in February and March in line with the market. We continue to make investments to further accelerate growth in our base business and our efforts to improve productivity are helping us to offset inflationary pressures. So based on the strength of our business, we're raising our 2022 guidance. This morning, I'll discuss our performance for the first quarter of 2022, and then Mark will provide more detail on the financial results and talk about our updated financial outlook for 2022. But first, I'd like to ask Jim Davis to give us an update on our leadership transition. Jim?