GSK plc

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the analyst call on the GSK third quarter 2020 results. I will now hand over to Sarah Elton-Farr, head of investor relations who will introduce today's session. Please go ahead Sarah.

Thank you. Good morning and good afternoon. Thank you for joining us for our Q3 2020 results which were issued earlier today. You should have received our press release and can view the presentation on GSK's website. For those not able to view the webcast, slides that accompany today's call are located on the investor section of the website. Before we begin, please refer to slide 2 of our presentation for our cautionary statements. Our speakers today are Emma Warmsley, Ian McKay, Luke Miles, David Redfern and Brian McNamara. Hal Barron and Roger Connor will join us for Q&A. We request that you ask only a maximum of two questions so that everyone has a chance to participate. And with that, I will hand the call over to Emma.

Thank you Seth and welcome everybody to today's call. I hope that you are all keeping well. 2020 continues to be an extraordinary year. GSK has shown resilience and agility in tackling the challenges while maintaining focus on our strategic goals which remain firmly on track. We continue to strengthen and advance the pipeline. In July, as mentioned at Q2, we received approval for Recovia and HIV. And this quarter we've also had first approval and launches for Blenret in multiple myeloma, for trilogy in asthma and new indications for new cholera. We've delivered positive data on our RSV candidate vaccines and GSK 836 in HEP B. Plans to progress these programs are underway. Both represent major opportunities for healthcare impact and have the potential to be significant for future growth drivers. We also initiated three major pivotal studies in meningitis vaccines, second line multiple myeloma and with our VIA antibody in COVID-19, a very exciting program you're going to hear more on later. So there have been some short term pressures as a result of the pandemic, especially in vaccines early in the quarter. Our performance fundamentals continue to strengthen. And we're very confident our vaccine portfolio and pipeline will drive growth for years to come. Brian will update you in more detail, but the momentum we're building in our commercial execution is driving encouraging growth across our new products, setting the course for strong future performance. And this has also been a quarter of disciplined cost control, as we've made substantial progress on both our consumer integration and company separation programs. We continue to deliver efficiency in our support functions, further simplify our site network and have achieved an important milestone on building one development organization in R&D for pharma and vaccines that will improve agility, decision making and scientific collaboration as well as our cost base. Our pipeline includes several COVID solutions and we remain committed to building stakeholder trust as we deliver them. We have in place supply agreements with multiple governments for our partners, adjuvanted COVID with 19 vaccines and a pledge to maintain our focus on safety and global access. Turning to the quarter, strong performance from our future growth drivers combined with a focus on cost has offset the ongoing pandemic impact. We've delivered margin and earnings growth this quarter and expect to deliver within our earnings guidance range in 2020. All numbers referenced are on a constant currency basis. In pharma, we're very encouraged by the strong performance of our new and specialty products with sales up to 12%. This was offset by a decrease in established pharma of 18% and we'll go into that in more detail in a minute. The greatest impact of the pandemic has been in our vaccines business where sales were down 9% in the quarter. However, we're encouraged by the accelerated recovery towards pre-COVID level of immunization as the quarter progressed and a strong performance in flu, up 21% year to date. Sorry, up 21% in the quarter. Year to date, Shingrix sales are up 6%. In consumer, we continue to reshape the portfolios and pro-former growth in our ongoing business was 3% driven by vitamins and oral health. Overall, we're gaining share and our power brands are performing strongly. Group adjusted operating margin for the quarter was .8% with the impact of vaccines more than offset by tight cost control and the realization of restructuring benefits with SG&A down 10% pro-former while we continue to invest in our pipeline and our new product launches. On a total basis, earnings per share were 25 pence and adjusted earnings per share were up 1% for 35.6 pence. Before I hand over to Ian, I'd just like to remind you of the great progress we're making on our portfolio of COVID solutions. Our aim is to develop multiple adjuvanted COVID-19 vaccines and we now have three different vaccine collaborations in the clinic that could move to pivotal studies by the end of the year. We also have two exciting therapeutic approaches in clinical studies through our collaboration with Veer, which Luke will speak to later, and our AGM-CFS antibody, Atilumab. And so now to Ian with more detail on the quarter.