GSK plc

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Analyst Call on the GSK Third Quarter 2021 results. I will now hand you over to Nick Stone, Head of Investor Relations, who will introduce today's session.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning and good afternoon. As you've just heard, I am Nick Stone, Head of Investor Relations at GSK. It's my pleasure to welcome you to our Third Quarter 2020 Conference Call and webcast for investors and analysts. The presentation was posted to gsk.com, and was also sent to our distribution list a little bit earlier today. Please turn to slide two. This is the usual safe harbor statement, and we'll be making comments on performance using constant exchange rates, or CR. Please turn to slide three. This is today's agenda, where we'll plan to cover all aspects of our results. The presentation will last approximately 25 minutes in order to maximize the opportunity for questions. For those on the phone, please join the queue by pressing star one, and we request that you ask a maximum of two questions so that everyone has a chance to participate. Our speakers today are Emma Williams, Luke Miles, Deborah Waterhouse, Brian McNamara, and Ian McKay. The Q&A portion of the call, we will be joined by Dr. Hal Barron, Roger Conner, and David Redford. And with that, I will now hand the call over to us. Please turn to slide four.

Thanks, Nick, and a warm welcome to everyone. On to slide five. I am delighted to announce another quarter of strong financial performance and continued progress against our strategic priorities. Third quarter sales and adjusted EPS were both up 10% at CR. These excellent results were driven by strong commercial execution and underlying demand, with double digit growth in pharma and vaccines, 24% growth in new and sped-sense proof that our pipeline is bearing fruit, and an acceleration in consumer healthcare growth. Continued cost disciplines supported this performance. Today's results demonstrate the building momentum in the business, which has enabled us to improve our full year 2021 adjusted EPS guidance and narrow the range to between minus 2% and minus 4% at CR. The guidance excludes any contribution from COVID-19 solutions, which we now expect to contribute an additional 7% to 9% to this adjusted EPS for the year. A very positive result. Alongside our strong financial performance, we continue to make excellent progress in R&D. Additional indications have been approved for new cholera in respiratory and gemperle in cancer. We also received US FDA priority review of cabotegravir for the prevention of HIV. Following the positive headline results announced in July for Daprodistat, another potential best in class new medicine for treating chronic kidney disease, we will present key data in a late breaking session at ASN Kidney Week. The demerger and creation of a world leader in consumer healthcare continues to be fully on track. And we were delighted to unveil exciting plans for a new global campus and innovation center here in the UK. And lastly, as we look ahead together, we are all strongly committed to delivering health impact at scale and maximizing value for shareholders. Our resolute focus remains on world-class execution and successful delivery of our stated key strategic objectives, beginning with a step change in growth in 2022, an exciting and important year for our company. Turning to slide six. Progress in the third quarter was reflected across all three of our strategic priorities. In innovation, we continue to build a high value pipeline across prevention and treatment of disease through organic and inorganic delivery. I just mentioned some of the highlights and several more are listed on the slide. Among them, I'm also delighted we are now playing a meaningful role in the COVID-19 response through our antibody treatment, Zivudi. We've several COVID-19 vaccine programs soon to read out and we remain agile as the environment continues to evolve. In performance, continuously improving commercial execution is driving robust growth and strong share performances in new and specialty products. For Shingrix specifically, we have seen an impact as a result of the surge in the Delta variant, but we are increasingly confident we're on the recovery track. The initiatives we've put in place and the underlying demand will drive strong growth in 2022 with the potential to deliver record annual sales. Luke is going to take you through the detail of this in a minute, as well as our confidence in the medium term opportunity for Shingrix. And in consumer, strong brand performance also drove a significant acceleration in growth in the quarter, as Brian will speak to. Lastly, on trust, we continue to maintain leadership in ESG with the recent announcement of significant renewable energy investment and carbon reduction initiatives at our manufacturing sites in the UK and US. We also announced the new R&D program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from our metered dose inhalers, which are responsible for 45% of the company's carbon emissions. And these new initiatives support the continued progress on our environmental commitments to be net zero and nature positive by 2030, which we'll share more on at COP26. I also, of course, welcome the recent WHO recommendation for a broader deployment of our malaria vaccine. Malaria kills more than 250,000 children a year in Sub-Saharan Africa, and this is the first and only vaccine shown in pivotal long-term clinical trials to significantly reduce childhood illness and death from malaria. Please turn to slide seven. I want to take a moment to expand on my comments on innovation. At our investor update in June, we shared how we've significantly improved R&D productivity since 2017. With a top quarter performance versus our peers for the number of launches with the approval of 11 major vaccines. We've more than doubled the number of assets in phase three or pivotal studies from 11 to 23, and created a pipeline of over 60 medicines and vaccines, many with -in-class or -in-class potential. The result of all of this work and targeted investment in an increasingly valuable pipeline with real momentum. It is worth restating that major pipeline approvals delivered from 2017 to 2021, plus anticipated pipeline approvals will drive more than 100% of our forecasted sales growth from 2021 to 2026. Over the next 12 months, you're going to see a number of readouts and regulatory support the confidence we have in the outlooks we provided for GSK in June. Specifically, we expect to report key readouts on up to seven of the 11 assets we highlighted, including our older adults RSV vaccine in the first half of 2022, as well as proof of concept data on our potential HEPB therapeutic. And we're planning a regulatory submission for Blenref in third line multiple myeloma. And as I mentioned previously, you're going to hear a lot more on that produced at ASN Kidney Week and our investor science event, which is also scheduled for early November. Please turn to slide eight. So lastly, I want to take a moment on the timelines for de-merger of our world leading consumer healthcare business. We're in countdown mode and moving at pace with our plans to unlock the potential of both GSK and consumer health, strengthen GSK's balance sheet and maximize value for all our shareholders. We're committed to the de-merger of at least 80% of GSK's holding and for the remaining 20% to be monetized in a timely and pragmatic manner. As momentum builds towards this important event, you're going to see several important steps in the process. Most visible will be the announcement of a chair designate and subsequently an appropriately skilled board for consumer health. In the first quarter of 2022, we plan to hold a capital markets day, which will set out in detail the performance and compelling prospects for consumer health as a new and independent company. We'll then proceed with the premium listing of the new consumer business on the London Stock Exchange, creating two companies set up for independent delivery of competitive growth, shareholder value and scale impact on human health. Now, let me hand over to the team to take you through the growth drivers in detail. So Luke, first over to you.