GSK plc

Hello everyone, it's Nick Stone, Head of Invest Relations. Welcome to our year to date in Q3 2020-3 results conference call and webcast for investors and analysts. The presentation was sent out to our distribution list by email, and you can also find it on gsk.com. Please turn to slide two. This is the usual safe harbor statements. We'll comment on our performance using constant exchange rates or CR unless stated otherwise. As a reminder, following the consumer healthcare demotions in 2022 to form Halion, we're presenting performance and growth of the continuing operations for GSK. Please turn to slide three. Today's call will last approximately one hour with the management presentation taking around 30 minutes and the remaining time for your questions. For those who wish to ask questions, please join the queue by raising your hand. Press star nine to raise and lower your hand if you're on the phone. And we would request that you ask one to two questions so that everyone has a chance to participate. Our speakers are Emma Walmsley, Tony Wood, Luke Miles, Deborah Walterhouse and Julie Brown. With David Redfern joining the rest of the team for the Q and A portion of the call. I'll now hand the call over to Emma.

Thanks, Nick. And welcome to everybody joining us today. I'm delighted to be presenting to you all with another set of excellent quarterly results. Please turn to the next slide. Sales and profits grew double digits for the quarter with sales up 16% to 8.1 billion pounds, adjusted operating profit up 22% to 2.8 billion pounds and adjusted earnings per share up 25% to 50.4 pence, all excluding pandemic solutions. Our strong performance was broadly based and benefited particularly from the outstanding US launch of our RSV vaccine, ArexV on track to be a blockbuster in its first year on the market. This excellent execution together with our drive for efficiency and margin accretion means we can upgrade our 2023 sales, adjusted operating profits and adjusted EPS guidance. For the year, we now expect sales to increase between 12 and 13%, adjusted operating profit to increase between 13 and 15% and adjusted EPS to increase between 17 and 20%. Within sales, we are upgrading the outlooks across all segments for the year, reflecting our clear momentum. Our performance also clearly demonstrates delivery of the strategic choices we've made to invest in prevention as well as the treatment of disease. New products launched since 2017 have contributed sales of 7.8 billion pounds so far this year with nearly 80% of them coming from vaccines and specialty medicines. Approvals this year for ArexV and Apertudes together with two important oncology medicines, GenPurley and most recently Ajara, further strengthen this new product portfolio and offer meaningful sources of profitable growth. To take them all together, this is a strong and sustained performance heading into 2024. Next slide, please. This quarter further underscored the importance and strength of our vaccines business. Prevention is an increasing focus for healthcare systems all around the world. GSK is a world leader in vaccines and is extremely well-placed to deliver innovation and offer value to both individuals and payers. The introduction of ArexV in the US is evidence of this, demonstrating our strong launch capabilities with over 700 million pounds of sales in its very first quarter as we protect people at scale from this life-threatening disease and especially those with co-morbidities. Generating further clinical evidence for ArexV remains a clear priority and we were pleased to present positive data in adults aged 50 to 59 years at the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices last month. We also added to the outstanding clinical profile for Shingrix this quarter, results of a large post-marketing study in China demonstrating 100% efficacy. And alongside this, we're additionally significantly expanding availability of Shingrix in China. Our exclusive partnership with Jupe, signed last month, is going to support and accelerate our goal to Shingrix annual sales of more than four billion pounds by 2026 and with opportunities to expand this partnership further, including potentially with ArexV. Our innovation in RSV, Shingles, meningitis, and pediatrics all demonstrate our world-leading vaccines capabilities. And we have further substantial innovation in the pipeline where we have our comprehensive and leading suite of vaccine platform technologies, including next-generation mRNA, our multiple antigen presenting system or MAPs, as well as, of course, as our adjuvant systems. All of these offer exciting new opportunities in seasonal respiratory, bacterial, and chronic viral infections, and we continue to explore the science beyond infectious diseases. Alongside delivering stronger shareholder returns, we also continue to build trust by delivering across the six key areas we prioritise for ESG. This quarter, I'm highlighting our continued commitment to fight malaria with innovation. GSK scientists working with Johns Hopkins Institute and others published their ground-breaking discovery of a naturally occurring bacterium that can significantly reduce the malaria parasite load in mosquitoes, indicating the potential to inhibit transmission of malaria to humans. And we also continue to deliver our environment and diversity, equity, and inclusion goals. Further details, along with more, in all six key areas, are included in the Q3 results announcement.

Now,