IQVIA Holdings, Inc.

Gentlemen, thank you for standing by. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the IQVF first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the pound key. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Andrew Markwick, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury. Mr. Markwick, please begin your conference.

Thank you, Casey. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our first quarter 2021 earnings call. With me today are Ari Boosby, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ron Brauman, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Eric Sherbert, Executive Vice President and General Counsel. Nick Charles, Senior Vice President, Financial Planning and Analysis. And newcomer to this call, Brian Stengel, Associate Director, Investor Relations. And Brian has succeeded Jen Helcheck. Today we will be referencing a presentation that will be visible during this call for those of you on our webcast. This presentation will also be available following this call on the events and presentation section of our IQVIA investor relations website at ir.iqvia.com. Before we begin, I would like to caution listeners that certain information discussed by management during this conference call will include forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied by forward-looking statements due to risks and uncertainties associated with the company's business. which are discussed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent SEC filings. In addition, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures on this call, which should be considered a supplement to and not a substitute for financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the comparable GAAP measures is included in the press release and conference call presentation. I would now like to turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Ari Ducey.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you, Andrew. Welcome and thank you for joining us today. This morning, we reported first quarter results with strong double digit growth in all key financial metrics. And as a result of this performance and an improved outlook for the rest of the year, we have once again raised our guidance The 2021 guidance that we provided you last quarter was already within reach of our original pre-COVID plans for 2021. Our revised guidance today significantly exceeds those original plans. In many ways, 2020 was a reset year for our company and also for the industry. We've been saying for a long time that the traditional timelines for the development of new drugs are too long. The speed at which COVID vaccines were developed in 2020 has obviously raised the bar in terms of what expectations should be. The crisis accelerated the adoption of new technologies, and we believe it will force a lasting change in how innovative medicines are developed, and commercialized. All of this has made IQVIA even more relevant to our clients and has highlighted the power of our differentiated offerings. The deep client engagements that we had during the pandemic demonstrated how uniquely positioned we are to bring new insights and expertise that can improve drug development and commercial timelines. What is also becoming clear is that there is a lot of pent-up demand due to, one, the many trials that were slowed down or temporarily pushed to the right, and two, the trials that did not get started as they were crowded out by the COVID resolution efforts on which everyone was focused. This pent-up demand across therapy areas combined with record levels of biotech funding, provide a very strong backdrop for our industry. As a result of these favorable conditions, we've started the process of revisiting our Vision 2022 goals. We plan to update you later this year on our Vision 2022 progress, and lay the groundwork for the next phase of our journey. We may do this at an investor conference later this year, especially if we are able to hold one in person. So stay tuned for more information. For now, let's review the quarter. Revenue for the first quarter grew 24% on a reported basis and 21% at constant currency. It was $209 million above the high end of our guidance range. About half of this beat came from strong operational performance, and half was from higher pass-throughs. First quarter adjusted EBITDA grew 32%, reflecting our revenue growth and productivity measures. The $69 million beat above the high end of our guidance range was entirely due to the stronger organic revenue performance. First quarter adjusted diluted EPS of $2.18 grew 45%. The beat here entirely reflects the adjusted EBITDA drop through. A little bit more color on the business. Our commercial technology presence continues to grow as we launch new offerings in the market. During the quarter, a top 10 pharma client deployed our next best action solution in 14 countries. This tool is a SaaS-based technology platform that optimizes our clients' Salesforce effectiveness. It increases the success of their marketing activities by providing automated sales call recommendations to the field based on advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. Our base OCM CRM win rate remains strong. We added another 10 new clients this quarter and now have 150 clients deploying about 70,000 users. Our ECOA technology platform or electronic clinical outcomes assessment tool, which is used by our real world as well as our MDS teams, is also experiencing strong demand. This cloud-based platform utilizes a user-friendly interface to collect clinical data directly from patients. We launched this solution during 2019, and the team is seeing strong user acceptance. To date, we've been awarded over 125 studies with over 300,000 patients enrolled and over 4 million surveys completed. Moving now to our MBS. We continue to build on our strong bookings momentum in our NDS business. In the first quarter, we achieved a contracted net book-to-bill ratio of 1.41, including pass-throughs, and 1.41, excluding pass-throughs. At March 31st, our LTM contracted book-to-bill ratio was 1.52, including pass-throughs, and 1.45, excluding pass-throughs. These numbers are all the more impressive, obviously, given our strong revenue growth. Our contracted backlog in RMBS, including pass-throughs, grew 18.3% year-over-year to $23.2 billion at March 31, 2021. As a result, our next 12 months' revenue from backlog increased by over $600 million sequentially to $6.5 billion. That's up 31.1% year over year. The R&D team is building on the success we experienced in 2020 with our hybrid virtual trial offering, or the term of art is now decentralized trials. In the first quarter, we won decentralized trials in new therapeutic areas, including cardiovascular and metabolic disorders. we are working with five of the top 10 pharma clients and to date we've recruited almost 170 000 patients using our advanced decentralized trial solutions finally you saw that on april 1 we completed the acquisition of the remaining interest in q square solutions from quest diagnostics as you know q squared is an industry-leading laboratory service provider for clinical trials with global capabilities across safety, bioanalytical, vaccine, genomics, and bioanalytical testing, along with best-in-class technology in biospecimen and consent lifecycle management. These transactions streamline strategic decision-making for us and gives us the flexibility to build out greater bioanalytical, genomic, and biomarker capabilities as we see increased attractive growth opportunities in this expanding market. With that, I will turn it over to Ron for more details on our financial performance.