IQVIA Holdings, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the IQVIA Second 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, do 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 will now turn the call over to Nick Childs, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Mr. Childs, please begin your conference.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our second quarter 2021 earnings call. With me today are Ari Boosby, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ron Brumman, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Eric Sherbet, Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Mike Fedock, Senior Vice President, Financial Planning and Analysis, and Brian Stengel, Associate Director, Investor Relations. 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 in 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 Busby.

Thank you, Nick, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining today. This morning, we reported second quarter results with outstanding double-digit growth in all key financial metrics. Following this strong performance, we've once again raised our guidance for a year. As you recall, we're tracking ahead of our pre-COVID V22 financial plan. The health of the life sciences industry continues to strengthen. New clinical trial starts are trending well above recent historical figures. They're up 22% versus 2020 levels and up 7% compared to 2019. The pipeline of late stage molecules continues to expand to record numbers. indicating a large backlog of potential launches, some of which have been pushed to the right during the pandemic last year. And finally, biotech funding continues to increase significantly, according to the National Venture Capital Association, funding total $25 billion in the first half of 2021. This represents an increase of 64% compared to the first half of 2020, which itself was already a record first half year. During 2020, the pandemic disrupted execution of clinical trials and businesses requiring face-to-face interactions. But at the same time, it accelerated change in the industry It created new demand for new services. And IQVIA is uniquely positioned to deliver based on the differentiated capabilities such as data analytics, advanced technology offerings, and of course our deep scientific and therapeutic expertise, all of which capabilities were highlighted to our clients during the pandemic. We're confident that these capabilities will continue to drive strong demand for both our clinical and commercial offerings in 2021 into 2022 and beyond. As we begin thinking about our plans during 2022, I am pleased to announce that we will be hosting an investor conference in New York City on November 16th. where we will update you on our V22 progress and share our plans for the next phase in IQVIA's evolution. Nick and the team will of course provide more details once all the logistics are set and available. With that, let's review the second quarter in more detail. Revenue for the second quarter grew 36.4% on a reported basis and 33.2% at constant currency. This represents growth that was $176 million above the midpoint of our guidance range. About 40% of this beat came from strong operational performance, and the reminder was from higher pass-throughs. Second quarter adjusted EBITDA grew 49.5%, reflecting the revenue growth drop-through as well as productivity measures. The $20 million beat above the midpoint of our guidance range was entirely due to the stronger operational performance. Second quarter adjusted diluted EPS of $2.13 grew 80.5%. That was 8% above the midpoint of our guidance range and was driven entirely by the adjusted EBITDA drop-through. I need to provide a little more update and color on the business during the quarter. Starting with our real-world evidence business, it once again performed well, strengthening its leadership position. This included a recent win with a top 20 pharma client to develop an ophthalmology evidence platform for upcoming product launches. The platform integrates primary and secondary data and layers on AI ML tools to monitor patient safety in real time. This will allow this client to add new products and indications to the platform without initiating new studies. This, of course, will save critical amounts of time and money while also reducing the burden on patients and sites. Turning to our commercial technology business, it continues to increase penetration among top 10 life science companies and emerging biopharma clients. A top five pharma client entered during the quarter into a commercial agreement to leverage the IQVIA human data science cloud as part of their core data and digital strategy for one of their large therapeutic areas. This client plans to roll out this platform in over 50 countries to centralize all of their fragmented data assets, resolve data management complexities, and improve speed to insights. Our orchestrated customer engagement offering, OCE, gained additional ground this quarter as nine new clients adopted the platform for commercial operations, including two wins with large biotech clients. One of these OCE biotech clients has the potential for a global rollout to over 20 countries. The other large biotech win represents a competitive win back of the customer facing team in the US. To date, we have 159 client wins for OCD. Our clinical technology solutions team continued our path to innovation in decentralized clinical trials with the introduction of IQVIA's Clinical Data Analytics Suite, or CDAS. This solution, built on our human data science cloud platform, provides life science companies with new approaches to data use and harmonization, as well as producing AI, ML, and analytics-based insights. As an open, scalable cloud platform, CDAS seamlessly works which sponsors existing data archives and systems. We now have all of the top 10 and 18 out of the top 20 pharma clients using at least one of the several modules within our clinical technology suite. By connecting the right technology with the right data sources, IQVIA is enabling customers to identify new opportunities to maximize product value get to market faster, improve departmental and business alignment, and reduce costs. Switching to our R&DS business, during the quarter, it continued to build on its strong momentum with over $2.5 billion of net new bookings on a 6-6 basis. In the quarter, we achieved a contracted net book-to-bill ratio of 1.34 including pass-throughs and 1.37 excluding pass-throughs. As of June 30th, our LTM contracted book-to-bill ratio was 1.45 including pass-throughs and 1.40 excluding pass-throughs. Our contracted backlog in RMBS, including pass-throughs, grew 16.7% year over year to $23.9 billion as of June 30th, 2021. As a result, our next 12 months revenue from backlog increased to $6.6 billion, which is up 19.6% year over a year. I want to highlight the lab business, which continues to be a key driver of growth and therefore will remain an area of strong investment for IQVIA. You'll recall that on April 1, we completed the acquisition of the remaining interest in Q-square solutions from Quest Diagnostics. Following this transaction, we announced our plans to expand our laboratory operations in Scotland to bolster our investment in cutting-edge technologies, including next-generation genomic sequencing and testing. Also in the quarter, we agreed to acquire Myriad RBM, adding to our capabilities in the lab. RBM specializes in biomarker detection and quantification testing that supports early and late stage drug development in key therapeutic areas such as oncology, CNS, and immunology. This acquisition fits nicely into our strategy to develop specialized testing and precision medicine to help support drug development with state-of-the-art solutions. These actions further demonstrate our commitment to advancing outcomes in this space and we are excited to continue to grow and innovate in the lab business. The Myriad RBM transaction is expected to close sometime in the third quarter. I'll now turn it over to Ron for more details on our financial performance in the quarter.