IQVIA Holdings, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to IQVIA third 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 then 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 hand the conference over to your speaker today, 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 third quarter 2021 earnings call. With me today are our... Ari Boosby, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ron Brooman, 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. The 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 for our third quarter results. Our strong momentum from earlier in the year has continued despite the resurgence of COVID-19 due to the Delta variant. This has not had an impact on our operations as we have learned to manage through these disruptions. Our outlook for the longer term remains unchanged. The backdrop for the life science industry continues to be very strong. Biotech funding continues to run at record levels. According to the National Venture Capital Association, funding totaled $35.8 billion through September 2021, already exceeding the full year of 2020. The pipeline of late-stage molecules continues to expand and is at an all-time high, with almost 3,000 molecules in active Phase II or Phase III developments. Clinical trial starts are trending well ahead of recent years with year-to-year date starts up 23% over 2020 and 13% over 2019. And finally, new drug approvals by the FDA are keeping pace with the historically high levels of 2020, with 40 new drugs approved year-to-date, which sets the stage for a strong volume of upcoming commercial launches. The bottom line is the dynamics in the industry are strong, and we remain bullish on our outlook for our end markets and for IQVIA in particular. As we think about our longer-term plans, I want to remind you of our upcoming Analyst and Investor Conference on November 16th in New York City. At that meeting, we will provide financial guidance for 2022 ahead of our usual timeline, which is normally coinciding with the end-of-year results in early February, and we will share as well our midterm outlook and plans for the next phase of Acuvia's growth. Look forward to seeing everyone and hope you can join us then. With that, let's review the third quarter. Revenue for the third quarter grew 21.7% on a reported basis and 21.1% at constant currency and was $64 million above the midpoint of our guidance range. The beat was driven primarily by higher pass-throughs, which, as you know, dilutes our margin somewhat, as well as by stronger organic revenue growth. Third quarter adjusted EBITDA grew 20.5%, reflecting our revenue growth as well as productivity measures. The $8 million beat above the midpoint of our guidance range was entirely due to the stronger operational performance. Third quarter adjusted diluted EPS of $2.17 grew 33.1%. That was 7 cents above the midpoint of our guidance, with a bit coming from the adjusted EBITDA drop through, as well as favorability in below the line items. Let me now provide an update on the business. Our real-world evidence business continues to take a leading role in informing healthcare. In late September, the FDA released their draft guidance on how electronic health records and medical claims data can support regulatory decision-making, and it cited several IQVR publications. With the growth of rare disease therapies and personalized medicine-driven trials, the number of single-arm clinical trials increases every year, and external comparators provide important context for these studies for both regulators and payers. Our clients recognize our leading expertise in this area. For example, we had a recent major win to deliver an external comparator in a cardiovascular study for a top 20 pharma client. In another example, we were awarded a 15-year follow-up study to demonstrate the long-term effectiveness and safety of a newly launched gene therapy. Regulatory guidance requires extended follow-up for patients exposed to cell and gene therapies, and IQVS innovative real-world capabilities combining direct-to-patient solutions as well as IQVS technology platforms to capture secondary data was pivotal in this award. On the technology front, our suite of offerings continue to be adopted in the marketplace. You're familiar with our OCE platform and other commercial technology applications, and we have, of course, continued to expand our footprint here. We have 10 new client wins in the core, bringing the total number of OCE wins to date to 169 customers. But we are also very excited to see increased adoption of our orchestrated clinical trial suite, OCT. This quarter, for example, a leading biotechnology company in Asia selected our site portal module within OCT to power site engagement across all of their trials. We now have 165 customers that have bought the site portal module, representing 155,000 sites and 1,716 active studies that are using our site portal module. Similarly, our award-winning e-coop platform continues to experience strong demand. We have successfully deployed over 150 projects across 35 different therapeutic areas. To date, we have over 70 customers using this platform, including eight of the top 10 pharma clients. The platform has processed over 10 million unique patient responses in 65 countries and across 28 languages. Now, I want to say a few words about a fast-growing part of our industry. You're familiar with decentralized trials, or DCT. The IQVIA decentralized trial offering combines several tech modules within our OCT suite, including ECOA, e-consent, telemedicine, and connected devices, as well as other service capabilities, including home nurses and phlebotomists, along with our decentralized trial patient concierge and study coordinators, all organized around our decentralized trial platform. Importantly, we've developed innovative clinical patient engagement offerings, including direct-to-patient services to accelerate recruitment and improve patient diversity and inclusion in clinical trials. When we step back and look at the growing importance of DCT in our own portfolio, we find that up to 30% of our active full-service trials utilize one or more components of our DCT offering. Incidentally, when our competitors speak about their own DCT offerings, this is often what they report as their DCT business. When we look at trials that actually fully utilize our DCT capabilities, meaning they are fully run on our decentralized trial platform, we've been awarded 89 trials to date, totaling over $1 billion. These awards are with 34 unique sponsors, of which 10 have multiple decentralized trials ongoing with us. These trials span 12 different therapeutic areas, 32 unique indications and have recruited over 200,000 patients in 40 countries. Our ability to combine advanced clinical technology with an extensive network of investigators and care professionals differentiates us in this space and makes us the partner of choice for decentralized trials that utilize the full capabilities. Our overall RMDS business continues to build on its strong momentum. We had approximately $2.6 billion of net new bookings in the quarter, bringing our LTM net new bookings for the first time to over $10 billion, including pass-throughs. This resulted in a contracted net book-to-bill ratio of 1.39 including pass-throughs and 1.28 excluding pass-throughs. At September 30, our LTM contracted book-to-bill ratio was 1.38, including pass-throughs, and 1.37, excluding pass-throughs. Our contracted backlog in our MDS, including pass-throughs, grew 12.7% year-over-year to $24.4 billion at September 30, 2021. As a result, our next 12 months revenue from backlog increased to $6.9 billion, up $300 million sequentially versus the second quarter. As we have signaled several times in the past, we've ramped up investment in our lab capabilities. We recently announced the opening of our new 160,000 square foot innovation laboratories in North Carolina. This facility provides customers with access to cutting-edge bioanalytical, vaccine, and genomics capabilities along with an expansion into exploratory human biomarker discovery services. These new services would enable us to partner closely with sponsors in the development of essential biomarkers to support new molecules moving into clinical development and throughout the life cycle. And this expansion, of course, comes on top of the investment we announced last quarter in our 130,000 square foot facility in Scotland. I will now turn it over to Ron for more details on our financial performance.