IQVIA Holdings, Inc.

Oh, now let's turn the call over to Kerry Joseph, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury. Mr. Joseph, please begin your conference.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our second quarter 2024 earnings call. With me today are Ari Boosby, Chairman and Ron Broman, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Mike Fedok, Senior Vice President, Financial Planning and Analysis. And Gustavo Peroni, Senior 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 Adventure Presentation section of our IQVIA Investor Relations website. at ir.icubia.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 risk and the certainties associated with the company's business. which are discussed in the company's filings with the Security 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 Boosby.

Thank you, Gary, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today to discuss our second quarter results. Acuvia delivered another quarter of strong operational results with 5% revenue growth, excluding the impact of foreign exchange and COVID-related work, and 8.6% growth in adjusted diluted earnings per share. The fundamentals of the industry remain healthy, which supports our confidence in the outlook for our business. On the commercial side, things are starting to gradually improve and while customers continue to exercise budgetary cautiousness, we see faster decisions and more focus on carrying out mission critical projects such as those associated with launching new drugs. As you recall, New FDA approvals for 2023 were 55, which was the second largest year since 2017. And in fact, year-to-date approvals are at 21, which is in line with the average for the last five years. In the quarter, TAS came in a little better than our expectations, consistent with the improving leading indicators that we cited earlier this year. both consulting and analytics and real world revenue improved sequentially in the second quarter. We said TAS revenue growth for 2024 was going to be the mirror image of 2023. And in fact, TAS revenue growth was about 3% in the first quarter, and it was 4% in the second quarter, excluding COVID and foreign exchange. A constant currency, And based on forward-looking indicators, we remain confident in our full-year forecast for TAS. This implies 6% to 7% growth for the balance of the year, resulting in full-year mid-single-digit growth, again, consistent with the target we established for TAS at the beginning of the year. On the clinical side, while we continue to see the trend we have observed over the past year, With large pharma reprioritizing their portfolios of programs and reallocating money to the most attractive ones in response largely to the IRA, demand from our large pharma clients in RNDS remains solid. We are also encouraged by the continued acceleration of EBP funding. In fact, Bioworld reports emerging biotech funding for the second quarter was $22.9 billion, which is up 32% versus prior year. For the first half, biotech funding is about $70 billion, essentially equal to the entire year of 2023. Obviously, it does take time for funding to translate into RFP flows, but certainly it bodes well for mid-long-term prospects in our EBP segment. In the quarter, RDS recorded good net new bookings of approximately $2.7 billion, representing a book-to-bill of 127. BlackRock reached a new record of $30.6 billion, which is growth of 7.7% versus prior year. And in fact, that's actually 8.1% when you remove the impact of foreign exchange. And of course, all of our usual forward-looking indicators, RFP flows, overall pipeline, and qualified pipeline are up. Turning now to the results for the quarter. Revenue for the second quarter grew 2.3% on a reported basis and 3.5% at constant currency. Compared to last year, and excluding COVID-related work from both periods, we grew the top line 5% at constant currency, including approximately a point and a half from acquisitions. Second quarter, adjusted EBITDA increased 2.7%, driven by revenue growth and ongoing cost management discipline. Second quarter, adjusted diluted EPS of $2.64 increased 8.6% year over year. Now, I'd like to spend a bit of time on highlighting some of our business activity, starting with TAS. IQVIA contracted with a top 20 client to expand implementation of our commercial technology ecosystem. IQVIA's AI ML offerings, including analytics and OCE, integrate seamlessly into the client's technology infrastructure and allow our client to manage their data more effectively and to optimize their customer engagement. In the quarter, IQVIA won a multi-year contract with a top five client, to increase the effectiveness of the digital communication strategy. Here, our innovative solution enables targeted audience selection and custom content delivery. In our first quarter call, we shared the preview of a large deal awarded in April for our current OCE offering. This is a multi-year global implementation for a major division of a top five pharma client with 1,000 users. and it's displacing the incumbent. As you know, IQVIA has a rich history of developing AI for healthcare. For the last 10 years, we've invested heavily in artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms that support our clients from clinical development through commercialization. Our AI offerings are specifically engineered to meet the demanding standards of precision, speed, privacy, and trust that are required in healthcare. Whether it's in patient support services or analytics or pharmacovigilance, our proprietary AI software solutions have become market leading. Let me share a few examples of AI wins and awards in TAS this last quarter. We launched a GenAI solution which collects structured and unstructured survey inputs from over 30,000 HCPs across 36 countries in multiple languages and in minutes delivers analytics and insights to our clients on how their interactions and messages about their brand resonated. This work would normally take a week at least for human analysts using existing tools. A top 10 client awarded IQVIA a contract to implement our centralized GenAI reporting and analytics solution across their entire U.S. sales force, consolidating different legacy tools. IQVIA's comprehensive GenAI solution enables users to ask questions and get contextual responses in the form of charts, graphs, and KPIs. This AI solution also proactively alerts the user of key trends, anomalies, and the changes that would be required. In another example, a U.S. medtech client selected IQVIA to implement IQVIA's AI solution to onboard and train patients to utilize their medical device for diabetes. IQVIA's AI solution incorporates real-time sentiment analysis provides automated transcription and smart engagement recommendations. It empowers patients to take more control of their treatment, which of course promotes better adherence to treatment protocols. Lastly, for AI in TAS, IQVIA won the award of best use of artificial intelligence in healthcare out of 4,500 nominations in the eighth annual MedTech Breakthrough Awards. IQVIA's winning AI solution here is called Smart Sold Enterprise Quality Management System, EQMS, which simplifies quality compliance and connects regulatory and quality processes for life sciences customers. Moving to real world, IQVIA won an effectiveness study with a midsize pharma client focusing on patients who have not responded well to their previous migraine treatments. We were selected due to our strong therapeutic expertise combined with our direct-to-patient approach to accelerate recruitment and reduce site burden. A US EBP client awarded IQVIA a real-world post-approval safety and efficacy study in Japan for their coronary intravascular therapy. The aim of the project is to demonstrate the safety and effectiveness of their device, which could potentially increase the client's market share in Japan, as well as help the client register the device in other regions. Within the quarter, a top 15 pharma client awarded IQVIA a significant contract to study the effectiveness of a therapy for schizophrenia. The study will use data tokenization to link multiple data sources and then apply AI to provide a comprehensive view of patients pre- and post-therapy in real-world settings to physicians, patients, and caretakers. Finally, you may have seen that IQVIA was recognized by a respected independent third-party research organization as a leader in medical affairs and life sciences regulatory operations. IQVIA's global end-to-end solutions enable medical affairs customers to manage and curate the richness of data coming into their organization, transforming evidence into insights that can enable actionable initiatives. Let me now move to RNDS. Let's start with a trending therapeutic area, obesity treatment. A top 15 pharma client selected IQVIA Labs to conduct globally harmonized high volume testing to ensure accelerated enrollments. It's expected this will result in a significant reduction of study timelines for this therapeutic area where speed to market is key. Our strength in the vaccine development area led to another major role to conduct a phase three trial for a new influenza vaccine that will enroll approximately 50,000 volunteers. Turning to oncology, which represents once again our largest therapeutic area in RNDS bookings this quarter, I'll offer a few examples. A top 20 client selected IQVIA to conduct a large phase three oncology study focusing on small cell lung cancer, a disease with a high need for effective treatments. We want this study due to our strong therapeutic expertise, data and analytics capabilities, as well as our proven delivery approach, which includes a dedicated delivery unit project staffing that is exclusively focused on the client's study. By the way, for some time now, we've been deploying this unique delivery approach for large customers who have an especially complex study portfolio across multiple therapeutic areas. A biotech client selected IQVIA to support a large-scale global complex phase three program to test and validate their innovative cell and gene therapy vaccine for colorectal cancer. Lastly, in oncology, A top 25 pharma client awarded IQVIA a contract to develop an optimal clinical strategy and to execute a bladder cancer study in the U.S. We were awarded this engagement based on IQVIA's AI-enabled site selection and feasibility solutions that will help the client meet aggressive timelines. We discussed AI initiatives in TAS, and in fact, AI enablement is also pervasive in RDS. couple of other such examples. A US biotech client awarded IQVIA four full-service clinical trials, which are supported by IQVIA's AI-enabled data and analytics, increasing the likelihood of success for each trial, reducing the risk of protocol amendments, as well as the need to add countries and sites after the trial starts. In another example, we were awarded a pharmacovigilance project by a large biotech client to manage all case processing work worldwide using our AI capabilities. The IQVIA AI-enabled solution is designed to dramatically improve productivity, reduce cost, and enhance data quality and accuracy. We will continue to share more exciting AI initiatives across the businesses hopefully at future investor forums. I now turn it over to Ron for more details on our financial performance.