IQVIA Holdings, Inc.

To withdraw your question, please press star one again. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Kerry Joseph, Senior Vice President, Industrial Relations and Treasury. Mr. Joseph, you may now begin your conference.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our fourth quarter of 2024 earnings call. With me today are Ari Boosby, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ron Braun, Eric Sherbert, Executive and Vice President for General Counsel, Mike Fedok, Senior Vice President, Financial Planning and Analysis, and Gustavo Peroni, Senior Director, Investor Relations. Today, we'll 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 risk and uncertainty 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 Boots. Thank you, Jerry, and good morning, everyone.

Thank you for joining us today to discuss our fourth quarter and full year 2024 results. It was great to see many of you in person at our December investor day at the Innovation Park headquarters. I hope this helps you appreciate the depth and breadth of our offerings as we showcase the product demos and tour some of our industry leading laboratories. commented to me afterwards that they left with a deeper understanding of the breadth and depth of our capabilities and how our strategy to improve patient outcomes is being executed. As we close 2024, we delivered solid full-year results with revenue growth of 5.5% of cost on currency, excluding the COVID revenue step-down, adjusted earnings per share growing over 9%, and free cash flow of $2.1 billion, which represents growth of 41% versus last year, as well as 104% of adjusted net income. I'm very proud of the results the IQVIA team was able to deliver in an industry that faced significant challenges in 2024. We saw the consequences of the inflation reduction act, which led to delayed customer decision-making, reduce discretionary spend, and portfolio reprioritizations. Additionally, we had a challenging macro environment that persisted with geopolitical unrest, continued high interest rates and inflation, foreign currency headwinds, and questions about the impact of political elections in the US and around the world, all of which created tremendous amount of noise and incremental uncertainty. In fact, Very few companies in a broader industry sector achieved positive growth, and IQVIA really stood out as an outperformer. More specifically, in the fourth quarter, you saw that we had strong operational results. Revenue came in above the high end of our guidance range, representing about 4.5% growth, excluding the impact of foreign exchange and COVID-related work. We delivered just under 10% growth in adjusted diluted earnings per share, and we achieved a record quarter of free cash flow. On the clinical side, net new bookings for the quarter were over $2.5 billion, and this all highlights the great work that was done by our RMBS team in securing new business contracts. This helped mitigate the outsized level of cancellations that did materialize in the quarter, just as we had anticipated. Now, despite the tough macro environment, the R&DS business had some significant achievements in 2024. We successfully renewed all of our large pharma strategic partnerships this past year, even as many clients re-evaluated and consolidated their alliances. In addition, we established new relationships, displaced incumbents, and expanded the scope of work in several partnerships, positively positioning our business for future growth. IQGNR has partnerships with 22 of the top 25 pharma companies. We made significant advancements in our global health business. For example, we helped the World Health Organization control polio virus outbreaks in Africa, We collaborated with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, CEPI, in Rwanda. So we were able to respond swiftly to a Marburg virus disease outbreak. Finally, we were selected by a large biotech client to expedite a vaccine trial for mpox in sub-Saharan Africa, addressing a critical outbreak and unmet medical needs. This all comes to show that whenever there is a crisis, IQVIA is the company public health officials turn to. Now moving to TAS. The growth trajectory materialized just the way we said it would. Low single digit growth in the first half and gradually ramping up each quarter. In fact, growth exceeded our expectations in the second half. Obviously, this was helped by easier compares versus the second half of 2023. but we also had stronger organic demand than expected across all sub-segments with real world actually returning to double digit growth. We finished the year with constant currency growth of 5.7% and about 6.5% excluding the COVID step down, which was at the high end of our guidance. We expect to sustain this favorable trend into 2025. Reflecting on 2024, we're proud of what we achieved in TAS. A couple of business highlights. We introduced 60 innovations this past year, including 39 AI-enabled applications. For example, we introduced IQVIA AI Assistant, our first-ever gen AI interface that allows customers to interact with a growing number of our products and get answers to their questions almost instantly. We launched a number of AI-enabled patient offerings, including our patient relationship manager, which has already been deployed at eight clients, including three top 10 pharma. Our digital business, which up to now is largely U.S., has begun expanding into Europe, where we've doubled the number of websites, publishers, and partners that are now integrated into our digital network. Now, looking at 2025, we are reaffirming the guidance we provided to you at the December investor desk. On the TAR side, things have continued to recover as we anticipated. On the RMDS side, we still have some volatility, so we might see another quarter or two of fluctuating demand and elevated cancellations. But we think the bulk of the portfolio reprioritizations at L'Arche Pharma has been completed. In fact, we feel good about the RNDS demand environment because leading indicators continue to be favorable. For example, our Q4 RFP flow was up mid single digits, a little higher actually in the EVP segments. Our qualified pipeline is also up with positive growth across all segments. EVP funding, as you noted, was strong through 2024. four-year biotech funding was over $100 billion, which is 44% higher than it had been in 2023. Now, we did have much higher cancellations in 2024 than ever before. In fact, nearly 50% higher in 2024 than the average of the previous three years. But our gross new bookings before cancellations for 2024 were even stronger, and up mid-final digits at constant currency versus 2023, which led to an end-of-year backlog of $31.1 billion, which is, again, at constant currency, 5.5% higher than a year ago. Now, turning to the results for the quarter. Revenue for the fourth quarter grew 2.3% on a reported basis and 3% at constant currency. Compared to last year, and excluding COVID-related work from both periods, we grew the top line about 4.5% on a constant currency basis, and that included in the quarter about two points of contributions from acquisitions, mostly on the stock side. Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA increased 3.1%, driven by revenue growth and ongoing cost management discipline, which resulted in 20 bps of margin expansion. Fourth quarter adjusted diluted EPS of $3.12 increased 9.9% year-over-year. Let me now give you some color on business activity IQVIA's success is achieved by continuing to raise the bar in innovation every year and investing in highly differentiated capabilities. You saw the recent announcement of our collaboration with NVIDIA to transform healthcare and life sciences to advance agentic AI solutions. AI has the potential to transform our industry, for example, by addressing lengthy and complex processes in clinical trials, or on the commercial side, by helping expedite diagnosis and improve treatment adherence by patients. Our collaboration with NVIDIA will help accelerate the introduction of AI agents within our workflows, with AI agents essentially becoming digital companions to researchers, HCPs, and patients. Let me give you some more examples of what was achieved in the quarter, and let me start with TAS. The business is rapidly evolving as we see increasing demand for integrated solutions that combine information, analytics, and services. This is enabling us to win much larger, longer-term deals with our clients because of our unique ability to deliver these combined offerings. Let me give you a few examples. IQVIA was awarded a strategic partnership to deliver omnichannel marketing solutions to promote a top 10 pharma client's established portfolio. At IQVIA here, we utilize analytics, information, technology, and commercial outsourcing capabilities. IQVIA is also partnering with a biotech company to launch a new treatment for ovarian cancer, which will be our client's first product in market. This large deal leverages IQVIA's comprehensive commercial capabilities and expertise to execute regulatory process, launch, and commercial activities. Another ADP client asked IQVIA to support them in launching a new cell therapy for severe pediatric conditions. by providing the full comprehensive commercial infrastructure, and that includes field sales, medical and commercial communications, compliance, and OCE. A large pharma client engaged Acuvia to simplify data management by integrating diverse sources from over 30 countries, reducing complexity and enhancing efficiency. IQVIA will support the client's information strategy to streamline operations and centralize its global information into a single standardized system that will be operating. Moving now to the real world. IQVIA is using advanced AI to support a top 10 pharma client to demonstrate efficacy for gastric cancer treatment and gain approval in new markets. A top 10 15 pharma clients chose IQVIA to help track disease and treatment efficacy in support of various regulatory submissions in Europe. Let me move now to RDS. I earlier noted the success of our RDS team and want to highlight some notable wins that represent our capabilities across segments, therapeutic areas, and operational dynamics. Let me start with large pharma. The top five pharma clients selected IQVIA to conduct a complex full-service phase III study addressing asthma and COPD patients. We won another full-service global phase III breast cancer study for a top 30 pharma. Another top 10 pharma client awarded IQVIA a large FSP contract. This award is notable because we displaced two large long-time incumbent CROs. Medtech. IQVIA was awarded a study to evaluate a novel medical device specifically targeting a cardiovascular condition. Biotech. Few notable awards include a critical phase three oncology study based on our strong data-driven approach and ability to manage global complex trials efficiently. Another global study, full-service study for another biotech client for progressive pulmonary fibrosis disease, which involves nearly 1,000 patients in 26 countries. And again, we're able to win this based on our global footprint and therapeutic expertise. The phase two trial for rare CNS conditions with limited previous research. Lots of success in the marketplace with large pharma, medtech, and EVP. Before passing the call over to Ron for more detailed review of our financial results, I'd like to take a minute to acknowledge and congratulate our employees around the world for their extraordinary work this past year. It was challenging, but we delivered. A great team. We also received amazing recognitions throughout the year. I just want to highlight a few. Frost and Sullivan awarded IQVIA the 2024 Global Customer Value Leadership Award for excellence in AI quality and regulatory solutions in healthcare. IQVIA's SmartSolve Enterprise QMS was recognized for best use of AI in healthcare by the MedTech Breakthrough Awards. My Green Lab awarded IQVIA Laboratories the 2024 Race to Zero Leadership Award for certifying 100% of our laboratories. We received recognition as a leader in Forbes World's Best Healthcare and Life Sciences Management. And lastly, for the eighth year in a row, IQDIA was named one of the world's Most admired companies in Fortune's annual survey, and importantly for the fourth year in a row, IQVIA was named the number one most admired company in our category of healthcare, pharmacy, and other services. In addition, IQVIA earned number one ranking in the categories of innovation, global competitiveness, people management, and use of corporate assets. Now, Ron, will give you more details on our financial performance.