Merck & Co., Inc.

Good morning. My name is Jerome, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Merck and Company third quarter sales and earnings conference call. All mics 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. To withdraw your question, press the parent key. Thank you. I would now like to turn it over to Peter Donenbaum, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Jerome. Good morning. Welcome to Merck's third quarter 2019 conference call. Today I'm joined by Ken Frazier, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Rob Davis, our Chief Financial Officer, and Dr. Roger Pullmutter, President of Merck Research Labs. who will each have prepared remarks. In addition, I'm also joined by Mike Nally, our Chief Marketing Officer, and Frank Clyburn, our Chief Commercial Officer, who will be available for the Q&A portion of the call. Before I turn the call over to Ken, I'd like to point out a few items. You will see that we have items in our GAAP results, such as acquisition-related charges, restructuring costs, and certain other items. You should note that we've excluded these from our non-GAAP results and provide a reconciliation in our press release. We have also provided a table in our press release to help you understand the sales in the quarter for the business units and products. I would like to remind you that some of the statements that we make during today's call may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provision of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are made based on the current beliefs of Merck's management and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. If our underlying assumptions prove inaccurate or uncertainties materialize, Actual results may differ materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. Our SEC filings, including Item 1A and the 2018 10-K, identify certain risk factors and cautionary statements that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those projected in any of our forward-looking statements made this morning. Merck undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements. You can see our SEC filings as well as today's earnings release on Merck.com. We've also posted a presentation to the investor section of Merck.com, which includes some of the highlights from our results. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Ken.

Thank you, Peter. Good morning, and thank you all for joining the call. We are extremely pleased by the performance of our business this year. Execution both in the Merck Research Lab and in our commercial operations has been exceptional, and Merck again achieved one of its best quarters in many years. This success reinforces our belief that our science-led approach and the significant focus and resources we are putting into innovation is the right strategy and the best path towards delivering meaningful and sustained value to our patients and shareholders. As we highlighted at our investor day in June, we have good visibility into the growth of our de-risked portfolio of innovative products over the next five years. We are also confident that the investments we are making now in cutting edge science focused on areas of significant unmet medical needs from discovery through late stage clinical development will help us deliver breakthroughs over the next decade and beyond. Notwithstanding the strong momentum we are seeing in our business, we will continue to prioritize business development aimed at supplementing our portfolio and strengthening our pipeline and we are very happy with the additions of Antelic, Peloton, Immune Design, and Telos this year. We are realizing the benefits of focusing on our key growth drivers and are now operating from a position of strength. With that said, we're also mindful of the changing industry landscape. At Investor Day, Rob spoke about our efforts to best position Merck for the future by becoming a more focused, innovation-driven company. In order to realize this vision, we are evolving our operating model, driving productivity across our operations, and looking for ways to optimize our human health portfolio, all in an effort to create sustainable growth. With that, I'll now pass it over to my colleague, Rob, to review the details of our quarterly performance.