Merck & Co., Inc.

Good morning. My name is Lara, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Merck & Co. Q2 Sales and Earnings Conference Call. Our lines have been placed in 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 respond to your question, press the pound key. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Peter Dannenbaum, Vice President of Investing Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Lara, and good morning. Welcome to Merck's second quarter 2020 conference call. Today I'm joined by Ken Frazier, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Rob Davis, our Chief Financial Officer, Dr. Roger Kohlmutter, President of Merck Research Labs, Frank Flyburn, our Chief Commercial Officer, and Mike Notley, our Chief Marketing Officer. Before we get started, 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 that we have excluded these from our non-GAAP results and provided reconciliation in our press release. We've also provided a table in our press release to help you understand the sales of the quarter for the business units and products. I'd also 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 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 in the 2019 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. Our SEC findings, today's earnings release, and an investor presentation with highlights of our results are all posted on Merck.com. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Ken.

Thank you, Peter. Good morning, and thank you all for joining today's call. I want to start by thanking our employees around the world for demonstrating resiliency and diligence through this difficult time. As a result of their tireless work, we continue to make progress on our strategic priorities and we exited the quarter with accelerating business momentum. While the pandemic has brought challenges that few of us could have imagined even six months ago, it has also demonstrated the critical importance of organizations that are focused on breakthrough science. Our scientists are highly focused on this effort and we are incredibly energized by this mission. Simply put, this is why Merck exists. Throughout the quarter, Merck executed well both operationally in support of our existing portfolio and by advancing our innovative research program. We continue to perform at a very high level without significant disruption to the production, supply, and distribution of our medicines, vaccines, and animal health products or our clinical trials. As expected, social distancing measures in many regions negatively impacted second quarter volumes for many of our products. However, customer access to care is steadily improving, including in our portfolio of vaccines, which was hit particularly hard this quarter. We remain confident. that our innovative portfolio will drive strong, long-term growth. Our financial strength also allows us to execute on our capital allocation priorities, including continuing to invest in internal R&D and business development. In addition to advancing our strategic priorities, we also achieved significant progress on our plans to spin off Organon & Co., which remains our trust be completed in the first half of 2021. We remain confident that creating two more focused companies will result in each being stronger and better positioned in an evolving healthcare landscape, which will benefit the patients we serve and our shareholders. We recently announced appointments of several talented and experienced leaders from outside the company to the strong leadership team and they are already deeply engaged in driving the various work streams underway to set up a standalone company for success. Before Roger provides more details, I'd like to say a few words on the multiple efforts underway within Merck on the COVID-19 front. COVID-19 represents a tremendous challenge to the biopharmaceutical research community, and Merck is moving with urgency to apply our deep expertise and vaccines and infectious diseases toward potential solutions. During the quarter, we announced two vaccine development efforts, one through a collaboration with IAVI, and the other through a now-completed acquisition of FEMIS. We selected these candidates because they are based on proven platforms that we anticipate will lead to safe, effective, and broadly deployable vaccine with the promise of single dosage. Both vaccine candidates will soon enter the clinic, and we have begun investing to facilitate our ability to manage hundreds of millions of doses. We also announced a program to develop a novel, orally available antiviral candidate through a collaboration with Ridgeback Bio. This compound has advanced into Phase II clinical trials. We are optimistic about the prospects for these three programs and, if successful, Merck is committed to working with others to create broad, affordable, and equitable global access. These programs illustrate our continued commitment to supplementing internal capabilities with innovative external science. Roger will provide more details on the significant progress being made in our research activities elsewhere. More broadly, the biopharmaceutical industry's response to COVID-19 has been extraordinary. Our industry is uniquely positioned to address the public health challenge on a global scale. Collaboration across the scientific, public health, and biopharmaceutical industry communities will be key to successfully finding solutions for this pandemic and to help ensure that we are adequately prepared for the next. We are confident that science will ultimately prevail over COVID-19 with new medicines and vaccines. Let me conclude by expressing our gratitude to the frontline healthcare workers as well as to our own employees who have worked to help patients affected by COVID-19. Their dedication inspires us and makes us even more resolute in our commitment to bring forward new tools to help end this pandemic. The value of our industry to society is underscored by this crisis, as does the need for companies like Merck to continue to invest in research and development to address the greatest health threats both now and in the future. And with that, I'll pass it over to my colleague, Rob Davis, to review the details of our performance and our outlook.