Merck & Co., Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Good morning, my name is Alan, and I will be your conference moderator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Merck & Company Q2 Sales and Earnings Conference Call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press 1, then 0 on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw your question at any time by repeating the 1, then 0 command. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset before pressing the numbers. If you should require assistance during the call, press star then zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Peter Dannenbaum, VP Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Welcome to Merck's second quarter 2022 conference call. Speaking on today's call will be Rob Davis, President and Chief Executive Officer. Caroline Litchfield, Chief Financial Officer, and Dr. Dean Lee, President of Merck Research Labs. 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 other items. You should note that we have excluded these from our non-GAAP results and provide a reconciliation in our press release. I would like to remind you that some of the statements that we make today 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 FCC filings, including item 1A and the 2021 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. During today's call, a slide presentation will accompany our speaker's prepared remarks. The presentation, today's earnings release, as well as our FCC filings are all posted to the investor relations section of Merck's website. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Rob.

Thanks, Peter. Good morning, and thank you for joining today's call. I'm proud to report that the business continues to perform extremely well. We remain firmly guided by our strategic priorities to drive long-term growth and deliver value to patients and shareholders. We are executing on the opportunities in front of us today while simultaneously making the necessary investments to sustain our success long into the future. I'm pleased to report that during the second quarter, we achieved robust top and bottom line growth and made additional important clinical advancements in our pipeline. Turning first to our results, we again achieved exceptional performance this quarter, led by strong growth of key products, including Catruda, Gardasil, and Brideon. Our results were aided by revenue from Ligebrio, which is helping in the ongoing fight against COVID-19. We're confident in the underlying demand for our innovative portfolio as we've continued to see momentum in our business, which we are pleased to reflect in our updated guidance. Moving to our research organization, we continue to advance our pipeline most significantly across our suite of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines. VaxNuVance received an expanded approval from the FDA for pediatric use, providing an important option for children in the prevention of invasive pneumococcal disease. We also presented positive results from clinical studies of V116, our pneumococcal conjugate vaccine candidate designed specifically to address remaining disease burden in adults, and we've initiated pivotal phase three studies. These milestones reinforce the confidence we have in our population-specific approach to address the distinct needs of children and adults. We've also taken additional steps to help you understand the significant opportunities we see in our pipeline. In June, we hosted an investor event at ASCO, which highlighted the depth and breadth of our oncology program. At the event, we reiterated our ambition to become the leading oncology company by 2025 and our goal of sustaining this success well into the next decade. As I reflect on my first year as CEO, I'm very pleased by the significant progress we've made in advancing Merck's position as a global biopharmaceutical leader and the sense of momentum spreading across our business. The unwavering focus and dedication of our employees worldwide is driving strong execution on the significant opportunities in front of us. We're demonstrating impressive resilience across all aspects of our business in a very challenging global environment. We're achieving record levels of production on our manufacturing operations, delivering exceptionally strong revenue growth, making meaningful advances in our pipeline, and taking important steps to be more transparent about our outlook. Our strategy is working, and our future is bright. I was very confident a year ago, and I am even more confident today that we are well positioned to achieve our near and long-term goals anchored by our commitment to deliver important medicines and vaccines to patients and value to all of our stakeholders, including shareholders. With that, I'll turn the call over to Caroline.