Merck & Co., Inc.

Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you and good morning. Welcome to Merck's first quarter 2023 conference call. Speaking on today's call will be Rob Davis, Chairman 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 SEC filings, including item 1A and the 2022 10K, 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 speakers' prepared remarks. These slides, along with the earnings release, today's prepared remarks, and our SEC 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. We began 2023 with significant advancements across key areas of our pipeline and with continued strong performance of our key growth drivers. I remain very pleased with the consistency and excellence of our team's execution, and I'm confident that our strategy is leading to sustainable success. We remain grounded in our shared purpose to bring forward bold science that delivers solutions which address serious unmet medical needs and, importantly, save and improve lives around the world. Our priorities remain consistent. By focusing on our science-led strategy, we intend to bring forward important innovation from our internal discovery pipeline and via strategic business development targeted at accessing the most compelling and complementary external science. leveraging our best in class clinical development capabilities. We aim to sustain the momentum in our pipeline in 2023 and beyond, and we're confident that this will lead to strong commercial and financial performance, as well as value creation for patients and shareholders over the long term. Speaking of accessing important external innovation, we're very pleased with our announced acquisition of Prometheus Biosciences. Prometheus brings us a potential best in class novel treatment that could transform the standard of care for patients suffering from ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, potentially debilitating conditions, as well as a broader pipeline and a technology platform that enables a precision medicine approach. It accelerates our presence in immunology, increases the diversity of our pipeline, and brings us a potentially significant revenue growth driver through the next decade. This transaction is also another example of Merck acting decisively when science and value align. Turning now to our first quarter results. We delivered very significant underlying growth, excluding the expected year-over-year decline in Ligebrio sales. This reflects continued fundamental strength and momentum across our key growth drivers, particularly in oncology and vaccines. These results reinforce our confidence in the robust demand for our innovative portfolio and in our outlook for the remainder of 2023, which Caroline will speak to in a moment. Moving to our research organization, we've made significant advancements. In cardiovascular, we shared the remarkable work of our research colleagues at the American College of Cardiology conference in March. The strength of the data from the Phase III STELR trial studying Sirtatracept in pulmonary arterial hypertension reinforces our belief in this important new mechanism's potential to change the treatment paradigm for patients. In addition, impressive results from the Phase II trial studying our oral PCSK9 inhibitor suggest that this could be a globally accessible treatment option for patients in need of LDL cholesterol reduction. The successes we are achieving across our cardiovascular pipeline have created excitement across our company and a belief that Merck will build on its strong legacy of bringing forth breakthrough therapies for the benefit of patients suffering from cardiovascular disease, and that these programs will contribute significantly to our long-term growth. In oncology, we were pleased to share the positive top-line results from Keynote 671, which showed a significant improvement in event-free survival in certain patients with early-stage non-small-cell lung cancer, and we look forward to potential approval later this year. In addition, we are working with our partner Moderna to rapidly expand our efforts to study the combination of Keytruda with an individualized neoantigen therapy, which we previously referred to as a personalized cancer vaccine therapy in adjuvant melanoma and potential additional tumor types. I'm very encouraged by the substantial progress we've made across our broad pipeline. We're now working on a greater number of late-stage programs across more therapeutic areas and modalities than at any time in recent years. In summary, we've begun 2023 with scientific, commercial, and operational momentum and expect strong full-year growth across both our human and animal health businesses. I'm proud of the progress we've made, but as always, recognize the need to move with speed and urgency to do even more. I want to thank our global team for their steadfast dedication as we build a sustainable innovation engine that will deliver value for patients and shareholders well into the next decade. With that, I'll turn the call over to Caroline.