Merck & Co., Inc.

This call is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Peter Dannenbaum, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you, Brad, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Merck's second quarter 2024 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 that we have items in our GAAP results, such as acquisition-related charges, restructuring costs, and certain other items, and that we have excluded these from our non-GAAP results. There is a reconciliation in our press release. I will also 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 2023 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. 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. Our business is demonstrating strong momentum as we exit the first half of the year. We remain guided by our purpose of harnessing the power of leading-edge science to save and improve lives around the world. Our ambitious and dedicated teams are working tirelessly to reach more patients with our broad commercial portfolio and advance our deep pipeline with the goal of delivering future innovations that solve for additional unmet medical needs. Through excellent scientific, commercial, and operational execution, we're achieving significant milestones for our company and for patients. This quarter, we're proud to have successfully launched WinRiver, which has introduced a novel mechanism to treat adults suffering with pulmonary arterial hypertension. We're also pleased by the recent FDA approval of Capvaxiv, the first approved pneumococcal conjugate vaccine specifically designed for adults, as well as the subsequent ACIP recommendation. Both of these important innovations demonstrate our unwavering commitment to creating value for patients and shareholders. And we remain committed to the execution of strategic business development to further augment our pipeline. We recently announced and have now closed the acquisition of iBio, which expands our effort in ophthalmology and brings to Merck a novel late-phase candidate for the treatment of retinal diseases. This promising new mechanism adds another substantial potential commercial opportunity to our expanding pipeline in an area of significant unmet medical need. In addition, our animal health business closed the acquisition of Lenco's Aqua business, which establishes Merck as a leader in this important production animal category. Three years ago, I was honored to step into the role of CEO. and it remains my top priority to uphold and build on Merck's legacy as a premier science-driven, patient-focused biopharmaceutical company. At that time, I affirmed Merck's strategic commitment to the research and development of innovative medicines and vaccines as a source of long-term value creation. I communicated our intention to be appropriately aggressive in making the necessary investments to both advance our broad internal pipeline and augment it with the best external science through business development. Since then, we've made substantial progress in expanding and evolving our pipeline for the benefit of future patients. We have the potential to bring as many new drugs to market in the next five years as we launched over the last 10 years across a greater number of therapeutic areas and modalities, and with a significant proportion having Blockbuster Plus potential. We've made tremendous progress building on our past successes, enabling the creation of a sustainable engine that will drive future innovations for patients. And we continue to leverage our scientific prowess to identify new therapeutic targets where we can add value through our expertise in clinical development and regulatory affairs and our global commercial scale. I'm also proud of the substantial improvements we've made across our sustainability focus areas. We're reaching more people with our medicines and vaccines across a greater number of countries globally than ever before, and doing so with a dedicated, highly talented and diverse employee base. Finally, we're driving increased innovation and productivity through widespread integration of data, digital and analytics in all areas of our business. Going forward, I'm committed to ensuring our actions remain aligned with our strategy, and I'm confident that we are well positioned to deliver value to patients and shareholders long into the future. Turning to our second quarter results, we achieved strong growth reflecting continued demand across our broad portfolio, which was reflected in our updated foliar guidance, which Caroline will speak to in just a moment. Turning to our broader research efforts and new launches, in cardiometabolic, we've seen very favorable reception by physicians, patients, and payers to the availability of WinRiver. While still early, the U.S. launch has gone very well, in line with our own high expectations. We've deployed a focused, customer-centric rare disease model and are pleased to see an increasing number of prescriptions being written and patients obtaining access. We've also received a positive CHMP opinion and look forward to potential regulatory approval in Europe in the near future. we continue to see a tremendous opportunity to positively impact the lives of patients living with this devastating disease. In vaccines, we've continued to bring forward innovations for both adults and children. We are proud of the recent FDA approval of CABACCIV for the prevention of invasive pneumococcal disease and pneumococcal pneumonia in adults and the unanimous ACIP recommendation. Given its compelling clinical profile, we expect that cabvaxib will achieve a majority market share in the adult setting. We were also pleased to announce positive top-line results from the Phase 2b3 clinical trial for clozorovimab, our investigational monoclonal antibody for the prevention of RSV in infants, and we are moving swiftly to bring this important option to market. Finally, at our ASCO investor event, We highlighted the significant broadening of our oncology pipeline and the progress we've made in building on the success of Keytruda. We presented data from multiple novel candidates demonstrating our commitment to advancing standards of care and maintaining leadership over the long term. As a company, we remain highly focused and continue to work with urgency to bring forward these innovations and others for the patients we serve. In summary, I want to again recognize the tremendous efforts of our global team. Together, we've made significant progress across our diverse pipeline and portfolio. As a company, we've been advancing science for the benefit of patients for over 130 years, and I'm confident that Merck is well-positioned to deliver value to patients, shareholders, and to all of our stakeholders well into the future. With that, I'll turn the call over to Caroline.