Novo Nordisk A/S

Thank you very much and welcome to this Nordisk earnings call for the first six months of 2021 and the outlook for the year. I'm Lars Rurgard Jorgensen, the CEO of Nordisk. I'd like to start by thanking you for your scheduling flexibility today as we decided to advance this earnings call as a consequence of our earlier than anticipated release of our results following an upgrade of both sales and operating profit. With me today, I have our Chief Financial Officer, Karsten Munk Knudsen, Executive Vice President and Head of Commercial Strategy and Corporate Affairs, Camille Silvestre, Executive Vice President and Head of North America Operations, Doug Lange, and finally, Executive Vice President and Head of Development, Martin Holst Lange. All presenters will be available for the Q&A session. Today's earnings release and the slides for this call are available on our website, no noise dot com. Please note that this call is being webcasted live and a recording will be made available on Nordisk's website. The call is scheduled to last for one hour. Please turn to the next slide. The presentation is structured as outlined on slide two. Please note that all shares, sales, and operating profit growth statements will be at constant exchange rates unless otherwise specified. The Q&A session will begin in about 25 minutes. Please turn to slide three. As always, I need to advise you that this conference call will contain forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risk and uncertainty that could cause actual results to differ maturely from expectations. For further information on the risk factors, including the uncertainties around COVID-19, please see the company announcement for the first half of 2021 and the slides prepared for this presentation. Please turn to the next slide. In the first half of 2021, Nordisk has progressed on all four dimensions of our strategic aspirations. I would like to highlight a few today. As a company, we are continuously working on being the best for the world and have progressed within purpose and sustainability. Under our Defeat Diabetes strategy that focuses on prevention, access and affordability, and innovation, we have expanded the Changing Diabetes in Children program by including Ghana as the 15th country. This will support our aspiration of reaching 100,000 children and young people with type 1 diabetes in low resource settings by 2030. An integrated part of being a sustainable business is to offer an inclusive and diverse working environment. In Nordisk, a number of initiatives have been launched to achieve a balanced gender representation across all managerial levels. But the reality is that progress has been slow. The current share of women in leadership positions defined as vice presidents and above is 35%. To underline our commitment to accelerate progress and ensure leadership accountability, we are launching a global gender diversity target. Specifically, our aspiration is to achieve a minimum of 45% women and a minimum of 45% men in leadership positions by the end of 2025. I see this as an important step to create an inclusive culture with equal opportunities in Northern Nordisk. Martin will come back to key developments within R&D, but I wanted to touch upon a few. We have reached a very important milestone with the approval of WeGoWe in the U.S. to the benefit of people living with obesity. WeGoWe was made available to U.S. patients in June 2021, and Doug will share more about the details of the launch later. Furthermore, we expanded our pipeline within cardiovascular disease with the Heart-Seed Collaboration and acquisition of Proteina's ATTR amyloidosis program. For commercial execution, we have progressed on all three strategic aspirations, which Camilla and Doug will elaborate on later. Lastly, leaving the details to Karsten, we are pleased with a sales growth of 12% and operating profit growth of 9% in the first half of 2021. Both measured at constant exchange rates. With that, I give the world to Camilla for an update on commercial execution.

Thank you Lars and please turn to slide 5. In the first half of 2021, our total sales increased by 12%. This sales increase was driven by both operating units with international operations growing 13% and North America operations growing by 11%. All therapy areas contributed to growth, with diabetes care sales growing 11%, driven by GLP-1 sales growth and broadly unchanged insulin sales. GLP-1 sales increased 30%, driven by North America, growing 24%, and international operations growing 46%. The broadly unchanged insulin sales were driven by a 6% growth in international operations, partly offset by an 11% sales decline in North America. The U.S. insulin sales declined by 11%, driven by a decline in volume and realized prices, the latter driven by channel and payer mix as well as rebate enhancements. Obesity care sales grew 34% overall and now includes both Saxenda and Vigovi in the U.S. In international operations, Saxenda sales grew 44% and in North America operations, obesity care sales grew 27%. BioPharm sales increased by 7%, driven by North America operations growing 12%, and international operations growing by 4%. Please turn to slide six. In line with our strategic aspirations of reaching one third of the diabetes value market by 2025, our growth of 11% is faster than the overall market, and hence we have improved our market share by half a percentage point to 29.6%. This increase reflects GLP-1 growth of 30% and market share gains in both operating units. Currently, Ousembic has been launched in 62 countries and Rebeltus in 18 countries. Please turn to slide 7. In international operations, diabetes care sales increased by 13% in the first half of 2021, driven by all geographies. The continued rollout of new generation insulins and focus on the GLP-1 product portfolio have resulted in an increased diabetes market share in international operations, which is now 23.9%, reflecting an increase of 1.4 percentage points compared to one year ago. This is driven by share gains in both GLP-1 and insulin. And in the last 12 months, our insulin volume market share has increased from 47% to 47.3%. Please turn to the next slide. Biofarm sales grew by 7% in the first six months of 2021. This was driven by a 12% sales growth in North America operations and 4% sales growth in international operations. Rare blood disorders grew by 11%, driven by uptake of launch products, Asprox and Rayfixia, and Novo 8 and Novo 7. Specifically, Haemophilia A products grew by 39%, Haemophilia B sales by 30% and Novo 7 by 3%. Rare endocrine disorders grew by 2%, driven by new indications and global rollout of the next generation device for Nordotropin. And now over to Doug for an update on US GLP-1 and obesity care.

Thank you, Camilla. Please turn to the next slide. The U.S. GLP-1 volume market growth is around 25%, comparing Q2 2021 to Q2 2020, driven by once-weekly injectable GLP-1 as well as Rebelsys. Novo Nordisk's new-to-brand market share leadership is now 62.6%, driven by the continued uptake of Ozempic and Rebelsys. Furthermore, Ozempic has regained MBRX market share leadership within injectable GLP-1s, in the first half of 2021. Measured on total scripts, Novo Nordisk remains the market leader with more than 50% market share. Please turn to slide 10. In the US, Rebelsys increased its volume market share both in terms of total scripts and new patient starts in the first half of 2021. This should be viewed in light of the two COVID-19 related commercial lockdowns in the US. with no face-to-face interaction between Novo Nordisk and the prescribers. Since mid-May, our sales force has been fully back out in the field. Importantly, leading indicators such as prescriber breadth, HCP awareness, and sourcing from outside of the GLP-1 class remain encouraging, and we remain confident in the product and its long-term potential. In addition, the launch trajectory is broadly progressing in line with the average performance of major SGLT2s that were all launched in a non-COVID world. Outside the US, Rebelsys has now been launched in 17 countries with one key market being Japan, where Rebelsys has reached a 0.7% modern OAD value market share. While underlying parameters are on track, it should be noted that there continues to be COVID lockdowns in Japan, which makes it difficult for patients, and a sales force to reach doctors. Please go to the next slide. With the US approval of WGOVI in June, obesity care is now a portfolio consisting of two products. Globally, obesity care sales increased 34% with 27% growth in North American operations and 44% in international operations. As we have touched upon throughout 2020 and 2021, Fewer patients have started treatment with Saxenda due to COVID-19 lockdowns and reduced access to healthcare providers. But thankfully, the situation has now started to improve. In the U.S., since the start of the year, we have seen positive momentum in new patient starts on Saxenda, which during the second quarter of this year were above pre-COVID levels. The U.S. launch of Agobi has been extraordinarily fast. Following a six-month FDA review, Wegovy was approved on June 4th, launched on June 10th, and available to patients in pharmacies on June 18th. Market access has progressed since launch, and two national payers have unblocked Wegovy from their national formulary. The initial feedback from patients and prescribers has been encouraging. Five weeks after launch, More than 8,000 Mugobi prescriptions have been filled, and more than 50% of these are new to the anti-obesity medication class. Now, the overwhelming initial demand has put the supply chain under pressure, leading to temporary shortages for the starting dose, which is 0.25 milligram. Novo Nordisk is committed to ensuring that any patient who has started on Mugobi will be able to continue on the product and production plans are being adjusted to satisfy the current demand. Now over to you, Martin, for an update on R&D.