Novo Nordisk A/S

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q3 2023 Novo Nordisk AS Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Daniel Boson, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Welcome to this Novo Nordisk earnings call for the first nine months of 2023. This call follows the early announcement of top-line results and the updated outlook for 2023, shared in October. The release was advanced due to Danish securities regulations. My name is Daniel Boson and I am the Head of Investor Relations at Novo Nordisk. With me today, I have CEO of Novo Nordisk, Lars Forgaard Jørgensen, Executive Vice President and Head of Commercial Strategy and Corporate Affairs, Camilla Sylvestre, Executive Vice President and Head of North America Operations, Doc Lange, Executive Vice President and Head of Development, Martin Holst Lange, and finally, Chief Financial Officer, Carsten Munch Knudsen. All speakers will be available for the Q&A session. Today's announcement and the slides for this call are available on our website, NovoNordisk.com. Please note that this call is being webcast live and the recording will be made available on our website as well. The call is scheduled for one hour. Please turn to that. The presentation is structured as outlined on slide two. Please note that all sales and operating profit growth statements will be at constant exchange rates unless otherwise specified. Please turn to the next slide. As always, we need to advise you that this call will contain forward-looking statements. These are subject to risk and uncertainty that could cause actual results to differ materially from patients. For further information on the risk factors, please see the company announcement for the first nine months of 2003 and the slides prepared for this presentation. With that, over to you, Lars, for an update on our strategic aspirations.

Thank you, Daniel. Next slide, please. In the first nine months of 2023, we delivered 33% sales and 37% operating profit growth at constant exchange rates. I'd like to start this call by going through the performance highlights across our strategic aspirations. before handing over the word to my colleagues. Within Purpose and Sustainability, we continue to make progress. Our carbon emissions decreased by 28% compared to pre-pandemic levels in 2019, and in line with our aspiration of being a sustainable employer, we continue to expand the number of women in senior leadership positions. This is now 41% compared to 38% last year. In R&D, an important milestone is that we will stop the flow kidney outcomes trial early as semaglutide demonstrated a benefit in people with type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease. Further, within R&D, we have recently agreed to acquire oziduron for the treatment of cardiovascular disease. This supports our aspiration of establishing a presence in other serious chronic diseases with a high unmet medical need. Margie will come back to this and our overall R&D milestones later. The sales growth reflects strong commercial execution with both operating units contributing to a continued sales growth driven by increasing demands for our GLP-1-based diabetes and obesity treatments. Camilla and Doug will go through the details in the therapy area later. Within commercial execution, we are pleased to have reached our obesity aspiration of 25 billion Danish kroner and our aspiration for diabetes by reaching a global value market share of one-third. Naturally, the progress is not holding us back, and we continue to aim for treating more patients with our innovative treatments. Karsten will go through the financial details, but I'm very pleased with our overall performance for the first nine months of 2023, which has enabled us to raise our outlook for the full year. With that, I'll give the word to Camilla for an update on commercial execution.