Novo Nordisk A/S

good day and thank you for standing by welcome to the first six months of 2024 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 1 and 1 on your telephone you will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised to withdraw your question please press star 1 and 1 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, Jakob Rode, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Welcome to this Novo Nordisk earnings call for the first six months of 2024. My name is Jakob Martin Viborod, and I'm the Head of Investor Relations at Novo Nordisk. With me today, I have CEO of Novo Nordisk, Lars Fogor Jørgensen, Executive Vice President and Head of Commercial Strategy and Corporate Affairs, Camilla Sudvest. Executive Vice President and Head of North America Operations, Doug Lange. Executive Vice President and Head of Development, Martin Holtz 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, novenordis.com. Please note that this call is being webcasted live and a recording will be made available on our website as well. The call is scheduled to last one hour. Please turn to the next slide. 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. 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 expectations. For further information on the risk factors, please see the company announcement for the first six months of 2024 as well as the slides prepared for this presentation. With that, over to you, Lars, for an update on our strategic aspirations.

Thank you, Jareb. Please turn to the next slide. In the first six months, we delivered 25% sales growth and 19% operating profit growth, both at constant exchange rates. The operating profit growth was impacted by the impairment loss related to orthodurinone. We'd like to start this call by going through the performance highlights across our strategic aspirations before handing over the word to my colleagues. Starting with our focus on purpose and sustainability, we are now serving more than 42 million patients with our diabetes and obesity treatments. Our total carbon emissions rose by 31% as compared to the first six months of 2023. This was primarily driven by our increased investments in capital expenditure to meet the high demand for our products. To uphold our commitment to being a sustainable employer, we expanded the number of women in senior leadership positions to 41%, compared to 40% in the first six months of 2023. Across all leadership positions, 46% are held by women. Within R&D, we had a number of exciting readouts this quarter, including the positive MyMate Phase 3 results. Martin will come back to this and our overall R&D milestones later. The quarterly sales growth reflects solid commercial execution across both operating units. The performance in the first six months has enabled us to raise our outlook for the full year. Camilla and Doug will go through the details later. Karsten will go through the financials, but I'm very pleased with our performance in the first six months of 2024. With that, I'll give the word to Camilla for an update on commercial execution.