Novo Nordisk A/S

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the third quarter 2024 Novo Nordisk AS Earnings Conference Call. At this time all participants are in the listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question please press star 1 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, Jacob Brode, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Welcome to this Novo Nordisk earnings call for the first nine months of 2024. My name is Jacob Martin Viborod, and I'm the Head of Investor Relations at Novo Nordisk. With me today I have CEO of Novo Nordisk, Lars Roerbo Jørgensen, Executive Vice President and Head of Commercial Strategy and Corporate Affairs, Camilla Sylvestre, Executive Vice President and Head of North America Operations, Doug Langer. Executive Vice President and Head of Development, Martin Holtz-Lange. And finally, Chief Financial Officer, Carsten 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, normanordis.com. Please note that the 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. Next slide, please. 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 nine months of 2024 and the slides prepared for this presentation. With that, over to you, Lars, for an update on our strategic aspirations.

Thank you, Jacob. Next slide, please. In the first nine months, we delivered 24% sales growth and 22% operating profit growth. This reflects continuous scaling of the company, and we now reach around three times more patients with our GLP-1 treatments compared to three years ago. Increased visibility on the full-year performance has led us to narrow our guidance range. 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. Starting with our focus on purpose and sustainability, we are now serving more than 43 million patients with our diabetes and obesity treatments. This is an increase of almost 3 million patients compared to 12 months ago. Our total carbon emissions rose by 34% compared to the first nine months of 2023. This was primarily driven by our increased investments in capital expenditure to meet the high demand of our treatments. To uphold our commitment of being a sustainable employer, we expanded the number of women in senior leadership positions to 41% compared to 40.5% 12 months ago. Across all leadership positions, 47% are held by women. In R&D, we had several exciting readouts this quarter. including the phase three results from soul, stride, and essence. These results are contributing to an already strong body of evidence on the cardiometabolic profile of semaglutide. 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. Camilla and Doug will go through the details later. Bas will also go through the financial details But I'm pleased with the sales growth of 24% in the first nine months of 2024. Before we move on to the detailed performance during the first nine months of this year, I would like to update you on changes to executive management. After more than 13 years with Novo Nordisk and more than seven years as head of North America operations, Doug Lange has decided to step aside from his current responsibility by the end of the year and instead take up a role as Senior Advisor to Nordisk Executive Management, effective 1 January 2025. I would like to thank Doug for his excellent contributions to Nordisk and look forward to working with him in his new capacity. Dave Moore, Executive Vice President with Responsibility for Business Development and Corporate Strategy, will now also take over the responsibility for Nordisk commercial operations in the US while maintaining his responsibility for global business development. Since rejoining Nordisk in 2022, Dave has made a substantial impact and built momentum within business development. I'm confident he'll be able to continue this in his new position. His experience with the U.S. business from previous roles within the company further strengthens his fit for this extended role. With that, I'll give the word to Camilla for an update on commercial execution for the first nine months of 2024.