Qiagen N.V.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Cecilia, your PGI call operator. Welcome and thank you for joining QIGEN's Q4 2020 Earnings Conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Please be advised that this call is being recorded at QIGEN's request and will be made available on their Internet site. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press the star followed by the one on your touch-tone telephone. Please press the star key followed by the zero for operator assistance. At this time, I would like to introduce your host, John Gilardi, Vice President, Head of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations at QIGEN. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much, and welcome to all of you to our conference call today. The speakers we have for you are Thierry Bernard, the CEO of QIGEN, and Roland Sackers, our Chief Financial Officer. also joining us is Phoebe Lowe, Director of Investor Relations. Please note that this call is being webcast live and will be archived on the investor section of our website at www.kaizen.com. A copy of the press release is also available in the same section. Before we begin, let me cover our safe harbor statement. The discussions and responses to your questions on this call reflect management's views as of today, February 10th, 2021. We will be making statements and providing responses to your questions that state our intentions, beliefs, expectations, or predictions of the future. These constitute forward-looking statements for the purpose of the safe harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. QIAGEN disclaims any intention or obligation to revise any forward-looking statements. For more information, please refer to our filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. These are also available on our website. We will also be referring to certain financial measures not prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. You can find a reconciliation of these figures, the gap, in the press release and the presentation for this call. I'd like to now turn the call over to Thierry.

Thank you very much, John, and good evening, good afternoon, good morning to all of you. Let me please begin by welcoming all of you to our conference call today. And as a first remark, on behalf of our QIAGEN team and myself, I would like again to wish you and your families very good health and all the best during those unprecedented times. Without question, 2020 was a year of significant changes and developments for all of us. For QIAGEN, obviously, it significantly shifted the way we work, Thank you very much. Thank you very much. It is indeed a humbling experience to be able to lead such a dedicated team. Let me go through our four key messages of today. First, our teams exceeded the outlook for sales growth and adjusted EPS in the fourth quarter. As you have seen, we continue to deliver on our commitments. Sales grew 36% at constant exchange rates to $571.2 million, and this was well above the outlook set for at least 32% CER growth. Adjusted earnings per share was 68 cents at constant exchange rates, and this was well above our outlook range for 64 to 65 cents CER. Second. The performance in the fourth quarter leads to a second good performance for the full year sales result and adjusted EPS for 2020. This also exceeded our outlook. Sales of $1.87 billion in 2020 represented 23% CER growth over 2019. This was above our outlook for 22% CER increase. Adjusted earnings per shares were $2.17 at constant exchange rates. This was, once again, above the high end of our outlook by 3 cents. The third key message today relates to the ongoing impact of the pandemic in the fourth quarter. We experienced dynamic growth for product groups used in COVID-19 testing while, as well, seeing further improvements in non-COVID areas. The fourth quarter represented indeed the strongest year-on-year growth in sales during 2020 and also a very strong sequential improvement from the second and third quarters of the year. Those results underpin once again that QIAGEN is COVID-19 relevant, but QIAGEN is not COVID-19 dependent. We are actively managing our business, both sales and expenses, to navigate through the pandemic, but also to make sure we are best positioned to continue our business expansion in the future and create therefore long-term value for our shareholders. This is why we are putting a relentless, and I insist on this relentless, focus on the five pillars of growth. which we outlined to you at our recent virtual deep dive event on December 8th of last year. If you remember, those pillars include, first, our leading position in sample technologies. Second, the Quantiferon franchise anchored by our tuberculosis test. Third, the QIAQUITY digital PCR series of platform that we recently launched. Fourth, the Pneumonics Integrated PCR System for Clinical Diagnostic and fifth, the Chiostat Diagnostic Syndromic Testing Platform. As a final key message for today, we are reaffirming our full year 2021 outlook announced in December 20. We are confident to deliver an ongoing high level of sales growth and further improvements in adjusted EPS for 2021. For the full year, we are expecting sales growth of about 18 to 20% CER growth over the same period in 2020. This is based on expectation for ongoing strong demand for COVID-19 product sales during at least the first half of 2021, along with continued improvements in other areas of our portfolio. For adjusted EPS, We continue to expect about $2.42 to $2.46 at CER again. This reflects our plans to invest in our five pillars of growth to strengthen our competitive profile. And I would like now to hand over to Roland.