Qiagen N.V.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Tracey, your PGI call operator. Welcome and thank you for joining QIAGEN's Q1 2021 earnings conference call webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Please be advised that this call is being recorded at QIAGEN'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 star followed by the one on your touchtone telephone. Please press the star key followed by 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 QIAGEN. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and thank you to all of you for joining us today for our conference call. The speakers today are Thierry Bernard, the CEO of QIAGEN, and Roland Sackers, the Chief Financial Officer. Also joining us is Phoebe Lowe, our Senior 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.qiagen.com. A copy of the press release is also available in the same section. Before we begin, let me cover our Safe Harvest Statement. This presentation, as well as the discussion and responses to your questions on this call, reflect management's view as of today, May 4, 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. CHI Agenda claims any intention or obligations to revise any forward-looking statements. For more information, please visit the SEC website for these filings. We will also be referring to certain financial measures not prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. You can find a reconciliation of these figures in the press release and the presentation for this call. I would like to now turn over the call to Thierry.

Thank you, John, and welcome all to our conference call today. As usual, before we begin, I would like to again wish you and your families and loved ones good health and all the best during those times. As you have seen yesterday, the first quarter of 2021 marked another strong quarter for us as we moved through various stages of the pandemic with vaccination progressing in many countries. Of course, some at a pace faster than we had expected, the U.S., for example, or Israel or the U.K., and slower in other areas such as in Europe. Demand for our product groups using COVID testing overall remain at similar levels to what we saw at the end of 2020. But we have seen this vary between regions. Beyond the pandemic, Research Labs have reopened and diagnostic testing in other areas of healthcare is coming back into play. QIAGEN teams continue to execute day after day and manage the demands on our product portfolios while preparing to work through the headwinds that are going to be created by a reduction in COVID-19 testing demand as vaccination rates increase. QIAgen is well positioned with our five pillars of growth in those exciting times of change in the molecular testing landscape. We are poised to make a significant impact with a series of new product launches in the coming years, especially supported by menu expansion in QIAquity, QIAstat, or Pneumodics. Now please let me go through our key messages for today. First, our teams have once again exceeded the outlook for the first quarter of 2021 in terms of sales growth and adjusted EPS. This is now the sixth quarter in a row where our karyogeners have exceeded our guidance. Net sales grew 48% at CER rates over the same quarter of 2020. This beat our outlook of at least 45% CER growth. Adjusted earnings per share were 60 cents CER and above our outlook for about 60 to 62 cents. As we have said before, we put a very serious and tremendous amount of attention on ensuring that we execute on our commitments. The performance of our non-COVID product groups leads to our second key message. As you have heard Kayagen say before, those results in Q1 2021 are once again proving that we are COVID relevant, but we are not COVID dependent. Sales in the first quarter of 21 for non-COVID product groups reflected an acceleration from the end of last year and grew 16% CER over the first quarter of 2020. Our third key message relates to the ongoing demand for COVID-19 testing solution in the first quarter and this remain at a high level on par with the fourth quarter of 2020. Sales for those product groups grew 186% CER to $203 million, up from $69 million in the first quarter of 2020. But more importantly, this also compares to sales of $200 million in the fourth quarter of 2020. We confirm, however, as we said in our deep dive day in December 20, that we expect this to slow down progressively in Q2 and H2 2021. and as a final key message, we are reaffirming our full year outlook for 2021. For the full year, we continue to expect sales growth of about 18 to 20% CER over 2020. This is based on expectation for sales growth from COVID-19 product groups to subside as the year progresses but anchored by continued improvements in demands for non-COVID product groups compared to trends in 2020. For adjusted APS, we continue to expect about $2.42 to $2.46 at CER once again. This reflects our plans to invest in our five pillars of growth and strengthen our competitive profile to drive sustainable growth Once we move through the pandemic. And now I would like to hand over to Roland.