Qiagen N.V.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Katie, your call operator. Welcome and thank you for joining QIAGEN's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in a 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 prepared remarks will be followed by a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star followed by one on your touchstone telephone. Please press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. At this time, I'd 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 as well to all of you for joining us today. On the call, we have Thierry Bernard, our Chief Executive Officer, and Roland Sackers, our Chief Financial Officer. Also joining us is Phoebe Lowe from the Investor Relations team. 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 quarterly results press release and presentations are also available on this website. Today we will first have some remarks from Thierry and Roland and then move into the Q&A session. Before we begin, let me briefly cover our safe harbor statement. This call discussion and responses to your questions reflect the views of management as of today, May 4th, 2023. We will be making statements and providing responses to your questions that state 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. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. These include those discussed in our filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. These are also filed with the SEC and available on our website. QIJEN disclaims any intention or obligation to revise any forward-looking statements. We will also be referring to certain financial measures not prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP. All references to EPS refer to diluted EPS. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are available in our press release and the presentation. So with that, I'd like to now turn over the call to Thierry.

Thank you very much, John, and a very warm welcome to all of you. And obviously, thank you for joining us. As you have seen from our release yesterday, QIAGEN has had a very solid start in the first quarter. Our teams all over the world remain focused amid uncertain macro conditions and did a great job executing on our goals, delivering 12% Thank you for your attention. Net sales at CER for the first quarter were $502 million and exceeded our outlook for at least $490 million. On the other hand, due to Q1 2022 being an exceptionally strong quarter for COVID testing, we had sizable headwinds, as expected, in COVID product sales in the first quarter of 2023. As a result, total sales declined 20% CER to $485 million at actual rates. Adjusted earnings per share were 52 cents CER, also above the outlook for at least 47 cents CER. Our second message. Our teams are executing on our five pillars of growth strategy. In sample tech, first, we are pleased to report double-digit CER growth continuing in the non-COVID portfolio. This is driven by strong consumable sales across the business and also supported by our ongoing instrument upgrade program. The QuantiFerron latent TB test also delivered another quarter of double-digit CER growth with trends all across the regions. Chiostat Diagnostics and Pneumodix, our PCR clinical testing system, both made good progress in transitioning to non-COVID use. Pneumodix, for example, delivered underlying double-digit and many more. We are maintaining a good level of profitability. We continue to make investments into our business, organically or non-organically, while actively managing costs with a high level of discipline. And as a last message, we are reaffirming our full year outlook for 2023. Our teams are determined to deliver on our goals for the year. We remain proactive, agile in addressing any new developments. For 2023, we continue to expect sales of at least $205 billion at CER and for adjusted EPS of at least $2.10 CER again. Of course, key to this outlook is our goal to deliver for the full-year double-digit CER sales growth in the non-COVID portfolio, just like we did in this first quarter. We are also forecasting for a significant decline in COVID-19 sales. Remember that those sales compared to the pre-pandemic level of around $150 million of sales in 2019, from those products, that were then redeployed for COVID testing. We do have a strong portfolio, a solid pipeline of instruments, and a solid customer knowledge to support our growth ambitions. And we have the team worldwide to deliver. As a last point, I would like once again to welcome Steve Rakowski to our supervisory board. Many of you know Steve from his long tenures as chairman, president, and CEO of Quest Diagnostics. Steve has indeed a remarkable career in the diagnostic industry, and we look forward to his valuable contribution to the future success of KIAGE. I would like to now hand over to Roland for a review of our results in greater detail.