Qiagen N.V.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Jess, your Global Meet Call Operator. Welcome and thank you for joining QIAGEN's Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call 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 website. 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 touchtone telephone. Please press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. At this time, I would like to introduce your host, Mr. John Gilardi, Vice President, Head of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations at QIAGEN. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Jess, and thank you all of you for joining us today for this call. We appreciate your interest in QIAGEN. Our speakers today are Terry Bernard, our Chief Executive Officer, and Roland Sackers, our Chief Financial Officer. We also have Phoebe Lowe from the IR team joining us as well. This call is being webcast live and will be archived on the Investors section of our website at www.kygen.com. You can also find a copy of the quarterly results, press release, and presentation on our website. We'll begin with remarks from Terry and Roland and then move into a Q&A session. Before we start, let me briefly go over the Safe Harbor Statement. The views expressed during this conference call and the responses to your questions represent the perspectives of management as of today, October 31st, 2023. We will be making statements and providing responses to your questions that convey your intentions, beliefs, expectations, or predictions for the future. These statements fall under the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. They involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from those suggested by these statements. Factors that could influence results are mentioned in our filings with the SEC. These are also available on the SEC website and also on our own website. QIAGEN disclaims any intention or obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Additionally, we will refer to certain financial measures not approved, sorry, not prepared following generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP. All references to EPS refer to diluted EPS. You can find the reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures in our press release and presentation. I'd like to now hand over the call to Thierry.

Thank you, John. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending, of course, of where you are in the world, and thank you for joining us. We delivered another quarter of solid results that exceeded our outlook in an increasingly volatile macro environment. This confirms again the resilience of our portfolio. Our performance continues to be driven by our strategy of focus and balance. Focus on our pillars of growth and balance in serving over 500,000 customers in the life sciences and molecular diagnostic with our broad geographic presence. At the same time, We are obviously closely monitoring increasingly challenging geopolitical and macro environments and taking actions to reduce as much as possible the impact on our business. We believe that we are very well positioned to finish this year in a strong position, committed to delivering solid sales growth and improved earnings in the fourth quarter as we prepare for more growth and expansion in 2024 and the years ahead. Let me quickly go to our top messages for today. First, we exceeded our outlook for net sales and adjusted EPS for the third quarter, driven by solid growth in the non-COVID-based business and a high level of profitability. Net sales were $470 million at constant exchange rates, which exceeded our outlook for at least $465 million. Our non-COVID product sales rose 5% CER, and these were supported by 10% CER growth in sales of highly recurring consumables revenues that accounted for well over 85% of total sales. For the first nine months of the year, those sales grew 8% CER. Overall results showed a decline of 5% to $476 million, reflecting, of course, the significant drop-off in COVID testing revenues from 2022. We continue to track towards $160 to $165 million of sales for 2023 in our COVID-19 product group. Remember that we had $143 million of sales from this group in 2019 before the pandemic. In terms of profitability, adjusted earnings per shares were $0.50 CER, And once again, above the outlook for at least 48 cents CER. Our second key message. Our key pillars are driving the solid underlying performance. Just to call out a few. The quantitative TB test maintained the momentum we have seen during 2023, growing 25% CER over the third quarter of 2022, and delivering the second consecutive quarter of sales above $100 million. What are the key drivers? Obviously, once again, the strong conversion trends from use of the tuberculin skin test. Another example, the QIAQUITY digital PCR system delivered over 40% sales growth at constant exchange rates, driven by new placement and increasing biopharma consumable sales. The chiostat diagnostic syndromic testing platform also did well this quarter, with a combination of growth in consumables driven by double-digit CER gains in non-COVID testing and placements above the same level achieved in the third quarter of last year. Our third message. We continue to maintain a high level of profitability as we invest into research and development that will help driving future growth trends. The adjusted operating income margin was 26.6% in the third quarter, and we achieved this level while investing around 10% of sales into research and development. We see those investments as an important way to create new relays of growth for tomorrow. And our last point for today, we are reaffirming our full-year outlook for 2023. Our outlook 23 remains for net sales of at least $1.97 billion at constant exchange rate and for adjusted earnings per share of at least $2 We are, of course, closely monitoring the increasingly volatile geopolitical and macro trends. Inflation, the war in Ukraine and now in the Middle East, supply chain issues, the economy in China. Those are a lot of moving parts to observe in terms of macro trends. Before I hand over to Roland, I would also like to mention a change in our leadership team. After leading our molecular diagnostic business since 2020, Jean-Pascal Viola has been appointed senior vice president, head of corporate strategy and development. He remains a member of the executive committee. We here want to capitalize on Jean-Pascal's contribution to QIAGEN since 2007 and his proven track record in business development. After a rigorous selection process, We would like to welcome Fernando Baez as our new senior vice president, head of molecular diagnostic business area, and member of the executive committee. Fernando joined SkyAgen after more than two decades in the life sciences and molecular diagnostics industry. He most recently led the genetic testing solution business at Thermo Fisher Scientific, and previously spent over two decades at Siemens, and his last role as global head of the molecular diagnostic business unit at Siemens Healthiness. We welcome Fernando to the team and are convinced that his passion for innovation and customer focus will help us achieve our ambitions. And now, I'd like to hand over to Roland for a review of our results in greater detail.