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 Q3 2024 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. It 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 touchtone telephone. Please press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. At this time, I'd like to introduce your host, John Ghilardi, Vice President, Head of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations at QIAGEN. Please go ahead.

So thank you, operator, and thank you to all of you for joining us for our quarterly results call. We're pleased to have you with us and appreciate your interest in QIAGEN. This call is being webcast live and will be archived in the IR section of our website. You can also find a copy of the quarterly results, press release, and the presentation on our website. Now, I'd like to remind everyone that we will be discussing forward-looking statements on this call. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in any statement that we make. The factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially are discussed in our most recent Form 20F on file with the SEC and also available on our website. In addition, we will be referring to certain financial measures not prepared following generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP. We believe these non-GAAP measures provide useful information to investors. You can find a reconciliation in our release. All references to EPS refer to diluted EPS. So Terry Bernard, our Chief Executive Officer, and Roland Sackers, our Chief Financial Officer, will start with some remarks on the key initiatives for the quarter, followed by a Q&A session. With that, let me hand over the call to Terry.

Thank you, John. Hello, and good morning, good afternoon, or even good evening, depending on when you are in the world, and thank you for joining us. I'm very pleased to share that our teams have once again exceeded our targets and delivered another solid quarter of results. Thanks to our heavily recurring revenues, which represent over 85% of our sales we are very well on track to achieve our goals for 2024 in this still challenging macro environment. I want here to recognize the impact of our outstanding QIAgeners. But before we get into the performance of quarter three, let me take a moment to celebrate some truly remarkable achievements. 2024, is another year where our QIAGEN customers were awarded Nobel Prizes for their invaluable contribution to advancing science and improving healthcare. This is a real testament to the impact of our customers on our daily lives. As we celebrate our 40th anniversary in 2024, we are more committed than ever to delivering the highest quality product that will support future Nobel Prize winners in helping to make improvement in life possible. So now let me highlight our key messages for Q3. First and foremost, we exceeded our outlook for sales and adjusted earnings in the third quarter. We delivered $502 million of sales in the third quarter, representing 6% growth at constant exchange rates. This exceeded the outlook for at least $495 million at CER. Growth excluding the pneumatics franchise was also 6% CER. To be noted, we saw a 10% growth in our diagnostic solutions product group. Consumables and related revenues grew 8% CER over Q3 of 2023 and contributed 89% to our sales. We continue to see cautious customer spending on instrument and those sales declined 9% CER. Adjusted diluted EPS were 57 cents and results at constant exchange rates were 58 cents and this was 3 cents above our outlook for at least 55 cents. Second key message, we achieved several important product launches and key milestones. This positions KayaGen strongly for future growth as we set our ambitions towards delivering on our 2028 commitments. As a first highlight, KayaStat had a very strong quarter with 40% CER sales growth driven by increasing demand worldwide, and more than 150 placements of instruments in the third quarter. We have now received four FDA clearances for KyaSTAT panels, and this includes the announcements just this week of the clearance for the meningitis encephalitis panel. Let me here express my appreciation to our KyaSTAT team for this tremendous accomplishment. we are not done yet on our menu expression plan. In September, we also received new approvals in Europe under the new IVDR regulations for the Kiastate instruments along with the respiratory and GI gastrointestinal panels. Across Kiagen, We now have over 80% of our regulated products transferred to this new and more rigorous regulatory framework. Building on the success in syndromic testing, we are also expanding the ecosystem for KyaSTAT into precision medicine. KyaSTAT is the only syndromic system endorsed by pharmaceutical companies. and we have signed a number of pharma collaboration to use this technology in precision medicine application. Most recently, we announced collaboration with AstraZeneca and Eli Lilly. The goal is to provide chiostat test to help guide treatment decisions for various chronic diseases with AstraZeneca, and also a new test for Eli Lilly for using diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. If we move now to the QIAQUITY digital PCR system, we also have seen significant progress. A key development was the addition of 100 new validated assays to support our customers in areas such as cancer research, inherited genetic disorders, and infectious disease surveillance. We can now offer well over 2,400 different high-quality assays developed specifically for digital PCR that are accessible to our customers through our online GeneGlobe portal. Another key development in digital PCR was creating a version of QIAQUITY for clinical applications. The first placements have been made after the FDA approval in September of QIAQUITY diagnostic. a four-plate version designed specifically for clinical customers and with an initial focus on oncology. Kaya QT Diagnostic offers many capabilities that make it a better solution for customers against qPCR or next-generation sequencing. It is very well suited for monitoring cancer progression and supporting clinical decision-making in a very meaningful way. And now we continue to build out the application portfolio for career equity diagnostic. Turning now to the third key message, we again delivered a significant improvement in profitability and free cash flow. Our adjusted operating income margin improved by 3% to 29.6% of sales from the third quarter of 2023. This came from a combination of factors, including efficiency gains across the business, as well as the decision in June to discontinue the new MODX system by 2025. In terms of free cash flow, here we saw a 73% increase to $364 million in the first nine months of 2024. we are reaffirming our full year 24 outlook for net sales and we are increasing our target for adjusted EPS. The net sales outlook continues to be at least $1,985,000 at constant exchange rates. This takes into consideration the solid base business performance to date in 2024 as well as the reduced sales expectation for pneumatics, and those are tracking as we had expected for 24. We have increased our adjusted EPS target to at least $2.19 from the prior outlook, which was $2.16, also at CER. Last, I would also here like to mention a change in our executive committee. Jonathan Sheldon, our head of our QIAGEN digital insight business, has stepped down from this role. Let me express our appreciation to Jonathan for his many important contributions to developing our bioinformatics business, and we wish him all the best in his future endeavors. Those of you who attended our Capital Market Day in New York, had the chance to meet Dominic Jones from our QIAgen Digital Insights team. And I'm looking forward to working with him and the rest of the QDI team. So as a quick summary, our teams are committed to delivering on the goals for 2024 in a challenging micro environment. Doing so will position QIAgen for further profitable growth in 2025 and put us on the course to achieve our midterm targets I would like now to hand over to Roland for a review of our financial results.