Qiagen N.V.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Taryn, your Global Meet Call Operator. Welcome and thank you for joining QIAGEN's Q4 2024 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 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 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 welcome to all of you to our quarterly results call. We appreciate your time and interest in QIAGEN. On the call today are Terry Bernard, our Chief Executive Officer, and Roland Sackers, our Chief Financial Officer. Also joining us is Dr. Dominica Martorona from our IR team. This call is being webcast live and will be archived in the IR section of our website at www.qiagen.com. A copy of the quarterly results press release and the presentation are also available on our website. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that this call will include forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those projected due to various factors. These risks and uncertainties are outlined in our most recent Form 20F file with the SEC and is available on our website. Additionally, we will refer to financial measures that are not prepared in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP. These nine GAAP measures provide useful insights for investors and a reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP figures is included in our release. Please note that all references to earnings per share refer to diluted EPS. With that, let me hand over the call to Terry.

Thanks a lot, John. And hello, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where you are in the world. And thank you all for joining us. I am very pleased to share that QIAgen has once again delivered a strong performance in the fourth quarter, closing out 2024 on a strong note. Our results reflect both the resilience of our business and the trust of our customers, reinforcing our momentum as we move into 2025. We exceeded the targets for sales and adjusted earnings. We are again among the fastest growing companies in our industry. Those results reflect the strength of our portfolio with over 85% of our sales coming from highly recurring revenues. They show as well our ability to deliver solid profitable growth in today's challenging and volatile environment. I would like to take a moment to recognize the efforts of our teams who have been instrumental in delivering those achievements. And I would like also to acknowledge the impact of our customers whose work continues to advance science and improve healthcare across the globe. This being said, let me now highlight our key messages. First, We exceeded our outlook for Q4 2024 in both net sales and adjusted earnings. Net sales were 521 million in the fourth quarter, growing 3% CER and surpassing our outlook for at least 520 million CER again. Sales for our core business were up 4% CER when excluding discontinued products, in particular the pneumodics and dialunox systems. Adjusted diluted EPS was 61 cents CER, exceeding our target of at least 60 cents CER. For the full year 2024, We also exceeded our outlook for at least 1,985,000,000 CER in net sales and the latest upgrade of our adjusted EPS outlook for $2.19 CER. Second, we reached key milestones across our portfolio. positioning our company to deliver solid, profitable growth towards our 28 targets. First, Kyastat Diagnostics had a very, very solid year with 25 CER growth in Q4 and over 660 new system placements in 2024. This exceeded our target. Our teams achieved FDA clearances for four panels for use for the syndromic testing system during 2024. Now, we have the full menu for the very important U.S. market with panels covering the detection of many respiratory, gastrointestinal, and meningitis and cephalitis conditions. Second, quantiferons. The gold standard test for latent tuberculosis delivered 14% growth in Q4 and 11% CER growth for the year on gains in all regions, and this underscores the increasing adoption of this solution worldwide. We continue to see ample room for Quantiferon to grow given that only about 40% of the global latent TB testing market is converted to blood-based testing. So we continue and execute on a clear strategy to drive further conversion. For our listeners in the US, for example, the recent tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas reminds us that this is a global epidemic also impacting the most developed countries. To put this in context, the Kansas outbreak is the largest documented case of this potentially fatal bacterial disease since the CDC began counting cases in the 50s. Once again, this shows that tuberculosis might be silent, but it's everywhere. Three, moving to digital PCR, our teams expanded the capabilities of the QIAQUITY system with the launch of our QIAQUITY diagnostic for clinical use. Here, we are focusing on oncology and infectious disease applications, while also building on greater utilization over the 2,700 cumulative QIAQUITY placements since launch. Fourth, in our sample technologies portfolio, we achieved a significant milestone with over a thousand cumulative placements of our new easy-to-connect automated sample preparation instruments. We continue leading in automated sample processing as we capture opportunities in high-growth areas like liquid biopsy, minimal residual disease, or microbiome as well. Our third key message for today. We continue to make significant improvements in profitability and free cash flow. In Q4 of 2024, our adjusted operating income margin rose by 2.6 percentage points and achieved 30.6% of sales. This was driven by efficiency gains across the business and obviously the decision to phase out the pneumatic system by mid-2025. For the full year 2024, our adjusted operating income margin came in at 28.7%. We also generated extremely strong free cash flow of $506 million in 2024. This is up 63% compared to 2023. Those results demonstrate again our ability to deliver growth and improve shareholder returns. As you have seen recently, early 2025, we completed a new synthetic share repurchase of approximately $300 million, building on the $300 million we already returned to shareholders early 2024. This, once again, reaffirms our commitment to return at least $1 billion to shareholders by the end of 2028 And that, of course, as we said in New York 24 is absent of significant M&A opportunities. Last, we are focusing on delivering on our 2025 outlook, which is clearly aligned with our path to achieving our 2028 goals. For 2025, we expect net sales to grow by approximately 4% CER. And more important to us, to rise about 5% CER in our core portfolio. This is once again excluding discontinued products like pneumatics. Adjusted diluted EPS is expected to be at least at $2.28 CER. Those targets are really backed by our plans to make progress in developing and commercializing our differentiated portfolio. We continue to see significant opportunities ahead for QIAGEN as we target key markets to develop and maintain leadership positions. This is really putting us on a course to achieve our mid-term targets for 2028, and they all come down to seven 31, 2, and 1. A 7% sales cager for 24 to 28 from our core business, excluding discontinued products like pneumatics. A 31% adjusted operating income margin by 2020 weight, and we are very well on our way to achieving this. A $2 billion of sales from our group of growth pillars. which together already achieved $1.4 billion of sales in 2024, and at least $1 billion in return to shareholders, and we have already completed $600 million of that goal. I would like now to hand over to Roland for a review of our financial results.