Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Thermal Fisher Scientific 2020 First Quarter Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised, today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would like to introduce our moderator for the call, Mr. Kenneth Apicerno, Vice President, Investor Relations. Mr. Apicerno, you may begin the call.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. On the call with me today is Mark Casper, our Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and Stephen Williamson, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please note that this call is being webcast live and will be archived on the investor section of our website, thermofisher.com. under the heading webcasts and presentations until May 8th, 2020. A copy of the press release of our first quarter 2020 earnings and future expectations is available in the investor section of our website under the heading financial results. So before we begin, let me briefly cover our safe harbor statement. Various remarks that we may make about the company's future expectations, plans, and prospects constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those discussed in the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019, under the caption, Risk Factors, and also the company's current report on Form 8-K, filed on March 23, 2020, which are on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission and also available in the Investors section of our website under the heading SEC Filings. While we may elect to update forward-looking statements at some point in the future, we specifically disclaim any obligation to do so even if our estimates change. Therefore, you should not rely on these forward-looking statements as representing our views as of any date subsequent to today. Also during this call, we'll be referring to certain financial measures not prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is available in the press release of our first quarter 2020 earnings and future expectations, and also in the investor section of our website under the heading financial information. So with that, I'll turn the call over to Mark.

Thank you, Ken. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our 2020 first quarter call. Let me start by saying that I hope all of you and your families are faring as well as can be expected in this extraordinary time. We're all doing fine here as a leadership team and following the protocols to stay safe. Obviously, the world has changed dramatically since our last earnings call, so in addition to the normal topics we cover, we'll make a few modifications to our format this morning. One is that I'll begin my remarks by explaining our guiding principles for managing through this unique situation. In my high-level financial overview, I'll briefly turn it over to our CFO, Steven Williamson, to give you a little more color specifically on our revenue performance in the quarter. I'm also going to abbreviate my typical growth strategy highlights and use most of that section to talk about our involvement in supporting society's COVID-19 response. Let me also just say right up front that I'm incredibly humbled by the way our colleagues around the world stepped up to deliver a very good quarter under tough circumstances. It really highlights the commitment of our teams and the strength of our company. So starting with our guiding principles. Our approach for managing through the pandemic is threefold. One, make sure our colleagues are safe. Two, keep our business running so we can serve our customers. And three, manage our company appropriately so we can come out stronger. Let me delve into each of these a little more deeply. First is ensuring the safety of our colleagues. This is paramount. While a significant number of our colleagues are working at home, Many of us are coming to our facilities to make sure we can continue to serve our customers at a time when they need us most. We've implemented numerous health and safety protocols at our sites following CDC guidance and local regulations, and we've also assembled an outside panel of medical experts that's giving us additional insights. I couldn't be prouder of our 75,000 colleagues for working together as one team to fulfill our company's mission. which is to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner, and safer. Our mission has never been more relevant than it is right now. Our second guiding principle is to maintain business continuity so we can support our customers, whether they're directly responding to COVID-19 or continuing their work more broadly. Once the pandemic hit, we immediately established incident response teams to create a process for managing new protocols at our sites, and navigating the challenges presented by this situation. I'm pleased to say that every one of our sites has continued to operate during this period, and our supply chains have experienced minimal disruption. This achievement speaks to the amazing dedication of our teams and the strong operational foundation we've built through our PPI business system. Our industry-leading scale is also a significant advantage in ensuring we can continue to serve our customers. The overwhelming appreciation we're hearing from our customers during this time has been especially gratifying. Our third guiding principle is to manage the company appropriately so we come through this period an even stronger industry leader. We have the benefit of a very experienced team that successfully managed the company through the financial crisis of 2008 to 2009 and other periods of disruption around the world. We start with a strong focus on executing our long-term growth strategy while ensuring that we successfully navigate the short-term challenges and also generate new opportunities as well. In this case, when the pandemic put China in lockdown, we quickly mobilized our global team to help our customers respond to the crisis. We also pivoted our teams to accelerate their short-term growth plans in other regions of the world. In addition, we continued our strong focus on innovation, stepped up the impact of our PPI business system, and continued to execute a well-thought-out capital deployment strategy. All of these activities will allow us to come out of this period even stronger. Turning to our financial results, as you saw in our press release, our reported revenue increased 2% in Q1 year-over-year to $6.23 billion. Adjusted operating income increased 1% to $1.38 billion, and our adjusted operating margin was 22.1% in Q1. Finally, we grew adjusted EPS to $2.94 per share in the quarter, which is a 5% increase over last year. At this point, I'll briefly turn it over to Stephen to provide some color on how we assessed our Q1 revenue performance. Stephen?