West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Q3 2020 West Pharmaceutical Services Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you would need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, to Mr. Quinton Lai, Vice President, Corporate Development, Strategy, and Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Dulem. Good morning, and welcome to West's third quarter 2020 conference call. We issued our financial results this morning, and the release has been posted in the investor section on the company's website located at westpharma.com. This morning, CEO Eric Green and CFO Bernard Burkett will review our financial results, provide an update on our business, and present our updated outlook for the remaining year of 2020. There's a slide presentation that accompanies today's call, and a copy of the presentation is available on the investor section of our website. On slide two is the Sage Harbor Statement. Statements made by management on this call and in the accompanying presentation contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of U.S. federal securities law. These statements are based on our beliefs and assumptions, current expectations, estimates, and forecasts. The company's future results are influenced by many factors beyond the control of the company. Actual results could differ materially from past results, as well as those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statement made here. Please refer to today's press release as well as any other disclosures made by the company regarding the risk to which it is subject, including our 10-K, 10-Q, and 8-K reports. During today's call, management will make reference to non-GAAP financial measures, including organic sales growth, adjusted operating profit, adjusted operating profit margin, and adjusted diluted EPS. reconciliations and limitations of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable financial results prepared in conformity to GAAP are provided in this morning's earnings release. I now turn the call over to West CEO and President Eric Green.

Great. Thank you, Quentin, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. before we dive into our q3 results and raise 2020 guidance i like to make clear the importance of our mission at west and the values that form the pillars in which we operate in today's uncertain environment and what seems like a new set of challenges each day we remain focused on two key priorities keeping our team members safe and ensuring uninterrupted supply of high-quality containment and delivery devices required by our customers and the patients we jointly serve. Moving to slide five, West is uniquely positioned to satisfy increasing market demand by leveraging our global operations scale and resources. Our team recognized at the outset of the pandemic the need to increase production capacity and we were already supporting the growth trajectory of our base business, and the future demand for our products required for COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics meant that we needed to act quickly and decisively. To address the increase in demand, we brought forward planned capital investments in production capacity. Earlier this month, we installed new manufacturing equipment at one of our HVP sites, to prepare for the future demand of Floratech and NovaPeer. As of this week, that capacity is operational, and we have additional equipment being installed at a second HVP site with more installations planned in the coming months at other global sites. The strength of our performance this past quarter demonstrates the forward momentum we have built over time with our market-led strategy and the One West team approach to satisfy market demand. Now turning to slide six, the disruption caused by the pandemic has impacted the way all of us conduct business in our daily lives. West is no exception. Thankfully, the changes we have been making over the past several years to the way we do business have enabled us to address these disruptions from a position of strength. Customers come to us for our scientific and technical expertise, and this differentiates us in the market. Despite the pandemic, we continue to share our expertise through our enhanced knowledge center, webinars, published articles, and technical presentations at virtual conferences. We have been investing in digital technology and automation with two objectives in mind, bringing new connected products to market, as well as enhancing the productivity of our operations at every level of the organization. While we're early in our digital journey, I would like to share a few examples of our recent success. Starting with our manufacturing automation strategy, we made great strides over the past year in helping us achieve continuous improvements in quality, safety, service, and cost. For example, our St. Petersburg, Florida site has developed an automation process for robotically loading and unloading molding presses. This has considerably reduced idle production time associated with product changeovers and improved operating efficiency. And our Kinston site has automated molding, trimming, rinsing processes, which will drive higher quality and final product and greater efficiency gains. And I'm especially pleased with the team's agility in bringing forward the production capacity expansion I mentioned earlier. A great deal of planning and engineering went into this initiative to help us meet our customers' requirements. On the digital front, we have just introduced West Virtual, the future of customer interactions with a truly immersive, fully interactive online experience. We expect this tool to be a primary customer interface even beyond the current pandemic. Turning to slide seven and our performance in the third quarter. Our financial results remain strong. I'm pleased to say that the growth trends we have experienced over the past several quarters continued in the third quarter, and the outlook for the fourth quarter remains positive. We had over 18% organic sales growth in the third quarter, driven again by robust high-value product sales as well as sales and contract manufacturing. and we experienced solid growth in operating profit margin expansion. This resulted in a strong adjusted EPS and free cash flow for the third quarter. Similar to the second quarter, our Bates business had solid organic sales growth in the third quarter. We also had incremental sales associated with many COVID-19 development projects we are supporting for both therapeutics and vaccines. Specifically for vaccines, towards the back end of the quarter, we were asked by our customers to accelerate initial deliveries of components. These more than offset continued sales decline of products associated with injectable drugs and treatments such as dental and elective surgeries that have been impacted negatively by the pandemic. As for guidance for the remainder of the year, we are confident that we're well positioned with the strength and resiliency of our core underlying business and the incremental opportunities being presented to support our customers with pandemic solutions. Therefore, we're raising our sales and EPS guidance for the remainder of the year. And with that, I'll turn it over to our CFO, Bernard Burkett, who will provide more detail on our financial performance and guidance. Bernard?