West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to West Pharmaceutical Services' fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Quentin Lai, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Shannon. Good morning and welcome to West's fourth quarter and full year 2022 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 westfarmer.com. This morning, Eric Green and Bernard Burkett will review our financial results. provide an update on our business, and present an update on our financial outlook for the full year 2023. There's a slide presentation that accompanies today's call, and a copy of that presentation is available on the investor section of our website. On slide four is our safe 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 police 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, 10Q and 8K 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 compared in conformity to GAAP are provided in this morning's earnings release.

I now turn the call over to our CEO, Eric Green. Thank you, Quentin, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. We will start on slide five. For over 100 years, the West name has come to mean so much to so many people. We have grown and expanded from manufacturing primary containment components to designing and manufacturing delivery systems. This remains the same today. As a global market leader who continues to define the evolution of our industry, our 10,000-plus team members are motivated by improving patient lives. The past few years have been a reminder that the world doesn't stand still, and the needs of the healthcare industry are evolving and growing in complexity, with shifting treatment options from the hospital to home setting. we remain committed to the pursuit of scientific innovation and partnerships to address the changing needs of today and into the future. Moving to slide six. Looking back at the year, I'm pleased to report that West delivered overall organic sales growth of approximately 8%. This growth was generated despite a rapidly shifting pandemic landscape. We started 2022 expecting COVID-19 volume growth, but instead declining orders and demand from our customers actually resulted in a 15% decline in pandemic-related sales. Excluding COVID-19, we estimate their base organic sales growth was low double-digit, with mid-teens growth in proprietary products. and driving this base growth is demand for our high-value product offerings for both legacy as well as recently launched drugs. And we ended the year with a return to growth in Q4 and contract manufacturing. This performance is a result of the dedication and relentless focus of our team members across the globe. We are connected by a strong responsibility and shared values that continue to help us succeed each day. I want to acknowledge these efforts and say thank you. Looking ahead, we remain well positioned with the right growth strategy around execute, innovate, and grow. Our solid order book of committed orders reinforces the criticality of West's components and devices to address our customers' growing injectable drug demand. And we continue to deploy capital investments to support the increase in demand driven by the attractive end markets. Turning to slide seven. In addition to our financial momentum, there were several other notable accomplishments in 2022. We shipped close to 47 billion components, touching billions of patient lives. As scientific and technical leaders in the industry, our customers expect us to help solve their problems. We continue to broaden insights with our expertise through our webinars, published articles, and technical presentations. We partnered with Corning to build the next generation of leading elastomer glass systems. We launched Dicul CZ 2.25 ML insert needle syringe to support the biologics market. and secured three additional FDA-approved drugs using our smart dose technology as we continue to bring additional value to our customers. Lastly, we donated $2.75 million, but more importantly, our team members continue to volunteer their time to help our local communities with the greatest needs. Our heartfelt thoughts are with all those impacted by the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria, where we have provided aid through UNICEF. Shifting to slide eight, we continue to factor environmental considerations into every aspect of our business. Over the past five years, we have made tremendous strides across the six priority areas and newly defined performance indicators. I'm pleased that we're on target with 90% of our operational waste not being sent to landfills. Our pursuit of renewable energy alternatives has aided in a positive impact in the emission reduction. These efforts have been recognized with numerous ESG accolades in 2022. We look forward to sharing more detail in our corporate responsibility report to be published in the spring. Turning to slide nine. We continue to address the growing market needs with today's complex and sensitive molecules. At the recent PharmaPak meeting, we introduced several new products for large volume delivery and complete vial containment solutions. One available product is our West ReadyPak with Corning's Valor Ready-to-Use Vials. This will be the first of many products from our Corning partnership. The combination of these products eliminates the risk of delamination and reduces glass particulate in bulk filling lines. It is drug delivery innovations like this that ensures best-in-class performance with a value proposition to meet the increased regulatory expectations with a complete vial containment solution. Moving to slide 10, we are introducing four-year 2023 financial guidance. This guidance is based on demand trends as well as our current capacity levels. It is also reinforced by our strong West and Dicul participation rate in drug approvals, especially in biologics and biosimilars. we expect full-year overall organic sales growth of approximately 3% to 4%, which includes a $303 million year-over-year decline in pandemic-related sales. Excluding this impact, we expect mid-teens overall base organic sales growth, with proprietary products growth in the high teens and high single-digit growth in contract manufacturing. 2023 will represent a transition year for our margin profile as we see a headwind from COVID-19 HVPs. That said, our expected margins for this year are significantly above pre-pandemic 2019 levels. This underscores the strength of our financial construct with annual margin expansion of 100 basis points or more per year. In 2019, we posted operating margin of 16.1%. In 2023, we expect operating margin of 23 to 24%, which would represent an increase of approximately 800 basis points over a four-year period. Also, today we announced that the Board of Directors has authorized a new share repurchase plan, as our prior plan was completed last year. This program is authorized for up to $1 billion of share repurchase. We note that this new program does not have a specified end date. As comparison, in 2022, our 12-month program was completed at $203 million of buybacks, and in 2021, our 12-month program was completed at $137 million of buybacks. This new $1 billion program will provide for a continuation of our share count neutral strategy, which is assumed in our 2023 full-year financial guidance. We believe this program will also provide flexibility for incremental share repurchases depending on various factors such as economic and market conditions. Turning to slide 11. As you can see from our guidance, we see continued base momentum in 2023, and we're planning for further additional growth as our customers are preparing for expanded success of their current biologics portfolio and drug launches. As such, we continue to drive forward to complete the installation of our capital expansion plans for additional HVP capacity. The picture shows the progression of our ongoing efforts. On my recent visit to Kinston, it was impressive to see the additional space added to accommodate the installation of new manufacturing equipment to address the growth of HVPs and plungers. Together with other site expansions, this will support future demand across our global manufacturing network. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Bernard.