West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc.

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the West Pharmaceutical Services Q2 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentations, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question at that time, please press star 11 on your telephone. Please be advised, today's conference call is being recorded. I would now turn the call over to Mr. Quinton Lau, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Valerie. Good morning and welcome to West's second quarter 2023 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 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 our CEO, Eric Green.

Thank you, Quentin, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. We will start on slide five. I'm pleased to report that we delivered a solid second quarter, which has us positioned for an even stronger performance in the second half of the year. The continued success is a result of our proven growth strategy as we capitalize on the robust customer demand and ongoing capacity expansion projects. And proudly, the strength of the One West team and unwavering commitment to our purpose continues to set us apart as the trusted market leader. I want to acknowledge team members across the globe and say thank you. The second quarter performance was driven by our base proprietary products business, which grew mid-teens. As expected, COVID-19 sales continued to drop as the second quarter last year was the peak of our pandemic-related sales. With respect to our base business, the biologics market unit again grew double digits with stable demand. Our generics market unit continued to benefit from HPP capacity expansions as the base grew strong double digits. and the farmer market unit base grew high single digits. In addition, contract manufacturing experienced significant momentum in the quarter with delivery of components for injection-related devices. Turning to slide six, the key levers of growth in Q2 were primarily driven by HVP components and delivery systems. our participation rate in recently approved new molecular entities in the U.S. and Europe remains strong. The components developed by West or our partner, DICU, are addressing some of the most critical therapeutic areas around immunology, oncology, including gene therapy applications, cardiovascular, neurology, diabetes, and obesity. This is also reflected in the solid order book across our biologics, generics, and pharma customers, a clear reflection of the needs of the market. And we continue to make good progress on bringing down lead times for certain HVPs. We're seeing our order book patterns reverting to a more normal pre-pandemic cadence. In addition, we continue to work closely with customers to update demand trends for the near and long term. These trends underscore the importance of our capacity investments, which are making a significant impact across West's global operations. For example, at our West Kinston plant, we have installed, validated, and brought online additional HVP capacity for NovaPure plungers. Although it is early days, we are pleased with the initial output as operations ramp up. Recently, I had the opportunity to visit West's site in Singapore, where we have enhanced the capabilities to meet growing HVP demand from our commercial customers in the APAC region. It was exciting to see the facility fully equipped with industry-leading coating, pharmaceutical washing, sterilization, and automated vision inspection capabilities for elastomers. This marks another exciting milestone on our journey towards meeting the industry's increasing emphasis on biologics. Shifting to slide seven. At the end of June, we published our 2022 ESG report on the company website. I am proud of the progress the organization has made towards the new five-year targets with even greater scientific rigor and quantitative focus on environmentally-based targets. we know to fulfill our purpose effectively, together as One West, we must continue to progress the sustainability goals, diversity and inclusion, and success around our charitable endeavors. These collective efforts from last year were recognized by several organizations, including being named as one of America's climate leaders by USA Today. Moving to slide eight. Our full year 2023 organic sales growth outlook remains unchanged at approximately 3% to 4%, and we're raising the 2023 financial outlook for overall net sales and adjusted diluted EPS. Now I'll turn the call over to Bernard, who will go into more detail from the quarter. Bernard?