Merck Kgaa

Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Merck Investor and Analyst Conference call on the first quarter 2023. As a reminder, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. I am now handing over to Konstantin Vest, Head of Investor Relations, who will lead you through this conference. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much, Sharon. Dear ladies and gentlemen, a very warm welcome to this Merck Q1 2023 results call. My name is Konstantin Fest. I'm head of investor relations here at Merck. I'm delighted to have today with me here Belen Garillo, our group CEO, as well as Markus Kunert, our group CFO. Please note for the Q&A part of this call, we are also being joined by Matthias Heinzel, CEO of LifeScience, as well as Peter Günther, CEO of Healthcare, and Kai Beckmann, CEO of Electronics. Also note that at the beginning of this call, for a brief introduction, we are joined today by Helene von Röder, as our newly appointed Chief Financial Officer as of 1st of July. Also, for your information, the first minutes of the call we would like to spend by guiding you through the key slides of this presentation. And after that, we are happy to take all your questions in our Q&A. With this, I'd like to now hand over to Jubilent Tukikekeke.

Thank you, Konstantin. Welcome, everybody, to our Q1 earnings call. Overall, Q1 has once again illustrated the strength of our business in a year that we have deemed to be transitional. Before I go on the highlights for Q1, please allow me to briefly comment on the changes that we recently announced at the level of the executive board. As you know, Marcus Kooner has decided to step down as CFO and as a member of the Executive Board as of June 30th. I wanted to take this opportunity to express my deepest gratitude also on behalf of the Executive Board for the tremendous contribution of Marcus to the company over the last nine years. We all wish him the very best. I personally have enjoyed immensely working with Marcus, first as a peer in the executive board, and then as a CFO over the last couple of years. At the same time, I'm truly happy to welcome Helene van Rother as our newly appointed Chief Financial Officer as of 1st of July. Helene brings with her an extensive experience in finance and in capital markets, having worked for 23 years in several big investment banks. She's joining Merck from Vonovia, where she served as Chief Financial Officer until 2021, and then transitioned to become Chief Transformation Officer responsible for digitalization and innovation in both positions, being also a member of the Vonovia Executive Board. As Konstantin mentioned, she is here with us today on the call and I would say it's probably better if she says a couple of words about herself. So, Helene, welcome.