Recordati Industria Chimica e Farmaceutica S.p.A.

Good afternoon. This is the course call operator. Welcome and thank you for joining Recordati conference call. As a reminder, all participants are at least in only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ms. Federica De Medici. Please go ahead, madam.

Thank you, George. Good afternoon or good morning, everyone, and thank you for attending the Recordati conference call today. I'm pleased to be here with our CEO, Rob Cormaz, and Vigila Corte, our CFO, who will be presenting the 2023 first quarter results. They will be running you through the presentation. As usual, the set of slides is available on our website in the investor section. After that, we will open up for Q&A. Please, I now give the floor to Robert. Please, guys.

Thank you, Federica. And good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome on our call. This year's first quarter confirms Recordati's ability to consistently deliver outstanding performance and show an excellent style of the year. With revenues at 551.4 million, up 31.5% versus previous year, or 21 on a like for like at constant exchange rate, with strong underlying momentum across both business units and across all key markets. I'm extremely encouraged by the overall group performance. SPC is double-digit ahead of the relevant markets, thanks to continuous improvement in competitiveness. And I'm also extremely happy with Endo's growth, 44.7% on a year-to-year basis, and a really successful on-call franchise integration, but that business showed 24.2% growth on a year-on-year pro forma basis. In the first quarter, we also benefited from strong metabolic performance, which was resilient, and so far, very low and slow penetration of the generics in the first quarter. It is really worth highlighting some phasing, some real one-offs and some seasonal shifts, but we are still able and very happy to upgrade our full year guidance. The strong underlying revenue performance enhanced by channel movements in Turkey and Russia and phasing of shipments to international distributors with a total Q1 benefit of roughly 15 to 20 million, the largest part of which was in our SBC unit. What was also quite exceptional in Q1 was a strong cough and cold. The flu season was very strong, and we were able to benefit from that in most of our markets. And also in Turkey, we've seen throughout the year, and again also at the beginning of Q1, multiple price increases as a reaction to the constant devaluation and inflation that we see in Turkey. The high volume also gave us a high operating leverage. This allowed us to really deliver strong operating and bottom line results. With an EBITDA of 220.8 million, operating margins benefit from fixed cost absorption level in COGS and a gradual ramp-up of the R&D spent related to also a gradual ramp-up of R&D activities, very much in line with our plan. The adjusted net income of $155 million, or up 33.3% versus previous year, driven by the positive operating performance, partially offset by higher financial expenses due to higher net debt and increased interest rates. Our net debt of 1.39.6 million were leveraged at 1.8 times LTM EBITDA, with strong free cash flow of 103.4 million, absorbing working capital increase, which was in inventories and receivables, from high business growth. Also, we're very happy with the key R&D pipeline projects progressing to plan, and Luigi will expand on that a little bit more. And we're very happy to raise our full year targets for 2023, which are now expected to exceed the top end of the guidance range that we set in February, both on revenue and on bottom line. And with that, I'm handing over to Luigi.