Bausch + Lomb Corporation

Good morning and welcome to the Bosch and LOMS first quarter 2023 earnings call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Alice and Ryan. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter 2023 financial results conference call. Participating on today's call are Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Brent Saunders, and Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Sam Eldosuke. In addition to this live webcast, a copy of today's slide presentation and a replay of this conference call will be available on our website under the investor relations section. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that our presentation today contains forward-looking information. We would ask that you take a moment to read the forward-looking legend at the beginning of our presentation as it contains important information. This presentation contains non-GAAP financial measures and ratios. For more information about these measures and ratios, please refer to slide one of the presentation. Non-GAAP reconciliations can be found in the appendix to the presentation posted on our website. Finally, the financial guidance in this presentation is effective as of today only. It is our policy to generally not update guidance until the following quarter unless required by law and to not update or affirm guidance other than through broadly disseminated public disclosure. With that, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Brent.

Thank you, Allison, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. It's great to be here. I'll start off by sharing some high-level comments about my first 50 days as Chairman and CEO of Bausch & Long and briefly discuss the first quarter financial highlights. I will then turn the call over to Sam, our CFO, to review the first quarter financial results in detail and discuss our 2023 guidance. Finally, I'll cover our key franchises and a few upcoming catalysts before opening the line for questions. Beginning with slide three. I've been involved in eye health for the better part of my career. It's a dynamic industry that is always evolving, full of innovation and collaboration, and with many talented practitioners, surgeons, ophthalmologists, optometrists, and significant unmet needs for millions of people. It is an area that I care deeply about and have continued to stay close to. Having an opportunity to work in this great industry again was an important factor in my decision to rejoin Bausch & Lomb. The eye health industry operates an attractive part of the healthcare space with a large addressable market and growth driven by demographic trends and lifestyle changes that create significant unmet needs. Companies that can meet these needs are rewarded for innovation in a favorable competitive environment with significant barriers to entry. There are many other reasons why I returned to Bausch & Lomb. An iconic brand, 170 years in the making, a broad, diverse commercial platform, products that touch patients throughout their lives, a massive global infrastructure, and a competitive landscape where we have the most comprehensive footprint. And most importantly, a team of talented and dedicated colleagues who are passionate about making Bausch & Lomb the best eye health company in the world. My first 50 days here reaffirmed all of this. Our challenge and opportunity is to how to reach our company's full potential. To possibly oversimplify our situation, our biggest issue as a company is underutilization. That is, we have a very broad commercial structure and supply chain touching almost every eye health professional in the world, but not enough product flow to utilize it efficiently. Historically, we have invested significant resources into building a global infrastructure. But due to inadequate sales volumes, our infrastructure is not being utilized to its full potential, resulting in inefficiencies and wasted resources. Given this, the best plan for a sustainable future for our company, although easy to say but hard to do, is to focus on driving profitable growth. I'll discuss our path forward to doing just that in a moment. After careful thought, I developed a plan with input from the executive team designed to take Bausch & Lomb to the next level. We're calling it the Roadmap to Accelerate Growth. This is a multi-year plan with three phases, all with measurable, clear objectives. Let me give you some of the details. Let's start with a deeper dive into phase one of the roadmap. If we do all the following things correctly, we will advance to our next phase, innovate and execute. First, grow revenue at or above market, which we achieved in the first quarter of 2023. Clearly, this is foundational to our plan. We're growing, but we need to do this consistently. Next is a focus on our frontline sales teams with a view toward achieving selling excellence by building enduring bonds with our customers. Our sales teams are a talented and dedicated group. And when customers think of Bausch & Lomb, it's our sales reps that come immediately to mind. They are our face to our customers. But the infrastructure around them needs to be improved by giving them the best tools, training, and support that we can. I cannot understate it. Our sales teams are crucial to our success, and we are pivoting to making them the priority for an entire company, creating an environment that is viewed throughout the industry as the best place for sales representatives to work. Third, build an industry-leading business development platform. As I mentioned earlier, this is a tremendously dynamic industry with countless opportunities for growth and innovation. We need to build best in industry capabilities to seek out and evaluate the right opportunities and collaborate with smart, thoughtful partners. I want Bausch & Lomb to be known industry-wide as the best partner. Next, we need to enhance the use of technology and build leading digital capabilities across our company, from marketing to manufacturing, that support the business and enable it to run more efficiently and effectively, and eventually for it to become a competitive advantage for our company. This investment will pay off by increasing our efficiency, improving our customer experience, and expanding our market reach. The final part of the roadmap's first phase is to make work easier, eliminate bureaucracy, and increase accountability. We will reduce complexity and promote clear accountability. Empowering our colleagues with accountability not only increases their sense of ownership and pride in their work, but also fosters a culture of trust, responsibility, and continuous improvement. As we fold these capabilities into Bausch & Lomb, we look to build on our legacy and establish ourselves as the best eye health company in the world. Turning now to the quarterly results on slide seven. I'm going to talk about our numbers in constant currency, as Sam will explain in more detail. The year is off to a good start, with first quarter revenue of $931 million, up 8% year-over-year on a constant currency basis. Adjusted EBITDA of $141 million was impacted by $14 million currency-related headwind and higher levels of commercial investment to support key product launches, which we will believe will be the future growth drivers. Importantly, we saw continued high-quality growth across all three reporting segments and in most significant geographies. Revenue from VisionCare was up 8% on a constant currency basis, driven by growth in key franchises, including Lumify, DailySciHi, BioTrue OneDay, and Ultra. Increased demand, improving supply, and expansion in the premium IOL portfolio drove the surgical segment 9% constant currency growth. And the ophthalmic pharmaceutical segment grew by 7% on a constant currency basis driven by U.S. generic execution and international portfolio growth. Achieving growth across so many areas of our business in the face of continued headwinds underscores the strength of the Bausch & Lomb platform, brand, and team. My focus going forward will be to build on this foundation and execute the roadmap to accelerate growth that will enable the company to move into its next stage of growth. I will now turn the call over to Sam to cover the first quarter results in more detail.