Good day my name is Stacey and I will be your conference operator today. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the First Quarter 2009 Life Technologies Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the presentation over to your host for today’s call, Miss Amanda Clardy, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please proceed.

Thank you Stacy and good afternoon everyone. Welcome to Life Technologies First Quarter Sales 2009 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me on the call today are Greg Lucier our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Mark Stevenson, our President and Chief Operating Officer; Bernd Brust our Chief Commercial Operations Officer; and David Hoffmeister, our Chief Financial Officer. If you haven’t received a copy of today’s press release you can obtain one from our website at lifetechnologies.com. Before we begin, I would like to call you attention to a few additional items that will be helpful for you during our call. We have now posted a revised 20008 quarterly pro forma income statement on our website that combines Invitrogen and Applied Biosystems financial results down to operating income. This revised pro forma income statement reflects financial results for Applied Biosystems using the same calendar quarters as Invitrogen rather then their previous 445 method. In addition, we have now provided quarterly revenue detail for our new technology divisions within Life Technologies. In 2009 we will be comparing all of our results against this revised pro forma income statement, so I encourage you to retrieve this document at your earliest convenience. Before we begin, I want to remind our listeners that our discussion today will include forward-looking statements including, but not limited to statements about future expectations, integration plans and prospects for the company. We believe these statements are based on reasonable assumptions, but actual results may differ materially from those indicated. It is our intent that these forward-looking statements be protected under the Safe Harbor created by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Additionally, we will be discussing GAAP and non-GAAP measures. A full reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to GAAP can be found in today’s press release or on our web site. For today’s call we will be referencing a presentation that you can view online. Instructions to access the web cast are also on our website. Additionally we will be posting this presentation following the conference call. Greg will begin today’s call with highlights of the quarter and our 2009 imperatives. Mark Stevenson will follow with an update on divisional performance in the integration. Bernd Brust will then provide some detail around our Go To Market integration and he will be followed by David who will give a more detailed review of the Company’s first quarter operating results and 2009 expectations. With that, I will now hand the call over to Greg Lucier.

Thanks Amanda. We couldn’t be more pleased with the results delivered in our first full quarter as a combined company. It is a strong start to the year with that performance driven by good results in both Legacy businesses despite the tough macroeconomic conditions we all face today. In Q1 total company revenue grew 1% to $785 million. Revenue growth without the impact from foreign currency was 5% with consumable and instrument revenue contributing equally. Gross margin was a robust 66.7%. Operating margin improved by an impressive 190 basis points to 26.2%, mostly as a result of synergy realization. Operating income improved 9% or 17% excluding the impact of currency. All of this resulted in non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.72. As you can see from our results, our business remains good despite the current economy. As we said before, our industry in general and our company in particular tends to be relatively resilient in tough economic times, although I will admit no business is recession proof. I believe this performance once again demonstrates the strength of our operating model, the diversity of our technology portfolio and the hard work of our people. It shows how essential our products are to the every day work of our customers. Our products are just about the last thin to be cut because of the criticality of them in our customers ever important work. In order to maintain our competitive edge we are focused on three important objectives this year: Growing our core business, flawlessly executing upon our integration plans and investing for future growth. The first objective, growing our core business, focuses on delivering our current customers the best possible products, service, and support. Both Invitrogen and Applied Biosystems have a long history of leadership in the life science tools space. Researchers…

Thanks Greg. I would just like to add to Greg’s comments about our employees and extend my thanks to them as well. As you know we now operate with four technology divisions: Molecular biology Systems, Cell Systems, Genetic Systems, and Mass Spectrometry Systems. Each division has its own unique set of products and as such each quarter I will provide some more color as to the dynamics in each one and some of the recent product launches that highlight the return from our R&D investments. Let me start with our largest division, Molecular Biology Systems. This division had revenues of $367 million dollars which represents approximately 4% growth excluding the impact from currency. In this division we have all of our PCR technologies, our core molecular biology reagents which are basics used in labs around the world as well as all of the associated royalties. Growth in this division was driven by continued strength and demand for reverse transcription enzymes and genomic assays, as well as very stable demand for our core molecular biology reagents. Molecular Biology Systems launched some exciting new products in Q1, but first I would like to highlight the launch of the NeonTM Transfection Device a bench-top tool that simplifies the delivery of DNA, RNA and proteins into a wide range of mammalian cell types, especially difficult-to-transfect cells, such as many types of primary and stem cells. The second product launch I would like to highlight is a new line of genotyping assays, the Tachman copy number assays. These assays enable researchers to better study how these copy number variations or changes in the number of copies of a gene or part of a gene alter DNA and affect processes such as cancer and neurological disorders. The Cell Systems division which includes our cell analysis, cell…

Thanks Mark. As you have now hear it has been a very nice start to the year and of course, beginning any year as strong is always critical and really sets the tone for the rest of the year. Given the context of the general economy, integrating new teams, and just the every day challenges of winning, we are very pleased with the results. Together with the customer care, marketing, and pricing functions, the selling teams have done an amazing job executing upon all of their objectives. My personal gratitude goes out to every individual around the world for staying focused and delivering a great quarter. One of our guiding principles in our integration planning has been to ensure that customers are not negatively affected by the merger, while at the same time making sure that the new benefits, such as broader access to our products, are made available as soon as possible. For this reason we continue to move slowly and deliberately on executing initiatives that have a customer facing aspect. We spent a considerable amount of time planning and training our employees for the implementation of the new Go To Market strategy. InQ1 we ran several pilot programs in selling select AB reagents through both the Invitrogen website and the Invitrogen supply centers. These pilots are going well. We have worked out the kinks that always come up and we are now beginning to put more AB products through these channels. In Q2 we will continue our careful preparation and begin to move into the full tactical implementation of our Go To Market initiatives that are designed to provide even greater value to our customers. As you know, we continue to maintain two platform brands, Applied Biosystems for instruments with linked reagents to optimize workflows and Invitrogen as…

Thank you, Bernd, and good afternoon everyone. I will now take you through the financial details of the first quarter results. Before I begin, let me remind you that we are comparing all of our non-GAAP financial results to the pro forma income statements that we’ve published on our website combining Invitrogen an AB for all of 2008. This quarter we grew revenue to $785 million, an increase of 1% including the impact from currency and 5% without currency. We are clearly pleased with this level of organic growth which was the result of solid performance across most of our business. You will notice that our non-GAP revenue is $9 million higher than our GAAP revenue. This adjustment to GAAP sales is associated with deferred service revenue acquired through the AB transaction. This non-GAAP adjustment provides a better comparison year-over-year, as well as associates revenue with the cost of these ongoing service contracts. Organic growth in the America’s was -1%. As a result of a decline in royalty revenue and weak demand in pharma and biotech, although academic, government, and applied market sales continued positive growth trends. Europe and Asia Pacific had strong organic growth at 12% and 28% respectively and although Japan was flat for the quarter, consumable demand was higher than it’s been in the recent past. Division revenue was $367 million for Molecular Biology, $219 million for Genetic Systems, $192 million for Cell Systems and $7 million for Other. This Other revenue of $7 million is associated with our Mass Spec division, but is not a part of the joint venture and consists of consumable products used on discontinued Mass Spec Systems. Currency this quarter impacted revenue impacted revenue growth by approximately 4 points, net of our hedging. The negative impact to EPS was approximately $0.09 and…

Thank you, David. Stacey, you can now open up the line for questions.

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Quintin Lai with Robert W. Baird.

With respect to the NIH and the stimulus package coming forward, you kind of mentioned increased quota activity and thank you very much for the expectations for the impact to your business of $100 million. Did you see any impact in the quarter of researchers perhaps spending more time grant writing and less time at the bench?

We have heard some of that, of course. I would say though that it had really minimal impact on our business for the quarter.

Okay and then what have your sources or contacts been saying about potential in the fiscal 2010 budget for the NIH? I mean we’ve seen some positive things come out this afternoon. I guess we’ve seen Arlen Specter who has been a big proponent and now switching over to become a democrat. What impact do you think 2010 could have for the NIH?

We think 2010 will see a modest increase in the NIH budget and driven primarily because our current estimate is most of the stimulus spending will take place next year, so I’d say now most of the focus is on the 2011 budget and we expect that, and the current dialogue in Washington is how do we sustain the elevated funding levels that the stimulus will give us in 2010. So that is where we put our energy and our dialogue with legislators and I would say that’s where the current discussion is really centered is 2011 building off of 2010.

Do you get the feeling, Greg, that this time around that they’re going to try to avoid kind of that drop down from the last five year doubling project and continue to grow off of a base of, let’s say, 2010 plus stimulus?

Quintin, I think the lessons from the past of the doubling and then not sustaining it are really well known in Washington and so that is really, I think, the most refreshing aspect of the dialogue today. Secondly is that there is really an enthusiastic response for the NIH and more broadly just funding innovation at the Federal level. President Obama spoke to the Academy of Sciences and committed to try to get to 3% of the Federal budget for the spending of innovation of which the NIH would be part of it. So I think we’re on a good path. Nothing is assured, but certainly the tenor of the dialogue has changed just in the last few months here and so we feel good where the NIH is going.

All right thank you.

Your next question comes from Tycho Peterson with J.P. Morgan Equity Research.

I was wondering if we can get a little more color on SOLiD with regards to maybe where some of these placements are going. Maybe some break out from genome center, non-genome center geographic color. Then any update to some of the initiatives you talked about at the AGBT in terms of tighter bead packing and progressive mapping and some of these other advancements?

We are seeing good pull through on SOLiD and really adoption in smaller centers as well as the larger genome centers and that is happening here in the US. We also saw good traction in Europe as well as in Asia Pac and Japan is starting a new fiscal year with funding there. So we are actually seeing a quite wide distribution. We focused really this quarter, and we were pleased to announce at AGBT both the introduction of SOLiD 3.0, but also then upgrading our customers during this quarter, which as I mentioned, we had 60% done or more complete by the end of this quarter. Then as the road map we outlined, we believe that by just continuing to progress this technology, so ever more increasing the technology B packing as you point to, will increase the throughput by the end of this year to 100 gigs or more. So we are on that path that will drive a lower cost per run and since this market, as we said, is just getting going, we’re heavily investing to continue to address that to use the advantage around accuracy and then come as well with ease of use workflow systems around that during the year.

Was the growth that you commented on in CE kind of consistent with your expectations or are you seeing kind of an up tick there and how do you think about maybe new instruments cycle there and capillary?

In the field it was consistent that overall we continue to expect that the movement will go in the research market, the next generation sequencing, and the growth will happen in more applied like forensic, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and clinical diagnostic applications. So, we certainly see the room for increased sequencing applications, in those applied markets and consider further offerings on investing in the CE platform to look at further products to really meet the needs of those more regulated and validated customers. We also see a bit of a trend with this interest in sequencing. Just across the range of applications, CE continues at the moment to be the gold standard of validation of those discoveries. So, you still see a continual use of the install base and actually some up tick on further placements in some of the markets of new capacity put in there that we saw during this last quarter. But, overall the trend continues, it is a shift in the research to next generation sequencing and adoption in the applied markets as CE is the gold standard.

Okay and Greg, when you talked about the growth strategies in personalized medicine, molecular diagnostics, how do we think about the evolution of the sale force going forward? I mean, you envisioned building out a big diagnostic sales force. How do you think about partnership versus M&A and that space? I would like your thoughts on building out diagnostics in particular.

Tycho, we have been doing a lot of strategic work on diagnostics and it is one of the key deliverables to the board this year. As we’ve done more and more work the new Life Technologies Company today does over $300 million a year in OEM provision of our technology, so we are quite deep already in the space. In terms of the next step of how do we become, perhaps, even more of an end solution provider, those strategies are kind of well though through and in the phase now of picking the path to go. You will see us do some things that will center around more R&D, more creation of focused selling forces, and certainly M&A will be part of that as well. That all really starts to roll our here over the next 12 months.

Great thank you, and congratulations on the quarter.

Your next question comes from Ross Muken with Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

On the revenue side was there any bit on relative to some of the instrumentation particularly that you were surprised by some of the strains? I mean, these growth numbers are pretty robust relative to just about anything we see in our out of industry; so I am just trying to get a sense versus plan was there anything that particularly in this resilient, obviously Mass Spec is a notable one given the performance there based on some of the new instruments.

That is a great question. I would just second your comment about Mass Spec. It was a very good quarter for the Mass Spec business. I think this 5500 platform technology is being very well accepted and is really providing a stimulative affect to our position, perhaps versus others today, in what still is a very difficult market. I don’t want to make any claims other than that. This is a part of our business that has its challenges, but we are very fortunate to have a very good piece of technology out here being sold today. Maybe Bernd you can give some other color commentary on PCR instruments in the like?

Sure. On Mass Spec certainly the new platform, also some real strength in Asia we continue to see on the Mass Spec side. On the other platforms real strength, as Mark pointed out earlier in some of the areas for CE sequencing and certainly the PCR instrument base around the world performed above expectations for the business.

Excellent and David, maybe you could share the thought process on keeping the range on guidance. Obviously this was quite a strong quarter. It doesn’t seem like we’re going to see any incremental weakening in any of the kind of core businesses, at least the top line and the synergy capture has been phenomenal. I know we are going to be in the upper range here, but it seems like with this start to the year it is kind of hard to get to the end of the range.

Thanks Ross. We are very pleased with the first quarter and hope that it continues. But, it is only three months out of 12 and we feel that given the uncertainty in the market environment it is premature to raise it at this point in time.

Yes, I guess my one question is in the assumption that you have baked into your model. Is there anything that you would point us to that incrementally we should be focused on that you may see some bit of a disruption or is it just kind of a general macro concern and there is nothing specifically driving that conservatism?

I would just chime in that like David said, it has really only been three months. This next quarter for us we do a lot of changes to our Go To Market strategy both with how we present ourselves to customers and then some system changes behind it. So, I think we’re just being cautious. So, obviously if we’re able to sustain this performance into the second quarter we will be back to you in 90 days with, at that point, probably, with some revised guidance. That is really the attitude we have right now towards what we’re trying to do.

I appreciate the candidness Greg; I just know everyone was thinking the same thing. Thank you guys very much.

Your next question comes from Isaac Ro Leerink with Swann & Co.

Just on gross margins, they look pretty good. Can you maybe help break down for us how the low royalties and foreign exchange might have off set some of the improvements you made via merger synergies? I’m just trying to get a sense of what the normalized gross margin might look like for the rest of the year.

I think that as we said, I mean you touched on the point, there were declines in royalty and settlement revenue, but those were offset by gains in pricing, freight optimization, and synergies, as well as renegotiation of some sourcing contracts and reduced royalty expenses. All of those things that we would expect to continue going forward. So, while there may be some increases in expenses next quarter, and we do in fact anticipate that from increases in merit pay, we don’t see that the things that happened to us this quarter were 1x events or any significant changes going forward.

Okay and then just switching over to sequencing, I think in the past you said that you have a very large commitment to that technology and a large portion of the Company’s R&D is going into that technology. Can you give me a sense, maybe, of how your commitment to R&D or sequencing is split up between solid versus perhaps use of technology?

We don’t get to break that out. I mean increasingly we view it as a continuum in the marketplace, but also as we organize our R&D effort. So, we are leveraging the experience across that as we develop chemistries and new systems and you’ll see that in our road map. Really our commitment there is to all the technologies and really we see sequencing at different platforms used across different techniques and so you will see us continue to invest in CE and solid and also we have announced that we always have a single molecule program under development and we’re very optimistic about that future as well.

Okay and then just lastly on sequencing here, obviously bioinformatics is an area where there are a lot of hurdles that we hear a lot about from current users who are generating perhaps more data than they can handle. I am just wondering how we should look at this Geospiza partnership with Amazon and is that something that you think an accelerated adoption of SOLiD and maybe some of these non-genome center locations, or how do we think about helping the informatics part get up to curve?

The way we’ve really thought about is this sequencing technology is really just getting going. In order to be able to used ever more in medical environments and clinical settings we’re really trying to test it and give a community of uses around that. So really, the partnership is about enabling customers to quickly get on, compare that data, and then move onto doing the next experiment. So, you will see collaborations like that. Collaborations like we announced with the TGen in Phoenix and looking at clinical practice as examples of strategic partnerships we’re doing that will help the adoption and grow increasingly in this marketplace in next generation sequencing.

Okay, great. Thanks a bunch.

Your next question comes from Jon Wood with Banc of America Securities.

David, can you break out the 1x cash integration costs that were in operating cash flow and the CapEx figures for the quarter?

Jon, we don’t have those off the top of our head, but I can do that with you on the follow up call.

Okay and then on pricing, can you give us a sense of the net pricing capture of this quarter? I don’t know if you can break it out from a synergy figure or not, but just give us some qualitative sense on the capture there?

No, we really don’t share those numbers broken down for the quarter.

Is the core business in line with historical capture rates in prior years?

Yes, it is.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from Derik De Bruin with UBS Investment Research.

In the [inaudible] systems certainly some of the reports in the biotech suggest that some of the biologic drug volumes are down, particularly impacted by the economy. Are you seeing any changes in terms of drug inventories, the demand for manufacturing on you industrial [cila] culture business?

Yes, so typically what we’ve seen is customers in this area have had a slightly reduced demand and that was something we saw at the end of last year, so as we came into planning for this year that was really how we planned it for this year. So the demand, while it continues, we sort of plan for that. It is nothing different to our expectations and as we go through the year we will continue to really see us to a macroeconomic trend of moving towards more biological molecules, but aware that you are going to see some failures and some consolidation in the farmer industry that is anticipated in our plans here.

So you have seen no incremental pull back in requests for orders for your industrial side?

No, it is as we anticipated; a tough environment for the farmer, but no dramatic change to what we have anticipated for the year.

Great, I guess could you talk a little bit about your pull through on reagents for SOLiD system? I mean where are you, how many of your customers are fully ramped, what’s the average of consumable pull through?

This quarter was different as we upgraded a lot of our customers from 2.0 to 3.0. That is a major upgrade that typically takes about two week to do. We still expected our customers to ramp up to 3.0. They will be in the range of somewhere between $175,000 to $200,000.00 per system.

Okay great. I know you took a US price increase in January; you took a European price increase in February; you are going to do Asia this quarter. Have you seen many huge push back in people like us wanting to carry less inventory? I guess just talk about what you’re looking at down through the pricing environment?

In general we have been fairly sensitive this year on making sure that we do look at the market and the environment we find ourselves in, but pricing has been in line with our expectations really pretty much around the world. As far as the specific comment around people destocking inventory, our portfolio really, we don’t have that much of stock sitting with our customers. Our products are fairly time sensitive and people order them on a regular basis. So, we haven’t seen really seen any impact on our business as it relates to some of the destocking comments we may have heard in other parts of the industry.

Okay great. Thanks.

Your next question comes from Doug Schenkel with Cowen and Company, LLC.

Would you be willing to comment on where you are in applying some of the traditionally strong Invitrogen pricing discipline to the ABI businesses?

I would just say that in that area we have made some good initial progress, but we’re really just at the beginning of the journey on overall pricing excellence for the combined company.

Okay and then regarding the $9 million in deferred services revenue that you’re recording on a non-GAAP basis, did you receive payment for those services in the quarter and then how should we think about that over the balance of the year?

Yes, we received payment and so, as a matter of fact, we received payment when we entered into the service agreements. So, what we’re really doing here is matching the recognition of the revenue as the service agreements expire or we incur the expense to provide those services. I think you can expect about that level of $9 to $10 million in terms of revenue going forward per quarter.

And then within molecular biology would you be willing to quantify how real-time PCR held up in the quarter?

We don’t break out the specifics in real-time PCR, but it continues to be a strong business for us. I mean the real-time PCR just is a gold standard for validation and increasingly into these applied markets and diagnostics. As Bernd said, it was part of the strength of the instrumentation, but just it was strong for us across the board there.

Okay, so last year you did quarter-by-quarter somewhere between close to 6% and as high as 10%. Would it be fair to say that there was no notable change in that range in this quarter?

I don’t think you can compare like by like categories, because they are slightly different categories in that you’ve got, so you really have to look at the overall category. This is a category, in fact the business we said Microbiology Systems is a mid-single digit grower that we expect to grow. It has a big portfolio of products in it, including real-time PCR which is obviously part of the growth engine.

Okay and then I believe, at least at the time of your Q4 call you had talked about, I think it was about $1 billion of the $2.4 billion of then new debt that was swapped into fixed rate. Are there any further changes on that front?

No, you are absolutely right. Of the $2.4 billion we swapped $1 billion to fixed in January at about a 2% swap rate.

Okay, thanks again for taking the questions.

Your next question comes from Marshall Urist with Morgan Stanley.

It was a pretty strong number for EU growth. We’ve heard of this from several companies and contrasting to what is going on in the America’s. So, could you talk a little bit about what is driving that? Is it different end markets, or product cycles there, why we’re seeing such a difference?

EU growth really kept on the same trajectory we saw pretty much through 2008 and really none of the major funding arenas where we positioned most of our portfolio have changed. In Europe, there is no doubt, there is less of a business for us in the biotech area, it is more academically focused and the funding, as you stated, it is probably strong, certainly through the first quarter.

Okay great and can you give us a little bit more granularity on how your Pharma business did? I know you said it was weak, but could you help us to quantify that a little bit more? Was it sort of a low single digit number, or how did that do through the quarter, because it has obviously been a concern for a lot of people.

We don’t break that out specifically, but I think in our prepared remarks we spoke to that pharma and biotech in general, especially large pharma and biotech, which is the majority of our revenue in that area, continues to not be that robust.

Okay and then what was the price contribution to constant currency growth in the quarter?

We don’t break it out on a quarterly basis.

Okay, great. Thanks.

All right, Stacey that wraps up our Q&A portion of the call. Thank you everyone for joining us. A replay of this web cast will be available on our website for three weeks. Thank you.

We thank you for your participation in today’s conference. This does conclude our presentation. Have a great day.