Andrew Philip Witty
Management
Good afternoon, and thank you very much for joining me by link today. I'm sorry we're not doing this face-to-face. But I'm sure you'll understand, we're trying to avoid everybody being caught up in Olympic lane. And hopefully, this works for you in terms of avoiding being trapped in traffic. We're going to review the Q2 results for GSK. And with me today, I've got Simon Dingemans, our CFO, who'll make some comments in a few minutes. And also, Moncef Slaoui, who will join Simon and I for question-and-answer at the end, so you'll have an opportunity to ask about pipeline assets, if you'd like. Let me start by making a few general comments about the quarter. It's been an interesting quarter for the company, a very busy one, really a couple of big dynamics. The first is some very, very good progression of the advanced pipeline. We'll talk a little bit more about that. But clearly, during the quarter, we've seen a lot of very encouraging data, particularly around some of the bigger potential assets in the pipeline. While there still so much to do to bring those assets to the marketplace, it's clearly coming into shape as a potential driver of enhanced organic growth going forward. Secondly, again, the quarter has been characterized by a continued deterioration in the external environment, especially in Europe, where we took a 7% negative price hit during this quarter. We think to some degree, that may be the worst it gets, but that all depends on government policy. So if nothing new comes out from now on, we think it starts to ameliorate going forward. But it all depends on the events coming out of the Italian, Spanish and other governments over the next few months. We'll have to wait and see.…