Operator
Operator
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the IDEXX Laboratories’ Third Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, today’s conference is being recorded. Participating in the call this morning are Jon Ayers, Chief Executive Officer; Brian McKeon, Chief Financial Officer; and Ed Garber, Director, Investor Relations. IDEXX would like to preface the discussion today with a caution regarding forward-looking statements. Listeners are reminded that statements that members of IDEXX management may make on this call regarding IDEXX’s future expectations, plans and prospects constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as expects, may, anticipates, intends, would, will, plans, believes, estimates, should, and similar words and expressions. Such statements include, but are not limited to statements regarding management’s expectations for financial results for future periods. Investors should be aware that any forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed here today. These risk factors are explained in detail in the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Please refer to these filings for a more detailed discussion of forward-looking statements and the risks and uncertainties of such statements. All forward-looking statements are made as of today and except as required by law, the company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Also during this call, we will be discussing certain financial measures not prepared in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles or GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure is provided in our earnings release, which can be found on our website, idexx.com. In reviewing our quarterly results, please note that growth rates refer to Q3 2014 performance compared to Q3 2013 performance unless otherwise noted. Also when we refer to normalized organic growth, in addition to adjusting for exchange in acquisitions, we have adjusted for changes in distributor inventory levels. In order to allow broad participation in the Q&A, we ask that each participant limit his or her questions to one with one follow-up as necessary. We do appreciate you may have additional questions, so please feel free to get back into the queue, and if time permits, we will be more than happy to take your additional questions. I would now like to turn the call over to Brian McKeon.