Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the QIAGEN N.V. Investor and Analyst Conference Call on the Q4 Results 2012. Throughout today's presentation, all participants will be on listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions). I would now like to turn you over to your host John Gilardi, VP Corporate Communications. Please go ahead, John.

Thank you, and good afternoon and welcome to the QIAGEN conference call to discuss our latest quarterly and full year results. Joining me in the call are Peer Schatz, our CEO; Roland Sackers, our CFO; and Peter Vozzo, our new Director of Global Investor Relations based in Germantown, Maryland. A copy of the announcement and the presentation for this call can be downloaded from the Investor Relations section of our home page at qiagen.com. Before I turn it over to Peer, please keep in mind that the following discussion and response to your questions reflect management's views as of today, January 30th, 2013. Today, we will be making statements and providing responses to your questions that state our intentions, beliefs, expectations, and predictions of the future. These constitute forward-looking statements for the purpose of the Safe Harbor provision. They involve certain risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those projected. QIAGEN disclaims any intention or obligation to revise any forward-looking statements. For more information, please visit our filings with the SEC. I'd like to now hand over to Peer.

Thank you, John. Hello, I would like to welcome you to our conference call to discuss our results for the fourth quarter of 2012 and the full year. As you saw in our release last night, we made significant progress during 2012 on initiatives to drive innovation and growth. The efforts of our over 4,000 employees around the world were reflected in QIAGEN exceeding its sales and adjusted earnings targets for the fourth quarter and full year. In 2012, net sales rose 10% at constant exchange rate ahead of the 8% to 9% growth rate we had set as a goal and reached $1.25 billion. Adjusted operating income grew 12% to $356 million, while adjusted diluted EPS was $1.08 for the year, which was $0.02 ahead of our target. Results for the fourth quarter were also ahead of our targets. Net sales rose 4% at constant exchange rates and we were pleased given the challenging comparison against the fourth quarter of 2011, which included revenues from a major product tender. Adjusted earnings per share were $0.34 compared to $0.31 year ago. I want to note here that we also achieved a 31% adjusted operating income margin in the fourth quarter, and that was a year ahead of the schedule that we had set as a target. These results give us confidence in achieving the goals we have set for 2013, even in light of the challenging macro environment. Our top goal is to further accelerate sales and adjusted earnings growth through sustainable innovations, superior quality of products and services, and targeted allocation of our resources to do so. Our goal focus on accelerating organic and strategic growth, delivering efficiency and effectiveness, further improving our position as an employer of choice, and also to exceed the expectations of our customers. So…

Yes, thank you, Peer. Good afternoon to everyone in Europe and good morning to those joining from the U.S. Let me start first by reviewing the full year. As you heard from Peer, we exceeded our target for net sales and adjustment EPS while making significant progress on our strategic initiatives. On Slide 6, you'll see our results for the full year. Amid challenging market conditions, net sales at constant exchange rates advanced at a double-digit pace on a mix from the acquisitions of Cellestis, Ipsogen, AmniSure, which provided six percentage points of growth and four percentage points from the rest of the business. Currency movements had a negative impact of three percentage points on reported sales growth. Adjusted gross profit rose 8% to approximately $897 million. We had set a target of 31% for the adjusted gross profit margin in 2012 and I am pleased that we achieved this despite product mix pressure from good instrument rates in the quarter as well as from higher sales QuantiFERON, which currently has a gross margin below the QIAGEN average, since it is still not manufactured in-house but through a third party. Adjusted operating income rose 12% to $356 million over 2011 and the adjusted operating margin improved to 28% of net sales from 27% a year ago. As Peer mentioned, we have been reallocating the sources to our growth initiatives. We expect more benefits to emerge in the future and this should help us to promote our goal of 29% adjusted operating margin for the full year 2013. Adjusted net income grew 11% to approximately to $261 million, and adjusted EPS of $1.08 per share exceeded our target for the full year by about $0.02. The adjusted tax rate was 21%, and in line with our target. This shows the benefits…

Thank you, Roland. I'm now in Slide 12 to review our achievements of 2012 and the progress we're making on our strategic initiatives. In terms of driving platform success, the QIAsymphony rollout is going well. We also improved HPV automation with the launch of the Decapper unit in early 2012. A new topic in 2012 has been our initiative to enter targeted areas of next generation sequencing specifically clinical research and human healthcare. The first pre-analytic products were launched in late 2012, and we're moving ahead with plans to launch a benchtop workflow with our own sequencer in 2013. We're investing heavily in this area and are very excited about this opportunity, and we'll start showing more information on this initiative later this quarter. In terms of adding content, we completed two important submissions in the U.S. in the fourth quarter, EGFR, companion diagnostic, and the QuantiFERON-CMV test for monitoring the level of anti-CMV immunity in persons in risk of developing CMV disease, particularly immunosuppressed patients such as those who have had a transplant. The test which is based on our proprietary QuantiFERON technology, which provides an excellent fit with our leading position in infectious disease testing and transplantation and immune suppression monitoring. We are particularly pleased to have received three positive U.S. regulatory decisions in 2012 clearance for the Ro-Gene Q PCR cycle, as well approvals for the Therascreen KRAS companion diagnostic, and the artus Influenza assay. Another key moment was the launch of our next generation CE marked BRAF assay in Europe, which complements our extensive range of personalized healthcare assays, including KRAS, EGFR and others in this region. In first studies, our BRAF assays significantly outperformed the competition with higher sensitivity and discrimination of the key mutations to allow superior clinical value. And in terms of growing…

Yes, thank you, Peer. On Slide 20, I would like to provide outlook for the full year and the first quarter 2013. For the full year, total net sales are expected to grow approximately 5% to 6% at constant exchange rate, with about 4 to 5 percentage points of organic growth and about 1 percentage point coming from AmniSure, which should become organic in the second quarter of this year. Adjusted diluted earnings per share are expected to rise to about $1.16 to $1.18 for the full year. As I mentioned earlier, this includes a net diluted impact of about $0.02 to $0.03 per share from a constellation of factors. The anticipated dilution from implementation of the U.S. medical device tax to be up to $0.02 per share for the full year, an additional dilution of about $0.02 to $0.03 of the higher interest expenses due to the $400 million private placement, this more than offset an anticipated accretion of about $0.01 to $0.02 coming from the share repurchase program. The distribution of sales growth during 2013 is expecting to show way in the first half of the year being below the full year average and then with the lower tax level at the second half. So for the first quarter the guidance is equal to total sales growth of about 2% to 3% at constant exchange rate and this is a mix of contributions from AmniSure and organic growth. The reason for the sales growth profile includes this growth levers being expected to grow at a double digit constant exchange rate as a commonly large percentage of total sales. We are again looking for more than 20% constant exchange with growth from QuantiFERON latent TB test and also for double-digit growth in personalized healthcare and building on the 2012 level. AmniSure remained a significant contributor to full year sales and we are looking for further growth in profiling driven by higher pull through with on QIAsymphony. This is on top of ramping up our investments in some emerging markets that again in late 2012. This slide also contains assumptions for the adjustment operating income for the full year and the third quarter. For the full year, we expect share based compensation of about $30 million to $32 million, about $120 million for amortization of acquired intellectual property, about $25 million to $30 million for business integration, acquisition and restructuring cost, the adjusted tax rate is expected to be about 20% to 22% for the full year. With that I will like to hand back to Peer.

Thank you, Roland. I'm on Slide 21 for the summary before we move into Q&A. We are pleased with the strong performance in 2012 and are building momentum to accelerate innovation and growth in 2013. And let me review again what we have announced. We exceeded our targets for the fourth quarter and full year 2012 both in terms of sales and adjusted earnings growth. We made significant progress on our strategic initiatives while exceeding our target for new QIAsymphony placements and gaining important U.S. regulatory decisions particularly the launch of the therascreen KRAS companion diagnostic assay. We are advancing a portfolio of more than 35 molecular diagnostic assays and we have a number of regulatory submissions planned for this year. We improved our efficiency and effectiveness by reallocating resources and we improved profitability with a full year adjusted operating margin of 28% and even reaching 31% in the fourth quarter a year ahead of schedule. We are actively developing our company while enhancing shareholder value and at the same time maintaining our financial strength and flexibility. Our program to repurchase up to $100 million of shares is set to be completed by the end of the first quarter. This is a signal of our conviction in our future prospects and views that there is significant value potential in our shares. In closing, we are looking to again deliver on our goals and are optimistic about achieving our targets and delivering a stronger performance in 2013. With that, I would like to hand back to the operator to open up for the Q&A session. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we will begin the question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions). Our first question today comes from line of Tycho Peterson from JPMorgan. Please go ahead Tycho.

Firstly, just on margin guidance, you reached your long-term guidance a year ahead of schedule, you just mentioned, Peer. Can you talk about how you are thinking about the runway for further margin expansion versus reinvestment, and are you able to call out the specific investments on to need to make an NGS over the coming years?

Sure, I will take the NGS part of the question. I would just say in general to the first part of the question, we are definitely managing the company for improved efficiency and effectiveness going forward lets say tight focus also on the operating margin in particular. So, going forward, we do expect a continued improvement year-over-year on this trend. We had 28% on an average in the year 2012 and we expect that to move up. In terms of the NGS investments, this is a significant investment. We have a lot of people working on this across all of our areas enzymology in the chemistry areas and automation and software. And this has become a significant cross cover initiative across R&D teams. This is already baked into the expectations for 2013; we are prioritizing these initiatives due to their significant and look forward to be able to reporting on their success. Roland, do you want to give more detail on the operating margin?

Yes, I think as Peer said, we do feel quite comfortable that we actually can keep those I would say a very good level investing in to our R&D pipeline. You will also see that amount investing in R&D is actually going up over the course of 2013. At the same time, we will se significant level as we’re coming out of SG&A so that all and we will hopefully achieve that kind of 100 basis points margin improvement also for 2013 similar what we have achieved now for 2012 and we are also committed even beyond 2013 going into same kind of direction.

Maybe it’s a quick follow-up, Roland. Can you talk about the sustainability of the tax rate here?

Yeah, I think, we achieved our target. We said all in the year if you want to around 21 we hit that and it’s very typical at QIAGEN if you see this the fourth quarter is clearly kind of a catch up quarter which again is quite a Northern European based company. Nevertheless, we do believe given that everything staying the same as we are being marginally better even in 2013 depending what except in the U.S. one taxes might change but right now I think there is no indication on that.

(Operator Instructions). Our next question today comes from the line of Dan Leonard from Leerink Swann. Dan, please go ahead.

So, my question and essentially I am trying to reconcile the first quarter guidance with your guidance for the full year it looks like you’re being much more modest about the Q1 and I am wondering what wouldn't able you accelerate the business through the balance of the year? Thank you.

Ron, do you want to take that?

Yeah, sure. First of all, I will take a look back what we are obviously the sequential increase quarter-over-quarter, so it’s not really too unusual for us that we have a stronger second part of the year than the part first part of the year. I think what is clearly our profile is that a couple of the launches are clearly getting even more effective in the second part of the year. Speaking about our KRAS products building momentum, as Peer said before, the same is probably true for the EGFR. But also clearly having QIAsymphony on a much larger base and having a very strong second part of place -- second half of the year 2011 in terms of placement should giving us some additional move for the second part of 2012 as well. So lot of factors especially on molecular diagnostics and applied testing being done with a larger scale is driving them.

Our next question today comes from the line of Daniel Wendorff from Commerzbank. Daniel, please go ahead.

Thanks for taking my question and it's relating to the QIAsymphony consumers consumption. And Peer, you mentioned that an average consumer consumption per year is increasing there. Could you potentially give us a number or range what the average consumption from QIAsymphony is right now and where do you expect it to go over the next few years? Thank you.

Right. So, I gave you the range of 30 to 300,000.

Okay. It's a broad one.

It's a broad one, right, and there are different users of the system. So if people buy the system only for sample preparation use, which is the minority, is it would be about 30 to 30,000 at the low-end. If people run the whole system for instance for blood viral then you're can even go well ahead, well above 300,000. We -- I often see in reports that the link with the assays is only seen if people buy a full system; this is definitely not true. So, a lot of people just buy an SP system, which is the sample to purify nucleic acid system, and have manual pipettes or their own generic liquid handling systems to set up the assays, and then run the assays on the Rotor-Gene again. So and combination of an SP and the Rotor-Gene can provide a significant pull through of reagents as well. And then some people will have to pull line up and that would potentially also allow them to go into even higher throughputs as they're looking at more a hands off experienced workflows. So, we would have to go into individual customer segments and we would have to go into the different formats of the systems to give them target numbers that we have very precisely for the different types of segments. And we will probably see significant expansion of that volume as more LDTs are converted with commercial assays and also our menu expands in particularly in the United States going forward. Placements in the U.S. are primarily LDTs and ASR placements. Some are running RUO here in their own validations and also partly you have the approve the products or product in submission, but this will definitely expand over the course of 2013.

Okay. Well thanks.

I'm wiggling and it's tough for me to give you an exact number without going into the segments and then it becomes obviously very sensitive information. But we're going to see a significant increase of that volume.

Our next question today comes from the line of David Clair from Piper Jaffray. David, please go ahead.

I'm asking for Bill Quirk this morning. So, first one from me, I recognize you've less exposure to NIH spending than others in the group, but what are you including in your guidance about sequestration?

As you correctly point out, our academia sales are in the range of 24% of overall sales and U.S. is about half of that, so we're talking about 12% of sales plus minus just running the straight math being indirect exposure to that. As we said, also in the comments and the press release and Roland will give you further details in a second. But we're not including the impact of sequestration because it is still not quite clear where this is going to go; there are different views on this. So, we're assuming a very, very modest or a conservative approach to NIH but just not the full hit of sequestration. The full hit of sequestration, however, is muted because it would hit academia sales to a certain degree and it would potentially hit some areas of applied testing and may be smaller areas of the healthcare system as well in terms of our exposure. Roland, do you want to quantify that further?

No. I think that was a perfect answer on that. I think it's even that we're it's of course academia is not only NIH budget related but is also a significant part of business coming from other funds, private funds. So, I would even -- I would quote as probably even smaller than Peer's calculation. Nevertheless, in terms of what if we incorporated I think is absolutely correct and then in a way we did it.

And if I could sneak in one follow-up here. Can you talk about the recent reimbursement price in the U.S. for the personalized medicine business? The levels are coming in a little bit lower than expected and what, if any, impact you see on pricing?

We're actually quite pleased with first results coming in. There is a wide array currently depending on the institution that is setting up the guidance, but the guidance coming in, in California which is a very important state in terms of its signaling effect, is very positive. We are also seeing some very strong trends towards putting an emphasis on using the FDA-approved product, which is giving us additional tailwind. So, there are a lot of numbers that are currently putout but they are in a quite attractive area and I think EGFR will be important. Here we are talking about 29 mutation tests versus now looking at four to seven mutations in other tests or in some cases even only one or two. And this will be an important discussion over the course of 2013. But in general, we are quite pleased and also our customers are quite pleased with the level of reimbursement that they are getting for some of these newer tests.

Our next question today comes from the line of Doug Schenkel from Cowen & Co. Doug, please go ahead. Doug Schenkel - Cowen & Co: So, many of the companion diagnostic tests that are currently working through the FDA are replacing existing -- to some extent replacing existing RUO kits that you sell today. At this point is there, do you have any clarity on how much of a price premium that you think would be -- that you think you would be able to get on these FDA approved products? And what’s the assumed rate of conversion to IVDs? And I guess if I could add one more component, what’s the dollar value of revenue associated today with these RUOs that you think you could convert? Thank you.

Sure. Doug, the data was partly on one of the slides. We showed that we had been running about 20,000 tests under RUO, with RUO products release that was universe, where we knew that our products were being used in the States for whatever purposes we obviously are not always privy to that. But we now see that we have more than doubled that in sales of FDA approved product i.e., the level of conversion has been very successful. And we also see, for instance, in Europe, where our solutions are being used, that our market shares also against the LDTs are very high 70%, 80% in some cases in terms of or even higher in terms of the respect of test volumes. So, the fact that you have a regulated and validated product and especially the validated part is very important that is putting a lot of people into using the FDA approved product, and that has helped us a lot. So, if you look at the price premium it is in the range of 40% to 50%. In some cases even higher above what the reportable was being sold at with an RUO product, and that is the number we are not getting any push back on. Doug Schenkel - Cowen & Co: Okay, that's great. And if I could sneak in one more real quick was there any notable flu impact in the quarter? Thanks again.

Flu is definitely very attractive in terms of an opportunity due to the severe flue season at the moment but less so for the molecular assay. So, molecular flu is typically not a very significant volume unless people do a lot of genotyping like we did in swine flu or other so or you need an ultra-sensitivity test. So, in this case, it's not been seeing -- we are not seeing significant spikes in the molecular flu assays at least in anyway that would impact materially our overall franchise.

Our next question today comes from the line of Derik de Bruin from Bank of America. Derik, please go ahead.

So, I know you're going to speak some more about sequencing of the AGBT meeting coming up in February, but can you just give us some teaser in terms of how your platform is going to stack up against what's out there in turn -- just a sense of how you expect to compete? I'm also curious to the follow-up like you are focusing much more on the clinical applications product. So, how do you see sort of building out that pipeline, and are you going to get involved in things like non-invasive prenatal diagnostics? And do you see any particular advantage to the platform you are working on versus others -- the applications are currently being run?

Sure, Derik. What we -- we have said before, we see that the market has a significant need for a sample to result workflow that allows our customers to go from primary sample to digital output in the way that could be routinely be performed in clinics, and a lot of features are currently quite cumbersome for routine applications as we all know. And there are a number of companies also doing a good job in many areas in developing systems and solution for next generation sequencing, but in particular for the clinical applications there is still some significant shortfall. And that is what we are trying to address. So, we are not going to go into the broad area of next gen sequencing but are focusing on this area of application. So, sample to result workflows, integrated ecosystems, superior chemistries, entomology to chemistry, ultimately also the IT solutions are things that we are working on intensely, and there will be a stream of products that we will be putting out over the months and even years to come. It's an very exciting area developing very rapidly. One area that I think should not be underestimated is the area of content. We today have one of the broadest content portfolios in the industry. We have over 200 panels that are already preformatted that reporting over to next gen sequencing formats and will have available. What we also think is very important is that our clinical channel and the access to the clinical and with regulated and reimbursed clinical diagnostic assays is very important. So, we see next gen sequencing as a niche application and one of many. So, it's not the do all solution, but it is an important part of a molecular diagnostics franchise, and one that we hope to make a difference in.

And just one quick follow-up. You've been successful with the therascreen KRAS and you are now launching the BRAF assay. How much of your companion diagnostic pipeline are basically products that you just have to develop the assay, the markers are validated, stepped up its nose and you are going to get a product out of it versus how much of it is exploratory work with the pharma companies and that you are still doing experimental and stuff it's not really having validated in the clinic? I'm still trying to get some sense of what sort of like your guaranteed revenue stream, you think about approaching, we are going to be hit coming out of this?

Good question. By far the majority, almost everything that we are doing in the area of personalized healthcare is paired up with drugs and are in a validated format. Everything we would be doing in the pharmaceutical area supplying the GeneGlobe assays, the 60,000 assays in pre-IVD formats that pharma companies can use that would be in the pharma piece. So, anything that is pre-validation would be pharma, anything that is going into paired, development, and validation is in the PHC area.

Our next question today comes from the line of Romain Zana from Exane. Romain, please go ahead.

I have a question on your guidance because you highlighted your ambition to accelerate organic growth especially as of 2013, but the guidance sounds comparable to the one you issued last year. So, do we have to understand that the guidance might be conservative or is fair to assume that you may be see you at the end of the year among the higher, the double range of the guidance? And a follow-up question, a quick one would be to see when do you expect the U.S. HPV revenues to stabilize? Thank you.

Roland, you want to take the first part?

Yeah, sure. I would say our guidance is a holistic guidance. It is cautiously optimistic. We are clearly facing volatile time as we explained on the call especially on the academic environment. Nevertheless, we are increasing organic growth. As you recall 2012 organic growth rate was along 12% for the full year and again we are starting from this kind of basis point. Now moving into 2013, if we are able to beat them, we have, I think we are happy about that. Nevertheless, with things moving into the right direction, and also as I said in the call, we also expect a good improvement over the course of the year, which then of course again is a business going for performance in 2014. So, I would say given volatile environment in parts of our business, our guidance is a fair point.

The second question on the sales of HPV testing products, if you look at the way these contracts are typically done the multiyear contracts will take a couple of three years for that pricing effect to move into the market. We are extremely successful in extending these contracts. There is some pretty wild pricing by some of the competitors out there and we are winning a lot of contracts actually at significant premiums to offered prices. So, I think this speaks for our product. Nevertheless, on top of even increasing volumes, we will continue to see pricing pressures probably over the next couple of years. I think the good news is that U.S. sales of HPV testing products is about 12% of our sales base, and with - as that we are talking about 1% organic headwind that we have in this area. So, it is definitely manageable. It’s a fantastic product. It’s a great infrastructure supporter for us going forward. And I think it is also very good addition to our brand equity.

Our final question today comes from the line of Jon Groberg from Macquarie. Jon, please go ahead.

Just one really brief, if I can, clarification on the med device tax. Can you just -- that you said it was net number, I'm just curious. Are you are trying to offset that with any pricing in terms of unlikely given your comments just now on HPV pricing? But just, I'm curious how and how you are calculating that number. And then just bigger picture, Peer, you're at the 12% you said on your HPV 12% in the U.S., pharma it doesn’t like it's growing that much. Is there anything you can do in those, I know you are moving into sequencing but it is just big picture I guess, strategically and internally is there anything you can do to try and take that whole group of slower growing businesses and accelerate the growth assuming an end market that is kind of is what is, as you said? Thanks.

Well, so I think the market has changed over the last few years and we have -- I think ahead of the curve spend a lot of time rebalancing, where we invest our resources. So, it doesn't make sense to invest a lot on growth initiatives in areas that probably won't be able to support a lot of growth going forward. So, we -- and for instance, life science we are focusing on technology differentiation; in pharma by linking into our companion diagnostics franchise; in applied testing, it is on the platform success that we have is a spillover from the clinical diagnostics arena. In the diagnostics area, it's around the platform successes around the QIAsymphony systems and the QuantiFERON success that we have. So, these are just the deliberate growth engines that we have always focused on and characterized as growth drivers, and they are getting premium resources. And in the other areas, we are investing to hold these franchises and are not trying to push for growth where it would be very difficult. So, its -- and as we said, over the course of 2013, we are going to see an acceleration over '12 and the outlook is most likely 2014 will then be an acceleration over '13 as well, and that would be our hope then for the medium term trend.

And on the medical device tax, of course is not only the HPV test where we have to pay medical device tax for in the U.S. Also other products for example take the Cellestis franchise is clearly affected by that. And I guess it's too early to say if companies and our industry are able to pass it on to customers. I don't think there is a general trend either way today. It's probably what we will see over the course of 2013 and see how it goes.

So, with that, I would like to close the conference call. I know we had a lot of people in the queue. We tried to get to as many as we could today. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to give Pete or me a call or send a note, we will be in touch. And thank you again for participating.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the Q4 results 2012 conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.