“We're now forecasting COVID testing-related sales of around $1.5 billion, which is below the full year forecast of approximately $2 billion we provided in January due to current testing dynamics we're seeing in the market.”

In context

“U.S. dollar strengthen somewhat versus several currencies, which resulted in a slightly more unfavorable impact on sales compared to exchange rates at the time of our earnings call in January. Regarding other aspects of the P&L, the adjusted gross margin ratio was 55.9% of sales, which reflects flow-through impacts from the elevated inflation we experienced last year on certain manufacturing and distribution costs as well as an unfavorable impact from foreign exchange. Adjusted R&D was 6.4% of sales and adjusted SG&A was 28.3% of sales in the first quarter. Lastly, our first quarter adjusted tax rate was 14%. Turning to our outlook for the full year. We now forecast total underlying base business organic sales growth, excluding COVID testing sales, to be at least high single digits. We're now forecasting COVID testing-related sales of around $1.5 billion, which is below the full year forecast of approximately $2 billion we provided in January due to current testing dynamics we're seeing in the market. For the second quarter, we forecast COVID testing sales of around $200 million. Based on current rates, we expect exchange to have an unfavorable impact of a little more than 1% on full year reported sales, which includes an expected unfavorable impact of a little more than 2% on second quarter reported sales. Lastly, our full year adjusted earnings per share guidance of $4.30 to $4.50 remains unchanged, but now reflects a lower earnings contribution from COVID testing sales compared to expectations in January, offset by raising our underlying base business earnings forecast by a little more than $0.10 based on our strong performance and outlook. With that, we'll now open the call for questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] And our first question will come from Larry Biegelsen fro”