Pascal Soriot
Operator
Hello, everyone, it’s Pascal Soriot. Welcome to the first half 2019 conference call and our webcast for investors and analysts. The presentation is available on astrazeneca.com, as always, and we’ve also sent it to those on our distribution list. Please turn to Slide two. This is our usual safe harbor statement. We’ll be making comments on our financial performance using core reported numbers and at constant exchange rates, or CER, which are both non-GAAP measures. We’ll also discuss other non-GAAP measures deemed helpful for investors and analysts. All numbers we refer to million U.S. dollars and growth rates will be at CER and for the first half year of 2019, unless we state otherwise. Please turn to Slide three. We actually plan to spend a good half an hour on the presentation and then do a Q&A. [Operator Instructions] Thanks in advance for that. Today, I’m joined by Dave Fredrickson, who is our Executive Vice President of the Oncology business unit; Ruud Dobber, the EVP for BioPharmaceuticals business unit; Marc Dunoyer, our CFO; José Baselga, who is our EVP of Oncology R&D; Mene Pangalos, who’s our EVP of BioPharmaceuticals R&D. And for the questions later, we have – also with us, we have Leon Wang, our EVP in charge of China and the Emerging Markets. So if you turn to Slide four. This is the agenda. We plan to cover all key aspects of our results today. Turning to Slide five. So we had a good start of 2019and we’ve continued on a very high note in the second quarter. Sales were up 19% in the quarter, 17% year-to-date. We saw very strong performance across our company. New medicines grew by 77% and added $2 billion in incremental sales in the half. This strong performance was driven by Oncology with…