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Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to today’s conference call and webcast announcing that INC Research and inVentiv Health are merging, creating a leading global biopharma solutions organization. Our call will also include a brief update on INC Research’s first quarter results. At this time, all participants are currently in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will take questions from the analyst community and instructions will follow at that time.

I’d like to hand the conference over to Ronnie Speight, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, and thank you for taking the time to join our call. With me on the call today are Alistair Macdonald, Chief Executive Officer of INC Research; Mike Bell, Chief Executive Officer of inVentiv Health; and Greg Rush, Chief Financial Officer of INC Research. As a reminder, this call is being recorded, and a press release and slide presentation regarding today’s announcement are available on each company’s website, along with a supplemental presentation on inVentiv Health. In addition, a separate presentation regarding INC Research’s first quarter 2017 results is available on the INC Research website. An archived replay of the conference call will be available on the companies’ websites at www.incresearch.com and www.inventivhealth.com after 1:00 p.m. today. Lastly, an audio replay will be available for the next 7 days.

We will refer to forward-looking information, both in connection with the transaction announced this morning and INC Research’s earnings, as defined on Slides 1 and 2 of the accompanying presentation. Remarks that we make about future expectations, plans and prospects for INC Research, including those implied by our backlog and pipeline, constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors. These factors are discussed in the Risk Factors section of our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016, and our other SEC filings.

In addition, any forward-looking statements represent our views as of today and should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any subsequent date. While we might update forward-looking statements at some point in the future, unless legally required, we specifically disclaim any obligation to do so.

Thank you, Ronnie, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for today’s call. This is a very exciting day for INC Research and inVentiv Health. Together, we are combining to create a leading global biopharma solutions organization focused on value creation for biopharmaceutical companies, patients, physicians, payers and employees. We believe this merger will create significant benefits and growth opportunities for all stakeholders.

We are really excited about the value proposition of a combined INC and inVentiv which will have deepened scale, scope and therapeutic expertise. Our combined company is purpose-built to address new market realities where clinical and commercial must work together sharing expertise, data and insights, all with the goal to accelerate our ability to help customers around the world. Together, we will infuse clinical insights into commercialization and commercial expertise into clinical trials, speeding up the delivery of evidence-based medicines to patients worldwide.

Turning to Slide 4, the combination of INC and inVentiv brings together a leading global Phase I to IV contract research organization, or CRO, with a leading global CRO and contract commercial organization, or CCO. Together, we will be the second-largest biopharmaceutical outsourcing provider, one of the top 3 CROs by net revenue and the largest CCO.

inVentiv is the first and industry-leading contract commercial organization that delivers comprehensive commercial services, such as selling solutions, communications, consulting and medication adherence. Combined, we will offer a comprehensive suite of end-to-end solutions to support the development and commercialization of biopharmaceutical and biological compounds. We will have a highly diversified and complementary customer base by combining INC’s strength in small and midsized biopharma with inVentiv’s key relationships with large biopharma. We will have deeper and broader therapeutic expertise, particularly in complex disease areas, increasing our combined capabilities in oncology for both liquid and solid tumors, a strong and diverse CNS offering and significantly enhanced expertise for cardiovascular, metabolic and respiratory diseases.

Turning to Slide 5. The combined company will have the global scale to compete to win in the clinical and commercial markets. Together, we will have more than 22,000 employees in 60 countries and we’ll serve customers in more than 110 countries. We will be a large player in Asia-Pacific, becoming a top 3 global CRO in Japan.

A significant number of top 50 biopharma already utilize both clinical and commercial services of the combined company. We have an attractive opportunity to further penetrate this existing base as well as small to midsized biopharma customers. Many of these relationships currently utilize only a small portion of what will be our combined end-to-end solution. The opportunity to broaden and expand these existing relationships and introduce inVentiv’s commercial offering to INC’s strong position with small and midsized customers is substantial. Furthermore, the total addressable outsourcing market is vast, an estimated $60 billion for clinical and $150 billion for commercial. There is significant opportunity for further penetration.

Turning to Slide 6. This is truly a transformational combination for both of our companies, and we are enthusiastic about the significant value creation opportunities for all stakeholders. We will expand our global scale and our capabilities to grow our addressable market as we bring together 2 innovative and respected players in our industry.

Beyond the compelling strategic rationale, there are a number of key financial highlights of this transaction that I would like to discuss. We will continue to benefit from inVentiv’s margin expansion story through effective cost management and operational efficiencies, which, on an adjusted EBITDA level, has enabled an increase from approximately 10% in 2013 to over 16% in 2016. The transaction is estimated to achieve approximately $100 million in identified annual cost synergies, which we expect to be fully realized within 3 years of closing. We believe up to an additional $50 million of potential annual cost synergies may be achievable but have not been included in our accretion estimates. In addition, we believe there are value drivers we have not modeled in that will enhance earnings growth including additional margin expansion opportunities, a significant opportunity for revenue synergies through increased capability, cross-selling and scale, and the ability to lower the combined company’s effective tax rate. We expect mid- to high-single-digit accretion to INC’s adjusted EPS in 2018, an accretion of more than 20% in 2019 and beyond.

Turning to Slide 7. This is an all-stock transaction. Following close, INC shareholders are expected to own approximately 53% of the combined company on a fully diluted basis, and inVentiv shareholders are expected to own approximately 47% of the combined company. The transaction values inVentiv Health at a finance price value of approximately $4.6 billion and the combined company a finance price value at $7.4 billion based on the closing price of INC Research common stock on Tuesday, May 9, 2017. The transaction is subject to standard closing conditions, including regulatory and shareholder approvals, and we expect to close in the second half of 2017.

The leadership of the new company will reflect the strengths and capabilities of both INC and inVentiv. Upon closing, Mike Bell, inVentiv’s CEO, will serve as Executive Chairman of the Board of the combined company. He will also have executive oversight of the company’s commercial segment. I will serve as Chief Executive Officer, and Greg Rush will serve as Chief Financial Officer of the combined company.

We will have a 10-member Board of Directors with 5 designated by INC, including myself. inVentiv will designate the other 5 directors, including Mike and representatives of Advent International and Thomas H. Lee Partners. We are confident this merger will be seamless for all of our stakeholders, including our customers, employees and shareholders. Both organizations have extensive integration experience. The combined company will be headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, with a significant presence in the Northeast corridor and operations worldwide, including Asia and Europe.

Slide 8 shows our combined market position. As we have said previously, together, we will create the second-largest biopharmaceutical outsourcing provider with net revenue of $3.2 billion. The combined company will have more than 22,000 employees worldwide and enhanced scale, which will enable us to deliver comprehensive solutions for our customers. Any need, anywhere, anytime.

As a leading global provider of drug development and commercial solutions, Slide 9 shows the breadth of the combined company’s capabilities. Biopharmaceutical companies of all sizes face increasingly complex challenges to bring products to market and are seeking comprehensive outsourced solutions across the clinical and commercial spectrum. Our new company will be built to address new market realities where clinical, Real-World Evidence and commercial must work together, sharing expertise, data and insights to improve client performance. We will have leading positions in both the outsourced clinical and commercial services markets. Together, we will offer our diverse and highly complementary customer base the most comprehensive suite of outsourced services across the drug development and commercialization life cycle. We will also capitalize on the growing commercial outsourcing trend with specialized knowledge and expertise increasingly required for the successful launch of products. With inVentiv’s CCO, we can enhance the clinical development process with commercial capabilities, including selling solutions, communications, consulting and medication adherence.

Slide 10 shows the business mix and customer base of the combined company. One of the things that makes me so excited about this combination is the complementary nature of this transaction from a business, customer and cultural perspective. Based on 2016 combined net revenue, clinical will represent approximately 2/3 and commercial approximately 1/3. INC has strong relationships with many small and midsized biopharmaceutical companies. inVentiv, on the other hand, has great relationships with large biopharma, including in the top 20. By combining our complementary customer bases, we will have leadership across large, midsized and small biopharma. We will be able to partner with biopharma companies of all sizes and offer best-in-class point solutions as well as integrated offerings from clinical development through commercial solutions.

Our revenue is well-diversified across customer size, with a little over half from the top 20 biopharma, slightly less than 20% from 21 to 50 and approximately 30% from small and midsized.

Importantly, our 2 companies have limited client overlap, and we see no foreseeable revenue dissynergies that often accompany a merger of this scale. This merger represents an opportunity to deepen our relationships and expand our share of outsourced clinical development and commercialization spend from across our customer base.

On Slide 11, we highlight our combined platform in enhanced data assets and commercial insights. Our combined clinical visibility and therapeutic experience help inform customers’ commercialization efforts. This purpose-built business model allows us to infuse clinical insights into commercialization and commercial insights into clinical trials, speeding up the delivery of evidence-based medicines to patients worldwide.

Furthermore, the proprietary data assets and communications capabilities that will result from our combination will enhance the speed and success of site selection and patient recruitment. At INC, we have always had a strategic focus on strong site relationships and improving the sustainability of their participation in clinical research trials. We recently ranked as the top CRO to work with among the top 10 global CROs. These award-winning site relationships will expedite clinical trials, providing a bridge to physician awareness and education.

Lastly on this slide, the capabilities we have been building in real-world evidence, coupled with our market access expertise, allows us to bridge the clinical gap and more effectively communicate the benefits to payers and PBMs.

Now I’d like to take some time providing a more in-depth overview of the combined global clinical business. Slide 13 lists several factors that we see as critical for success in navigating the current clinical development market. We believe a combined INC and inVentiv addresses each of these, including critical scale, a strong geographic presence, therapeutic area depth and expertise, delivery model flexibility, an ability to serve clients of all sizes and an understanding of real-world market challenges.

Moving on to Slide 14. I’d like to provide some context around each of these factors. This slide shows both the combined scale and geographic presence in clinical outsourcing. As we’ve discussed with our investors in the past, scale is increasingly becoming a key consideration for our customers. This transaction will expand the combined company’s global presence. Additionally, we will have a greater presence in important strategic geographies, such as Asia-Pacific, specifically Japan and China, where there is significant opportunity for growth. We will have more than 2,500 clinical employees in the Asia-Pac region including approximately 400 in Japan, where we will be a top 3 global CRO, approximately 250 in China and approximately 1,200 employees in India providing clinical operations and support services.

Simply put, we believe the combined company will be invited to propose on additional clinical development opportunities because of our increased scale. We believe our global reach will enable us to remain a leading outsourcing partner in a market that is increasingly demanding multiple delivery models that span full service, FSP and hybrids.

Turning now to Slide 15, we should have a combined business that would deepen our therapeutic expertise across all areas, particularly in complex diseases. Having therapeutic breadth and depth is an increasingly important factor in customers’ outsourcing decisions. Both inVentiv and INC have significant therapeutic expertise in core areas, including oncology and CNS, with a combined 2016 revenue of over $1.2 billion. This combination also deepens and broadens our capabilities across all therapeutic areas, particularly in cardiovascular, metabolic and respiratory diseases.

Additionally, our delivery model flexibility will benefit customers around the world by being able to deliver solutions for all needs, whether full service, hybrid or FSP and tailored to onshore, near shore or offshore. We will have a leading FSP offering with approximately $500 million of annual revenue including more than $200 million in clinical monitoring and project management.

Earlier, we showed you the customer mix for both clinical and commercial combined. Looking specifically at clinical on Slide 16, the combination of inVentiv’s existing strength with the top 20 biopharma complements INC’s strength with both small and midsized biopharma in customers ranked 21 to 50. We will have a strong, stable revenue base of $1.4 billion from the top 50 companies. We will also be a leader in small and midsized biopharma, with approximately $700 million in combined revenue. This is a segment in which INC has grown awards at a CAGR of approximately 25% since 2012.

Our well-diversified customer base will allow us to have strong relationship across large, midsized and small biopharma. Offering commercialization solutions to these customers will be a strategic benefit of the transaction. Finally, our combined company will have the proven ability to understand real-world market challenges to optimize the clinical development process.

And before I turn it over to Mike Bell to discuss the CCO segment, I just want to say how much I’ve enjoyed working closely with him over the last few months. We see eye to eye and share a great strategic vision for the combined company. There’s no better partner than Mike for this endeavor.

Thanks, Alistair. I and inVentiv have long admired INC, and we’re very excited about the transaction and bringing these 2 best-in-class teams together. And on a personal note, it’s been a real pleasure to work with a world-class executive like you, Alistair, who shares our vision for the industry and has gotten an organization to do really remarkable things at INC.

inVentiv is the first and leading CCO addressing a large and underpenetrated outsourcing market. The CCO delivers comprehensive commercialization services, such as selling solutions, communications, consulting and medication adherence. The CCO market is projected to follow a similar growth path as the CRO market, with growth in the high single digits.

On this slide, we provide an additional overview on the commercial market and recent trends that we are seeing. Biopharma sales and marketing budgets are significant, at least 10% greater than R&D budgets of large biopharma. We’ve all seen an accelerating shift towards specialty and more complex therapies that require a more sophisticated and integrated sales and marketing expertise.

Our commercial relationships at inVentiv have been purpose-built to be strategic and longer duration versus simply tactical and short term. We believe the combined company will be well positioned to expand and capture increased commercial outsourcing spend by taking this range of services to INC’s current customer base. The CCO market is expected to reach approximately $34 billion by 2020, growing at an approximate 8% compounded annual rate. Based on commercial outsourcing penetration of less than 20%, we estimate a potential market of $150 billion, which is significant.

Turning to the next slide. We identify a few of the current operating challenges facing the biopharma industry. These challenges include margin deterioration, reimbursement and access hurdles, relatively low R&D productivity and growing political pressures, just to name a few. In general, we expect fewer blockbusters with a shift towards specialty drugs. Existing approaches to confront these challenges have included reducing SG&A expenses, optimizing how to deploy marketing and field assets, refocusing product portfolios around the therapeutic areas in which they have the most depth or presence and expanding market access and pharmacoeconomic capabilities.

We believe that these operating challenges demand new commercial solutions. We’ve found that integrating our insights across the commercialization process delivers real client value. We think our combined company is best positioned to deliver the solutions that the industry needs.

inVentiv is currently the broadest provider of commercialization solutions. The 6,400 employees in our commercial business have supported more than 75% of the NME approvals in the United States over the last 5-year period. We organized the CCO into 4 key service areas, on Slide 20.

Selling solutions, in which we are the #1 organization in the United States and top 5 in the Japan. Our approach is fueled by robust market and data analytics that can include strategy design, recruitment, deployment and end-to-end sales operations. We’ve launched more than 120 field solutions in the last 5 years across all major therapeutic areas, which is more than all the top 20 biopharma companies combined.

In communications, where we are the largest independent global health care agency, inVentiv supports clients in health care advertising, medical communications, digital marketing and public relations and branding services.

In consulting, we’ve supported more than 70 product launches over the past 5 years. Consulting can include commercial strategy and planning, pricing and market access, medical affairs advisory and risk and program management.

In medication adherence, where we offer the largest pharmacy network for adherence, covering approximately 194 million patients and 2.2 billion prescriptions a year, we leverage a data-driven methodology to help patients stay on their prescribed therapies.

We compare inVentiv to a few of our CCO competitors on Slide 21, and the numbers speak for themselves. We are the leading provider of high-value commercial solutions. And beyond that, we’re not just a selling solutions company. We are a strategic, not tactical, solutions provider. We’re growing quickly and profitably. We have the scale and the platform that will enable us to drive consistent growth and deliver the end-to-end capabilities necessary to build upon our leading position in this evolving market.

Turning now to Slide 22. In combining CRO and CCO capabilities, we’ll have expansive data assets to drive insights and improve execution. The transaction combines inVentiv’s pharmacy data to its adherence pharmacy network, real-world evidence programs and other data sets with INC’s real-world and Late Phase business, site relationships and predictive clinical data sets. This will increase the combined company’s access to physicians, investigators, patients and, most importantly, insights. These are all key factors to inform the design and execution of clinical development and commercialization programs.

Many in our industry have data, but what we offer is a differentiated approach to insights. We generate proprietary data every day, from which we garner insights and drive actionable improvements for our customers.

Another highlight on a personal note from me this year has been getting to know Greg Rush. Greg is a very accomplished CFO, and will be the CFO in the new company, and his skill and depth is simply remarkable. Greg?

Thanks, Mike. Before I jump into the details, I wanted to say how excited I am about this combination. It brings together 2 companies that have a proven track record of double-digit organic revenue, EBITDA and earnings growth. Both of us also have a history of margin expansion, lowering our cost of capital and tax rates along with numerous successful integrations. We look forward to combining these 2 companies.

Turning to the numbers. On Slide 24, we show the value creation of this combination from a financial point of view, comparing our growth projections for the combined company to a stand-alone INC, looking at performance from 2014 to 2017 and projecting to 2020.

Looking at revenue, we expect the combined company to grow revenue at 9% per year. We believe this may in fact turn out to be conservative, because we have not included any of the many opportunities for revenue synergy in these projections.

Importantly, while certain combinations within the CRO sector could result in revenue dissynergy, there are no foreseeable revenue dissynergies among our customers, and in fact, we see this combination as an opportunity to expand our share of spend within these customers.

Turning to EBITDA. This combination allows us to repeat the strong EBITDA margin expansion story that we have accomplished through effective cost reductions and operational efficiencies since we went public in 2014 and that inVentiv has delivered in each of its last 3 years. Our modeling projects adjusted EBITDA to grow in the mid-teens, driven by inVentiv’s margin expansion and realizing the achievable cost synergies that we have identified. This does not reflect additional potential cost synergies and margin enhancement opportunities that I will discuss shortly. The transaction is expected to be accretive to INC’s adjusted EPS in 2018 at mid- to high single digits and to be accretive by more than 20% in 2019 and beyond.

Before I leave Slide 24, I wanted to talk briefly about 2017. As I will discuss in more detail later, INC exceeded our guidance for the first quarter on every metric and had record new business wins resulting in a net book-to-bill of 1.4. While our first half in 2017 was negatively impacted by cancellations and delays, the second half of 2017 and beyond are setting up nicely to deliver above industry growth.

With respect to inVentiv, they too experienced an admirably high level of cancellations within the commercial segment at the end of 2016 and are coming off one of the lowest years of new drug approvals by the FDA, with only 22 drugs approved last year. Despite these challenges, FDA approvals are on track to more than double in 2017, with 20 approvals already year-to-date. This trend, coupled with inVentiv’s pipeline, sets the foundation for a strong growth in 2018 and beyond.

Turning to Slide 25. We provide additional color as to one of the key drivers that makes this merger financially compelling, along with the opportunity to achieve additional upside to our current expectations. First, we are confident in our ability to achieve approximately $100 million in annual run rate cost synergies, which we expect will be fully realized within 3 years. These cost synergies have already been identified and are highly achievable and are primarily within corporate and administrative spending, rationalizing the clinical cost structure and consolidating facilities and IT systems. Beyond that, we believe there’s up to an additional $50 million of potential cost synergies and other margin enhancement opportunities that we have not modeled in our projections or included in the synergy and accretion estimates that I mentioned earlier.

These additional opportunities include implementing INC’s therapeutic delivery model within inVentiv’s full service offering, an area we saw drive over 100-basis-point increase in full-service margins; utilizing INC’s Trusted Process across inVentiv’s clinical customers, where appropriate, and this is an area that we have found increases customer satisfaction, repeat business and higher margins of up to another 100 basis points; leveraging the best-in-class capabilities from each CR platform; and finally, consolidating inVentiv’s 6 clinical trial management systems in an exercise INC went through, which led to a 50- to 100-basis-point improvement in our margins.

In addition to these margin enhancement opportunities, we have line of sight to improving the effective tax rate of the combined company from the 35% that we have modeled to a rate of 33% and the possibility of a tax rate in the low 30s. Also while it will not change our effective tax rate, it is important to note that for tax purposes, we can take advantage of inVentiv’s nearly $850 million in net operating loss carryforwards, which we estimate are worth over $200 million to the combined company.

For our customers, as we combine different customer bases, different geographies and complementary businesses, our top priority is continuing to deliver the services to which they are accustomed and in a seamless manner. Given each company’s history of successful integrations, which I will touch on shortly, we are confident our integration will be seamless to our customers. We look forward to supporting and growing our relationships with existing and new customers as we move forward into this next chapter.

On Slide 26, we discuss our opportunities for meaningful revenue synergies from cross-selling. First, within our combined clinical customer base, we see an opportunity to bring inVentiv’s FSP and hybrid model to many of INC’s top 50 customers. We will leverage our combined therapeutic breadth and depth to establish larger and deeper relationships across all customer sizes. In our past, INC has seen opportunities lost to a lesser competitor solely due to the competitor’s ability to offer additional services. This transaction will allow us to counter that.

Second, we see multiple ways that inVentiv’s commercial offering and relationships will enhance our success rate and derive revenue synergies within our clinical operations. We believe leveraging inVentiv’s senior relationships from the commercial segments will allow us to open doors on the clinical side. We also see a real opportunity to bring value to our customers through strategic consulting engagements and our ability to offer Phase IV and real-world evidence studies.

Finally, we believe there’s an opportunity to cross-sell inVentiv’s commercial services to INC’s robust customer base of small to midsized biopharma companies. These companies are currently underpenetrated by inVentiv’s commercial business and have historically had to complete 30% to 50% of the economics of a newly approved drug to large pharma in co-marketing agreements. We believe this customer set will see our financially compelling and highly differentiated offering as a way to bring their products to market.

Turning to Slide 27, it is important to understand that INC and inVentiv both have a history of value creation through successful integration of past acquisitions. We have done this without negatively impacting customers and while continuing to grow and expand our customer base. At INC, we have completed 7 acquisitions since the beginning of 2007, 2 of which were transformational, MDS Global Clinical Development in 2009 and Kendle International in 2011. It is important to note that many of the team involved in leading those successful integrations, including Alistair Macdonald, are still within INC today. For each of those, we exceeded cost synergy targets by more than 30%. In looking at the 5-year period from 2012 to 2016, after the Kendle acquisition, our adjusted EBITDA increased at a CAGR of more than 30%, and our adjusted EBITDA margin improved by 910 basis points.

inVentiv has completed 25 acquisitions since 2007, including Pharmanet and i3, both of which were transformational. In that integration, inVentiv exceeded its cost synergy forecast by 25%. In the 5-year period from 2012 to 2016, inVentiv’s clinical business EBITDA increased at a CAGR of more than 20%, and its clinical business EBITDA margin expanded by 740 basis points. Clearly, we know how to integrate and drive value creation.

On Slide 28, we look at the credit profile of the combined company. The combined company will generate significant cash flows. We will start our net leverage on Day 1 of the combination at approximately 4x pro forma adjusted EBITDA. We expect to reduce our net leverage to under 3x within approximately 18 to 24 months post closing. Our long-term focus will be deleveraging and optimizing our weighted average cost of debt, including reducing inVentiv’s balance of unsecured notes. We believe this capital structure positions us for growth as we capitalize on the many opportunities the combination creates for all stakeholders.

Now I’d like to talk about INC’s individual results for the first quarter 2017. As Slide 29 indicates, we had a really strong quarter on all financial metrics. Most importantly, we delivered record new business awards leading to record net awards and a net book-to-bill at 1.4. We also made significant progress in 2 of our key strategic goals, winning a large FSP award and 2 new preferred provider relationships from which we expect additional awards in the future. We exceeded the midpoint of our guidance for the quarter on each of these key metrics and, through strong operational execution, drove adjusted EBITDA margin to over 23%, again above our guidance range.

We have posted our traditional earnings deck on our website and will be glad to answer any questions on this call. In order to provide background on inVentiv, we have also included a few slides in the appendix that shows their historical financial performance, along with a brief summary of their first quarter results. A separate supplemental investor presentation with further background on inVentiv is also available on our website.

Now let me turn it back over to Alastair for a few closing remarks.

Thanks, Greg. As I hope you all took away from our remarks, we believe this is an exciting step forward for INC and inVentiv as we bring together 2 of the most innovative and respected players in the field to create a leading global biopharma solutions organization.

The customers of the combined company will be a top 3 CRO globally and the leading commercialization provider with an enhanced global platform and an expanded presence in important strategic geographies such as Asia-Pacific. We will have the flexibility and depth to serve clients of all sizes and needs and have significant therapeutic expertise in core areas.

For patients, we will accelerate the delivery of therapies through our comprehensive suite of end-to-end solutions. For physicians, we provide tools to improve adoption and adherence for important medicines. For payers, we have the opportunity to satisfy demand for real-world evidence and data-based outcomes. And for our 22,000 employees, we will have a highly engaged and world-class workforce leveraging best practices across the entire organization.

Finally, for our shareholders, we expect the transaction to be accretive to INC’s adjusted earnings per share in the first 12 months following close, mid- to high-single-digit accretion in 2018 and over 20% accretive in 2019 and beyond. As a global leader with an expanded platform, the combined company is positioned for enhanced long-term growth.

I speak for both Mike and myself in expressing how proud we are of what the INC and inVentiv employees have accomplished to date. We look forward to working with inVentiv to capture the value creation opportunities that we will have together, and I know Mike shares my confidence in the path ahead.

Thank you, again, for joining us today. I’ll now turn it back over to the operator for any questions. Operator?