Premier, Inc.

Good morning. My name is Dexter, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the premiering fiscal year 2021 third quarter results and conference call. All I have in place on YouTube to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Ms. Angela Cade, you will begin the conference.

Thank you, Dexter. Welcome to Premier's Fiscal Year 2021 third quarter conference call. Our speakers this morning are Mike Alkire, our president and CEO, and Craig McCaffin, our chief administrative and financial officer. Before we get started, I want to remind everyone that our earnings release and the supplemental slides accompanying this conference call are available in the investor relations section of our website at investors.premierinc.com. Management's remarks today contain certain forward-looking statements. and actual results could differ materially from those discussed today. These forward-looking statements speak as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update them. Factors that might affect future results are discussed in our filings with the SEC, including our Form 10-Q for the fiscal third quarter, which we expect to file soon. We encourage you to review these detailed safe harbor and risk factor disclosures. Also, where appropriate, we will refer to adjusted or other non-GAAP financial measures, such as free cash flow, to evaluate our business. Reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release, in the appendix of the supplemental slides accompanying this presentation, and in our earnings form 8K, which we expect to furnish to the SEC soon. I will now turn the call over to Mike Alkire.

Thanks, Angie. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our discussion of our fiscal 2021 third quarter results, outlook for the remainder of this fiscal year, and preliminary thoughts on fiscal 2022. Before we get started, let me say that I'm honored and humbled to have been chosen by our board to lead Premier as we continue on our strategic journey to transform healthcare together with our members I want to thank Susan for her leadership and her role in shaping Premier into the company it is today, an industry-leading healthcare solutions company with an extensive provider network and artificial intelligence-enabled technology platform that helps our members and other customers to deliver and provide access to higher quality, more cost-effective healthcare. Susan and I continue to work closely to ensure a smooth transition, and I look forward to her continued insights and perspectives for Premier, as she takes on her advisory role. Turning to some highlights for the third quarter, we are pleased with our results, which exceeded our expectations and reflect another quarter of strong fundamental performance. Compared with the third quarter of fiscal 2020, consolidated net revenue grew 40%, supply chain services segment net revenue increased 56%, and performance services segment net revenue grew 3%. As we expected, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted earnings per share declined year over year, primarily due to the amended and extended GPO agreements that were executed in August 2020. We also announced this morning that we are increasing our fiscal 2021 guidance ranges. We currently expect consolidated net revenue to be in the range of 1.671 to $1.711 billion. adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $460 to $475 million, and adjusted EPS to be in the range of $2.42 to $2.51. Craig will discuss our financial results and updated guidance in his remarks. This morning, as I take on the role of Premier's new CEO, I want to share with you my view of our business and our path forward. With my background in technology, a long history in process improvement, and a commitment to Premier's vision, mission, and values, I am focused on leading Premier's continued evolution into a technology-based healthcare solutions provider. We will use our differentiated network, vast data, and machine learning to help our members and other customers deliver higher quality, lower cost healthcare, and reduce waste and other inefficiencies. This is something that I'm very passionate about, and as part of my plan, I'm focused on three key priorities as we advance our strategies to achieve our goals and to deliver long-term growth and value to our stockholders, members, and other stakeholders. First, we are reinforcing our focus on our mission, vision, and values and enhancing our culture with a mindset of innovation, growth, discipline, and accountability. This includes executing and delivering consistent operational and financial performance. Second, we are continuing to nurture our core business while expanding into adjacent markets and diversifying our business. We believe our strong relationships with our members also position us to serve the needs of employers, payers, and life sciences companies through our data and technology. Third, we will be more creative in our approach to increasing the value of our portfolio of unique assets, This includes building, acquiring, enhancing, and refining the right complement of assets and capabilities. Our recent acquisition of Invoice Delivery Services, a leading provider of electronic invoicing and payment solutions for healthcare, is an example of this approach. Adding the IDS capabilities to digitize and automate invoicing and payments to our technology portfolio of assets is a key component in advancing our strategy to tech enable all aspects of the supply chain. We believe these capabilities will further diversify and grow our revenue streams by accelerating our expansion of technology-enabled financial solutions for healthcare. We also expect these capabilities will give us greater visibility to total member spend in the GPO, which will enable us to continue to identify GPO contract expansion opportunities and drive further contract compliance. In addition, IDS provides an opportunity for us to use advanced technology to help our members reduce the total cost of care by enhancing invoice and payment workflow and enabling automated communications between contracted parties. Over the past several years, we have strengthened our foundation, one that positions us well for the opportunities that are ahead of us. We have longstanding strategic relationships with our members. with access to what we believe is one of the industry's largest repositories of healthcare data, including clinical, financial, and operational data. We've enhanced our integrated technology platform by expanding our natural language processing capabilities, which provide real-time and actionable insights at the point of the physician decision-making to reduce variations in care and safely reduce costs. We have further expanded our use of artificial intelligence to begin solving for new use cases in adjacent markets, including the identification of patients for clinical trials and the modernization of manual and costly processes such as prior authorization. We have a strong leadership team with a significant industry experience in their respected areas of expertise. And we continue to operate from a position of financial strength, as reflected by our financial balance sheet our free cash and our free cash flow generation. Under my leadership, we will look forward to further accelerate technology enablement to advance our strategies. Our members and our customers and other adjacent markets are now being confronted with new expectations and requirements in an environment that will require technology enablement to help drive higher quality healthcare through improved health outcomes with efficiency and lower cost. Premier is a critical partner in helping to navigate this new environment and address these necessary evolution into the future. I'll now discuss a review regarding some of the anticipated changes in Washington, DC. While the Biden administration and Congress remain focused on ending the pandemic, attention is transitioning to economic recovery. This includes healthcare reforms to expand coverage and improve healthcare quality and cost effectiveness. First, We anticipate an improved reimbursement environment for our hospitals and health system members, which may result in a greater ability and willingness for them to take or to make incremental investments in technology and services to improve quality and reduce costs. Second, there is an increased focus on value-based care and pricing transparency, including incentives to move to risk-based alternative payment models. We believe we are well positioned to support our members through analytics capabilities that support evidence-based care and performance improvement. Third, there is a strong bipartisan support for automating the healthcare system's antiquated prior authorization system. We believe we are well positioned to support our members and other customers through our current prior authorization solutions. And then finally, we expect action to create a technology-enabled resilient U.S. healthcare supply chain. Premier has already taken steps, many in partnerships with our members, to meet these needs, and we look forward to further partnering opportunities to improve healthcare supply chain resiliency. In summary, we are very pleased with our third quarter results. The role we continue to play in supporting our members through the pandemic and our progress towards achieving our multi-year strategic goals. As we look forward, we are focused on operational and financial execution, advancing our strategy, and delivering meaningful solutions to our members and our other customers to create long-term value for all of our stakeholders. I will now turn the call over to Craig McKesson for a discussion of our financial performance and expectations.