Premier, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to Premier's fiscal 2022 first quarter results conference call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch tone phone. To withdraw from the question queue, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Angie McCabe, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome to Premier's fiscal 2022 first quarter call. Our speakers this morning are Mike Alkire, our President and CEO, and Craig McCasin, our Chief Administrative and Financial Officer. Before we get started, just a reminder 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. Our remarks today contain certain forward-looking statements, and actual results could differ materially from those discussed today. These forward-looking statements speak only 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 most recent Form 10-K, and our Form 10Q for the quarter, which we expect to file soon. We encourage you to review these detailed safe harbor and risk factor disclosures. Also, where appropriate, we 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 relief. 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. We are pleased with our first quarter performance. We continue to advance our strategies to help our members and other customers deliver higher quality, more cost-effective healthcare and support them through the COVID-19 pandemic. We are working every day to advance our technology-enabled supply chain capabilities and expansion of our Pink AI platform to serve our members and adjacent markets and fulfill our mission to improve the health of communities. We are also proud to play a role in our member health system's ability to care for patients in such a dynamic environment. The unique combination of our strategic member relationships, vast data and technology platform that yields actionable insights and solutions, and strong culture of highly engaged employees are foundational to our ability to execute our strategies. Compared with the first quarter of last year, total net revenue grew 5%, with a 9% increase in supply chain services segment revenue resulting from strong execution in our GPO and direct sourcing businesses as we continue to help our members manage through the pandemic. And a 5% decrease in performance services segment revenue due to the timing of revenue related to enterprise analytics license agreements in the quarter. Our adjusted EBITDA grew 10%, and our adjusted earnings per share increased 12%. Based on our first quarter performance and outlook for the remainder of the year, we believe we remain on track to achieve our fiscal 2022 guidance and deliver long-term sustainable growth. Craig will discuss our operational and financial results in more detail. We continue to operate in an environment characterized by new and emerging challenges, including rising inflation, increased raw material costs, supply chain disruption, and labor shortages. Through the combination of our strong member relationships and technology-based solutions, we are able to identify and act on potential market uncertainties and disruptions. We believe we are uniquely positioned to help our members and other customers navigate these challenges. More specifically, the global supply chain continues to experience unprecedented disruptions, which are affecting multiple industries, including U.S. healthcare. The market is experiencing an array of bottlenecks that could result in shortages of certain products. However, we continue to take a leadership role in helping our members and other customers identify and act on vulnerabilities while preparing for the post-pandemic environment. We also continue to work on creating a more resilient healthcare supply chain through a number of investments, partnerships, and collaborations. In September, we announced that we co-invested with 11 of our member health systems in Accela Pharma Sciences to enhance and support U.S.-based drug supply and manufacturing. We believe these efforts differentiate Premier in the marketplace and reflect the long-term strategic relationships we have with our members. The pandemic highlighted and accelerated the need for technology-based solutions to promote resiliency and long-term sustainability of the U.S. healthcare system. We continue to demonstrate the value of our offering. For example, Through our artificial intelligence and other technology-based capabilities, we can predict potential disruptions and shortages to enable better preparedness. This is just one example of the timely and meaningful solutions we offer through our comprehensive technology and services platform, Pink AI. Launched in August, The Pink AI brand has been favorably received by providers and adjacent markets, including payers, employers, and life sciences companies. We believe this closed-loop platform for continuous healthcare improvement has the ability to help providers stabilize their businesses. For example, health systems across the country are facing a labor and staffing crisis. With our technology-based solutions combined with our GPO and supply chain offerings, we are helping them manage through these issues. For instance, Pink AI leverages machine learning to predict and warn if a clinical department is at risk of a near-term labor shortage. It further supports healthcare providers with benchmarks to identify areas of opportunities where leaders may need to adjust staffing. The consulting arm of Pink AI helps providers manage and implement effective labor management solutions. By automating the manual, time-consuming processes such as prior authorization and invoicing and payables, Pink AI can save providers and other healthcare organizations time and expense. Our GPO also offers national and local contracts to help our members control the costs of full-time and contingent staff. And our supply chain services offers co-management of health systems supply chain operations. We are committed to supporting our members in finding innovative ways to solve for these and other related challenges so they can continue to deliver high-quality and cost-effective patient care. We also continue to advance our environmental, social, and governance, or ESG, efforts. A few weeks ago, we published our first-ever sustainability report, highlighting our many practices and initiatives aimed at improving healthcare, building trust, operating responsibly, and positively impacting communities. Further demonstrating our commitments to sustainability, ESG oversight has been elevated to our board of directors with dedicated responsibilities delegated to the board's nominating and governance committee. Our focus on incorporating appropriate ESG practices into our business remains a priority, not only for the long-term success of Premier, but for the good of our members, other customers, and the communities we serve. I would like to take the opportunity to invite you to join our virtual investor day that is scheduled for the morning of November 17th. During this event, we plan to provide more insight into our strategies to leverage innovative technologies, including AI and machine learning, to drive long-term sustainable growth and deliver value to our stakeholders. We are excited about the future and look forward to sharing more details with you in a couple of weeks. I will now turn the call over to Craig McCaslin for a discussion of our operational and financial performance and some comments on our fiscal 2022 financial guidance.