Premier, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to Premier's Fiscal 2024 Second Quarter 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 telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ben Krasinski, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you and welcome to Premier's fiscal 2024 second quarter conference call. Our speakers this morning are Mike Alkire, Premier's 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 presentation accompanying this call are available in the Investors section of our website at investors.premierinc.com. Please be advised that management's remarks today contain certain forward-looking statements, such as statements regarding our strategies, plans, prospects, Expectations, future performance, 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 most recent Form 10-K and our Form 10-Q for the quarter, which we expect to file soon. We encourage you to review these detailed safe harbor and risk factor disclosures. Also, during this presentation, we will refer to adjusted and other non-GAAP financial measures, including free cash flow to evaluate our business. Information on why we use these measures in addition to GAAP financial measures and reconciliations of these measures to our GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release and in the appendix of the supplemental presentation accompanying this call. Information on our non-GAAP financial measures will also be included in our Form 10Q for the quarter and our Earnings Form 8K, both of which we expect to furnish to the SEC soon. I will now turn the call over to Mike Alkire.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We are excited to share several updates with you, including that our Board of Directors has concluded its review of strategic alternatives and approved a new $1 billion share repurchase authorization. Over the past several months, together with our board, we have thoroughly identified, reviewed, and explored options to maximize value for Premier stockholders. You may recall that, as part of this process, we divested our non-healthcare GPO operations in July 2023. This transaction unlocks substantial value for stockholders and enhanced the company's focus on our differentiated healthcare businesses. The board subsequently considered opportunities for deploying capital resources, including the proceeds from this divestiture. To accelerate returns to stockholders, with this in mind, we will implement a $400 million accelerated share repurchase transaction as part of the new share repurchase authorization. We are exiting the strategic alternatives review process with a clear picture of our future strategic mission. That includes a disciplined focus on our key strategies that differentiate us in the market. When we think about our capabilities that are key to our mission and vision, what we know is this. Premier is an essential enabler of high-quality, cost-effective healthcare. Our provider-led, technology-enabled strategies deliver unique enterprise solutions for better provider performance and a smarter healthcare supply chain. We continue to see technology and artificial intelligence as key enablers to our vision and capabilities that set us apart from the competition. This includes the expansion of the use cases beyond providers and into life sciences, medical device, and payer-adjacent markets. Moreover, as the healthcare industry continues to grapple with challenges, including labor shortages, supply chain disruption, and aging population, Premier is an essential partner now more than ever. We remain committed to a disciplined approach to execution that we expect to deliver value for our stockholders, members, and other customers. Consistent with this, management and the board looked at ways to enhance our focus on our differentiated data, technology, and wide-scale network to best serve our members and other customers. As a result, in consultation with management, the board authorized Premier to seek partners for certain other assets, We believe these are meaningful businesses that will thrive with the right partners, creating more value for the customers they serve, while also affording Premier the opportunity to narrow our operational focus. Assets under consideration include, first, Contigo Health, our direct-to-employer business. While we expect the provider-sponsored health plan and employer markets to continue to progress, We believe an outside partner will allow for continued advancement of the business through a broader capability set and increased scale. Second, S2S Global, our direct sourcing business, which was a strategic investment to augment our GPO offering and provide additional optionality for commodity purchases for our member healthcare providers. We believe a committed partner with alignment to our membership could provide the resources necessary to further broaden and scale this business and continue to support our commitment to supply chain resiliency initiatives while removing the operational and working capital requirements for Premier. We are excited about the future as we execute on the strategies that set us apart in the markets. including streamlining all aspects of the supply chain and leveraging our unique data, technologies, and AI capabilities to support provider performance, improvement, and growth in adjacent markets. Before I turn it over to Craig, I want to express our appreciation for our stockholders, customers, and employees' patience as we diligently explored strategic alternatives I'm excited about our recently announced 10-year GPO agreement with Tufts Medicine that expands our relationship to include co-management of their people, processes, and technologies to drive efficiencies and contain costs. I'm also incredibly proud that Premier was recently recognized by Newsweek as one of America's greatest workplaces for diversity. True to our mission to improve the health of communities we are dedicated to creating a diverse and inclusive workforce and are so thrilled to be recognized nationally for our efforts. I will now turn the call over to our Chief Administrative and Financial Officer, Craig McKesson, for a detailed review of our results and our financial guidance for the remainder of the fiscal year.