Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Walgreen Boots Alliance, Inc. Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please note that today's conference is being recorded. If you require further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to Gerald Gradwell. Thank you. You may begin, sir.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our earnings call for the third quarter of fiscal year 2021. On the call with me today are Roz Brewer, the Chief Executive Officer of Walgreens Boots Alliance, James Kehoe, Global Chief Financial Officer, and John Stanley, President of Walgreens, is also here for any relevant questions. Before I hand you over to Roz to make some opening comments, I will, as usual, take you through the legal safe harbor and cautionary declarations. Certain statements and projections of future results made in this presentation constitute forward-looking statements that are based on our current market, competitive, and regulatory expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to vary materially. We undertake no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statement after this presentation whether as a result of new information, future events, changes in assumptions, or otherwise. Please see our latest Form 10-K and 10-Q for a discussion of risk factors as they relate to forward-looking statements, and note in particular that these forward-looking statements may be affected by risks relating to the spread and impact of the COVID pandemic. In today's presentation, we will use certain non-GAAP financial measures. We refer you to the appendix in the presentation materials available on our Investor Relations website, for reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures and related information. You'll find a link to the webcast on our investor relations website at investor.walgreensbootsalliance.com. After this call, the presentation and webcast will be archived on the website for 12 months. I'll now hand you over to Roz.

Thank you, Gerald, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our earnings call. Let me start by saying that we're pleased with our third quarter financial performance. which we announced earlier this morning. Our total adjusted earnings per share of $1.51 were above our expectations, driven by the strong execution of our vaccine administration, increased mobility as restrictions were lifted in various geographies, and recent increases in digitally driven sales in both the Walgreens and Boots businesses. Many categories performed well, including beauty and photo. And our investments in marketing technology are driving further revenues by more precisely targeting our customers. In recent months, the leadership team and I have been emphasizing across the company that we must deliver operational excellence. And our teams have answered this call in many ways, with our COVID-19 vaccinations being a particular highlight. This initiative is really quite remarkable and demonstrates our ability to move at pace and deliver at scale. We have now administered over 25 million vaccinations by quickly creating an extensive technology and logistics infrastructure and utilizing close partnerships with public officials, community and faith groups, and others. I continue to be deeply proud of our team members and their commitment to keep our communities healthy and safe, especially those communities that are the most medically underserved. Strategically, we remain committed to our previously stated priorities to create neighborhood health destinations around a more modern pharmacy, to accelerate digital, to transform and restructure our retail offering, and to drive our transformational cost improvement, all of which you'll hear more about today as James provides more insights on our results. It's also great to observe firsthand these priorities being carried out by our teams as I continue to spend time at our stores and vaccination sites. During these visits, I see over and over again the incredible strengths that our company has. We have deep brand trust and loyalty, an extensive understanding of our millions of customers, and an expansive store footprint in the heart of 9,000 communities across the U.S. And as I mentioned to you last quarter, I am also conducting a detailed review of our long-range business plans across the company, including where we should make further investments, allocate capital, and deliver the best financial returns. There are tremendous opportunities in healthcare right now, and we are uniquely positioned to capitalize on them. One example of our next phase of growth is our previously communicated tech-enabled healthcare initiative. As we build this out further, our choices will be guided by what our customers want as we continue to deliver solutions that meet their evolving needs while leveraging our unique assets and capabilities in order to win. But first and foremost, we have to ensure that we continue to operate our core pharmacy and retail businesses with excellence. Said simply, in order to build the pharmacy of the future and new healthcare solutions, we must build upon the core assets of the pharmacy of today. Next, we need to determine where we are best positioned to offer even more to our customers. What we're hearing from them is that they are often overwhelmed trying to manage different health conditions, providers, appointments, bills and medication, all of which are on different platforms and channels. And we know we can help them address these problems. in a way that builds on our strengths and establishes even deeper relationships with them. But the overall healthcare space is sprawling and incredibly complicated, so we must be laser-focused on the products and services that have the most potential and value, that can be enabled with the most innovative technology, and that will be delivered at a level and quality that our customers expect. Lastly, we must be mindful that speed is a priority in this rapidly changing landscape. We will assess appropriately and accelerate into new categories, spending just enough time getting it right, and then we'll deploy quickly and at scale. I'm looking forward to sharing more with you soon about our further plans. But again, there's fantastic potential here, and we're very excited about the prospects for the future. And with that, I'll turn it over to James to take us into more depth on our results and operations. James?