AmerisourceBergen Corporation

And welcome to Amerisource Bergen's second quarter fiscal year 2021 earnings conference call. Today, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance during today's conference, please signal for a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's event, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note that today's event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Bennett Murphy, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Good morning, and thank you all for joining us for this conference call to discuss AmerisourceBergen's fiscal 2021 second quarter results. I am Bennett Murphy, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Joining me today are Steve Collins, Chairman and President, CEO, and Jim Cleary, Executive Vice President and CFO. On today's call, we will be discussing non-GAAP financial measures, Reconciliations of these measures to GAAP are provided in today's press release and are also available on our website at investor.american.com. We have also posted a slide presentation to accompany today's press release on our investor website. During this conference call, we made four living statements about our business and financial expectations on an adjusted non-GAAP basis, including but not limited to EPS, operating income, and income tax. Four living statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to uncertainty and change. For discussion of key risks and assumptions, we refer you to today's press release and our SEC filings, including our most recent Form 10-K. The management of this program assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, and this call cannot be rebroadcast without the express permission of the company. You will have an opportunity to ask questions after today's remarks by management. We ask that you limit your questions to one per participant in order for us to get to as many participants as possible within the hour. With that, I'll turn the call over to Steve.

Thank you, Ben, and good morning to everyone joining us today. It's hard to believe that one year ago on this call, I addressed for the first time how Marisol Spurgeon was responding to the global COVID-19 pandemic. There were many uncertainties then about how COVID-19 would impact our lives, our families, and our communities. Guided by our purpose of being united in our responsibility to create healthier futures, Marisol Spurgeon acted decisively to protect and support our associates, maintain business continuity, and help our customers navigate increased complexity. Our people and businesses prove resilience, and the pharmaceutical distribution industry demonstrated its vital role as a key pillar in the healthcare system. I remain incredibly proud and inspired by the way our associates and teams have adapted and innovated to support our partners' needs and facilitate patient access. Powered by our talent and culture, and enabled by robust infrastructure and technology, AmerisourceBergen is providing value-added, data-driven solutions to empower our partners with channel awareness and solutions. Importantly, our differentiated capabilities enable us to continue to support pharmaceutical innovation and the pandemic response, both in the US and increasingly abroad. This work is important for our people, our community, and our partners, and embodies our purpose while creating value for all our stakeholders. Turning now to our quarterly financial results. As we announced earlier this morning, Amerisource Bergen delivered year-over-year growth for the second quarter of fiscal 2021. Revenues were $49 billion, representing growth of 4% from the same period last year, and our adjusted EPS grew 5% year-over-year. These results were driven by our strong customer relationships, leadership and specialty, innovative services and solutions, and our purpose-driven culture that unites us in our responsibility to create healthier futures. One way that we are living our purpose is our leading role in providing COVID-19 In the U.S., we continue to distribute the antiviral and antibody therapies to some health systems across the country. Through our work with the Strategic National Stockpile, we are supporting government preparedness for current and future potential pharmaceutical needs. Members of our Food Data Pharmacy Network are providing vaccine access in their communities as we facilitate their participation in the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program. Their efforts are especially important in the nationwide inoculation movement because their role as highly trusted medical professionals in their communities enables them to quickly, efficiently, and equitably serve local hard-to-reach priority populations. Outside the United States, we continue to play an active role in global vaccination efforts. In Canada, for example, our NMR business is working in partnerships to distribute the COVID-19 vaccine on behalf of the Canadian government. As I mentioned earlier, the Merisource movement is focused on providing value-added services and innovative customer-centric solutions, and that focus has only been amplified throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Our associates are facilitating an efficient and resilient supply chain to ensure patients have access to the critical medications they need. In our support of pharmaceutical innovation, we are providing key commercialization and distribution solutions for our partners to help them adapt to the current dynamic environment. We are leveraging our leadership in special distribution and services to further enhance our differentiated value proposition for our partners. This includes expanding our robust suite of specialty capabilities and data and analytic solutions to further solidify our position as a partner of choice and an essential pillar supporting pharmaceutical innovation and access. Just in five weeks, we are able to leverage the full breadth of AmerisourceBurgers capabilities, including our logistical expertise and efficient execution, to be a solution provider for public and private partners. Working with the U.S. government and our manufacturer partner, we were able to facilitate the transportation of antiviral therapies to India. I am both honored and humbled that we were able to live our purpose in this time of need around the world. This answer could not have been possible without our World Courier business, a key global specialty logistics Korea continues to support innovation of manufacturers as they navigate logistical complexes. The importance of World Korea's expertise has never been clearer in over the past year as our partners shifted to perform more clinical trials at patient homes through our industry-leading direct-to-patient capabilities given the challenges of interfacing with patients in a traditional clinical setting. WorldCare's unparalleled logistical services, combined with partnerships that enable a broad network of field-based services, have proven invaluable in keeping clinical trials moving forward. Our teams have been adaptable and creative, and they provide solutions to facilitate better outcomes for the communities and patients that our partners serve. Our MWI animal health business also continued its strong thanks to its strong manufacturer and provider relationships as well as its ability to facilitate better health for both companion and production animals. To support the continued growth of the MWI business and further our operational efficiency, we recently opened a new state-of-the-art animal health distribution center in the U.S. This new facility bolsters our animal health distribution network and enhances our service capabilities for veterinarians and other animal health care providers nationwide. Amerisource Bergen's continued ability to provide differentiated values to our customers and partners and deliver on our purpose of being united in our responsibility to create healthier futures is enhanced by our ability to execute on our core growth strategies. First, we remain focused on our customers One of our core differentiators is our portfolio of key active customers across each segment of our business. This customer base enables us to lead with market leaders and facilitate patient access wherever a prescription is needed. We intend to continue to strengthen our key customer relationships and enhance our customer-centric solutions globally. Second, we will continue to build upon our leadership in sessions, We have the strongest portfolio of customer relationships and value-added services in the industry, which enables us to advance and benefit from pharmaceutical innovation, enhancing our capabilities and specialty to support both our upstream partners and downstream customers to make an important area of focus for Marisol's program. Third, we continue to focus on delivering best into our service and developing innovative approaches to best service our customers. By embracing advanced technology data analytics, we provide solution-oriented and value-added innovations that enable all our customers to grow. This ties into our first growth strategies, because when our customers grow, we grow. We seek to enable positive prescription pharmaceutical outcomes globally by facilitating market access and supporting pharmaceutical innovation. By providing value-added services that facilitate commercialization as well as integrated solutions to facilitate patient access on top of our unparalleled scale and expertise, we are able to get therapies to both small and large patient populations. This approach enables partnerships that unlock product potential and move health forward. Our assumptions remain key to our success and our focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as investments in our people and culture, have long been pivotal in advancing these growth strategies and positioning Marisol's program for long-term success. Our strategy and culture are foundational to reinforce which focuses on putting people first and ensuring the continued financial health of our businesses while creating long-term value for all our stakeholders. To ensure that the value we create is sustainable, we are embedding ESG principles into our culture, businesses, and processes, making sustainability core to our overall growth strategy. Our environmental strategy focuses on adapting to a changing climate, and advancing a resilient and responsible supply chain. We are leveraging our infrastructure and technology to create an efficient and secure pharmaceutical supply chain that also allows us to reduce waste, lower our global carbon footprint, and prepare for unexpected events. For example, we collaborate with our partners and customers to create packaging and transportation efficiency that result in significant process, cost, and environmental improvements. We also understand our climate-related physical risks and have a robust business continuity plan in place to ensure we can continue to deliver life-saving medications. On the social side, our strategy is centered around corporate responsibility and focused on investing in our people and communities to inspire team members and foster healthy communities. We continue now, as we have throughout the pandemic, to ensure we protect and assist our associates and their families with enhanced power, additional bonuses, physical and mental health resources, and child care and independent care benefits extended paid parental leave. For our frontline associates, we implemented additional important measures, such as enhanced cleaning protocols, social distancing protections, and providing them with PPE. For the long term, we advanced our talent and culture by investing in the development of our people. One of these investments is a new leadership competency model and developing programs supported by world-class learning technology underpinned by our purpose and guiding principles the program focuses our leaders on creating an energized diverse and inclusive workplace leveraging collaboration to create and realize new opportunities innovating and executing action-based to rapidly adapt to our dynamic landscape. To help all our associates unlock their full potential and empower them to reach their career goals, we've also launched a new enterprise learning model that offers a modern, intuitive, and tailored learning experience that is also consistent with what we expect and develop in our leaders. By aligning our people strategy with our business strategy, we create value now and for the long term. Another way we inspire key members is through promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, and ensuring that their collective voices and perspectives are heard. DE&I remains a key focus of our investments in our workplace culture, and we encourage our associates, To further our community impact, we have elevated and strengthened our focus on supplier diversity with a collaborative, data-driven, and thoughtful approach to ensure the diversity of our supplier partners and the alignment of this function with our broader ESG efforts. Additionally, a marital service empowers our associates to participate in and meet conversations that help shape the future they want to see. For example, our associates are passionate about social justice, and the Marisol Spurgeon Foundation has elevated their impact by matching donations at a two-to-one ratio for organizations focused on diversity, I am proud that the Foundation has taken these steps because I personally believe that equality is a fundamental right and that it is important to support social justice. Health equity has also been raised over the past year as one of the many social issues facing our society. And here I want to highlight the work that our Good Neighbour Pharmacy and Elevate Provider Network members are doing to foster healthy communities. As transplant health providers with well-established relationships in their communities, they promote health equity on a daily basis and play a major role in ensuring positive outcomes locally. Their critical work advances the national COVID-19 vaccination effort to reach all parts of the country's populations quickly and efficiently. Secondly, the Marisol Spurgeon Foundation recently made a donation to the Boys and Girls Club of America to support COVID-19 vaccine education and awareness in an effort to remove barriers to vital healthcare access and improve the health of our communities. We are grateful and proud to have the opportunity to support healthy communities across the U.S. by partnering with nonprofits and independent pharmacies. Finally, the governance element of our of transparency, ethics, and integrity, which informs everything that we do and which ensures the highest standards of governance. Our commitment to do the right thing is core to Marisol Spurgeon's purpose and principles. By advancing environmental, social, and governance initiatives, Marisol Spurgeon aims to create healthier futures around the world. This is not only the right thing to do, but it also enables us to further enhance the value we create for all AmerisourceBurden stakeholders. In closing, we remain confident in our ability to provide differentiated value to our stakeholders, leverage our leadership in special distribution, capitalize on our innovative mindset, and benefit from our focus Looking ahead, we have strong confidence in our business and our focus on closing the acquisition of Alliance Healthcare, which will extend our distribution capabilities into key markets and further strengthen our global platform of manufacturing service. We look forward to building upon our strong talent base with the onboarding of the Lyme Health team, including their fantastic management team, and we are excited to begin the next evolution of enhancing our ability to provide innovative and global healthcare solutions. We are well positioned to create long-term stakeholder value and remain united in our responsibility to create healthier futures. Now I will turn the call over to Jim for a more in-depth review of our results. Jim?