AmerisourceBergen Corporation

Hello and welcome to today's Amerisource Bergen Q3 fiscal 23 earnings call. My name is Jordan and I'll be coordinating your call today. If you'd like to register an audio question, you may do so by pressing the star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I'm now going to hand over to Bennett Murphy, the Senior VP and the Head of Investor Relations and Treasury to begin. Bennett, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us for this conference call to discuss Ameris Norris Bergen's fiscal 2023 third quarter results. I am Bennett Murphy, Senior Vice President, Head of Investor Relations and Treasury. Joining me today are Steve Collis, Chairman, President, and 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, which is available on our website at investor.amarisnorrisbergen.com. We have also posted a slide presentation to accompany today's press release on our investor website. During this conference call, we will make forward-looking statements about our business and financial expectations on an adjusted, non-GAAP basis, including but not limited to EPS, operating income, and income taxes. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to uncertainty and change. For a discussion of key risks and assumptions, we refer you to today's press release and our SEC filings, including our most recent 10-K. AmerisourceBergen assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, and this call cannot be broadcast without the express permission of the company. You'll 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 will turn the call over to Steve.

Thank you, Bennett. Good morning and good afternoon to everyone on the call. Today, I am pleased to discuss how AmerisourceBergen's pharmaceutical-centric businesses, the strength of our balance sheet and execution by our team members have continued driving our strong performance in fiscal 2023. In the quarter, we saw continued momentum across our businesses, delivering revenue growth of 11% and adjusted EPS growth of 11%. We are once again raising our fiscal 2023 guidance as we continue to benefit from good underlying business fundamentals and our focus on operating more efficiently. As I said last quarter, we are leveraging our commercial and organizational strengths to find ways to better collaborate with a focus on enhancing the way we go to market with our customers. Operating efficiently is critical to our role in the supply chain and to our ability to invest as we seek to drive further differentiation in our business. Guided by our pharmaceutical-centric strategy, we advance our business by focusing on four key areas, community providers, specialty medicine and services, global access and opportunity, and customer partnerships. We leverage our robust commercial strengths to provide solutions and forge deep relationships with customers and partners globally. Community providers from specialty physicians and local health centers to pharmacies and veterinarians are the cornerstone of access and care in their communities. We work closely with our customers to provide solutions to support their operational needs and strategic initiatives as they enhance their patient impact. By leveraging our scale and expertise, we offer a broad range of solutions to our community provider customers, from those designed to help them solve for everyday challenges like marketing and contracting, to those designed to help evolve and broaden their reach. One example of this is our Alfega network of community pharmacies across Europe, where we recently introduced an oncology support program. This program provided community pharmacists with improved training to support patients undergoing cancer treatment. Alfaga Oncology Support equips pharmacists who interact frequently with cancer patients with resources to help address topics such as mental health, managing side effects related to treatment, and adjusting to lifestyle habits and changes. By providing these types of valuable services, we are able to help elevate the role community pharmacists play as critical healthcare providers within their communities. In the United States, the completion of our minority investment in One Oncology marked an important step in evolving a Marisol Bergen support of community oncology providers. Over the past several decades, we have built our leadership in oncology and been a strong supporter of community oncologists. Leveraging our expertise, we partner with our customers to drive innovation and share best practices to support the health and vitality of those crucial community providers. In this spirit, our investment in One Oncology further expands our footprint within the oncology space, allowing us to deepen our already strong ties to community oncologists. We look forward to enhancing the value we provide to all our partners as oncology landscape continues to grow and evolve. As we continue to expand our downstream solutions in specialty, our focus on specialty medicine and services differentiates us to our pharmaceutical manufacturer partners across the commercialization process, from clinical development to patient access. As pharmaceutical innovation continues to advance medical care, and health in our communities, we have positioned ourselves as a differentiated leader. AmerisourceBergen's ability to provide global access and opportunity by offering US and pan-European logistics reach and commercialization support makes us a partner of choice for pharmaceutical manufacturers, particularly as specialty medicines with higher commercial and distribution complexity for making up a bigger portion of the pharmaceutical development pipeline. Our offering is particularly unique in the cell and gene space, where we can integrate logistics with essential patient support services and orchestration technology. While still in early days for cell and gene, we have had positive receptivity to our integrated solutions for these highly specialized products from their biopharmaceutical innovators. Cell and gene therapy is a key area for innovation as it represents an evolving and expanding market with considerable long-term growth opportunities. Following the launch of our cell gene and therapy integration hub in April, we announced our support for the commercialization of a recently approved gene therapy. We will serve as the exclusive distributor of the product and provide commercialization support, including 3PL, kitting, and storage. Our goal is to simplify the commercialization process for our partners and help them achieve their desired outcomes. AmerisourceBergen is well positioned to support the next evolution of innovative products and we will continue to invest in developing technologies and solutions to increase our value to our partners. Our ability to drive innovation and establish new solutions to serve our customers and partners is key to advancing our strategy and long-term growth. Transparency into the supply chain has never been so broadly appreciated, and we are focused on providing actionable and timely insights to ensure the supply chain can operate in an efficient manner. Serving at the core of the pharmaceutical supply chain, we take our role seriously, handling nearly $1 billion worth of orders daily across tens of thousands of products. Our ability to manage thoughtfully, professionally, and effectively through disruptions and shortages amplifies the importance of the expertise and diligence we provide in the pharmaceutical supply chain. To further our ability to provide confidence and transparency, we recently announced a partnership with ParcelShield, which will enhance our customers' view of the delivery of critical medications by providing them with real-time packaging tracking and delivery updates. This example builds on other initiatives we have taken to enhance supply chain visibility, including the addition of real-time tracking on shipments in our global logistics business and demonstrates how we are leveraging our infrastructure, enhancing our distribution efficiency, and creating innovative partnerships to deliver value services for our customers and partners up and downstream. We also drive value by leveraging our extensive customer partnerships to develop solutions that will expand access to high quality care. In 2022, the innovative test to treat initiative began, permitting pharmacists to administer COVID-19 tests and prescribe certain COVID treatments. This in turn increased accessibility to these treatments, particularly in underserved communities. Taking learnings from the success of this program, AmerisourceBergen has partnered with SteadyMD to pilot a telehealth solution for community pharmacies to expand the number of test-to-treat services they can offer. By working jointly with physicians through the SteadyMD platform, pharmacists can accelerate patient access to essential pharmaceuticals before conditions become critical. These type of initiatives fortify our customer partnerships and support our customers' growth Guided by our purpose of creating healthier futures, we are focused on contemplating and building out other solutions to innovate how we support and grow with our partners as they improve patient care and outcomes. Over the last two decades, Ameris Holzbergen has recognized the importance of being a purpose-driven company and unifying under a new name that better represents who we are today and where we are going in the future will allow us to deliver on our purpose and advance our impact across the healthcare industry. Today, I am tremendously excited to announce that effective August 30th, 2023, AmerisourceBergen will officially become CENCORA and begin trading as COR, which will unite our team members under a globally inclusive name and a ticker symbol that reflects our core role in healthcare. This new identity will allow us to go to market as a unified enterprise to our customers and partners, showcasing the breadth and depth of our solutions across our footprint. The name Sincora also better represents our commitment to our people who are at the center of everything we do. Our team members are the key to our success, and we are focused on creating an inclusive and engaging environment where our people feel comfortable sharing their unique backgrounds and experiences. We pride ourselves on cultivating an inclusive culture and continually improving upon our efforts to ensure all our team members feel empowered and welcome. We've taken steps to further our inclusion efforts by signing the CEO Disability Inclusion Letter published by Disability IN to ensure an accessible and equitable environment within the Marisol Bergen team. We were also honored to be recognized as the best place to work for disability inclusion after receiving a perfect score on the Disability Equality Index. We proactively set goals and action items to advance disability inclusion and equity, demonstrating our commitment to enacting change within the environment in which people with disabilities work. At AmerisourceBergen, we are powered by our people, and we are proud to promote a working environment that supports and empowers all backgrounds, abilities, and genders. As we continue to grow and evolve under our new corporate identity, we will remain driven by our purpose. Our future success hinges on our people, environments, and communities in which we live and work, and I remain inspired by our team that lives our purpose every day. In the remaining months of our fiscal 2023 year, we look forward to executing on our strategy and investing in further innovation and growth. Building on AmerisourceBergen's strong legacy, Sencora will continue to be a differentiated force within the global healthcare system and provide value for all our stakeholders. The emphasis we place on innovation and efficiency sets us up for a long-term growth and success as a leader in pharmaceutical-centric healthcare. I will now hand the call over to Jim for a more in-depth look at our third quarter results and updated guidance going into the final quarter of our fiscal 2023. Jim?