AmerisourceBergen Corporation

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Sencora Q4 Full Year 2023 Earnings Call. My name is Emily, and I'll be coordinating your call today. After the presentation, there will be the opportunity for any questions, which you can ask by pressing Start, followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypads. I'll now turn the call over to our host, Bennett Murphy with Sencora. Please go ahead.

Good morning, good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us for this conference call to discuss Sencora's Fiscal 2023 Fourth Quarter and Full Year results. I am Bennett Murphy, Senior Vice President, Head of Investor Relations and Treasury. Joining me today are Steve Collis, Chairman, President, CEO, and Jim Clear, Executive Vice President and CFO. On today's call, we'll 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, investor.sancora.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 discussion of key risks and assumptions, we refer you to today's press release and our SEC filings, including our most recent 10-K. CENCOR assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, and this call cannot be rebroadcast without the permission of the company. If you 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 through as many participants as possible within the hour. With that, I'll turn the call over to Steve.

Thank you, Bennett. Good morning and good afternoon to everyone on the call. Welcome to our fourth and final earnings call for fiscal 2023 and our first earnings call as CENCORA. Today, my remarks will focus on the continued execution and success of our business in fiscal 2023 and how our strategy and capabilities as a global healthcare services company position us to further drive value for stakeholders in 2024 and beyond. Fiscal 2023 was a seminal year for Sencora as we united together under our new globally inclusive identity and took key steps to advance our position at the center of healthcare. I am proud of how we continue to deliver strong results through execution by our team members as we capitalize on the strength of our business while strategically deploying our capital by both returning capital to our shareholders and making meaningful internal and external investments. Pharmalex and One Oncology were important investments made this year that extended the services and opportunities we have to continue to differentiate the solutions we provide our core customers. Our evolution to Synchora unites our team members under a name that better reflects our impact on healthcare as we continue to build on our commercial strengths. We entered 2023 from a position of strength and have continued to build on the momentum throughout the year, delivering full-year adjusted EPS growth of 9%. Guided by our purpose, powered by our foundation in pharmaceutical distribution, and differentiated by the breadth of solutions we provide our partners, we continue to execute on our strategic imperatives to advance our core business and enhance our capabilities to drive value in the years to come. This year, we expanded our leadership in specialty by enhancing our suite of services for pharmaceutical partners and adding to the solutions we offer providers. In January, we closed on our acquisition of PharmaLex, which broadened our suite of end-to-end commercialization service offerings. PharmaLex complements our capabilities in market access strategy, patient access, and adherence and specialty logistics. The business provides us a global platform of solutions to drive our long-term growth in supporting pharma partners across the development and commercialization journey. On the provider side, we made a minority investment in One Oncology, allowing us to deepen our relationships with community oncologists and which represents the next evolution of our longstanding leadership in specialty. Over the past 20 years, we have been proud to build this leadership in specialty through strategic partnerships and investments to continuously expand the breadth and depth of solutions we provide to both downstream providers and upstream innovators. The acquisition and investments we completed during fiscal 2023 complement our core business and are a testament to our commitment to advancing our leadership in specialty. We also consistently invest in innovation to strengthen our ability to efficiently and effectively serve our customers. Teams across Sencora, from our sales teams to distribution center operations to consultants in the field, actively embrace innovative technology to drive our business forward and support our pharma partners. One example is our premier global specialty logistics business, which continues to drive innovation by adding services to support clinical trial logistics and commercial time and temperature sensitive products through enhanced cryogenic shipping capabilities and expanded use of real-time tracking for shipments. Technologies like these are vital allowing us to transport highly specialized products while giving our customers 24-7 visibility to their critical shipments, enabling them to better serve patients. Innovation and the rapidly evolving healthcare landscape necessitate that we remain agile and adaptive to support our customers' needs. As pharmaceutical innovation continues to advance, so too must our capabilities in supporting it. Earlier this year, we opened a new state-of-the-art specialty distribution facility in California. As the specialty space continues its rapid growth, the new distribution center increases our scale and allows us to better support our customers and partners by providing efficient and reliable distribution for these complex products. Sincora's customer-centric approach prioritizes understanding the challenges our partners face, and exploring how we can provide them the solutions and services they need to reach and better serve patients. As pharmacists continue to be recognized for their role as accessible care providers who can bridge care gaps, particularly in underserved populations, we aim to provide tools and technology to enable them to spend more time with patients. In August, we hosted our annual ThoughtSpot conference in partnership with our Good Neighbor Pharmacy Network. The conference brought together thousands of independent community pharmacists and gave them the opportunity to attend education sessions on the evolving healthcare environment and latest technology solutions, connect and learn from industry peers, and celebrate the impact community pharmacies have in healthcare. Our recently launched Sincora Marketplace which was showcased at the conference, allows independent pharmacies to streamline their ordering process for consumer products in one centralized location. The solutions we provide our pharmacy customers allow them to spend more time caring for their patients and understanding their needs. An important role that has been recognized for the seventh year in a row by J.D. Power with Good Neighbor Pharmacy ranking number one in customer satisfaction among chain drugstore pharmacies in its 2022 US Pharmacy Study. Pharmacists also play a critical role in hospitals by working in alignment with physicians and nurses to treat patients. And one way in which they do this is in keeping medications stocked and up to date for immediate use. Recognizing the time hospitals spend on inventory management, our teams look for ways to leverage technology to provide a solution to make this process more seamless. Through RFID tagging, hospital pharmacists can quickly identify out of stock or soon to be expired medications, ensuring that patients have access to the medication they need when they need it. This tagging is conveniently done at our distribution sites before medications are delivered to our health system customers. By understanding our customers' needs, Our team is able to leverage innovation and create solutions to promote efficiency and address their challenges, advancing our shared goal of improving patients' quality of care. Each day, we are enhancing reach and efficiency in the pharmaceutical supply chain and leveraging the breadth of our global healthcare services to help our customers navigate the increasingly complex environment they face. Driven by customer and patient needs and our focus on contributing to prescription outcomes, we have forged innovative partnerships aimed at ensuring a stable supply of essential medications. Early this year, we announced a relationship with a nonprofit entity that partners with healthcare systems to reduce and prevent drug shortages. As the exclusive distributor of their contracted products, We provide supply chain support and ensure that their crucial products reach their members in a timely and safe manner. We have also cemented our role at the center of healthcare by building long-term relationships with market leading customers. We provide our customers with valuable services ranging from distribution and logistics to consulting to grow their businesses, which in turn supports our own growth. We are creatively resourceful and next-minded as we assess our talents and strengths and plan for future opportunities to create value for all of our stakeholders. Since the beginning of fiscal 2023, we have welcomed four new independent directors with valuable experience and backgrounds that adds to the strength of our board. These new directors add complementary expertise and diverse perspectives to support our advancement, both internally and externally, as a global healthcare services leader. Our commitment to elevating talent and advancing Syncoris capabilities is pivotal in delivering on our strategic growth initiatives. This year, I am proud to announce we have reached 100% dollar for dollar pay equity in the United States and set three ESG goals that we believe are relevant to and aligned with our business. Our first goal involved business impact assessments across our footprint to inform our business resiliency planning. Our second goal was focused on female representation in global leadership roles. And our third goal targeted our team member experience in elevating our culture of inclusion. Coupled with the importance of achieving pay equity in our workplace, we know we must be conscious of our culture and footprint to ensure we have the highest caliber talents, engaged team members, and resilient businesses. The sustainability of our operations and collective power of our team members drives our ability to live our purpose, strengthens our business and culture, and enables our leadership in healthcare. Sincora's long-term growth and commitment to creating differentiated value drives our investments internally in our people. Our team members are the core of everything we do, power our purpose and drive our execution with their diverse backgrounds and experiences. We are motivating our leaders to foster an environment of inclusion that embraces diversity across the organization, leveraging unique global views across our enterprise and enhancing ways of working drives efficiency, and differentiated customer experience for our partners. We are very proud of our team members whose dedication and execution powered the successful year we had in fiscal 2023. As we move into fiscal 2024, we are inspired by our ability to unlock new opportunities, united as Sencora, and support the continued evolution of healthcare. As a global organization united under our new name, we are even better positioned to execute our growth strategy as a leader in pharmaceutical distribution complemented by higher margin, high growth commercialization solutions. While our purpose and who we are as an organization remain the same, I, as well as our 46,000 team members, are tremendously proud to now be a part of Sencora. We are confident in our strategy, and by building on our foundation and established services, we are expanding, diversifying, and enhancing our position as a partner of choice for our customers and partners, both now and into the future. Now I will turn the call over to Jim for a more in-depth review of our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2023 results and to discuss our expectations for fiscal 2024. Jim?