Cardinal Health, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Cardinal Health, Inc. Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Kevin Moran, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome. Today we will discuss Cardinal Health Second Quarter Fiscal 2021 results along with an update to our FY21 outlook. You can find today's press release and presentation on the IR section of our website at ir.cardinalhealth.com. Joining me today are Mike Kaufman, Chief Executive Officer, and Jason Holler, Chief Financial Officer. During the call, we will be making forward-looking statements. The matters addressed in the statements are subject to the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or implied. please refer to our SEC filing and the forward-looking statement slide at the beginning of our presentation for a description of these risks and uncertainties. Please note that during the discussion today, our comments will be on a non-GAAP basis unless they are specifically called out as GAAP. GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations for all relevant periods can be found in the schedules attached to our press release. During the Q&A portion of today's call, we please ask that you try and limit yourself to one question so that we can try and give everyone an opportunity. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Mike.

Thanks, Kevin, and good morning, everyone. I'll start our discussion with a few high-level thoughts on our progress so far this year, and then Jason will review our second quarter results and our updated fiscal 21 outlook. I'll close by sharing updates regarding our growth areas. We continue to make progress on our strategic plan as we navigate the rapidly changing global environment. Overall, second quarter operating results came in better than our expectations, led by the medical segment. In addition, we saw some favorability, including timing below the operating line, enabling us to deliver EPS growth of 14% in the quarter. Due to our solid first half performance and our improved visibility into the remainder of the fiscal year, we are increasing and narrowing our EPS guidance to a range of $5.85 to $6.10 per share. In the second quarter, we saw varying effects of the pandemic on our business, Our medical segment saw a net positive impact related to COVID-19 as our lab business and PPE products continue to experience strong demand. And in pharma, although the pandemic continued to adversely impact volumes, mainly in generics and nuclear imaging, areas like specialty and consumer health are recovering and performing very well. Across the company, we remain focused on doing our part to support ongoing pandemic relief efforts. In pharma, we partnered with the CDC to act as a network administrator, enabling retail independent, small chain, and long-term care pharmacy customers to participate in the vaccination effort. And in medical... We partnered with the state of Ohio to support vaccine distribution through our Opti-Freight logistics business. Regarding PPE, we are utilizing our supply assurance program to manage costs for our customers and provide consistent, long-range supply in key product categories. We are seeing improving supply in some of these product categories, such as gowns and masks, but continue to see a challenging market with exam gloves. Looking ahead, we remain committed to supporting our customers, patients, government, and communities through the ongoing challenges of the pandemic, and we are ready and willing to help in any way possible. Before I provide some updates on our strategic growth areas, I'll turn it over to Jason to share more details on our second quarter and outlook for the year.