Cardinal Health, Inc.

Good day and welcome to today's second quarter financial year 2024 Cardinal Health Earnings Conference Call. This meeting is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to hand the call over to Nat Sims, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Welcome to this morning's Cardinal Health second quarter fiscal 24 Earnings Conference Call, and thank you for joining us. With me today are Cardinal Health CEO, Jason Holler, and our CFO, Aaron Ault. You can find this morning's press release and investor presentation on the investor relations section of our website at ir.cardinalhealth.com. Before I turn the call over to Jason, since we will be making forward-looking statements today, let me remind you that the matters addressed in the statement are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or implied. Please refer to our SEC filings. and the forward-looking statement slide at the beginning of our presentation for description of these risks and uncertainties. Please note that during our discussion today, the comments will be on a non-GAAP basis, unless they are specifically called out as GAAP. GAAP's non-GAAP reconciliations for all relevant periods can be found in the supporting schedules attached to our press release. For the Q&A portion of today's call, we kindly ask that you limit questions to one per participant. so that we can try and give everyone an opportunity. With that, I will now turn the call over to Jason.

Good morning, everyone. In the last few weeks, we've made several notable announcements regarding our company's continued progress, including yesterday's news on our agreement to acquire specialty networks, which will further our specialty growth strategy and create value for specialty providers, manufacturers, and patients in exciting new ways. And as we highlighted at a recent industry conference, We're continuing to take actions to become a simplified and more focused company with further progress achieved on our ongoing business and portfolio review and our updated enterprise operating and segment reporting structure, which will be reflected in our financial reporting beginning next quarter. We plan to go further into our recent updates with you today, but first, let me begin with a few brief comments on our results. In Q2, we delivered strong profit growth in both segments. demonstrating continued operating momentum and execution against our strategic priorities. Pharma again delivered strong performance. Overall, the business is performing consistent with our expectations, and we're pleased to reiterate our outlook for 7% to 9% segment profit growth in fiscal 24. We've seen ongoing stability in macro trends, including in our generic program, and continued broad-based strength in overall pharmaceutical demand. Our specialty distribution business also continued to see strong demand, including with COVID-19 vaccines in the first part of the quarter. Turning to medical, Q2 segment profit was consistent with Q1, despite some non-recurring adjustments in the second quarter, which we've reflected in our updated fiscal 24 outlook for the former medical segment. We're encouraged by the underlying improvements in operating performance, reflecting further progress with our medical improvement plan efforts, focused on our global medical products and distribution business. Notably, we saw a change in trend in revenue growth for the medical segment in the second quarter. Along with continued growth from at-home solutions, we're seeing the effects of our five-point plan to grow Cardinal Health brand volumes yield positive results. And as we continue to optimize not only the performance of our businesses, but also the financial strength of the broader enterprise, we're generating robust cash flow and seeing meaningful benefits below the operating line. As a result of our first half performance and increased confidence as we look ahead, we're pleased to raise our fiscal 24 EPS guidance and our outlook for adjusted free cash flow. Of course, our customers remain at the center of everything we do, and our team continues to prioritize core operational execution to best serve them and their patients with essential products and services as we drive our company forward. Now, let me turn it over to Aaron to review our results and updated guidance in more detail.