Cardinal Health, Inc.

Hello, and welcome to the third quarter fiscal year 2024 Cardinal Health Incorporated Earnings Conference Call. My name is George. I'll be your coordinator for today's event. Please note, this conference is being recorded and for the duration of the call, your lines will be in the listen-only mode. However, you will have the opportunity to ask a question at the end of the presentation, and this can be done by pressing star one on your tablet keypad to answer your question. We ask also that you limit yourselves to one question per person to allow the maximum attendees to ask a question. If you require assistance at any point, please press dot zero and you will be connected to an operator. I'd like to call over to your host today, Matt Sims, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Welcome to this morning's Cardinal Health Third Quarter Fiscal 24 Earnings Conference Call, and thank you for joining us. With me today are Cardinal Health CEO, Jason Haller, and our CFO, Aaron Alt. You can find this morning's earnings press release and investor presentation on the investor relations section of our website at ir.cardinalhealth.com. Since we will be making forward-looking statements today, let me remind you that the matters addressed in the statements 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 a description of these risks and uncertainties. Please note that during our discussion today, the comments will be on a non-GAAP basis, unless specifically called out as GAAP. GAAP to 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'll now turn the call over to Jason.

Good morning, everyone. A year ago at our investor day, I reflected upon what attracted me to Cardinal Health, our strong culture, values, and mission to be healthcare's most trusted partner. How the company was uniquely positioned with its breadth and scale to navigate the complexities of the healthcare ecosystem and serve the needs of customers, manufacturers, and ultimately patients. At the same time, I was open about some of the opportunities in front of us as an organization. Together, we laid out a clear but aggressive strategic plan, streamlined our focus, and the team got to work, all the time prioritizing on our core business to emerge as a stronger, more resilient company. And we have a recent proof point. Over the last several months, we deeply focused on preparing for a variety of alternatives regarding a particular large, low margin customer contract, which has allowed us to quickly navigate the upcoming contract change and confirm that we expect to grow our earnings in fiscal 25. By driving improvements in our core operations, investing to expand our offerings in key areas like specialty, and evolving our commercial approach in ways which have resonated elsewhere in the marketplace, we demonstrated that we had made progress on positioning our business for sustained success and growth. As we look ahead, the current quarter's results reinforce our confidence. We're operating from a position of growing strength and resiliency with industry trends that remain stable and in our favor. In Q3, we delivered broad-based growth while executing on our four strategic priorities, building upon the growth and resiliency of pharmaceutical and specialty solutions, executing our GMPD improvement plan, accelerating growth in key areas, and maintaining a relentless focus on shareholder value creation. In our most significant business, pharmaceutical and specialty solutions, we again drove solid profit growth on top of a difficult comparison to last year's strong performance. We've seen ongoing stability in pharmaceutical demand, consistent market dynamics in our generics program, and strong performance in specialty. both downstream and upstream, all of which enables us to raise our fiscal 24 profit outlook for the segment to a midpoint of 9% growth. In GMPD, we are pleased to see the strong top line and bottom line performance with an acceleration in growth reflecting further progress against the business's turnaround plan. GMPD's quarter was overall consistent with our expectations, and the team is already working hard on the continued ramp up in Q4. Among our other operating businesses, our new reporting structure implemented at the start of Q3 is reinforcing our focus on performance and purposeful investment and growth. The strong demand we are seeing across nuclear, at-home solutions, and opti-freight fueled by favorable industry trends excites us about the long-term potential as these markets and businesses continue to develop. And as we've optimized the financial strength of the broader enterprise, we've seen meaningful benefits below the operating line this year. Putting it all together, we're pleased to be in a position to raise our fiscal 24 EPS outlook, provide preliminary guidance for fiscal 25 of profit growth in each of pharma, GMPD, and other, as well as overall EPS, and reiterate our long-term targets for our businesses and enterprise. Our strategy and long-term outlook are unaltered, and our team remains focused on executing our plan as we serve our customers and continue to drive our company forward. With that, let me turn it over to Aaron to review our Q3 results, fiscal 24 guidance, and early fiscal 25 outlook in more detail.