Cencora, Inc.

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 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 Amerisource Bergen's fiscal 2023 third quarter results. I am Bennett Murphy, Senior Vice President and 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. Reconciliation of these measures to GAAP are provided in today's press release, which is available on our website at .amerisourcebergen.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, property 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 filing, including our most recent 10K. Amerisourcebergen assumes no obligation to object any forward-looking statements, and this call cannot be broadcast without the express permission of the company. You will 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. Alfega oncology support equips pharmacists to 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 Marisville-Spergen 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 the oncology landscape continues to grow and evolve. As we continue to expand our downstream solutions and 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. A Marisville-Spergen's ability to provide global access and opportunity by offering U.S. 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 are 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, ketting, and storage. Our goal is to simplify the commercialization process for our partners and help them achieve their desired outcomes. Amerisville-Spergen 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, handing 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 Parcel Shield, 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 Tests 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, Amerisals Bergen has partnered with SteadyMD to pilot a telehealth solution for community pharmacies to expand the number of tests 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 types 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, Amerisals Bergen 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 30, 2023, Amerisals Bergen will officially become Sancora 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 Sancora 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 Amerisals 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 Amerisals Bergen, 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, the environment, 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 Amerisals Bergen's strong legacy, Sankora 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?

Thanks, Steve. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. Amerisals Bergen delivered another quarter of strong results as our team members' execution continues to create significant value for all our stakeholders. Our results speak to the strength of our business and our continued work to drive efficiencies. In the quarter, we also strategically deployed capital, closing our minority investment in One Oncology, an example of investing to further our strengths, and we continue to opportunistically repurchase shares to also return capital to our shareholders. Before I turn to our third quarter results, as a reminder, my remarks today will focus on our adjusted non-GAAP financial results unless otherwise stated. For a detailed discussion of our GAAP results, please refer to our earnings press release. Turning now to our third quarter results, Amerisals Bergen had adjusted diluted EPS of $2.92, an increase of 11% over the prior year quarter, driven by growth in both segments and a lower share count due to opportunistic share repurchases over the past year. Our consolidated revenue, with $66.9 billion, up 11.5%, driven by growth in both segments, particularly in the U.S. Healthcare Solutions segment, which had broad-based growth across our customer base, including growth and sales of products labeled for diabetes and weight loss in the GLP-1 class. Without this increase in GLP-1 products, our consolidated revenue growth would have been more in line with our consolidated gross profit growth. Consolidated gross profit was $2.2 billion, up 8% due to growth in both segments. Consolidated gross profit margin was 3.33%, a decline of 11 basis points due primarily to lower contribution from COVID treatments, which have higher gross profit margins, and continued volume growth in GLP-1s, which have lower gross profit margins. Both these margin impacts are to be expected, given the unique characteristics of each of these product groups. Consolidated operating expenses were $1.4 billion, up 7.6%, primarily due to higher expenses in our International Healthcare Solutions segment. We continued to focus on creating efficiencies and working collaboratively to drive value for our stakeholders, which contributed to the sequential -over-year moderation of growth and operating expenses in the quarter, particularly in our U.S. Healthcare Solutions segment as a result of actions we have taken. Consolidated operating income was $822 million, an increase of nearly 9% compared to the prior year quarter. Our operating income growth was driven by solid performance in both segments, and I will provide more detailed business drivers when discussing segment-level results. Moving now to our net interest expense. The third quarter net interest expense was $58 million, an increase of .5% versus the prior year quarter. As we look to the fourth quarter, we expect net interest expense to be at its highest level this fiscal year, given cash use in the past few months. Now turning to income taxes, our effective income tax rate was .5% compared to .2% in the prior year quarter. As we called out last quarter, we continue to expect our full-year fiscal 2023 effective tax rate to be towards the bottom end of our guidance range of 20% to 21%. Turning to diluted share count, our diluted share count was 204.4 million shares, a .5% decrease compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2022, driven by share repurchases we completed over the last 12 months. This included $100 million of repurchases in the third quarter in conjunction with transactions Walgreens Boots Alliance executed. Going forward, we expect transactions to continue to occur and we anticipate continuing to collaborate and coordinate with Walgreens Boots Alliance as we have done over the past year. Regarding our cash balance and free cash flow, we ended the quarter with approximately $1.4 billion of cash. Our adjusted free cash flow for the nine months ended June 30th was $1.5 billion, and we are slightly improving our adjusted free cash flow guidance to be at least $2 billion for the fiscal year, up from approximately $2 billion. This completes the review of our consolidated results. Now I'll turn to our segment results for the third quarter. U.S. Healthcare Solutions Segment Revenue was $59.9 billion, up 12% for the quarter, with growth across our customer base, including sales of products in the GLP-1 class and also sales of specialty products to physician practices and health systems. U.S. Healthcare Solutions Segment Operating Income increased by .5% to $635 million as we saw good pharmaceutical utilization trends across our business. And our animal health business had another good quarter with growth in both the companion and production animal markets. Our operating income growth also benefited from an easier expense comparison as we lapped inflationary pressures that began in the March quarter of fiscal 2022 and from efficiency initiatives that we have taken, both of which we called out last quarter. This combination of operating expense items helped improve our operating expense margin in the quarter, offsetting most of the gross profit margin pressure from lower COVID-19 treatment contributions and increased volumes of GLP-1s. In the quarter, U.S. Healthcare Solutions Segment Operating Income Margin did still have a -over-year decline of three basis points to .06% as a result of our mix of those two product groups. As a reminder, COVID product volume has continued to decline as expected, and we are earning a fee for distributing government-owned products, and GLP-1s are a big driver of revenue growth but not a meaningful driver of operating income growth. I will now turn to our International Healthcare Solutions Segment. In the quarter, International Healthcare Solutions Revenue was $7.0 billion, up .6% on a reported basis, or up .4% on a constant currency basis. In the segment, we saw growth in all our businesses. International Healthcare Solutions Operating Income was $187 million, up 6% on a reported basis, or 7% on a constant currency basis, driven by solid performance in our global logistics business and the inclusion of PharmaLex in the quarter, which offset the impact of the divestiture of our Brazilian specialty business in June of 2022. As a reminder, this divested business contributed nearly 2% of segment-level operating income in the third quarter of fiscal 2022. That completes the review of our segment-level results. I will now discuss our updated fiscal 2023 guidance expectations. As a reminder, we do not provide forward-looking guidance on a gap basis, so the following metrics are provided on an adjusted, non-gap basis. Full details of our fiscal 2023 guidance can be found on pages 8 and 9 of our earnings presentation on our Investor Relations website. Starting with revenue, we are raising our consolidated revenue guidance and now expect our revenue growth to be at least 8% to reflect stronger revenue growth in the U.S. Healthcare Solutions segment and favorable currency movements in the International Healthcare Solutions segment relative to our prior guidance. In the U.S. Healthcare Solutions segment, we now expect revenue growth to be at least 9%, which reflects strong pharmaceutical utilization trends and also the increase in volume of GLP-1 products. In the International Healthcare Solutions segment, we are raising our as-reported revenue growth guidance to be in a range of 1% to 4% up from our previous expectation of a 3% decline to flat due to favorable currency movements relative to our May guidance. Moving to operating income, we are narrowing our consolidated operating income guidance to a range of 3% to 4% growth from the previous range of 2% to 4% growth, primarily to reflect the strong performance we have seen in the U.S. Healthcare Solutions segment and to reflect favorable currency movements in the International Healthcare Solutions segment. In the U.S. Healthcare Solutions segment, we now expect segment operating income growth to be in the range of 4% to 5% from our previous range of 3% to 5%, excluding contributions related to COVID-19 treatment distribution. We now expect operating income growth to be in the range of 7% to 8% from our previous range of 6% to 8%, and we are more likely to be near the top end of that 7% to 8% range. In the third quarter, COVID-19 treatments contributed 6 cents to our consolidated EPS with about 5 cents in the U.S. and 1 cent in the International segment. This brings our total COVID treatment contribution year to date to 29 cents. Our full year expectations for COVID treatment contributions remain generally unchanged, and we expect only a penny or two of COVID-related contributions in the fourth quarter, with the contribution occurring in the U.S. Healthcare Solutions segment. In the International Healthcare Solutions segment, we now expect as reported segment operating income growth to be in the range of flat to 4% growth, which reflects favorable FX rates relative to our previous guidance. As a result of these updates, we are raising our full year diluted EPS guidance from our prior range of $11.70 to $11.90 to a new range of $11.85 to $11.90 to a new range of $11.80 to $11.90 to $11.85, representing growth of 7% to 8% on an as reported basis, or 12% to 13% excluding COVID-19 treatment contributions. As you turn to your models, there are a few items we wanted to remind you of as you think about the fourth quarter and the year ahead. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022, we had 17 cents of contribution from distributing COVID treatments, 16 cents of which was in the U.S. Healthcare Solutions segment. As I mentioned, this year we expect to only have a penny or two of COVID treatment contributions in this year's fourth quarter, which will impact year over year growth rates. It's also important to keep in mind that in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022, the dollar was at historically strong levels versus most major currencies. This should create a tailwind in the International Healthcare Solutions segment on an as reported basis as we lap that easier comparison. And as reported growth is expected to be higher than constant currency growth in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023. This dynamic is reflected in our increased as reported operating income guidance at the International Healthcare Solutions segment level and in our constant currency operating income guidance, which remains unchanged at the International Healthcare Solutions segment level. We are in the middle of our planning process and feel confident that the strength and resilience of our core business and our value creating approach to capital deployment will allow us to deliver on our long term growth guidance. While it remains early in our planning process, at this point we would expect contributions related to COVID treatment distribution to be minimal in fiscal 2024. As usual, we will provide full fiscal 2024 guidance in November when it can be fully informed by our detailed planning process. Before I turn to my closing remarks, I would like to provide a brief update on one of our key ESG initiatives. As we have discussed in fiscal 2023, we introduced an ESG metric within our executive compensation program that includes three quantifiable components focused on business resiliency, female representation and leadership roles, and employee inclusion and engagement. During the quarter, we successfully completed the business resiliency target by completing business impact assessments across our locations. This exercise informs our resilience planning and ensures we are able to continue operating in the face of natural disasters and a changing climate. To this end, we were also proud to be recognized by Forbes on their first ever Net Zero Leaders list. This list recognizes businesses that are leading the way not only in transitioning to a low carbon economy by 2050, but also are embedding sustainability practices into their business and working to achieve sustainability targets. Companies were evaluated across industries for the robustness of a company's climate governance, strategy and risk management principles. We continue to focus on maintaining strong business resilience practices to allow us to deliver on a role at the center of the pharmaceutical supply chain. Reflecting on this being our last earnings call with the corporate name Amerisource Bergen, I am impressed by our company's track record of adapting and evolving over the years. We have executed on our pharmaceutical-centric strategy, building on our foundation and pharmaceutical distribution and expanding our suite of solutions for both our customers and manufacturer partners. Looking ahead, I'm excited that on August 30th, we will begin trading under the ticker symbol COR on the New York Stock Exchange. This ticker is more meaningful and reflective of our business and role in the supply chain. As we begin our next chapter as Sincora, I am confident that our team members will build upon the legacy we have created and continue to drive long-term growth for our stakeholders. Now I will turn the call over to the operator to open the line for questions. Operator?

Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to register an audio question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two and please ensure you're unmuted when speaking. Our first question comes from Elizabeth Anderson of Evercore ISI. Elizabeth, the line is yours.

Hi guys, good morning. Thanks for the question and congrats on the quarter. One thing that was particularly impressive as we think about the performance in the quarter was obviously the improvement in the op-ex. Can you help us think about the sustainability of that improvement as we think about maybe the fourth quarter and then maybe conceptually beyond that?

Thanks. Thanks so much for asking that question, Elizabeth. One thing we were really pleased about, and there's obviously so many things we were pleased about during this quarter, but one of the things we were pleased with is that our op-ex growth was slower than our gross profit growth. As I'm sure you saw, our gross profit growth during the quarter was .0% and our op-ex growth was 7.6%. Really where we saw the improvement was in the US healthcare solution segment where our operating expense margin declined by 11 basis points. We really were able to achieve this by focusing on aligning our internal capabilities to our customers' needs and creating a more efficient organizational structure. We had talked about that on the May call. That's something that we were very focused on. Then we also benefited from lapping inflationary pressure that had started in the March quarter of fiscal year 22. We lapped that pressure and so we had less cost pressure during the quarter. As we look towards the fourth quarter and we look towards fiscal year 24, this is something that our company is very focused on. We're very focused on efficiency so we can really align our capabilities to our customers' needs and have an efficient organization. Thanks a lot for asking that.

Our next question comes from Lisa Gill of JP Morgan. Lisa, please go ahead.

Thanks very much. Good morning. I just want to understand a couple of things that are on the margin side. First, in your prepared comments, you talked about exclusive distribution relationships on cell gene therapies. Then you talked a little bit about the growth in GLP-1s, which I understand high dollar value when we think about it branded but probably a lower margin. As we think about your book of business, how do I think about the progression of margin, especially in the US distribution component of the business, as we think about one, exclusive distribution relationships, two, the continued growth in GLP-1s, three, biosimilars, how that plays a role. Lastly, anything else that I should keep in mind, whether it's generic price deflation, which seems to have moderated, as we start to think about not just the fourth quarter but thinking about 24 as well.

There's a lot there. Let me start out by talking about GLP-1s because they were such a driver of revenue growth during the quarter. I mentioned during my prepared remarks that we had about .5% revenue growth in the quarter and that if we backed out GLP-1s, our revenue growth would have been more in line with our GP growth of 8.0%. GLP-1s really are a driver of top line revenue growth but from an operating income standpoint, they are minimally profitable. They really are a driver of top line but minimally profitable at the operating income line. This is caused by the fact that the gross profit margins on them are low. Then the operating expenses are a little higher because of the cold chain nature of the product. Then with regard to things like exclusive cell and gene relationships, those sorts of things are very positive for the company and very strategically important but in terms of dollars, small at this opportunity and margin opportunity for Amerisource Bergen, you asked about generic deflation. During the last few months, we have seen some moderation of generic deflation in certain pockets. This is too early to call a trend but if it were to broaden beyond a few pockets into a broader range of generics, it certainly would become a tailwind for the company. You mentioned in particular the US and I think probably the thing that I will point out, and I talked about this in the prepared remarks on a consolidated basis, but in the US segment, the gross profit margin decline during the quarter was 13 basis points. That was really driven by two things. One is less sales of COVID therapies, which are high margin, and then greater sales of GLP1s, which are lower margin products and minimally profitable. I think that addresses your questions. I just want to finish by saying we were really pleased by the results we had during the quarter. In particular, the operating income growth that was driven by several things, including strong broad-based results across many businesses, good utilization trends we saw in the US, and then the good performance we made on the OPEX front that I had earlier talked about.

Our next question comes from Eric Purcher of Neffron Research. Eric, please go ahead.

Thank you. Thank you for the commentary on GLP1s. I want to stay on that subject. It's good to hear they're minimally profitable for Amerisource, but what we're hearing from pharmacies, particularly independents, is that they're not profitable. It sounds like maybe even the same for chains. Given the importance of independents, have you had to help them offset that, or is that the role of the manufacturer and others in the supply chain?

Yeah. Hi, Eric. Thanks. As you know, we price more on product category. This would fit into a branded and indeed an oral category that's dispensed mainly in the retail sector. A fairly significant amount of this is going through mail order. We don't discount on a particular product category, even as significant as this product category is, but we do regard ourselves as a liaison. Of course, we'll be talking on behalf of good neighbor pharmacies in particular. You look at the Elevate Network, we discuss this as a key product category that is affecting profitability, reimbursement, stability in the community pharmacy. It's not anything that we are discounting on a particular category basis. It just fits into that broader category. Of course, these products are extremely important, a good example of innovation. There's a lot of positives about the product as well. I think we shouldn't only look at this in terms of the negatives. There will be a whole lot of benefits to the pharmacy industry as this category evolves, including the monitoring of side effects, potentially anything else that pharmacists can do to help manage the health of their patients. Amerisalsburg will of course be there to assist.

Our next question comes from Daniel Grosslight of Citi. Daniel, please go ahead.

Hi, thanks for taking the question and congrats on another strong quarter here. I just had a quick question on the Adjusted Operating Income Guidance for the rest of this year and how we should think about that going into 2024. If you back out the COVID impact and assume that you're going to be at the high end of the range for the fiscal year, it implies around a 2% sequential step down from 3Q. I'm curious if there was any pull through from 4Q into 3Q that may be causing that sequential decline or is that the normal seasonality now? I think going forward is a low teens, high single digit growth rate in that segment reasonable.

Yeah, thank you for asking the question. Let me say of course we were really pleased with the results during the quarter and due to that we did really kind of cross the board, raise or narrowing of guidance for fiscal year 2023. We have a lot of confidence in our updated fiscal year 23 guidance and we have a lot of confidence in our long-term guidance which is of course 5 to 8% organic operating income growth and then including capital deployment, it's double digit compound annual growth rate for adjusted EPS at the midpoint of the range. Of course both those exclude COVID and exclude FX. But there are of course a number of that can impact results quarter to quarter and timing and those sorts of things. But rather than kind of get into the details there, I just want to say that as we are starting into fiscal, excuse me, the fiscal fourth quarter, we've got a lot of good momentum in our business. We're seeing strong utilization trends in the US. We're seeing good performance just a number of areas of the business and that's what gives us a lot of confidence in both our fiscal year 23 full year guide and our long-term guidance that I talked about. And of course we're just in the middle of our fiscal year planning process now and we'll look forward to providing our fiscal year 24 guidance on the November call.

Thank you. Next question comes from Charles Rye of TD Cohen. Charles, please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks for taking the questions. Congrats on the quarter. I wanted to go back to talking about sort of the services that you're looking to do that you are providing for pharma manufacturers that you talked about, more commercial support, the cell and gene therapy hub, etc. Can you talk about a little bit maybe how maybe one oncology fits into this? You look at some of your peers and some of the efforts that they're making in terms of sort of upward facing services to manufacturers. I know you have a lot of that when we think about World Courier as well. What is the broader strategy and what are the services that many manufacturers are starting to ask from folks like you and what's the unique position that you have here? And I guess how much share of a business do you think this will be when we think of Sincora going forward? Thanks.

Hi Charles. Thanks for the question. I'll try to cover all the elements you asked. Of course, one of the ways that Ameris Horst Bergen has a differentiated value proposition is our strong portfolio of distribution capabilities and key strategic relationships are really we juxtapose and relate those into our upstream relationships and try to provide more services to manufacturers. So key themes that you should keep in mind is our presence in specialty distribution where we've been the leading community oncology and this will only be enhanced by the one oncology acquisition where we expect to have learnings. There's been a lot activity for example recently in urology so that could be a future area of interest for us. As any of these physician dispensing capabilities become up in areas that we are already active in, including urology and rheumatology, ophthalmology, that will be of interest and urology could be one that we are very interested in as well. Aligned with our distribution capabilities to the dispensing physician and what we often call the part B market is our GPO capabilities. And then I'd have to say Ameris Horst Bergen has really focused and invested in the development and the breadth and depth of our commercialization services. The customer is the bio-pharmaceutical manufacturer who will actually be billing for a lot of these services. And I think if you look at the various businesses that we've been invested in, go back to 98 when invested in LASH, we started our ICS business for pre-wholesale third party logistics. We have always been a leader in this area as well and our goal is to provide an -to-end suite of solutions and support our partners at every stage of the commercialization journey. So of course as you have new more complex therapies, none more so than more intriguing than cell and gene therapies, and you have when you launch them you have cost issues, you have access issues, you have of course the distribution and storage issues, transportation issues. Ameris Horst Bergen is really creating a lot of services around this and you've heard how we even for a unique product now we're doing some kitting and different sorts of handling for a cell and gene product. So we will continue to evolve our business. There's a lot we can do. We can track outcomes on a therapy specific level. In some cases we've done that in the past. So we will be responsive to the needs of the market and continue to add value to patients on the access front and to manufacturers on taking those different distribution and other points we have to get their products into the market and efficiently and effectively. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Andrea Alfonso of UBS. Andrea please go ahead.

Oh hi it's Kevin Taliando for Andrea. Guys on the international segment you've discussed pricing visibility and on World Courier there's been a benefit from higher weights for shipment. Is that dynamic when it increases pricing organically on a go-forward basis? I guess what I'm really trying to understand here is how should we think about what drives margin improvement here internationally besides operating costs 10 wins easing for the whole international segment? Is that one of the big drivers or is there anything else we should think about in terms of the international margin or the potential for margin improvement in that business?

Yeah thanks for asking that question and as we look at the international business you know you asked about World Courier and there has been some benefit from price but I think as we look forward there you know probably you know what good deal of the benefit we'll see from World Courier will be in volume growth. As we look at you know margins overall in the international business you know probably what will impact it more than anything else is a mix and as we deploy capital like we did in PharmaLex you know those will be in higher margin higher growth businesses and that will you know over a period of time it should you know positively impact margin percentage growth in the international business and I think that'll be the key driver. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Eric Caldwell of Baird. Eric please go ahead.

Thanks very much. I'm gonna shift topics here a little bit. We're seeing aging of receivables and weaker cash collections in certain of our healthcare services coverage. Bio Pharma clients simply trying to hold on to cash as long as possible to take advantage of interest rates. I know payments really never seen as a risk here but at least on the pharma side but I'm just curious what are you seeing in contract renewals client negotiations when it comes to payment terms and are you seeing any of your upstream or downstream accounts trying to hold on to cash longer than they have in the past? Thank you.

Yeah hi. You know I can start out it's an interesting question given the interest rate environment and the different you know the sort of near recession we've had. I'm not the economist on this call but you know the terms in our business are very stable. You know there are longer terms often given to the physician segment but we are not seeing anything discernible, noticeable on changes in terms. Certainly there's a tighter funding environment for you know for Bio Pharma manufacturers and especially startup innovative products but you know that's a cycle. We think we may be seeing some sort of signs of optimism there you know and we of course follow very closely some of the world career peers you know larger life sciences type services companies and note their pronouncements their comments on this but you know nothing specifically I'd call Jim out on when we actually negotiate in negotiating fee for service and clauses. I mean the terms are pretty well established and you know the last thing I would say is that you know with nearly 30 years in the business the resiliency of the balance sheet that we have, the inventory you know the overall majority of the manufacturers we have are you know and I'd say the vast majority obviously we've had some few smaller manufacturers you know have got running to financial problems in the last couple of quarters but it's if you look at the gross business of Amerisourceburg and it's fairly negligible and very stable. Jim you want to add something?

Yeah yeah so this is you know of course something that we monitor and something that we manage you know very closely and constantly and there's no meaningful change to call out you know of course in a working capital management and ROI C and free cash flow are such key value drivers for us over the long term this is something that we you know really stay on top of and I said there's as I said there's no major change to call out. Thank you.

Our next question comes from AJ Rice of Credit Suisse. AJ please go ahead.

Hey thanks it's Jonathan Young on for AJ. I'm just going back to the generic pricing commentary and appreciate that the improvement is in the pockets of products. I guess how do you think about this from a competitive landscape you know is the increased pricing perhaps providing an opportunity to gain share in the market if your purchasing might be better than others? I just curious to get your thoughts there thanks.

Yeah so yeah like I said earlier you know this is what we're seeing is the last few months is a moderation of deflation and again as you know you said it's in pockets so too early to call a trend and but of course if it were a trend it would be a benefit for us and then on the sell side which you talked about you know what I'll say on the sell side is you know it's a competitive market it's a stable market also so thank you.

Our next question comes from Michael Cherney of Bank of America. Michael please go ahead.

Yes hi thank you this is Dan Clark on for Mike. Are you seeing any impacts to sterile injectable pricing margins or supply after the Pfizer plant was disrupted a little earlier this month or last month and if so how does that impact academic guidance?

Thanks. You know it's very quick it's very soon obviously that was a plant that manufactured a couple of injectable products we've actually worked closely with the Pfizer you know in this particular instance to see if we could help we had a distribution center close by the impacted manufacturer plant but you know nothing to report yet it's we're keeping our eye on this you know our supply chain group does a fantastic job has managed through COVID has managed through all sorts of setback you know we had the former nationalism that that you know we had on one of the calls we had a lot of concerns about that I don't think that one one manufacturer plant will impact us and I also you know you're talking about one of the most well-established resilient manufacturers I would imagine they have their contingency plans and business continuity plans so you know I think we did Gemini and Bob Moush our COO we did have a call with our supply chain people to understand and nothing alarming yet but we'll keep a close on the situation and we feel confident we can manage through this as we have a lot of other you know setbacks and you know that are not overall material to what Amerisals Bergen does. Next question please.

Our next question comes from George Hill of Deutsche Bank. George please go ahead.

Yeah good morning guys and James I want to come back to Eric's question talking about GLP1s and I guess has the growth of the GLP1s kind of changed the generic mix and kind of compliance hurdles in the independent channels and I guess you know has this led to the independence kind of like artificially hitting generic compliance numbers with you guys to kind of offset the brand into generic mix I would just kind of love to hear you delve into that dynamic a little bit more.

You know George it's a good question I mean the growth of these products you know have been producing headlines and it has altered but we you know we aren't you know we far from a rigid organization we have you know we have discussions with our customers we stay very close to the customers I think in fact I think one of the things that I've been really proud about the teams in the last few years is we don't just deal with customers when it comes to RFPs the large and the small customers we're trying to stay very close to them and we have a lot of resources you know including the you know the telehealth attributes that we're trying to help with our venture capital funds but also just the general communication tools that we have with customers and the coverage we have and this you know the market as Jim said is competitive but stable so we know our customers well we know what's going on and if we have issues we help with them and certainly the growth of this product category is something that that will be discussed and you know potentially could be adjusted for but no clear trend yet but it's definitely a good thought and you know we have our big retail trade show this weekend and I'm sure that this is going to come up because you know you know we have Bennett uses this term headline grabbing products and they they are I mean since the hepatitis drugs we've never seen in the market but this is definitely you know more sustainable and even much bigger than that so and of course much different payer mixes etc but we we want to make sure that our partners community pharmacies in particular are stable for the long term and and this would include the management of these products which are important for their patients so last question that was the last question okay well thank you today thank you we we are kind of a little bit emotional here as we report our last quarter as a Maris horse Bergen and I know Dave Yost is is going to be turning over he's a he's he doesn't like us that we haven't changed us but we are very very excited to be talking in the future about Sincora Sincora is a name that I think really resonates with myself and the team as we look towards the future where we're even more of a united global health solutions leader this name has been studied very well by Maris horse Bergen and we we really believe that is resonates with our team and who we are what's also extremely important and I cannot understate this enough is who we are what we do and how we do it will not change we will continue to be a purpose driven pharmaceutical centric leader powered by our team members and driven to provide differentiated solutions to our pharma partners and provider customers we will continue to build on our foundation in pharmaceutical distribution further our leadership in specialty distribution and services and carry forward our long track record of execution and creating value for all our stakeholders as Sincora thank you for your time and attention today

thank you this concludes today's event you may now disconnect your lines