CVS Health Corporation

Good morning. My name is Lisa, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the CVS Health Q2 2019 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the pounds key. Thank you. Larry Merlot, you may begin your conference.

Well, good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Before we get started, I'd like to introduce our new Senior VP of Investor Relations, Valerie Hartel. Valerie brings more than two decades of investor relations experience in the healthcare and financial services sectors, and we're excited to have her on board. So with that, let me pass the call to Valerie to get us started.

Thank you, Larry, and good morning. I'm excited to join the CVS Health team and look forward to working with all of you. I would like to welcome you to the conference call to discuss CVS Health's second quarter 2019 results and outlook for the remainder of the year. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. In addition to Larry, I'm joined this morning by Eva Barado, Executive Vice President and CFO. Following our prepared remarks, we'll host a question and answer session. John Roberts, Chief Operating Officer, Karen Lynch, President of Aetna, Derica Rice, President of Caremark, and Kevin Hurrican, President of CVS Pharmacy, will also be joining us for the question and answer session. In order to provide more people with the chance to ask their questions during the Q&A, please limit yourself to no more than one question with a quick follow-up. In addition to this call and our press release, We have posted slide presentation on our website that summarizes the information in our prepared remarks, as well as some additional facts and figures regarding our operating performance and guidance. Our Form 10-Q will be filed later today, and that too will be available on our website once filed. Please note that during this call, we will make certain forward-looking statements that reflect our current views related to our future financial performance, future events, and industry and market conditions and forward-looking statements related to the integration of the EDMA acquisition, including the expected consumer benefits, financial projections, and synergies. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from what may be indicated in the forward-looking statements. We strongly encourage you to review the information in the reports we filed with the SEC regarding these specific risks and uncertainties. in particular those that are described in the risk factors section of our annual report on Form 10-K and the cautionary statement disclosures in our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. You should also review the section entitled Forward-Looking Statements in this morning's earnings press release. During this call, we will use non-GAAP financial measures when talking about the company's performance and financial conditions. In accordance with SEC regulations, you can find a discussion of these non-GAAP measures and the comparable GAAP measures in this morning's earnings press release and the reconciliation document posted on the investor relations portion of our website. And as always, today's call is being broadcast on our website, where it will be archived for one year following today's call. Now we'll turn the call back over to Larry.