Community Health Systems, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Community Health System's third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Anton High, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Betsy. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Community Health Systems' third quarter 2025 conference call. Joining me today on the call are Kevin Hammons, President and Interim Chief Executive Officer and Jason Johnson, Senior Vice President, Chief Accounting Officer, and Interim Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'll remind everyone this conference call may contain certain forward-looking statements, including all statements that do not relate solely to historical or current facts. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of known and unknown risks, as described in headings such as risk factors in our annual report on Form 10-K and other reports filed with or furnished to the SEC. Actual results may differ significantly from those expressed in any forward-looking statements in today's discussion. We do not intend to update any of these forward-looking statements. Yesterday afternoon we issued a press release with our financial statements and definitions and calculations of adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS. We've also posted a supplemental slide presentation on our website. All calculations we will discuss today exclude gains or losses from early extinguishment of debt and impairments, gains, or losses on the sale of businesses. With that said, I'll turn the call over to Kevin Hammons, President and Interim Chief Executive Officer. Kevin?

Thank you, Anton. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our third quarter 2025 conference call. Before we jump into discussing the quarter, I want to take a moment to thank the team here at CHS for the support they've shown me and others through the recent transition in senior leadership. It is gratifying to see our team's confidence in the work we are doing here at CHS and their commitment to our future success. Over the past 90 days or so since stepping into my new role as interim CEO, I've had the opportunity to visit several of our markets and speak with many of our hospital leadership teams, including operational, financial, clinical, and service line leaders. It is always inspiring to see the folks who are providing high-quality care for our patients. and helps put into perspective how important our hospitals are to the people and communities they serve. At CHS, we will remain focused on supporting our caregivers, physician partners, and support teams to help ensure an exceptional healthcare experience for our patients. Next month, approximately 150 CEOs and CFOs from across the CHS network will gather for a leadership conference where we will discuss our vision for the future of the company and our ongoing commitment to investments in quality, improving both physician and patient experience, improving employee satisfaction, and achieving sustainable, positive free cash flow. As I've shared with many on our team already, I'm very optimistic about the future of CHS and our opportunities to continuously improve the healthcare experience. to continue to improve our operational and financial performance and to create value for our investors through disciplined and proactive management of our business. Now, turning to the third quarter operating results, our operating performance was in line with our updated expectations, and our reported results were further enhanced by the recognition of a $28 million gain from the settlement of some prior litigation, which reimbursed us for previously incurred expenses. Stored net revenue for the third quarter improved 6% year over year. We were encouraged to see some improvement in payer mix on both the sequential and year over year basis, as well as realizing the incremental state-directed payments from New Mexico and Tennessee when compared to the prior year. As we have done all year, we continue to grow our inpatient volume. However, similar to last quarter, the overall business mix remains surgical cases, and inpatient admissions were flat ahead of outpatient elective procedures. However, solid expense management across most categories helped drive slight margin expansion year over year, even when excluding the benefit from the legal film. We continue to make targeted investments and advance our competitive position in many key markets during the quarter, including capacity and service line expansion, such as the acquisition of a vascular surgery practice and the relocation of a large OBGYN practice onto our campus, both in Birmingham, Alabama, the addition of a new urology service line in Las Cruces, New Mexico, the addition of a new neurosurgery and spine program in Laredo, Texas, and new robotic surgery programs in two of our New Mexico markets. We are successfully recruiting physicians and advanced practice providers to our markets, At September 30th, 2025, we had approximately 160 more employed physicians and APPs in our clinics than in the prior year. With the recent recruits and planned commencements in the fourth quarter and early next year, we should be favorably positioned as we enter 2026. In addition, we continue to improve our capital structure, further reducing our leverage to 6.7 times, down from 7.3%. four times at year-end 24. Also, as a reminder, during the quarter, we refinanced $1.74 billion of our senior secured notes due 2027 through the offering of $1.79 billion of 2034 notes, thereby pushing out our nearest significant maturity to 2029. At this point, I want to introduce Jason Johnson, our Interim Chief Financial Officer, And we'll turn the call over to Jason to review the financial results in greater detail and discuss our updated guidance. Jason.