Guardian Pharmacy Services, Inc. Class A

Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to Guardian Pharmacy's second quarter 2026 earnings call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. I will now hand the call over to Ashley Stockton, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Thank you for participating in today's conference call. This is Ashley Stockton, Vice President, Investor Relations for Guardian Pharmacy Services. I'm joined on today's call by Fred Burke, President and Chief Executive Officer, David Morris, Chief Operating Officer, and Will Mudd, Chief Financial Officer. After the close today, Guardian posted its financial results for the quarter ended June 30th, 2026. A copy of the press release is available on the company's investor relations website. Please note that today's discussion will include certain forward-looking statements that reflect our current assumptions and expectations, including those related to our future financial performance in industry and market conditions. Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. We encourage you to review the information in today's press release and quarterly report on Form 10-Q, as well as the specific risk factors and uncertainties discussed in our annual report on Form 10-K. We do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statements which speak only as of the date they are made. On today's call, we also will use certain non-GAAP financial measures when discussing the company's financial performance and condition. You can find additional information on these non-GAAP measures and reconciliations to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures in today's press release, which again is available on our Investor Relations website. And now I will turn it over to Fred for high-level commentary.

Thank you, Ashley, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today to review Guardian's second quarter results. But before David and Will review the second quarter in detail, I would like to begin with some perspective on our performance through the first half of 2026 and our outlook for the remainder of the year. Guardian continues to execute well, supported by solid fundamentals across our local markets and meaningful progress against our strategic priorities, including continued geographic expansion. Through the first half of 2026, reported revenue grew 2%. absent the IRA pricing reductions, revenue would have increased low double digits, a clearer indication of the underlying growth of the business. Importantly, we have successfully mitigated the profitability impact of the changing reimbursement environment under the IRA through disciplined execution across the business, enabling us to generate adjusted EBITDA growth of 23% during the first half of 2026 compared with the first half of 2025. Based on our year-to-day performance and current expectations for the balance of the year, we are raising our full-year 2026 outlook. We now expect revenue of $1.43 billion to $1.45 billion in adjusted EBITDA of $129 million to $131 million. As we move through the remainder of the year, our priorities remain consistent, delivering outstanding service to the residents and communities we support, expanding our platform in attractive markets, investing in the clinical and operational capabilities that strengthen our value proposition, and maintaining the financial discipline that has long been a hallmark of our model. Supporting those priorities requires an organizational structure and leadership team capable of managing the scale of the business today while positioning for growth ahead. At the broader corporate level, in June, we took an important step in the evolution of our company with the appointment of David Morris as Chief Operating Officer. David assumed this role after serving as Guardian's Chief Financial Officer since inception. He has played a central role in building this company and has helped shape our strategy, financial discipline, and operating model. He knows our business, our pharmacy leaders, and our local markets extremely well. Moving into the broader COO role gives David the opportunity to apply his experience more directly to our operations and sales organizations. The new field operations leadership team we put in place earlier this year to help advance operational excellence now reports to David. He will discuss this new structure in greater detail. With David moving into the COO role, we are pleased to have appointed Will Mudd as Chief Financial Officer. Will joined Guardian in 2012 and has worked closely with David for more than a decade. During that time, he has taken on increasing responsibility across the organization and has played an important role in building and scaling the financial infrastructure that supported Guardian's growth and our transition to becoming a public company. His appointment is a natural progression and reflects our confidence in his ability to lead the finance organization through Guardian's next phase of growth. These transitions demonstrate the depth of talent we have developed within Guardian, the strength of our succession planning process and our commitment to creating opportunities for leaders to grow within the organization. Alongside these changes, Kendall Forbes, a co-founder and long-term business partner who played an important role in Guardian's development, has retired. We are grateful for his many contributions to Guardian over the years and wish him all the best in his next chapter. Lastly, I want to briefly address the upcoming conversion of the final tranche of our Class B common stock and the Class A common stock, which will occur in late September and represents approximately 13.5 million shares. Following that conversion, we expect between 35 to 37 million shares of Class A common stock will be held collectively by employees, members of management and directors, including shares they hold today. Nearly all those shares are subject to a closed window trading restriction until the next open trading window following our third quarter earnings release, which is currently expected in early to mid-November. The management and directors who hold the substantial majority of shares remain committed to taking a measured and prudent approach to liquidity over time. to ensure a structured and orderly process with minimal market disruption. With that, I will turn the call over to David, who will provide additional perspective on our operations.

Thanks, Fred. I am pleased to report that we delivered another solid quarter. Will plans to review our financial results in greater detail But I would like to provide some operating context and discuss the progress we are making to strengthen Guardian's infrastructure as we scale. Our clinical capabilities remain an important part of our value proposition and support our ability to drive top-line growth. Through the first half of the year, our clinicians have served over 300,000 residents. Across this population, our pharmacy teams have completed more than 50,000 clinical interventions affecting over 45,000 residents. As an example, we identified approximately 4,000 allergy risk and 5,000 instances of potentially duplicate drug therapies. These interventions help reduce medication-related risk for our facility partners and, more importantly, help prevent adverse health outcomes across the resident population. We're also advancing several new clinical initiatives and are highly encouraged by the progress we are seeing. One example is our Falls Risk Program, which we are expanding to additional facilities for further evaluation. Early data has shown meaningful improvement in outcomes and we are encouraged by the opportunity to assess the program across a broader resident population and data set. Turning to profitability, we continue to translate strong top line performance into bottom line growth. As we scale, we are benefiting from increased purchasing, leveraged, improved labor productivity and greater efficiency across our support infrastructure. While we expect these benefits to continue, we also recognize the importance of investing in the leadership, systems, and infrastructure necessary to support our future growth and will do so as necessary. The strength of our operating performance is also supporting solid cash generation. Beyond our capital expenditure needs, we continue to view M&A and Greenfield startups as a highly attractive use of capital An important driver of incremental growth. Consistent with that strategy, subsequent quarter end, we announced the acquisition of Wellness Concepts, a long-term care pharmacy based in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. This pharmacy adds a service-oriented team with a strong reputation for quality in the communities it serves. While it was smaller in size, it was very much in line with the type of pharmacy we looked to add to our platform. Additionally, we launched a new Greenfield pharmacy in Lexington, Kentucky, marking our first location in that state. Lexington is the fourth Greenfield pharmacy developed by the team that joined Guardian through our Middle Tennessee acquisition in 2009. The launch is a collaborative effort between our Tennessee and Cincinnati pharmacies and demonstrates how acquired talent and local market expertise can come together to support continued growth. This effort is being led by David Brown, one of our newly appointed senior vice president regional leaders. That brings me to one of our most important organizational initiatives in recent years, the implementation of our new regional leadership structure. To enhance our organization, we have appointed eight regional senior vice presidents from within the company to provide leadership across our national footprint. These are some of our strongest and most experienced operators who have a proven track record. They understand our pharmacy teams, our customers, and the markets in which we operate. The objective is to bring greater consistency, accountability, and support to our local pharmacies while preserving the entrepreneurial culture and local decision making that have always distinguished Guardian. Our regional leaders will help pharmacies share best practices, develop and mentor local management teams, and identify opportunities to operate more efficiently and effectively. They will also play a central role in strengthening two-way communication between our pharmacies and support organizations. This includes translating company-wide priorities into action at the local level, while ensuring that the experience and perspective of our local operators help inform broader strategic decisions. While the COO role is new for me, I have worked closely with our pharmacies and these regional leaders since Guardian's earliest days. I look forward to deepening those relationships and working alongside them to strengthen execution throughout the organization.

I'll now turn it over to Will for a review of the quarter. Thank you, David, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm pleased to be speaking with you today and my first earnings call as Chief Financial Officer. I've had the privilege of working closely with David, Fred, and the finance organization for many years, and I'm excited to continue supporting the company's growth with the same financial discipline and operational focus that have helped define Guardian's success. I'll now walk through our second quarter results in more detail and provide additional context around our outlook for the remainder of this year. Residents served at quarter end were over 210,000, up high single digit year-over-year, reflecting continued growth across our facility base, increased adoption rates, and continued contributions from M&A. Script volumes also increased high single digits year-over-year. Reported revenue for the quarter was $351.2 million, up 2% year-over-year. Absent IRA-related pricing reductions, revenue would have been up low double digits year-over-year in the quarter. Revenue growth benefited from organic growth, M&A, higher resident acuity, and our continued plan optimization efforts. We also saw a favorable product and payer mix, both of which we expect to remain supportive through the end of the year. These factors benefited gross profit, which increased to $80 million in the quarter, and of 18% year-over-year, with a gross margin of 22.8%. We delivered this improvement despite continued pressure from higher fuel costs. SG&A was $56.5 million and represented 16.9% of revenues in the quarter, in line with our expectation. As we highlighted last quarter, we reached a settlement and a payer dispute that resulted in an $8.5 million cash payment. which was recognized as other income in the second quarter. Because the settlement payment is not reflective of our ongoing operating performance, it has been excluded from adjusted EBITDA. Importantly, the resolution also helped establish a stronger mutually beneficial relationship with the payer, which was our objective from the onset. Stock-based compensation was $2.9 million in the quarter and should remain near this level on a quarterly basis for the balance of the year. Adjusted EBITDA was $29.7 million, representing 19% year-over-year growth and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 8.4%. We achieved this margin while continuing to absorb dilution from the acquisitions and greenfield startups completed in 2024 and 2025. These locations remained below our corporate margin and reduced consolidated margin by approximately 60 basis points during the quarter, compared with 80 basis points in the first quarter, demonstrating continued progress in bringing the group closer to our consolidated margin. The effective tax rate for the quarter was 26% in line with our expectations. Net income is $22.1 million, inclusive of the previously mentioned $8.5 million settlement compared to $8.8 million in year-ago quarter. Turning to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with cash of close to $90 million, up from approximately $65 million in the prior quarter. Importantly, cash conversion returned to a more normalized level following a one-time working capital reset associated with implementation of the IRA in the first quarter. As Fred noted, based on our first half performance and current expectations for the remainder of the year, we are raising our full year 2026 guidance. We now expect revenue in the range of $1.43 billion to $1.45 billion, up from $1.4 billion to $1.42 billion. Our adjusted EBITDA range goes to $129 million to 131 million, up from 123 million to 127 million. As we have historically stated, our outlook does not include any contribution from future acquisitions. However, we will continue to actively pursue business development opportunities consistent with our approach in prior years. With the larger acquisitions completed in the prior year now fully lapped, second half forecasted revenue growth will be driven primarily by organic performance with a modest contribution from the two smaller acquisitions thus far in 2026. As such, absent the IRA pricing reductions, we expect underlying revenue growth to remain in the high single digits. Reported revenue, however, in the second half of the year is expected to decline year over year by a low single-digit percentage reflecting the continued impact of the IRA-related pricing reductions. We expect our adjusted EBITDA margin to remain relatively stable in the third quarter, followed by a typical seasonal increase in the fourth quarter associated with vaccine activity. With that, I'll turn it back over to Fred for closing comments.

Thank you, Will. Again, we are very pleased with our performance through the first half of 2026 and with the continued execution across the organization, particularly in managing the impact of the IRA-related pricing environment. We will continue to focus on driving profitable growth across our existing markets, expanding through greenfield development, and pursuing disciplined M&A. We have a strong and experienced leadership team in place to execute against these priorities with continuity, accountability, and operating focus as we continue to scale the business. Combined with our strong balance sheet and meaningful financial flexibility, these capabilities position Guardian to build on the momentum we have established. As always, I want to thank our teams throughout Guardian. Their commitment to our residents, our facility partners, and one another is what makes Guardian such a special organization. Operator, we'll now open the line for questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. Please pick up your handset when asking a question. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Brian Tanquillit with Jefferies. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon, guys, and congrats for such a strong quarter. Maybe before I forget, David will congrats also on the promotion. Maybe, Fred, when I think about the M&A and the Greenfields that were announced in the press release here, just thinking about how you're thinking of the ramp process or ramp phase and how long that will take for those specific assets to get to company averages. And then if you can share with us your thoughts or some visibility into the pipeline for both Greenfields and M&A for the rest of the year into next year. Thanks.

Thank you very much, Brian. Appreciate you joining and answering your question. We have a very robust pipeline, as David mentioned. both for Greenfields and for new M&A activity. We've always said that it takes us roughly four years to bring these new locations up to the corporate average profitability, some quicker, some maybe a little longer, depending on what has to be done. So in terms of these two particular, I would

And then maybe shifting gears, just as I think about the IRA, there are obviously a new set of drugs coming under the IRA pricing changes in 2028. I think Trulicity and Rexalti are a couple of drugs in mind. How do we think about what that does to you guys, or have the PBM arrangements been addressed to where future changes from the IRA are already covered? Thanks.

We will suffer the revenue decline associated with the price reduction, but this next tranche represents about 40% Am I right, David? About 40% of the 2026 trumps. So the impact, revenue impact is going to be less in 27 than it was in 26. On the EBITDA side, yes, we're comfortable that we've mitigated the margin impact.

Awesome. Congrats again. Thank you guys.

Your next question from the line of Raja Kumar with Stevens. Raja, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon, guys. David Will, congrats on the new roles. Maybe I want to follow up on it. So I think you called out it's now a 40% relative to the 2026 impact for IRA. I think last quarter you had called out it being 50%. So, you know, there's a 10 point improvement there. So curious on you know, what's driving that differential and what underlying operational improvements or PBM, you know, payer contracting improvements have taken place since then to kind of drive that conviction?

The revenue impact is yet to be definitively analyzed because we don't yet have the specific drugs. So we're just guesstimating at this point based on the relative volume of the 27 tranche relative to the 26 tranche. So somewhere in that range that is what it'll be, but we'll know here pretty soon.

Okay, got it. And then kind of thinking, David, maybe more specifically to you on some of the kind of initiatives you called out, I guess kind of as you think about may be kind of mobilizing it and kind of, you know, putting it into, you know, more of a illustrative manner for the payers and the PBM partners. Kind of what are some of the milestones and kind of ways do you kind of foresee kind of playing into the longer term outcome for kind of all of these clinical capabilities that you called out?

Rod, that's something that we've talked about the past few years. It's been ongoing and we set out five years ago with a very intensive education process with all of our payors to make sure they understood the value that we bring to the equation for these frail residents and for the ultimate health plans themselves. But More near term, we've talked about our falls risk program, and it continues to make great progress. Our sample size is relatively small, but we've seen meaningful reductions in the fall-related risk metrics, and we'll be providing more detail as we continue to roll out this plan and we have more representative data to talk about. Great. Thank you.

Your next question from the line of Parker Snure with Raymond James. Parker, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon. Just wanted to ask on the regional leadership structure changes, just is this going to create any changes just in how you operate on a day-to-day basis? And what capabilities or strengths do you think that this will add to the overall enterprise?

There will be gradual changes, but as we talked about in the opening comments, these are leaders that have been with us probably 15 plus years on average. They've run very strong businesses, grown regions prior to the reorg. And yes, they will be able to provide more guidance and assistance and insights. and to some of our local presidents, some that have been with us for a while, some that are new through our M&A activity and I think will heavily strengthen the organization as we prepare it for continued growth. We think it will be a very positive impact and it's early on but we're already starting to see some impact.

Okay, great. And if I can just get one follow up just on capital deployment. You know, you have 90 million of cash on your balance sheet, no debt, strong free cash flow, relatively low capex. Just outside of M&A, how are you thinking about potential capital deployment, maybe potential shareholder returns, or do you want to remain flexible?

Thank you for that. It's a it's a very positive problem to deal with. And yes, our main focus is to deploy cash on acquisitions and greenfield startups because it leverages our business so well. Also, at this point, we want to maintain dry power until we know for certain what happens with the Omnicare assets in case there's any opportunity there.

The line is now open for additional questions and follow-ups. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. Our next question from the line of Alan Lutz of Bank of America. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and thanks for taking the question. Fred, I want to follow up on that last comment you made around Omnicare and keeping some dry powder available. I know it's a difficult subject to opine on, but what are the range of outcomes for you that we should be thinking about related to that process? as we think about the remainder of the year. And can you just remind us, is any impact from Omnicare and sort of the fallout there reflected in the 2026 guide? Thanks.

Good question. I wish I could answer it definitively, but I cannot. The deal has not closed, at least not that we're aware of. and until it does, I don't know that we can really engage in any further conversations. There may or may not be interest on their part, but we're prudently standing by in case that they may seek to divest some of their assets. Certainly, we view it as an organic growth opportunity But at the moment, since we're in somewhat of a standstill mode, we have not incorporated any of that into our guidance.

Makes sense. Thank you.

Your next question from the line of Grayson McAllister with Truist. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey guys, this is Grayson on for Dave. I just wanted to extend my congratulations to Will and David as well. I wanted to go back to the Lexington Greenfield. Obviously, you know, it fits in pretty nicely between, you know, your Tennessee and Cincinnati pharmacies. And I'd imagine you're already serving some clients in the state. So could you just talk a little bit about the thought process that goes, you know, behind that Greenfield and then, you know, any benefit that you get in the state just from serving some of the same clients or leveraging capabilities through something through more legacy pharmacies.

Great question. If you look at the map, you can see that obviously we're not in Kentucky. I mentioned this marks our first location there, but we have locations in proximity. We're currently serving business in Kentucky for some of our other facilities, and I think This is a perfect example of a contiguous expansion with existing teams. So this is what we seek to do as there's enough business in an area to launch a bricks and mortar site. And yes, there will be assistance from existing guardian pharmacies, be it Columbus, Ohio, or other surrounding pharmacies to help launch this business and support it. as it comes up to scale.

Great, thank you.

There are no further questions at this time. This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.