HCA Healthcare, Inc.

Hello and welcome to the HCA Healthcare Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to Vice President of Investor Relations, Mr. Frank Morgan. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning and welcome to everyone on today's call. With me this morning is our CEO, Sam Hazen and CFO, Mike Marks. Sam and Mike will provide some prepared remarks and then we'll take questions. Before I turn the call over to Sam, let me remind everyone that should today's call contain any forward-looking statements, they're based on management's current expectations. Numerous risks, uncertainties, and other factors may cause actual results to differ materially from those that might be expressed today. More information on forward-looking statements and these factors are listed in today's press release and in our various SEC filings. On this morning's call, we will reference measures such as adjusted EBITDA, which is a non-GAAP financial measure. A table providing supplemental information on adjusted EBITDA and reconciling net income attributable to HCA Healthcare Inc. is included in today's release. This morning's call is being recorded, and a replay of the call is available later today. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Sam.

All right, good morning, and thank you for joining the call. As reflected in our earnings release for the third quarter, the company produced strong results when compared to last year, with 42% growth in diluted earnings per share as adjusted. Revenue increased by 9.6%, which was driven by broad-based volume growth, improved payer mix, more utilization of complex services, and additional revenue from Medicaid supplemental programs. We also translated its revenue growth into better margins with disciplined operations. As a result, you will see in this morning's release that we raised our guidance for the year to reflect its performance and our outlook for the fourth quarter. Our teams continue to execute our agenda at a high level. Across many operational measures, including quality and key stakeholder satisfaction, outcomes were better year over year. I want to thank our 300,000 HCA colleagues who once again demonstrated excellence in what they do. As a team, we remain disciplined in our efforts to improve care for our patients by increasing access, investing in advanced digital tools, and training our people. These investments allow us to enhance capacity, improve service offerings, and gain efficiency. making it easier for our patient for us to provide better services to our patients physicians and the communities we serve typically on our third quarter earnings call we provide some preliminary perspectives on the upcoming year before i get to these i want to comment on the enhanced premium tax credits We continue to advocate strongly for the extension of this program for the 24 million Americans who depend on it for health insurance coverage. Today, we believe there is greater recognition by legislators of the negative impact this issue will have on families, small businesses, and individuals than earlier in the year. At this point, however, we still do not know how this policy will play out. Because of the fluid nature of the federal policy environment, we will limit our early thoughts for 2026 to our views on demand and the cost environment. We continue to see solid demand across our markets for health care services and believe volumes will be within our long-term 2 to 3 percent growth range. As it pertains to operating costs, we expect mostly stable trends consistent with the past couple of years. as usual there are some pressures in certain areas but we believe our resiliency plan should provide some relief it is important to note that we are still early in next year's planning process and these preliminary views may change before our fourth quarter's earnings call when we will provide you with our guidance for 2026. so let me close with this As we work to complete another successful year for HCA Healthcare, we believe the company is well positioned to sustain high levels of performance in the years to come. Organizationally, we have strengthened enterprise capabilities to execute at a higher level through our previously restructured management team and improved management systems. Competitively, our networks have enhanced service offerings for patients with more outpatient facilities, greater inpatient capacity, and improved operations. And financially, because of the increased cash flow and stronger balance sheet, we have the resources to invest more in our strategic agenda. With that, I will turn the call over to Mike for more information on the quarter and our updated guidance.