Tenet Healthcare Corporation

Good morning and welcome to Tenant Healthcare's Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. I'll now turn the call over to Tenant's Vice President of Investor Relations, Regina Nethery.

Thank you. We're pleased to have you join us for a discussion of Tenant's Third Quarter 2021 results, as well as a discussion of our financial outlook. Tenant Senior Management participating in today's call will be Ron Rittenmeyer, Executive Chairman, Dr. Sam Sataria, Chief Executive Officer, and Dan Kinselemi, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Our webcast this morning includes an accompanying slide presentation, which has been posted to the Investor Relations section of our website, TenantHealth.com. Listeners to this call are advised that certain statements made during our discussion today are forward-looking and represent tenant management's expectations based on currently available information. Actual results and plans could differ materially. Tenant is under no obligation to update any forward-looking statements based on subsequent information. Investors should take note of the cautionary statement slide included in today's presentation, as well as the risk factors discussed in our most recent Form 10-K and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. With that, I'll turn the call over to Ron.

Thank you, Regina, and thank you all for joining us to discuss the third quarter. As you can see in the results we posted, it was a very, very strong quarter. company-wide, performance which continues to be driven by database decision-making has continued to provide consistency in every business segment. Our year-to-date results continue ahead of our expectations, and as a result, for the third time this year, we're raising the midpoint of our adjusted EBITDA guidance by 100 million to reflect the continued strong year-to-date performance we have achieved, and what we believe is a positive trajectory for the remainder of the year. This reflects the foundational strengths we have invested in over the past few years. And as these are established across the enterprise, supports the success, continued success of the ongoing transformation. What we achieved in the third quarter is notable along many dimensions, but particularly given the significant surge of COVID cases in many of our markets. And while we have actually begun to see a reduction in cases, I mean, our peak was was clearly pushing up closer to 2,000. Today, we're still at about 700 plus cases across the company. But even given the continued peaks, or not the continued peak, but the continued improvement, we continue to cycle through these peaks and valleys of the pandemic, and we continue to navigate the challenges of various variants. We are consistent in applying the learnings from each event. and have been successful in expanding this important information quickly and effectively across all markets. Our operators have done really a great job dealing with these rapid changes, adapting and adjusting their go-forward paths. The associated expenses have obviously increased, driven by the greater number of cases, but our approach has been very effective in managing these impacts efficiently across all impacted markets. We've done very well in ensuring appropriate PPE availability along with other supplies by tightly managing our supply chain and anticipating where and when we need to increase inventories in our warehouses and our locations. Also ensuring the right level of staffing by balancing needs and adjusting schedules and maintaining a continued vigilance on safety. Our True North has been sticking to our strategy that encompasses ongoing service line depth, capacity expansion, adding and working with quality physicians, remaining conscientious about efficiency gains, investing in ambulatory, and maintaining a very strong commitment to quality. All of these foundational areas have been consistent over the past few years as we transform the overall company and remain focused on our strategy, which is consistent and has shown to be very effective. Across the portfolio, we're pleased with the consecutive quarters of improvement and outperformance being driven in our hospitals. In addition to discipline expense management, we're seeing higher patient acuity, both in MIPS, in our hospitals, and at USPI. We've also broadened our network of top quality physicians, which we believe is a sign of the quality and safety of our care environment and our effective management of the pandemic. USPI has continued to identify important partnership opportunities with some notable transactions in recent weeks. These deals bring us together with experienced surgeons across multiple specialties, giving us deeper scale or a new market entry point with a runway for growth. And Conifer continues to achieve solid margins, executing against their plan and finding opportunities for future expansion through the point solution model. We had a few additional items of note during the quarter from an enterprise perspective. We completed the sale of our five Miami area-based hospitals and related operations. Very significant. We also took the proceeds from that divestiture to repay $1.1 billion of our outstanding debt and lower future interest payments by $50 million. As you know, in August, we announced promotion of SOM to chief executive officer and my role to remain as executive chairman of the company and of the board. This decision by the board was made to ensure our transition period allowed a smooth and effective period where we could continue the collaborative relationship that has made the transformation of Tenet a success over these last few years. I can honestly report today that we have continued to operate as an effective team, as Sam steps actively into the role of CEO without the slightest slippage in performance. We will continue to work closely together and have the opportunity to maintain this approach for at least the next 14 months that will make this transition truly a success. So with that, I'll turn it over to Sam, our CEO, to share his perspective on the quarter. Sam?