Universal Health Services, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q4 2025 Universal Health Services Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press Star 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press Star 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker for today, Darren Lyric, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome to Universal Health Services' fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call. I'm Darren Lyric, Vice President of Investor Relations. With me this morning are our President and CEO, Mark Miller, and our Chief Financial Officer, Steve Filton. Mark and Steve will provide some prepared remarks, and then we'll open it up to Q&A. During today's conference call, we will be using words such as believes, expects, anticipates, estimates, and similar words that represent forecasts, projections, and forward-looking statements. For anyone not familiar with the risks and uncertainties inherent in these forward-looking statements, we recommend a careful reading of the section on risk factors and forward-looking statements and risk factors in our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2025. In addition, we may reference during today's call measures such as EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA net of NCI, and adjusted net income attributable to UHS, which are non-GAAP financial measures. Information and reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to net income attributable to UHS can be found in today's press release. With that, let me now turn it over to Mark Miller for some introductory remarks.

Thank you, Darren. Good morning, everybody joining our call. Thank you for your interest in UHS. We closed out 2025 with strong results. Revenue growth for the fourth quarter was 9%. Adjusted EBITDA net of NCI increased 10% and adjusted EPS increased 20% as compared to the fourth quarter of 2024. For the full year 2025, revenue growth was 10%, adjusted EBITDA net of NCI increased 15%, and adjusted EPS increased 31%. Our fourth quarter and four-year performance were highlighted in particular by continued strong expense management in acute care, sequential volume improvements in behavioral health, solid pricing across both segments, and significant share repurchase activity. Looking back on 2025, I'm very proud of the progress we've made across the organization in several critical areas. We strengthen our growth agenda with the addition of new inpatient capacity while also intensifying our focus in the outpatient arena through the addition of new service locations across both segments. We demonstrated financial discipline by managing expenses well in the face of a dynamic operating environment. And we accelerated the pace of technology adoption to improve clinical outcomes and drive greater operating efficiency. Speaking first to our growth agenda, over the past two years, we've opened two new acute care hospitals and laid the groundwork for significant new acute care capacities to come online during 2026, with three inpatient expansions totaling 178 licensed beds in Florida, California, and Nevada, and a state-of-the-art 156-bed de novo hospital in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, that will open in the second quarter. In our behavioral segment, we've taken a disciplined approach to new bed capacity during 2025, as we devoted more resources to accelerate our outpatient behavioral strategy. For 2026, we have two behavioral de novo projects totaling 264 beds, including a joint venture project with the Jefferson Health System in Pennsylvania. On the outpatient side, We operate 119 outpatient behavioral locations, including 10 new freestanding centers opened under our 1,000 branches wellness brand during 2025. We are on track to open at least 10 more branches locations during 2026, and our team continues to pursue opportunities to accelerate our outpatient behavioral growth rate and diversify our segment payer mix and service offerings to sustain our leadership position as a provider of choice. In terms of expense management, our acute care margins improved in 2025 due to reduced contract labor costs and strong supply chain management performance. Labor productivity also improved through a 2% reduction in same facility acute care length And this remains an area of opportunity for us in 2026. In our behavioral segment, margins were stable in 2025 as compared to 2024, even as we made investments in staffing capacity to relieve some of our labor constraints that have held back our volume growth in certain markets. These investments position us more strongly for volume improvements during 2026. Finally, from a technology perspective, we've deployed AI and advanced technologies in two primary domains within our business, in our operations to impact quality and patient experience, and in our administrative operations to increase efficiency. We have a strong team in place with demonstrated success in evaluating and deploying technology at scale across both acute care and behavioral health divisions. On the operational side, we fully rolled out agentic AI to improve post-discharge care and reduce readmissions. In 2026, we are focused on rolling out new patient safety technology and behavioral health. And in acute care, we are deploying AI across several departments and functions to get out and outcomes. On the administrative side, we enhanced our acute care revenue cycle operations by deploying AI-based solutions to improve documentation and streamline our claims appeals process. Over the next several quarters, we will be rolling out process improvements and new technologies in our behavioral health revenue cycle operations. In behavioral health, we are also leveraging AI features and an existing digital tool to streamline the referral and intake process to improve response times to new referrals and improve volumes. In closing, we are optimistic about the future because we continue to invest in our people, our facilities, and in technology that will improve quality, patient experience, and operating efficiency. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Steve Filton for more details on the quarter and our financial outlook for 2026.