I think my mic's on. All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us here. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Glen Santangelo. I'm the analyst at Barclays that covers the Drug Wholesaling group. For our next presentation, we're very excited to have McKesson here with us today. To my right is a very special guy, Britt Vitalone, who I think most of you know is the Chief Financial Officer of the company, but only for a couple more months. We got some very sad news that Britt has. Well, happy news for him, sad news for us, that Britt has decided to retire, but he'll be around for a couple months. You know, let me just say thanks for everything, and we're obviously very sorry to see you go.
If it's any indication, you saw the way the stock reacted the day that press release came out, so that should give you some indication of how valuable people thought of you know, at the company. We wish you nothing but the best in retirement in Sarasota.
Yeah.
Right? Your golf game. Best of luck to you. I think right off the bat, it's kind of important to say there's nothing behind your retirement or anything like that. There's no change in the guidance or anything like that. We can just move on from that retirement conversation and let you retire in peace. Is that fair?
First of all, thank you for having us here.
Yeah.
for your kind words. We did reaffirm guidance. We gave dates for our May earnings event as well as conferences upcoming, and so we reaffirmed our guidance there. Our long-term guidance or targets that we provided are still in place today. It's just a good time for me, after you know, 20 years with the company and 8 years as the CFO for the company, it's a good opportunity for me to do some retirement things like work on my golf game, but also to continue on as an advisor to the company, particularly focused on the separation of MedSurg. I was saying this morning that when I joined the company 20 years ago, I joined the MedSurg business.
Yes.
That's how I came to McKesson, and I get to be an advisor on the way out as we separate it.
Okay.
It's a good way to kinda close things out.
You'll be in your seat until May 29.
That's right.
Will that incorporate the fiscal 4Q results and conference call?
That's right.
the fiscal 2026 guidance
Yes.
stuff like that?
Yeah.
27 guidance rather?
That's right.
Okay. Excellent. Oh, good. We'll have you around for a little bit.
You will have me around for a little bit.
All right. Okay, with all that sort of put aside, and sorry, I felt like it was important to spend.
Thank you.
A couple minutes on that, but why don't you maybe just sort of give us a quick recap. I mean, the company a couple weeks ago reported fiscal 3Q. Stock obviously had a positive reaction. Maybe you just wanna just sort of recap some of those highlights from the quarter, maybe some of the things that might have surprised you on the upside or maybe things that maybe didn't play out as you expected.
Yeah, we had another good quarter financial results and performance, and this is just an extension of many quarters over really a multi-year period now, where we've continued to operate with operational excellence and deliver strong performance again, in all of our segments as well as as a company. We had 16% adjusted EPS growth over the prior year. We had 13% adjusted operating profit growth versus the prior year. Very strong operating performance. We saw strong performance in our North American pharmaceutical distribution business, and we saw very strong performance in our core strategy pillars of both Oncology and Multispecialty and in our government meds business, which had 18% growth in adjusted operating profit year-over-year.
We continued along the path of portfolio management, which I think we have done a really great job over the last several years and made some good progress on our separation activities related to MedSurg and continued to execute against a disciplined and strong balance sheet and capital deployment. It's just for us, it was a continuation of many quarters of strong performance and really the focus that we have and the consistency of executing against our strategy really played out into another strong quarter.
Okay. All right. Maybe now we sort of dive in on the North American pharma business. You sort of talked about that. I mean, the revenue growth I think was 9%, the operating profit a little bit slower at 6%, but I think there were some, you know, some unusual items in there that maybe you could just, you know, help us sort of think through. I think when you factor those out, you were looking at almost 9% of operating profit growth. When you sort of unpack the performance in that division this quarter, you know, anything stick out to you in terms of just volume growth, you know, sort of generic performance? Like, what's
Help us think through the core and what's driving that above average growth in the cores to help us assess kind of the durability of those trends.
Let me first address the year-over-year. Last year in Q3, we had held for sale accounting in our Canadian business related to our exit of Rexall. When you account for that, we really had much stronger growth closer to the revenue growth that you cited here. We're seeing good performance across the North American pharmaceutical, both in our US pharmaceutical business as well as in Canada, where utilization remains stable and growing. Our scaled networks and capabilities continue to deliver good operating performance. We're seeing operating leverage being delivered across the business through the efficiency of our capabilities. We continue to see strong growth in specialty. Specialty revenues are still growing faster than any other area within healthcare.
We're seeing our customers, our largest customers are growing faster in this area, and that really is playing to the scaled distribution capabilities that we have. Across the board, the performance is very strong. Again, I would just emphasize, we continue to see efficiency gains within the business, and that's leading to operating leverage.
All right, just maybe on that topic a little bit. I mean, when we think about the volume trend that you've been seeing, to your point, it's been kinda strong. When we were coming into this year just thinking about the macro, I think people were somewhat excited about tax refunds and the benefit to the consumer. Maybe there was some concern around ACA reforms and how that might ultimately impact utilization. We've seen some wobble, you know, wobbling in the job market and, you know, maybe some companies are laying people off. Anything macroeconomic related that catches your eye with respect to volumes or anything along those lines?
I wouldn't say anything that stands out. I mean, utilization has been steady, and stable and continues to grow. You know, as we had anticipated when we were putting together our guide last year, it is strongest still in specialty. You know, those kind of macro factors are playing out really in line with the building blocks that we had for our guidance.
Yeah. All right. Maybe, you know, just sort of thinking about the continued strong generic performance. You know, one of the, you know, one of the things we do is we're always trying to assess generic pricing and the impact and how that ultimately filters down to your business. You know, through some of our work and some of the consultant conversations we've had, it sort of feels like to us that generic pricing, you know, has probably gotten maybe one turn a little bit better as opposed to or I should say less bad, as opposed to maybe what it was, call it a year or two or three years ago. I'm just kinda curious, when you think about the generics performance, is pricing something that's playing a role in that solid performance or is there something else that we should be thinking about?
Are you seeing this improving generic pricing trend?
Yeah, I would say that what we use is we leverage the capabilities we have at ClarusONE, provide us a really strong position in terms of the scale, the partnerships that we have across hundreds of manufacturers that allows us to source as effectively as anybody else. We do that with really two key goals in mind. One is surety of supply for our customers, and the second is the best low-cost quality product available. When we do that, we sell that back into our customers at a low cost way with that high surety of supply, and that allows us to create a spread for McKesson as well at the same time. You know, we've seen some stability in that over the last year. Obviously, generics continue to be a competitive marketplace, but I would say competitive and stable.
It's one of many capabilities that we provide to our customers along with specialty products and, you know, specialty distribution and cold chain capabilities. One of many things that a full line wholesaler does really well, like McKesson.
You know, one of the things, I mean, we picked up coverage of the stock as you know, back in December. Having been away from it for a few years, having covered it for a long time before that, it was interesting sort of getting back up to speed and, you know, it felt like to me, you know, most investors has a positive view of the space. One of the things that they were concerned about is sort of the IRA pricing implementations and maybe the reduction of some pricing across the branded spectrum in 2026 and 2027. I guess the concern might have been, right, has McKesson been able to renegotiate all their fee for service contracts effectively?
How do we get comfortable that there's not gonna be any hiccups along the way? Would you say the company had adequate time to sort of respond to those changes? How would you sort of describe the negotiations around your fee for service contracts to account for the IRA in 2026 and 2027? Do you feel comfortable with the actions McKesson may have taken?
Well, first of all, this is a normal part of our operations, is to work with manufacturers to understand what their pipeline is, to understand where those drugs are going to be distributed into what channels and what services are needed by McKesson to do that. We work with our supplier partners as we have for as long as I've been with the company on exactly those things. We work with them to establish its fair value for the services that we provide, and we get paid a fixed fee for service for that. This is nothing unusual. It's something that we've done for as long as I can recall and the natural part of our operating platform.
In the case of IRA, we had more time because the drugs were selected back in 2023, so we had more time to work with the manufacturers on, you know, what their strategies were and what services they needed and to establish that fair value. It's no different than the process that we've gone through for years and that we will continue to go through. We provide a select set of activities that the manufacturer needs, and we set a fair value for those services, and we're paid a fixed fee for that.
Okay. All right. Maybe shifting gears, why don't we talk about the Oncology and Multispecialty business for a second? You know, going back to last quarter, I mean, revenue growth 37% and operating profit 57%. Obviously, that's somewhat influenced by an M&A benefit, but, you know, when you think about the core organic trends in there, still very strong. Could you strip out the M&A piece for people to help us think about how fast that business is actually growing?
Yeah. We're really pleased with the Oncology and Multispecialty, adding not only our Oncology platform is centered on US Oncology and the addition of Florida Cancer at the beginning of our fiscal year. Now the build that we're doing on our retina platform with PRISM and that adding to that, and we added the Spokane Eye Clinic as a good example of that later in the year. The full year guide that we've given for this segment is AOP growth of 51% or so, 50%-53%. We've guided that 30%-34% of that is gonna come from acquisitions this year. Underneath the acquisition performance, which has been really good and we're really pleased with the integration that we've seen thus far, the core business is continuing to grow in a very solid way.
The platform has practice management, it has drug distribution, it has GPO services, Ontada, which is our data and insights business, as well as some of the clinical trials and clinical trial research business that we have. It's a very broad set of capabilities. It's growing at a very healthy pace, and we're excited about what's gonna happen in the future here. The other thing that I would say that I think gets lost a little bit, even outside the strength that we have in oncology and now in our vision platform, we are still providing distribution and GPO services to over 14,000 providers across, you know, a multitude of specialties. It's a very scaled and effective network of drug distribution, GPO services and other types of capabilities for those providers.
I mean, McKesson clearly deserves a lot of credit for, you know, for being early in this specialty game. I mean, I can't remember when that original oncology deal was. That was somewhere around 2010. It's just amazing when you think about sort of, you know, here we are all these years later and you're still growing that business close to 20%, right? Ex acquisitions, it's pretty impressive. How do we think about, you know, the maturation of that business and the outlook for that business without, you know, giving any sort of guidance or anything? Like, where do you think we are in terms of the growth curve of that business?
Well, I would just step back for a minute and talk a little bit about the strategy. You know, what we're looking to do here is build platforms where there is high drug innovation, high drug investment, which leads to, you know, high drug spend. Then we can service that drug spend on behalf of biopharma and the providers in a very efficient and effective way. On top of that, we can build a set of GPO services that is gonna benefit providers and their patients through quality and low cost access to products and services. We've got data capabilities. You know, if you think about our oncology business, all the providers, and there are now almost 3,400 oncology providers within the US Oncology Network, they're clinically providing care on one EHR.
You're enriching the data with insights and additional analytics to one EHR for clinical support purposes. Also, it can be used by manufacturers as they're developing their drug pipelines with clinical research and insights there. Of course, the clinical aspect of it in terms of clinical trials and clinical trial research and site management, that's also a part of the platform. It's a very broad platform of services and capabilities that's providing additional access, low cost, quality products and services, and affordability to both clinicians and their patients.
Right. When you think about how diverse these platforms are that you just sort of described and all the different services that you're providing, it seems like there would be ample sort of M&A opportunities to continue to augment these platforms, right? Build upon these services and deepen your penetration within them. You know, how do you think about the M&A landscape and just sort of given, you know, you kinda maybe created the blueprint and other companies are maybe trying to follow in that blueprint. I mean, essentially, how do you think about the M&A market at this point? Are you starting to see greater competition, upward pressure in acquisition multiples? Like, you know, how should we think about the evolution here in the next sort of couple of years?
Well, again, I would just come back to we are going to look to build platforms where there's high drug innovation, investment and spend. It's not on strategy for us to just go out and buy a bunch of providers.
Yep.
You know, it's practice management economics are, they don't really meet our threshold, and managing a bunch of providers is difficult. When you can do a lot of other things to support the providers and support their clinical decisioning and clinical choices and so forth with all these other services, you know, that's a better economic output for all in that platform. We will continue to look to add providers to both oncology and to our vision platform to continue to augment that. I think we will continue to look at capabilities that support clinical capabilities, whether that be clinical trials or site management capabilities, not only in oncology, but potentially on our vision platform as well.
All right. You know, one of the areas that maybe doesn't get enough attention, you know, you're talking about all these Biopharma Services that the company, you know, provides, and it's clearly becoming increasingly emphasized in the communications with the company. You know, how do we think about, you know, the contribution from these services and how meaningful is it and or can it ultimately be?
Yeah. I think you're talking about our Prescription Technology Solutions.
Yeah.
Yeah. That business now is gonna generate over $1 billion in AOP, adjusted operating profit. What we have done over a long period of time is a lot of the hard work in plumbing. We've put together a set of capabilities that is connected inside the workflow of providers and payers and pharmacies, all supporting capabilities and products and services that biopharma needs for their drugs. We have over 1 million providers now on our platform. We have over 50,000 pharmacies. There's over 23 billion transactions going through RelayHealth every year. That's all interconnected. What we have in a very differentiated way is this scaled platform that is connected in the workflow of providers and payers and pharmacies, providing them capabilities to better drive access, affordability, and adherence solutions.
We think that is really the hard work, and the differentiation is that scaled set of integrated networks.
Just maybe two more direct questions on prescription technology, 'cause I think it's important to sort of hear from the company. You know, one of the big drivers last year and, you know, even last quarter, 18% operating profit growth in that division. You talked about the demand for access solutions, right? I think investors have focused on the evolution of the GLP-1 market and maybe that demand for those access services or pre-authorization and eligibility checks and things might be less going forward than maybe what they've been historically. Do you see any potential degradation in the demand for some of these products, you know, just sort of given the evolution of that market, or is that not the right way to think about it?
Well, we haven't seen it, and GLP-1s continue to grow. GLP-1 prior authorizations remain steady, stable, and growing, and an important part of the business. I think we've talked about this before. GLP-1s are an important program for us for prior authorizations, but they represent about 11% of the segment's revenue. There's lots of other products and services and solutions within the portfolio. You know, we, in our access capabilities, we supported over 700 brands so far until today. You know, there's certainly the GLP-1 products, but there's over 700 other brands that we have provided access solutions for. It's a, it's a broad set of solutions across pharma and their needs. We've got affordability solutions that we provide. Again, a focus on access, affordability and adherence solutions across these product solutions in a very scaled way.
I think the growth is there. The solutions and the differentiation continue to be strong and the receptivity to these solutions remains very high.
Maybe just one more question. I'm almost even a little embarrassed to ask this, but, you know, one of the things, the questions we get from investors is around AI vulnerability, right? People just, they wanna focus on the fact that McKesson runs different technology businesses. You know, we were in this crazy environment in the month of February where anything software related was getting hit. Do you get the question you've been talking with investors? Do people ask you about it? Do you have any sort of commentary around AI vulnerability or anything along those lines that's worth sort of calling out for people?
Look, it is a question that we get. You know, are you gonna be disrupted by AI or are other companies gonna do that? I would say a couple things. First of all, we are implementing AI and technology in a very strong way. I'll give you a couple examples here in a second. I think the other key piece here that is very difficult to replicate is the scale of the connectivity across the number of providers, payers, and pharmacies that we have, and the fact that our solutions are integrated inside their workflow. That is very difficult to disintermediate. Now, there's a few things that I would just point out of how we're using technology today. We have, within CoverMyMeds, a chatbot that is now handling over 35% of all transactions. That's one example.
The second example I would give you is we're using automation to increase the efficiency of our personnel in terms of the number of cases that they can handle during verification season. Their case loads are now 120 cases more per person than they were a year ago, given some of the automation and efficiencies that we've added. Those are just two small examples.
Yeah.
We're continuing to look at adding technology into our integrated solutions.
Can we circle all the way back to where we started around the medical business, where you started with McKesson 20 years ago? The planned divestiture in 2027, you know, talk to us about why does that make sense, you know, particularly looking at the fourth quarter results. I mean, you know, operating profit, you know, down again, sort of lower volumes. Why is that business sort of better on its own? Just talk about the rationale behind that spin and how confident are you in that business' ability to do better on a standalone basis.
Yeah. Look, this is a great business and it's been a great business for a long period of time. We have really good product capabilities on the private brand side. We've got excellent distribution into physicians' offices across really all sites of primary care. We've got strong footprint in extended care, particularly out to the home. The products and the services that we have are very strong. You know, being able to focus that business and stand it on its own so we can focus on its strategy with its own growth capital, I think will really set it on its path. Today, inside McKesson, we've been very clear that our strategic pillars, where we have differentiation in higher growth, higher margin areas, is in Biopharma Services, Oncology and Multispecialty. That's where we're focusing.
While we've been allocating capital for the operations of the business for med surg, we've not been allocating growth capital. We're very disciplined about how we're allocating capital within the company, and we're allocating it in Biopharma Services and Oncology and Multispecialty. Separating it allows that business to stand on its own, go after its own strategy with its own capital structure. We've done this before. We did this with Change Healthcare when we divested that business. We exited our European businesses. We exited our retail assets in Canada. We felt like in all cases, it put those businesses on their own path with their own growth capital. In all cases, McKesson was able to get more discipline with its capital allocation and grow faster.
Maybe since we're pretty much out of time, I have one last question for you. It's a financial question. Can you just quickly comment on the guidance that you discussed on the fiscal third quarter call? You raised and sort of narrowed the range for essentially the balance of the fiscal year, which is just the end of this month. Any sort of thoughts on what gave you the confidence to raise and sort of refine that range a little bit outside of maybe just a stronger than expected 3Q? I fully get you're not gonna comment on fiscal 2027 or don't wanna guide fiscal 2027, but any sort of high level pushes and pulls that we should be thinking about for fiscal 2027?
Well, first of all, we raised and narrowed given the performance that we've had all year, the visibility that we have into the rest of the year, the momentum that we've had not only this year but really the last several years. Given the portfolio of assets and how they're performing, as we just talked about here earlier, we felt confident that we could raise and narrow that guidance. That guidance now will be, that range gives you 17%-19% year-over-year adjusted EPS performance, and underneath that, 13%-17% in terms of adjusted operating profits. It's very strong. Again, as we think about next year, you know, we are well-positioned in not only North American pharmaceutical distribution, where we have strong specialty footprint, but Oncology and Multispecialty business.
Again, not only the oncology and retina platforms, but again, servicing providers across 14,000 providers within that segment, in a very strong way. Then the continued growth momentum that we're seeing in our Prescription Technology Solutions. All of that is underpinned by a strong balance sheet.
Yep.
Strong cash flows and disciplined capital deployment.
Okay. As we're done and we're wrapping up, I wanna flip it back to you to give you the last word. If there's anything we didn't discuss you think is important to mention, any final words you wanna leave with the investors here today?
I think McKesson has performed on a consistent, stable, and strong level for years now. The consistency to the strategy that we've laid out year in, year out, our ability to continue to invest in the business to drive, you know, modernization and automation and get further efficiencies, these businesses are very well performing and they're well positioned to continue to grow in the future.
Well, congratulations.
Thank you.
To the world's CFO in McKesson.
Thank you.
Great career.
Thank you.
Incredible.