AmerisourceBergen Corporation (NYSE:ABC) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 1, 2023
Operator: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the AmerisourceBergen Q1 FY 2023 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Bruno and I will be operating your call today. I will now hand over to your host, Mr. Bennett Murphy. Mr. Bennett. Please go ahead.
Bennett Murphy: Thank you. Good morning, good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us for this conference call to discuss AmerisourceBergen’s fiscal 2023 first quarter results. I am Bennett Murphy, Senior Vice President, Head of Investor Relations and Treasury. Joining me today are Steve Collis, Chairman, President and CEO; and Jim Cleary, Executive Vice President and CFO. On today’s call, we will be discussing non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation of these measures to GAAP are provided in today’s press release, which is available on our website at investor.amerisourcebergen.com. We’ve also posted a slide presentation to accompany today’s press release on our investor website. During the conference call, we will make forward-looking statements about our business and financial expectations on an adjusted non-GAAP basis, including, but not limited to, EPS, operating income, and income taxes.
Forward-looking statements are based on management’s current expectations and are subject to uncertainty and change. For a discussion of key risks and assumptions, we refer you to today’s press release and our SEC filings, including our most recent 10-K. AmerisourceBergen assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, and this call cannot be rebroadcast without the expressed permission of the company. You will have an opportunity to ask questions after today’s remarks by management and we ask that you limit your questions to one per participant in order for us to get to as many participants as possible within the hour. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Steve.
Steve Collis: Thank you, Bennett. Good morning and good afternoon to everyone on the call. Today, we will discuss AmerisourceBergen’s fiscal 2023 first quarter results, our future under a new unified identity, and our impact from our position at the center of global pharmaceutical innovation and access. In the first quarter of fiscal 2023, we delivered solid financial results, with revenue of nearly $63 billion, representing 5% growth on a year-over-year basis along with adjusted EPS growth of 5%. These results reflect the resilience of our business as we focus on execution excellence, provided value-added solutions to our customers, and benefited from our strong market position. We also acted on opportunities to utilize our strong balance sheet to employ our value-creating approach to capital allocation.
Our business continues to have strong fundamentals as we maintain our focus on providing a differentiated value proposition to our customers and partners up and down the health care value chain. Importantly, our performance underscores the strength of our pharmaceutical-centric strategy, as we leverage our expertise, capabilities and scale to drive our long-term sustainable growth. As we announced last week, our future includes operating under a new unified identity as Cencora. Our new name resonates with customers and team members across geographies, reflects who we are as a purpose-driven organization, and better represents our impact across pharmaceutical care. Cencora also aligns with our growth strategy and long-term vision of building on our leadership in pharmaceutical distribution and growing our high-margin, high-growth businesses.
Importantly, while our name will be changing, our purpose and who we are as an organization remains the same. We remain united in our responsibility to create healthier futures as we focus on advancing our core business, enhancing our capabilities and growth and innovating to further drive our differentiation. We continue to advance our core business by providing our market-leading customers with a leading distribution network. Throughout our history, we have invested in our infrastructure to ensure that critical medications reach their destinations efficiently, reliably and securely. We also seek to be next-minded in our investments, and we have further enhanced our specialty distribution infrastructure with a new state-of-the-art facility on the West Coast, which we celebrated opening during the quarter.
We are now even better positioned to support our customers and partners with the unique logistical needs and by facilitating patient access to their specialty medicines, we promote the continued rapid growth of specialty pharmaceuticals in the market now and in the pipeline for the future. To strengthen our role as the partner of choice for global pharma and biotech companies, we continue to plan for the future of healthcare delivery and enhance our capabilities accordingly. This includes building on our legacy of leadership in specialty medicines to support our customers’ growing needs across a broad range of categories. We have recently expanded our portfolio of specialty solutions with the acquisition of PharmaLex, a leading provider of pharmaceutical services ranging from clinical development consulting to market authorization.
PharmaLex enhances our capabilities with additional regulatory affairs, development consulting and scientific affairs, pharmacovigilance and quality management and compliance services in both the US and internationally. With these enhancements, the acquisition not only advances our strategic imperative of expanding on our leadership in specialty but also on investing in innovation to further drive our differentiation. With assets such as PharmaLex, our comprehensive portfolio of specialty distribution and commercialization solutions is uniquely positioned to serve pharma and biotechs across the product life cycle, lead specific logistical and market access needs and ultimately deliver the most innovative and promising treatments to the patients who need them.
As we continue to support pharmaceutical innovation and access, we are focused on enhancing our differentiation by investing in our business to support our partners in bringing the latest scientific advancements to patients worldwide. In the area of cell and gene therapy, for example, we have many capabilities to serve our customers’ current and future needs. This includes our technology-centric partnerships such as our integrated technology platform designed to accelerate patient access to prescribe cell and gene therapies and to deliver complete visibility throughout the treatment journey. This also includes investing in our global specialty logistics capabilities which range from facilitating decentralized clinical trials to providing white glove distribution of the most time- and temperature-sensitive therapies.
With capabilities that ensure life-sustaining pharmaceuticals are consistently delivered on schedules at the right temperature and through the most complex situation, we have gained the trust of pharma and biotechs worldwide to be their partner of choice. This trust is built individually partner-by-partner, and behind each success story is the unparalleled dedication and talent of our team members who now include the team from PharmaLex. Our people are the foundation that drives our business forward and I’m humbled every day by the impact we make as we are guided by an unwavering pursuit of our purpose. United in our responsibility to create healthier futures, we embrace our role as a responsible business from a foundation of ethics, integrity, and transparency, we are committed to advancing our environmental, social, and governance initiatives to foster a positive impact on the planet and people while improving access and equity in health care.
Last week, we published our seventh annual environmental, social, and governance report, which highlights the progress we made in fiscal 2022. I’m particularly proud of the progress we made to create a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture. In fiscal 2022, we established a center for excellence that oversees governance of DEI, including our DEI Global Counsel and employee resource groups, establish channels through which teams across the organization can better partner, collaborate and consult, and improve the way we measure our progress using a data-driven approach. In a similar fashion, our supplier diversity program has made great progress investing in minority-owned enterprises. I’m impressed by the direct, indirect, and community impacts of our $1.8 billion spend with small and diverse suppliers.
Through our program, we have supported more than 11,000 jobs within our supply chain and in suppliers’ communities. We remain committed to making a positive impact in our communities. In recent years, our business has been at the forefront of responding to global health care challenges including the COVID-19 pandemic and the mpox public health emergency. From these experiences, we have strengthened our public and private relationships and further evolved our capabilities to increase our agility and resiliency. We are well-positioned to solve for potential future challenges, in particular, those that disproportionately affect vulnerable populations due to our footprint, reach, and strong relationships with governments, manufacturers, providers, and community organizations.
One significant global health issue that we are helping to address is antimicrobial resistance, which the World Health Organization, the US government, and the European Commission have each initiated action plans around. We recently led a call to action for health care distributors in partnership with GIRP, the umbrella organization for full-service health care distributors in Europe to explore public and private multi-sector collaborative efforts to drive a global response. ESG has become increasingly important to our stakeholders and to hold ourselves accountable to making progress in areas that further our business objectives and reinforce our ESG priorities. We are incorporating an ESG metric within our executive compensation program for fiscal 2023.
Designed based on feedback we have collected, our ESG metrics includes three quantifiable components focused on business resiliency planning for climate-driven events, female representation in leadership roles globally and employee inclusion and engagement. As we continue to think about what the future holds for public health, pharmaceutical innovation, care delivery and more, we are also constantly evaluating our leadership to ensure that we have the right team driving our future success. This includes the individuals guiding our organization from the top and we are pleased to have welcomed Dr. Redonda Miller to our Board of Directors in January. The addition of Dr. Miller, who is President of Johns Hopkins Hospital, further illustrates our focus on adding key skill sets and diverse perspectives to help support our business strategy and delivering on our purpose.
We also want to offer our sincere thanks and appreciation to Dr. Jane Haney and Mike Long for their meritorious service. Their advice, wisdom and counsel have helped shape the AmerisourceBergen of today. Looking forward to the rest of the year and beyond, we are powered by the resilience of our business and remain confident that our pharmaceutical-centric strategy will deliver long-term sustainable growth by enabling us to capture exciting opportunities in pharmaceutical innovation. We have a strong foundation in place, and our high margin, high-growth services reinforce the differentiated value we provide to our partners and customers, which in turn strengthens our relationships and bolsters our position at the center of global pharmaceutical innovation and access.
As we continue to advance our foundation, enhance our capabilities and invest in innovation to further drive our differentiation, we remain purpose-driven and well-positioned to create significant shareholder value. Now I will turn the call over to Jim for a more in-depth review of our first quarter results and our updated guidance. Jim?
Jim Cleary: Thanks, Steve. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. Before I turn to our results, I want to join Steve in expressing my excitement on our recent announcement that we intend to change our name to Cencora in the second half of calendar 2023. By becoming Cencora, we will be able to better connect with our team members, customers and other stakeholders on a unified basis across our footprint, and Cencora will better represent our role and impact as a leading healthcare solutions organization supporting pharmaceutical innovation and access. Now turning to our first quarter results, and as a reminder, my remarks today will focus on our adjusted non-GAAP financial results unless otherwise stated. AmerisourceBergen delivered solid results in our first quarter that were mostly in line with our expectations.
We finished the quarter with adjusted diluted EPS of $2.71, an increase of 5% over the prior year quarter. Adjusted EPS benefited from a lower share count as a result of our recent opportunistic share repurchases, and strong fundamentals in our business helped offset previously anticipated elevated expenses in the quarter. Our consolidated revenue was $62.8 billion up 5% driven by growth in our US Healthcare Solutions segment, which was offset by foreign currency pressure on the translation of our sales in the International Healthcare Solutions segment. While the US dollar weakened from the historically strong levels seen in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022, the year-over-year comparison still created a headwind as expected, which I will discuss in more detail when reviewing segment level results.
Consolidated gross profit was $2. 1 billion, up 5% due to growth in the US Healthcare Solutions segment. While each segment had better gross profit margins relative to the prior year quarter, consolidated gross profit margin was flat year-over-year as the foreign exchange impact on the higher-margin International Healthcare Solutions segment was a drag on margin growth at the consolidated level. Consolidated operating expenses were $1.4 billion, up 9.8% due to higher distribution, selling and administrative expenses to support revenue growth and reflecting inflationary impacts on certain operating expenses. As I called out on our November earnings call, we did not begin to see inflationary pressures in our business until towards the end of the March 2022 quarter.
The higher expense growth rate in this year’s first quarter was driven by a tougher comparison versus the prior year period. We expect the operating expense growth rate to decline sequentially in the subsequent quarters and to become a more normalized rate for the full year. Consolidated operating income was $734 million, a decrease of approximately 2% compared to the prior year quarter or up 4% on a constant currency basis. The as-reported decline was driven primarily by the impact of foreign currency translation for the International Healthcare Solutions segment, and was partially offset by growth in the US Healthcare Solutions segment, which I’ll discuss in more detail when I review segment level results. Moving now to our net interest expense for the first quarter, net interest expense was $46 million, down approximately 14% due to higher interest income resulting from higher cash balances and interest rates on investments.
Looking ahead, our average cash balances will be lower following the opportunistic share repurchases we announced in the quarter, the successful early completion of the PharmaLex acquisition, and the upcoming March 2023 debt repayment. Our lower invested cash balances will drive our net interest expense higher in the coming quarters and result in higher interest expense versus fiscal 2022, as I called out in November. Turning now to income taxes, our effective income tax rate was 19.1% compared to 21.2% in the prior year quarter. The lower tax rate for the quarter was in line with our expectations and we continue to expect our full year effective tax rate to be in the range of approximately 20% to 21%. Our diluted share count was 206.3 million shares, a 2.3% decline compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2022, driven by opportunistic share repurchases over the past several months, including $700 million of repurchases completed in November and December.
Regarding our cash balance, we ended the quarter with approximately $1.7 billion of cash due to the timing of holidays around the PharmaLex acquisition closed at the beginning of January. We prefunded the acquisition on December 29, which resulted in a prepaid asset on our balance sheet and lower cash balance when we closed the quarter. In the quarter, adjusted free cash flow was $584 million, and we remain on track to achieve our adjusted free cash flow guidance of approximately $2 billion for the fiscal year. This completes the review of our consolidated results. Now I’ll turn to our segment results for the first quarter. US Healthcare Solutions segment revenue was $56.2 billion, up approximately 6% for the quarter as we continued to see strong specialty sales and broad based solid growth in our human health distribution businesses.
US Healthcare Solutions segment operating income increased by approximately 1% to $572 million. Sales to specialty physicians and health systems were once again strong in the quarter as our leadership in specialty continue to position us well to deliver growth including in biosimilars, where we are seeing good trends in oncology and more recently, ophthalmology. The strength in specialty and broad-based good utilization trends in human health distribution helped to offset the previously anticipated higher operating expenses, as well as softness in the animal health market. As has been widely discussed in the animal health industry, there are short-term pressures in both the companion and production animal markets. From a cadence perspective, however, some of the softness in our animal health business in the quarter is related to timing and will normalize in the second quarter.
I will now turn to our International Healthcare Solutions segment. In the quarter, International Healthcare Solutions revenue was $6.6 billion, down 0.6% on a reported basis or up 17.7% on a constant currency basis. The as reported decline was driven by the impact of foreign currency translation on revenue for Alliance Healthcare as the business is more exposed to currency fluctuations. International Healthcare Solutions operating income was $161 million, down approximately 10% on a reported basis, driven by the impact of foreign currency translation on income for Alliance Healthcare and the divestiture of ProPharma Specialty, which represented approximately 3% of segment operating income in the first quarter of fiscal 2022. When looking at the segment on a constant currency basis, it delivered 11% operating income growth driven by solid underlying fundamentals and favorable manufacturer price adjustments this quarter in one of our developing market countries.
From a cadence perspective last year, this price adjustment occurred in our second fiscal quarter. This price adjustment activity offset the negative impact of the decline in the value of the local currency. That completes the review of our segment level results. I will now discuss our updated fiscal 2023 guidance expectations. As a reminder, we do not provide forward-looking guidance on a GAAP basis, so the following metrics are provided on an adjusted non-GAAP basis. I will also provide certain guidance metrics on a constant currency basis. Full details of our fiscal 2023 guidance can be found on Pages 8 and 9 of our earnings presentation on our Investor Relations website. I’ll begin with EPS. We are raising our full year diluted EPS guidance to a range of $11.50 to $11.75 up from our prior range of $11.30 to $11.60, representing growth of 4% to 7% on an as reported basis, or 6% to 9% on a constant currency basis.
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Our increased EPS guidance range is primarily a result of our opportunistic share repurchases in the first quarter, which results in our updated guidance on full year diluted average share count. We now expect our share count to be approximately 206 million shares, down from our previous range of 207 million to 209 million shares. Our increased EPS guidance range is also a result of the higher as-reported operating income and international health care solutions, partially offset by the reduced contribution from COVID in the US. Next, I would like to provide a brief update on COVID-19 treatment distribution contributions. In the first quarter, COVID-19 treatments contributed $0.12 to our consolidated EPS compared to $0.14 in the first quarter of last year, with about $0.09 in the US and $0.03 in our international segment.
Given trends we have seen to-date, we now expect the full year contribution from COVID-19 treatment distribution to be in the range of $0.25 to $0.30, down from our previous range of $0.30 to $0.35 that we provided in November. For the rest of the year, the majority of the expected COVID contribution is in the US segment with just a few more pennies of contribution expected in the International segment for the year. To reflect the lower expected contribution from COVID treatment distribution, we are lowering the bottom end of our US healthcare solutions as reported operating income guidance. We now expect the segment to deliver as reported growth in the range of 1% to 4% growth widened from the prior range of 2% to 4% growth. Our guidance for the US Healthcare Solutions segment excluding COVID contributions remains unchanged at 5% to 7% growth in fiscal 2023.
Now moving to the International Healthcare Solutions updated segment-level operating income assumptions. We are raising our as-reported operating income guidance for the International Healthcare Solutions segment to a range of a decline of 3% to growth of 1% from our previous range of a decline of 7% to a decline of 3%, driven by the general weakening of the US dollar and the incremental contribution from PharmaLex. The accretive and strategic deal is another example of how we create incremental value through capital deployment, and we are excited to welcome the PharmaLex team to AmerisourceBergen. PharmaLex’s leading solutions built upon our existing capabilities and will allow us to deepen our partnerships with pharma manufacturers as we provide support throughout the cycle from clinical development to regulatory support and access strategies to providing logistics services.
For additional operating income guidance measures for the International Healthcare Solutions segment, I would refer you to our investor presentation deck. These guidance measures also were increased driven by the general weakening of the US dollar and the incremental contribution from PharmaLex. In summary, regarding the updates we have made to guidance, there is no change in our guidance for as-reported consolidated adjusted operating income. And we are raising our adjusted EPS guidance for the full year, all while lowering our expectations for COVID contributions. Before I turn to my closing remarks, I would like to briefly discuss a few highlights about how we are working to ensure a resilient supply chain and mitigate our impact on climate change.
As a crucial member of the global pharmaceutical supply chain, we play a key role in ensuring the safe and reliable supply of medications. We take this role seriously and have robust plans and teams in place to support supply chain resiliency. In fiscal 2022, we advance these efforts and expanded the scope of our physical risk assessment process to reflect our expanded footprint since we last conducted a physical risk assessment in 2020. In 2022, we included nearly 400 sites across 24 countries, up from 100 sites. The updated assessment will inform our business continuity planning process to help ensure the continuity of supply in the event of extreme weather or natural disasters. While we prepare for and adapt our business to address the impacts of a change in climate, we continue to look at ways we can reduce our carbon footprint and be good environmental stewards.
As part of these efforts, in May 2022, we submitted a near-term target to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to the science-based targets initiative for validation. In January, we learned the science-based targets initiative approved our near-term science-based emissions reduction target. In addition to the items Steve and I have discussed today, our recently published ESG report contains additional information on how we are living our purpose and creating healthier futures through our ESG initiatives. The report aligns with a number of leading ESG reporting standards and frameworks and key data points have been externally assured. I would encourage you to review the report’s entirety on its dedicated microsite at esg.amerisourcebergen.com.
In closing, our updated fiscal 2023 guidance reflects our continued strategic use of capital to create value for our stakeholders through a combination of returning capital to shareholders and investing in our business to further our value proposition for our partners. Powered by the continued resilience and growth of our business. As we progress through 2023, we remain focused on executing on our long-term strategy, and through our foundation and pharmaceutical distribution and complementary higher-margin, high-growth businesses, we are well positioned to create long-term sustainable growth. Now I will turn the call over to the operator to open the line for questions. Operator?
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