Cardinal Health, Inc. (CAH) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to day 2 of the Citi Global Healthcare Conference. Really pleased to have with us today this morning, Cardinal Health, Aaron Alt, the CFO of Cardinal Health; and Matt Sims, Head of IR. Before we start, I'm going to hand it over to Matt to make some comments.

Perfect. Well, thanks for hosting us, Daniel. It's great to be here as always. And so just before we begin, I'll note, we will be making forward-looking statements today, which are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those projected or implied. For a description of these factors, please review our SEC filings, which can be found on our Investor Relations website at ir.cardinalhealth.com. All right.

Great. And I think Aaron wanted to make some introductory remarks as well.

Thanks. Good morning. On behalf of Jason Hollar and our entire management team, delighted to be here and talk about our business. Before we do the Q&A, I just want to provide a little bit of context on the Q1 results that we issued a couple of weeks ago as maybe some anticipatory set for the conversation we'll have both in this session and during the one-on-one sessions over the course of today. And it goes something like this. First, we were really pleased with our Q1 results. All 5 of our operating segments showed double-digit profit growth. That was headlined by our largest business, our pharma and Specialty services business, which had significant profit growth really driven by 3 factors, the 3 factors you want to see. Starting with strong, perhaps outsized demand really across the entire portfolio within our pharma business. That was matched with strong execution. The teams have been working very hard to make sure that we are servicing our customers in the right way, and that certainly helped to raise the boat as well. And thirdly, our focus on Specialty for the last several quarters continues to be successful. And so we saw strong growth within our $40 billion plus double-digit growth Specialty business as well. And so we were really pleased with that. The second thing going on was, of course, we have a reporting segment called Other. It's the combination of at-Home, Nuclear and Precision Health and OptiFreight, 60% profit growth with organically each of the 3 businesses growing more than our 10% long-term target. A lot of progress there against the specific strategic plans, the investments we're making really across that portfolio that I think we'll come to later on in the presentation. And then lastly, the GMPD business, which is the turnaround part of our story, a very strong quarter. That team makes -- continues to make good progress. They are managing through the tariff environment well. We're doing what's right for our customers. We're doing what's right for our business and making good progress, and I'm happy to talk more about that. If I zoom out from the specific business performance, though, I do want to highlight two things, which is we are investing for the long term. Jason and his team are not managing the business to this quarter. They're managing to the -- remaining to 3 quarters, 4 quarters, 5 quarters, 7 quarters out so that we have a continued cycle of good growth opportunities within the business, and we're starting to see that. We've been seeing that now for a couple of quarters. We continue to see that, I should say, as far as the success that's coming from those investments are now being realized. And lastly, and I imagine we'll talk about this as well. There is a changing regulatory environment out there. And I want to just convey at the start the confidence that what's in our guidance, the raise to guidance, we raised our guidance to $9.65 to $9.85. That incorporated that which we knew and that which we believe to be true. And what I would observe is that while regulatory change -- this particular regulatory change is new, we've been at this a while, right? We understand how to work with our supplier customers. We understand how to work with our suppliers and our customers, if you will. And we are -- we believe that we're on it. We believe that we have a close tie with the administration and whether it's IRA or MFN or the other regulatory changes out there, we have confidence in the future of Cardinal Health and the model that we are building.

Yes. I think that's a great foundation for us to launch and then dig a little bit deeper into each one of those areas of growth. And what's been surprising to me and I think to a lot of folks out there, not just on Cardinal, but on the industry, the drug distribution industry at large is just how durable the strength has been really over the past 7 years. It's been an amazing run for the space. Specifically related to Cardinal, you're guiding to 16% to 19% profit growth for your upcoming fiscal year fiscal '26. 8 percentage points of that is from acquisitions. But even when you back that out, the organic growth is very strong, ahead of your targets -- long-term targets of 5% to 7%. So as we think about the sustainability of that momentum, maybe help us parse out in a little bit more detail the drivers of the near-term outperformance? And why shouldn't we expect you to grow higher than that 5% to 7% long-term growth rate given what you've done over the past few years?

Great question. To answer, I need to provide a little bit of historical context, which is if you go back in several years, the growth aspirations for our pharma business was actually low single digits. And then we raised that to 4% to 6% a couple of years ago at our Investor Day. And at the most recent Investor Day, we raised that to 5% to 7% ex M&A. And so that's the core demand expectation, if you will. And we think based on what we can see that, that is a reasonable expectation for the industry or for the business, generally aligned with our peer set as well. And it assumes strong demand given the demographic trends that are out there as well. Now what it doesn't assume is outsized demand. And part of what you're reacting to and part of what we get questions about is the fact for the last couple or several quarters, we've seen demand that has actually been more than strong, right? It has exceeded -- it's been outsized demand, and it's been -- particularly in this last quarter, it was everywhere, right? We saw it in Brand. We saw it in generics. We saw it in Specialty. We saw it in Consumer Health. The business was humming. And so that outsized demand helped to lead to a very strong quarter for us as we push ahead. The second part of that I would call out is the operations piece of it as well, which is Cardinal has been finding its groove within the pharma business as well. And so we're able to service all the orders we're getting, and that is certainly contributing to strong success. And when you have strong demand and you're able to meet all the demand, good things happen as you push ahead. Now as we carry forward, it's also the case that the generic pipeline is robust, right? There is a significant number of pharmaceuticals that will go generic in the next 5 years, '25 forward, if you will. That's one reason why we have confidence in the guide that we've provided and that we can see that goodness coming. And as you all know, the generic part of our portfolio is certainly a strong contributor to our overall profit base.

Great. Great. And we'll dig into generics and also biosimilars a little bit later. But one of the questions that has been increasingly coming up at this conference, and I'm sure you're getting these questions, too, is just the impact of WAC reductions on your core distribution business. We were just at a panel right before this fireside chat where the speaker basically said this is going to put pressure on all intermediaries, the reduction in WAC. How would you respond to that? I think there's a good test case that you guys went through with insulin on WAC price reductions. But maybe if you can dig into how WAC price reductions impact your business, impact margins and how you can offset some of that potential.

Sure. I understand the concern. I understand the questions that are being asked, but I would go back to something I said in my introduction, which is we've been at this for a long time, and there has been consistent industry change over decades. The model has evolved. What hasn't evolved is the fact that the distributors as a group provide an essential service to the health care industry. Our role is to safely, securely and efficiently move the goods from point A to point B or point C, if you will. And that comes with a cost, right? And we historically have been and we expect to be compensated for the service that we're providing. And how that service -- how that compensation happens within the aggregated P&L, right, isn't something that's decided by one particular regulation or one particular line within the income statement. And so while there may be changes to WAC there -- I would observe that there is a regular negotiation with all of our supplier partners on how will we be compensated for the services that we're providing. And just because regulations change, doesn't mean that our cost of service in a 1% margin business is going to change. And so I would observe that we expect and will be compensated for the service that we're providing, and we have certainly seen that to be true. The IRA changes, questions around WAC, et cetera, this isn't happening this week. This conversation has been underway for some time. And we have entire teams that work with our suppliers on renegotiating those contracts all the time. And part of why we were able to, as recently as our Q1 earnings call to express confidence in our raise to guidance is that which we know to be true and that which we believe to be true at a detailed level is rolling up into our overall guidance. And I hope you take away from that, that we believe we're on it.

Okay. Okay. And maybe as we just think about how these WAC changes roll through your income statement, potentially a headwind to revenue, gross profit dollars, no change.

I guess I would have you think about it this way. At the end of the day, we are managing our business to profit, right? Revenue is certainly nice. Everyone wants to see revenue growth as well. But to the extent that there are WAC changes that are driving changes to the revenue line, so long as the profit line is appropriate, then we can work with our customers on what's the relative composition of the income statement in a particular contract because we will be compensated for the services we provide and again, acknowledging that we're about a 1% margin business overall.

Okay. Let's switch over to your MSO business, which is a bit of a newer strategy for you guys and actually one that you're pursuing in a bit of a more differentiated way than your competitors as I look at them versus you. You've bought nice growing platforms like GIA, Solaris. And I think what sticks out to me is that you're not wed specifically to the pharmaceutical aspects -- revenue-generating aspects of those business. I think drug spend is about 1/3 of those assets, whereas if I talk to your competitors, they're much more focused on the drug spend revenue generation of their MSO assets. So talk a little bit about how you're differentiated in your MSO strategy. And also, you're a bit unique, too, because you have not just the drug distribution business, GBO business, but you also have nuclear health, you have at-Home solutions. You've got Specialty networks. How does that all work together with your MSO strategy?

That's a really important lens on our company. And so I'm delighted to talk a little bit about it. Let me start with the MSO strategy and then layer in the other parts of our portfolio and how it comes together. When Jason became CEO of Cardinal Health and he reconstituted his management team, and we were together working on what will be the strategy for Cardinal Health going forward, there are a couple of things that were clear. The first was is that we had to identify our own strengths, where are we strong so that we could play toward our strengths. And part of what comes with that, though, is the acknowledgment that we have to run our own playbook, not run the playbook from the other guys, right? Because if you're running someone else's playbook, you're doomed to failure in that way. And so what you -- what we hope you detected from our Investor Day 3 years ago was the fact that we were very focused on our strength in the "other ologies" the 60% of the Specialty business separate and apart from oncology. Our goal was to be relevant in oncology. We needed to be getting the good pricing from the manufacturers that our peers are as well. But we really have strength in the other ologies, the urology, the gastroenterology, the rheumatology places where that's not new for us. We've had strong distribution strength there as well. Importantly, we also, in the background, and this was less well understood, we had strength within the GPO world in those categories, and we were building strength in the technology space of the world. And so even before we started acquiring MSOs, the first acquisition we did certainly in my time at Cardinal was to acquire something called Specialty Networks. Specialty Networks was a GPO plus, and the plus is really important because the plus is the fact that even if we were not the distribution partner to a urology practice, right, we were integrated into their EMR system. We were also integrated back up into the manufacturers. And so we were the connection point, if you will, between the practices getting recommendations on how to provide better clinical practice of medicine based on data as well then that data then going back up into the manufacturers as well. And so we had an ecosystem of urology customers that, again, even if they weren't a distributor customer, we knew the industry. Now fast forward, well, by the way, GIA, which was our first scaled MSO presence, they were in GI, not urology. They were also a Specialty Networks customer because they could see the benefit of what we were building in that way. And by the way, Solaris, which we recently acquired, they were not a distribution customer of ours, but they were also a customer of Specialty Networks. And so what we have been doing is building an ecosystem from the suppliers down through the clinical practice of medicine where Cardinal can provide value, certainly, if it's from the distribution, that's great, but also on the data side of the house and now increasingly on the ancillaries and the back-office elements of the overall portfolio. So where we find ourselves today is we acquired the single largest platform within gastroenterology, which we would call part of autoimmune. We acquired the single largest platform in urology. Both of these play to Cardinal's strengths as we push ahead. And along the way, we also both built organically and acquired a smaller platform called ION, which is now part of our Navista oncology platform, again, so that we would be relevant in oncology, but our focus is much more on the other ologies and the MSO platforms. You referenced it, I want to emphasize it. We don't do these deals to gain distribution, right? We should be winning distribution based on our distribution strength and our distribution economics. And so we don't include the distribution in the business cases that we put together on doing deals. What we are focused on is the broader opportunities within the MSOs. And what I love as CFO about these deals is the fact that only 1/3 of the economics is around distribution. We have higher margin, good growth opportunities in connection with the office visits in connection with the procedures and in connection with the ancillaries that diversify the profit streams that we have at Cardinal Health. And so we're excited about the roughly $4.5 billion of revenue that is coming with the -- how we're putting the MSOs together. Now there's a second part of this that is still building as the acquisitions are closing, which is if you think about my comments earlier about Specialty Networks and the focus on urology, so on the one hand, we have Specialty Networks in urology and we've just acquired Solaris, Urology Americas and a number of other practices. Well, by the way, our Nuclear Precision Health business has -- is the strongest provider of radiopharmaceuticals in connection with urology. You've heard, I'm sure some of this conference talk about Pluvicto, right? We are part of that Pluvicto ecosystem. There are a significant number -- there's a significant number of innovation coming in urology that our Nuclear Precision Health business is either manufacturing or manufacturing and distributing for our manufacturers. We like the synergies that come from that and are now able to connect the dots between the various parts of that ecosystem. And the same thing is true across other parts of our portfolio. Our at-Home business, right, so not in the acute environment or even in the physician office, but our at-Home business has a very strong presence in urology. And so what we love about these acquisitions and how we can take the broader ecosystem that is Cardinal Health, start connecting the dots to drive growth across every element of the business.

Yes. Yes. Great. Let's turn to GLP-1s, still a very big topic of conversation at this conference certainly. But I want to tackle it from a little bit of a different angle and maybe a 2-parter here. First, the introduction of orals in '26. Obviously, a little bit less, maybe a lot less complex to distribute than the injectables, the whole cold chain is not necessary there. You've commented that the injectables are minimally profitable. But as your costs come down with the introduction of orals, I'm wondering, will you start to generate meaningful profit from GLP-1s with the introduction of orals? And then separately, and I'll dig in a little bit deeper after you answer that, I would love to get your views on the DTC channel. But why don't you start with the orals?

They've not yet launched, right? But I would observe that the oral solids for GLP-1s certainly aren't going to be a bad thing, right? I can say that with -- I can declare that today. We would believe that -- well, first, we believe that innovation is good, and so we're always in favor of that. How the oral solids play out within GLP-1s and the broader ecosystem will depend on a couple of things. The first is demand. Will the oral solids replace the injectables? Or will they be additive to it, right? And depending who you talk to, you get a different view of that. If they were to just replace the injectables, then your point on -- it should be easier for us to manage it because there's no cold chain involved would be absolutely true, right? What we don't yet know is it -- will it grow the pie completely? Or will it replace some of the existing pieces? So the jury is still out. What is the case is that, a, we love innovation; b, we support patients taking care of themselves; and c, any time there's innovation, it presents us with an opportunity to have a continued conversation with the manufacturers of what are the right economics in that category. And so that's all I can say today.

Got it. And then on the DTC channel, certainly not just specific to GLP-1s, but probably most noticeable in GLP-1s, the development of LillyDirect and NovoCare, and there's a few other pharmaceutical companies that are launching direct-to-patient. I'm curious how the development of these direct-to-patient channels might impact your business? For instance, the speaker that I referenced the previous question mentioned that Lilly's tirzepatide vials, when you look at new starts are taking a significant share, and that doesn't touch a distributor. But I'm curious how development of this channel might impact your business and how you may change as we see further drugs flow through direct-to-patient.

Guess I would observe that we're in support of access, the same way we're in support of innovation. And the way that the administration is working with some of the manufacturers to provide better access at better cost to a limited number of items, right? We support that overall. And it is actually the case that in the vast majority of cases, if not all cases, I haven't done the math on every case, but vast majority of cases, there's actually a distributor behind the model, right? And so you have to be careful to differentiate between the flow of the money and the flow of the product. Inevitably, there's a distributor of some size, whether it's the big 3 or otherwise behind that. And while the models will continue to evolve, I'm going to go back to my earlier point, which is our role alongside our peers is to safely, securely and efficiently move the products to ensure that whether it's the acute environment, the physician office or the patient that they have what they need. And that can't be done at scale without significant investment. And how many people are going to invest the necessary dollars to get that 1% return to come into that space.

Right, right. All right. Great. Let's dig into the generics business because this is one of the areas of strength that you called out last quarter, and it is one that your competitors haven't really called out and maybe it's just their messaging versus yours. But I'm curious, your -- as you presented at your Investor Day, your long-term model is built on kind of 2% to 3% growth in generics. The recent performance is tracking ahead of that. Is that some structural shift in the market that you're seeing? There's obviously a lot of LOEs coming up there? Or is it a function of Cardinal-specific execution?

I think there are a couple of things going on. Let's just start with my earlier comment about demand. Demand has been strong, right? And demand is strong in our industry when scripts are being written because it's the script that determines what is -- what are we selling effectively to our customers. And so customers are -- our patients are getting health care. Their doctors are giving them the appropriate prescriptions relative to their health care needs, and that is translating into demand for us. It is certainly the case that the growing number of generics, the LOE, if you will, has been a positive factor in the last couple of quarters. We often talk about when generic volume is strong, we do well. Generic volume has been strong in the last couple of quarters for us. And so we have seen that. And we have no reason to believe that the generic volumes are going to decline in part based on the LOE. But I want to be careful to not get too far ahead of ourselves as well. We -- our guidance assumes strong demand. It does not assume the continued outsized strong demand. And I know I'm dancing on the head of a pin in saying it that way, but I want to be clear that our expectation is -- is it 2% to 3% or 2% to 4%? 2% to 3% generic growth over the long term. If there was more than that, that would be upside for us. The same way if demand were -- overall demand will continue to be as strong as it was in Q1, that would be upside for us as well. But we're being careful to calibrate that as we carry forward. It's also the case that our service levels are great. And so part of what's going on in our business is that we continue to better perform every quarter with our customers. We're not missing the opportunity to sell something in that way. And so that is assisting our business. And lastly, with some of our customer wins, particularly I'll reference the Publix win as well from the back half of last year, right? As we get those new customers that are selling those prescriptions, right, that is supporting our overall generic business as well. Lastly, we talk about and perhaps manage our generic business differently. If you're hearing me talking about consistent market dynamics on an earnings call, that means that we've accomplished our goal, supported by our Red Oak partnership of managing to an average margin per unit, right? We are much more focused on the basket of generics than we are on finding an opportunity in any one item.

Got it. And let's switch over to biosimilars. I think this is still very much in the early innings. But yesterday, we had Dr. Marty Makary giving a keynote and he was very focused on accelerating biosimilar adoption as a mechanism to increase affordability. So I was wondering if you can help us think through your biosimilar business. You haven't really called it out as a significant driver of recent outperformance, but a nice kind of tailwind at your back. But I'm curious how you're tackling the biosimilar market through your distribution business, through your MSO business and your Averon sourcing partnership and how all of these pieces kind of work together?

We have big aspirations for biosimilars over time, but we also believe that the biosimilars industry is in early innings in the game and that while there were hyped expectations of the impact that biosimilar was going to have in the short term, it's run into a couple of hurdles such that biosimilars has not become the next generics, if you will. And I would call out a couple. The first is that as individual items are open -- become open to the biosimilar alternative, there has to be a rationalization of the number of manufacturers in a particular biosimilar, right? Because if you have too many, the economics aren't good for anyone, and they end up -- it ends up disrupting the industry. At the same time, PBMs have been making choices around biosimilars and their formularies, which have been good for them, perhaps not good for the adoption of biosimilars overall, and we're watching carefully what that looks like because, of course, if a PBM makes a formulary choice, right, that limits how far a particular category of biosimilars can go as we push ahead. So we do have the Averon partnership. We are focused on supporting the development of biosimilars overall. But from our view, it is early innings and not -- certainly not a contributor to our profitability the way that our generics or branded business would have been so far.

Got it. Okay. Let's switch over to your growth businesses. We'll start with the Nuclear business. Just really fascinating. And I think a bit under the radar, even though it's been growing nicely, and you've been talking about it as a nice contributor to growth. And one of the areas you're investing in, you're making $150 million investment in new capacity. You're seeing growth in -- significant growth in Theranostics. You mentioned that there's synergies around kind of your urology practices on the MSO side as well. How are you building kind of the competitive moat here? Is it the manufacturing scale, commercialization services, your distribution network? Just talk to us a little bit about the competitive dynamic moat in the nuclear space.

The short answer is all of the above, right? And we are developing and building capacity in manufacturers in manufacturing in support of our brand partners. We already have an awesome distribution network where we can service 95% of hospitals within 3 hours. And as you think about the further innovation that's coming, I would observe that there are more than 70 new radiopharmaceuticals under development across therapy areas. What we need to be successful is for a handful of them to hit, right, because not all innovation will play. And we're excited about the innovation pipeline and what it means, not just for our business, but also for patients and having access to new pharmaceuticals as we push ahead. The business excites me because it is a little bit under the radar, but growing very nicely. And I believe we've disclosed that the margin structure of this business is around what the overall margin structure is of the other reporting segment as it is, so about 10%. So it's a higher-margin part of our business. And so as you can imagine, that means that we're motivated to put capital into this business to drive the manufacturing capabilities, to drive the distribution capabilities. And we recently announced that we were investing in more cyclotron capacity across the country as well. And so an exciting part of our portfolio.

Yes. And on that margin point, I think you've noted that the margin varies based on the model in that business. So it depends on if you take possession of the product if you manufacture, if you dispense it. How should we think about what's driving growth in terms of those models and how that might impact your margin going forward?

Yes. We don't actually comment on the financials around any specific therapy, right? We look at it from a basket perspective. And there may be different models with the same manufacturer depending on the therapy that we're supporting in that way. We ultimately aspire to be -- to cover the full value stream with the brand owners in that way. But we're flexible, right? And part of what we believe is our competitive advantage is the flexibility we bring to the equation given the scale we have as the largest incumbent in the industry in the U.S. in that way.

Got it. Okay. Let's now switch to another component of your growth business, the at-Home. I think the big news there, which was announced late Friday, was the finalization of rules around competitive bidding. Can you help frame in that business what percent of your revenue is subject to competitive bidding? If I'm remembering correctly, I think you've previously said around less than around 15% of your at-Home solutions business is Medicare fee-for-service and CGMs. I'm wondering if there's a broader number that you can provide.

Yes. We haven't cited a broader portfolio number, if you will. We have said the 15% number that you called out. So I'm going to anchor us there for a conversation. And I would have you think about what the administration is doing in a couple of ways. Their first objective in going to the new regulatory framework is just to eliminate fraud, waste and abuse. And we know this because this is what Dr. Oz and the administration has said to us. We stay very close with the administration on the proposals, both through our industry groups and through our own regulatory team. And as you think about what the administration wants to accomplish there, who better than a large public company that takes its compliance obligation very seriously to partner with them to do that, right? And so you add the fact that we have the right compliance framework, we have the right systems in place to be able to measure and provide the metrics. You add to that the scale we have with these regulatory changes and the competitive bidding, we believe the parties that are going to be the most successful in the new regulatory regime will be those that have the scale, right, that can make the right investments for bob and weave appropriately to help the administration get to their goals. And as the largest provider of CGM and indeed, the largest or one of the largest providers in other categories as well, we think we're ideally situated to be the best partner really across the board in the at-Home space. Lastly, I would observe that the near-term financial impact is small, right? The regulatory changes, we don't think will hit our business until our fiscal '28. We're 2 quarters into our fiscal '26. And so that's a lot of time, a lot of time to both work out the details, a lot of time to position ourselves to be helpful to what the administration is seeking to accomplish. And so we're very bullish on the at-Home business, which is part of why we did the ADSG acquisition to increase the scale of that business early on in the tenure of at-Home reporting directly to Jason.

Yes. Yes. And maybe if we just stick on the CGMs and pumps out of the competitive bidding because that is the most significant new thing in my view there, not a surprise because that was kind of hinted at with the interim rules. But I'm curious, and I'm not going to ask you to give away your bidding strategy on stage, but I'm curious, there was limit prices, ceiling prices effectively that were put into the finalized rule. I'm curious how you think bids will -- may develop relative to those ceiling prices or those limit prices.

Yes. All I can say is we have a strong relationship with the manufacturers. We have a strong relationship with the administration, and we will sort it out over time. Otherwise, I'd be giving away our bidding.

All right. Okay. Let's switch to your turnaround business, GMPD. You've noted that the net tariff impact there is going to be around $50 million to $75 million or so. As you can -- as you manage through that impact, what is the nature of your conversations with customers been? Really, I'm talking about pricing. And how do you balance that need for price adjustments with the goal of strengthening customer partnerships?

Yes. The GMPD business is part of our -- it is our -- the turnaround part of our strategy, and we've taken that business from negative profit, negative cash flow a couple of years ago to now positive profit, positive cash flow. So we're really proud of what Steve Mason and his team have accomplished over the last couple of years in connection here with that business. And that was all without reference to the tariff environment that came along. And so what we've been particularly pleased with is the fact that, that team has been able to adeptly navigate through the headwinds, the complexity that comes with the various changes to the tariff regime. We had called out a $450 million gross impact, 2/3 of which was being offset internally through operational changes and 1/3 of which we were going to have to take pricing in the market. We were the one leading that drive because we have committed to our stakeholders that we will do the right thing by the business, the right thing by the enterprise in doing that. And we've had productive conversations. Most of the pricing that we need to take is already out there. Of course, our team is monitoring the tariff evolution as it happens and adjusting accordingly. But it's a highly competitive industry, right? And just as we are doing that, we know that Medline and McKesson and OMI's businesses all are equally making choices in that way. And so our effort is consistent with our 5-point plan of business improvement to take -- to put our best foot forward with our customers to have the right fair conversations around pricing that we need to have to support our shareholder value creation. And so far, so good as our first quarter results indicate.

Great. And maybe if we can just end on your capital deployment priorities because that is such an important part of your business. You are generating a ton of cash flow. I think you've got about $5 billion of cash to deploy over the next 3 years, and that's taking out all of the capital that you're returning to shareholders via buybacks and the dividend. Can you just remind us what the priorities are for that capital deployment over the next few years?

Well, I'd love to talk about cash. I wish we had more time to do that. But you're right, we are a strong cash generator. We raised our adjusted free cash flow guidance after 1 quarter. So we're now $3 billion to $3.5 billion within the year. And you're right, we do have long-term aspirations that are much higher and some capacity there. Our view of capital is the highest and best use is to invest the capital back into high ROI projects in the business. And during -- after Q1, we raised our CapEx guidance for this year to $600 million to $650 million. That's reflective of the fact that we are investing not for our results this quarter, but for future quarters, future years as well so that we have the continued cycle of profit improvement as we carry forward. After that, we will manage our balance sheet to ensure that we stay at the BBB/Baa rating that we have. We expect to be back -- post acquisitions, we expect to be back in that rating during this fiscal year. And so not a lot of action we have to take there. We're well on track to accomplish that goal. Then it's return of capital for us, living by our commitment to return at least $750 million of capital to shareholders through share repurchase and maintaining or growing our dividend modestly every year. We've completed half of the share repurchase for the year already. And we'll talk more about our plans for that on our Q2 and Q3 earnings calls as well, but feeling good about that, which leaves us with the bucket of what's left in that way. And that's an important bucket that I spend a lot of time thinking about as well. And what we have committed to shareholders is that if we don't have a high ROI internal investment and we don't need to deleverage the balance sheet, we're going to look at a combination of strong return M&A or returning additional capital to shareholders. And I'm not here today to tell you what we're going to do in that respect. I will observe that we would expect that our M&A, as I sit here today, is -- we'll be open to further opportunities, but they are more likely to be tuck-ins than anything else in support of the strategy that we've already laid out. But there, again, if the M&A doesn't come, we will be focused on returning capital to shareholders.

Looking forward to more details. Thank you so much for joining us this morning, Aaron and Matt. It was a very interesting conversation.

Thank you.

Thanks, Daniel.