Cencora, Inc. (COR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon. My name is Lisa Gill. I'm the health care services analyst with JPMorgan. It is with great pleasure that I have with me this afternoon AmerisourceBergen. With me is CEO, Steve Collis; and CFO, Jim Cleary. They're going to make some opening comments, and then we'll come back for a little Q&A discussion. But Steve and Jim, thank you so much. It's great to see you guys.

Thank you, Lisa. It's great to be here, and welcome, Jim. So Lisa, I'll get going. I'll start off with our slides. And we're always happy to be present at the JPMorgan conference. Of course, it's at such a prominent presence in health care that we couldn't imagine not being in January at JPMorgan conference. So we'll be providing an overview of our company today, discussing our key differentiation and growth strategies and also highlight some of our corporate stewardship initiatives. So the lawyers get one slide, and this is it, the forward-looking statements disclaimer. But let me get right into talking about AmerisourceBergen, how we love to talk about it as a global health care leader. We are very proud of the access that we were able to create, the efficiency that we've been able to create and reliability across the global pharmaceutical supply chain. So we had a very important year in 2021 culminating in our June 1 closure of the Alliance Healthcare acquisition which was so pivotal to our growth strategy. We now are 42,000 global associates who we describe as purpose-driven team members. Also important to note that in 2022, we will begin reporting in 2 new segments, U.S. Health Care Solutions and International Health Care Solutions. Each segment has a foundation of leadership in pharmaceutical distribution with differentiated higher-margin, higher-growth complementary businesses. We have a robust platform of solutions, and it enables us to support global pharmaceutical innovation both upstream and downstream. And that's a key theme we'll be talking about is our positioning both upstream and downstream and our global footprint in the first world countries is definitely exciting for both large and small customers. So let's talk first about the U.S. Health Care Solutions. The U.S. prescription market continues to grow and has shown tremendous resiliency. If you think back to almost 2 years ago and just after the conference, of course, we are faced with the pandemic. But health care inflation has, of course, been a much talked about discussion. But in pharmaceuticals, inflation at the net level, has been very constant. In pharmaceuticals, we always maintain the most efficient form of care and hold steady at around just over a double-digit rate of total health care spending, so very misunderstood. We have business -- we have leading long-term strategic relationships in our U.S. health care business with key provider customers. Walgreens is, of course, one that comes to mind with some $70-odd billion in sales. We extended our contract with Walgreens through 2029. Some other key standing customer aspects are our Good Neighbor Pharmacy network of independent pharmacies across the U.S.; Mars, which is our largest veterinarian or animal health customer; and Florida Cancer Center in Oncology is a key customer in our Specialty Physician segment. We also are very proud of the market share that we have in key Part B segments and not only in oncology, but also in areas like dermatology, rheumatology, ophthalmology, where we maintain very high market share and high services and contracting capabilities. When you think about AmerisourceBergen, one of the key themes we always like to keep in mind and the background that I come from is really our specialty business, which has maintained a leadership in the U.S. for a long period of time, well over a decade. Close to 2 decades, actually. And we are uniquely positioned to support innovative products coming to market, including biosimilars, cell and gene therapies. And these products will, of course, continue to be an important part of our future. It will also be an important aspect as we look at our combination of distribution and services businesses. Our biotech and pharma manufacturer services support commercialization at a scale and solutions that we believe is unique in the supply chain. And the demographics of innovation really help improve the opportunities that we face in the future as evolving standards of care, including value-based care, organic growth drivers for our business and the innovation that we're seeing in the life sciences will continue to propel us forward. I would be remiss if I didn't mention our MWI Animal Health business, which should continue to benefit from pets being viewed as members of the family, and the growing demand for protein globally helps fuel our production animal business. International Healthcare Solutions, we'll be really presenting the segment with our reporting next month of our first quarter fiscal year 2022. So the largest part of our International Health Segment will, of course, be Alliance Healthcare, which we closed in June of 2021. The leading wholesaler in Europe really focused on pharmaceutical-based care, very much like AmerisourceBergen traditionally has been. Our anchor customer in the Alliance business is Boots U.K., which we signed a 10-year contract through 2021. And we have our payer network of independent pharmacies across Europe, are key anchor customer relationships that also expand on our community provider focus. And a lot of Alliance businesses are very much community pharmacy-based. Through our distribution business, we offer a range of solutions to downstream providers and pharmacies, furthering our value proposition to our customers. Manufacturer services are also very prominent in our international segment. We deliver a range of logistics and supply chain services and innovative solutions to help improve patient care. World Courier has been an outstanding business. It was the first acquisition that we made when I became CEO, and it remains a best-in-class logistics service, making it a leading partner in supporting clinical trials and ensuring temperature-sensitive shipments arrive on time and in temperature. And it's been a very important partner to pharma companies, even especially during this pandemic and how to operate with much fewer flights and had still been a very leading performer both operationally and financially. One of the prominent businesses within our Alliance Healthcare footprint is Alloga, which is a leader in specialist supply chain services for manufacturers across the health care landscape, providing end-to-end transport solutions and is, in fact, often how specialty drugs get distributed in the European market. So if you think about AmerisourceBergen, why do we like you to think about us in terms of creating a differentiated value for our stakeholders. We are focused on 4 key areas, especially medicine and services, which I've already touched a lot on. But our scale and our services deliver exceptional value to physician and manufacturer partners. Community providers, I often talk about the Holy Grail of AmerisourceBergen. That's community pharmacists, community oncologists, community veterinarians are such key stakeholders for AmerisourceBergen. And often, the services that we provide to independent customers are so pivotal to their survival and their continuity, and even they're featuring in regulatory matters and including reimbursement in the U.S. for community providers. Our customer partnerships, AmerisourceBergen is laser-focused on creating integrated and interoperable and continuity relationships with key customers. We work closely with customers as strategic partners. We listen to them, aiming to deliver innovative solutions and be their partner for life. Global access and opportunity. When we've talked to our Board and to our investors about the opportunity we have with Alliance, we think about what does this platform mean and how can we help launch products across all the first world countries. If this alliance was in place between Alliance Healthcare and AmerisourceBergen, if we'd had our portfolio lined up, why couldn't we be a global distributor for a vaccine and other important products that affect health care throughout the first world. We have 5 key business imperatives that are worth mentioning. We want to lead with market leaders, so that ties into the customers for life and the customer partnerships we have. We want to leverage our infrastructure to increase efficiency, access and customer experience. I've never been prouder of the work we did in the pandemic, the resiliency that we displayed. Of course, as we're seeing a surge now, the same themes of the excellent efforts of our team members as well as the business continuity plans and the robust systems and technology that we've deployed are so much in our favor. We're expanding on our leadership in specialty. This is something that we are absolutely insistent on is being the leader in specialty. Particularly as increasingly complex therapies come to market, AmerisourceBergen is really distinguished by key businesses like ION and Oncology Supply that are such key partners to community providers and are so well associated in the minds of manufacturers as leading specialty value-added components. We want to be a part of the increasing value-based care systems and Rx outcomes as a key value stream to manufacturers and downstream customers as well. So we want to ensure that, of course, the over -- well into 90% of units that are generic are, of course, incredible value drivers. But also, the overwhelming majority of our sales are in branded and specialty and cell and gene therapy, and we want to make sure that the value that those contribute, that we are a part of that discussion and a part of that calibration as to how do Rx items provide value. We continue to invest in innovation. We're very thoughtful about it. I would say the AmerisourceBergen culture has really shifted a lot to where we believe we can impact society and health care, including areas like health disparities and really be the provider of choice and that partner of choice for manufacturers. Let me give you some examples of the differentiated solutions that we provide. Again, innovation. We have a leadership in specialty distribution that I've talked about. Key to that is the focus, not only on ION, our oncology GPO, but also other contracting entities like -- through our IPN mechanism that we're hoping to gain more traction as those therapies grow in importance in alternate site markets. What AmerisourceBergen -- besides Alliance acquisition, what we may be well remembered for throughout the last few years and into this next period ahead as we hopefully reach the endemic stage, is our incredible role in COVID-19 antiviral and antibody therapies to hospitals and health systems. We've partnered with the U.S. government. Almost all the EUA therapies have been distributed through AmerisourceBergen. And I think it's a true testament to our facilitated effective distribution of these therapies in the way that we're able to report data and manage inventories on a real-time basis. So we've been incredibly proud of the work that we've done throughout the pandemic in this area. And globally, we've distributed 100 million vaccine units, so important role that we played. When you think about AmerisourceBergen, our global logistics services provide high-touch shipping solutions that are supported by advanced cold chain infrastructure. And we also offer access adherence and affordability solutions that are supported by an advanced technology ecosystems that helps speed access to therapy and unlocks valuable insights for manufacturers and payers and all stakeholders in the system. Again, if you think about 2021, I've talked about a lot, the Alliance Healthcare acquisition, which is highly financially accretive. And we are starting to -- we started to benefit from it in the 4 months in 2021. But we've also been able to, with Jim Cleary and his team's expert guidance, really finance us in a very accretive way with our commitment to pay down $2 billion of acquisition debt by the end of 2023. And we feel like we've got that well in hand. We are proud to be able to offer our expertise, capabilities and infrastructure as part of the solution on facilitating the distribution, which I've talked about. We also are the partner for the strategic national stockpile, and that's another example of the very value-added work that we're doing for society and for the U.S. government. We also are proud to continue to work with Walgreens, extending our contract with them through 2029 and working with them on the next phase of our distribution relationship, which includes central fill and other key items, some sourcing opportunities that we have together. Culture and talent have never been more important than during this era. Last time in 60 Minutes, they talked about the 20 million people turning over in the last 6 months of 2021. AmerisourceBergen has a very comprehensive pay and benefit package. And we think about paying our people in the most fair manner we can and the most transparent way we can as a great way to retain the excellent people we have and help them to think about a career with AmerisourceBergen. We've also made meaningful progress on resolving the opioid litigation during the year, and you saw the announcement last week that 3 states have committed to join in a global settlement that we have with our peer-based companies. And we've joined the science-based target initiative and are committed to limiting emissions to mitigate climate change. So again, our next slide is really again on the investment in our people and our culture, advancing the value of our most important resource, which is our people. I say it often in internal meetings, we don't own the wonderful products that we get to be a part of distributing and providing access to, but we do have people that we are so proud of and are so beholden to, to make them key stakeholders in our future. We support them, as I said, with comprehensive benefit packages and industry-leading pay scales. We make investment in talent development programs. One thing I've always observed is that people truly value investments we make in training, and we continue to do that. And this virtual environment is such a prolific way for us to be able to do that. And we're fostering diverse and inclusive teams so team members feel comfortable bringing their whole selves to work, and we spend a lot of time on that, and I believe we have the right balance around that within AmerisourceBergen. Jim Cleary, you will hear from in the Q&A session, has been our leader on the executive team, along with Bob. Bob Mauch, who's our Group President, and Gina Clark, who heads up our ESG and so many other initiatives in advancing environmental, social and governance initiatives to create healthier futures around the world. Our Board of Directors has been very encouraging of this. We'll be releasing our sixth annual sustainability report in the coming months. And we'll further advance our transparency with the additional disclosures on our human capital and through the release of our EEO-1 data. ESG has truly become ingrained in our thinking and in our business operations from focusing on operational efficiency, which has always been a core competency of AmerisourceBergen, to reducing emissions, to investing in diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. So we have been successful in creating shareholder value. This is a chart on the last 5 years. You'll see a 10.5% 5-year CAGR in our shareholder and our growth in EPS. And we have a strong legacy of execution, delivering growth and being strong corporate stewards with an appreciation for having a healthy balance sheet. AmerisourceBergen has always been very focused on cash flow. Our execution excellence, leadership in specialty and suite of complementary services and solutions provides a pillar for continued growth. AmerisourceBergen has continued to provide -- be a key pillar to the health care infrastructure in the economy, and we are excited about the opportunities ahead. We'll now, a little bit early, Lisa, turn it over to you for Q&A, and I'm excited to have Jim Cleary join us. Thank you.

So am I. Again, it's so great to see you guys. So Steve, one of your peer companies today preannounced around some incremental costs. And primarily, it sounds like it's on the medical supply side of their business. But I just want to make sure that everybody that's listening today understands how we think about, on the pharmaceutical supply chain side, how we think about freight costs and distribution costs. One, how we think about inflation from a wage perspective. You talked about how important your employees are today in your presentation. And so have you seen any increase from just an inflationary standpoint, for employees would be the second part of that.

Lisa, we were talking last week to our President of Pharmaceutical Distribution. And there are benefits to paying a higher wage. I think it's been well demonstrated through the pandemic, the importance of our nonexempt associates. And maintaining them, they do get more experience and more productive. We feel that they're a key talent and asset to AmerisourceBergen. And we're seeing a benefit from it. Jim, you want to talk about this. I'd love to have you have the opportunity to talk as well.

Sure, Steve. Well, I echo everything you've just said on the importance of talent and rewarding talent. I'll also say that sorts of inflation that we've seen and are seeing in labor and freight, that inflation was contemplated when we gave our guidance in November. And so the sort of inflation that we're seeing in labor and freight is included in the guidance range and contemplated in the guidance range. And I will say that we feel very good about our pharmaceutical-centric strategy. And pharmaceuticals, as everyone knows, are value-dense products. And because of the fact that they're value-dense products, freight isn't quite as important a component in the cost structure as it is in a lot of other businesses. And so kind of the value density of pharmaceuticals helps us. And once again, we certainly are seeing inflation, but it's contemplated in our guidance range, Lisa.

Great. We also started this time of the year, and we always talk about pricing and where pharmaceutical pricing is. And I know you and I have had discussions over the years that both branded and generic fluctuation in pricing means less than it did many years ago. But can you just remind people, as we think about branded and as we think about generic and specialty, what are the key components of things that we should be thinking about? And does drug price inflation really matter anymore?

It's a great question and definitely, from the earlier sessions, a lot of this is foremost in our investors' minds. There's a couple of things. First of all, some 15, 16 years ago, our industry went through a transition to the fee for service, and that's been very, very successful. I can't imagine operating in an environment where we were full buying product and being so reliant on that. Our job at conferences like this would be much, much harder. But we now have 95% of our branded products covered by agreements where we don't really benefit from inflation. Of course, in the generic industry, which is about 90% of the units that we sell, there's been a well-demonstrated deflation. Jim has been CFO for over 3 years now and I remarked earlier that this has not been something that has been an unmanageable problem for us. We have our guidance. We have the ranges, and we tend to manage with it. I don't think you'll see an environment also on the branded side where manufacturers have license to increase their prices at a rate much above cost of living increases. You have had a well-marked, well-noticed phenomenon of inflation increasing this year. And -- but our industry is a bit different. We haven't had API problems. As Jim mentioned, there's -- the value density on pharmaceuticals is very high, and we haven't had some of the supply chain problems that others have encountered. Jim, anything you'd add?

Yes. Yes, Steve. I would just add a couple of things. One is, I think that our teams over a several year period, Lisa, have done a really good job of rebalancing contracts so that we make a fair return on brand, on specialty brand and on generics. And it's not overweighted to generics. And so I think that multiyear effort to rebalance contracts is really working out well. And then I'll just also quickly add that what we are seeing, from a branded inflation standpoint, is also in line with our expectations.

That's great. I think you made a comment around utilization, Steve, right, that overall pharmaceutical utilization in the U.S. trending back towards prepandemic kinds of levels, but acute scripts are still not there. I think part of that is cough, cold and flu last year down 94%. Can you give us some thoughts as to if you anticipate that that's going to normalize? Or is this the new normal? And then secondly, has there been any impact on utilization because of Omicron?

Yes. So the size of AmerisourceBergen is very unusual. I mean, of course, we had the hep C products a couple of years ago, but it's very unusual that we'd have to comment. I mean last year, it was not a big impediment to our progress when it was a weak cold and cough and flu season. Now it's -- everything prescription related, particularly in the U.S., is very important to us, important to our community pharmacy customers but the resilience in the system has been remarkable. I mean when the pandemic hit, my first worry -- and Jim and I had hours wringing our hands over receivables, we were worried about it. And again, like we had in 2009, our system proved very, very resilient. Our distribution, our ability to source product, all of that has been incredibly resilient. The U.S., one benefit that we've seen is we have such a wide footprint of where care is delivered. Even we talk a lot about the holy grail of AmerisourceBergen being community providers. All those community providers have proved resilience and patients started coming back to them, and they learned how to manage in the pandemic. So we're seeing trends resume. Obviously, we have roughly about 30% of all the prescriptions in the U.S. so any uptick we'll see will benefit us. And we manage with the health care economy. But I think this company is diversified. One benefit from the last transaction is we still have close to 80% of our profits in the U.S., but it is a nice benefit that we're getting to have exposure to other systems and some of the growth opportunities that we'll have there and some of the combined growth opportunities we'll have. Jim, anything else you'd say on prescription trends?

Yes. What I'd just add, and as everyone knows, when we said on our fourth quarter earnings call that we've seen strong utilization trends across our businesses, and we were seeing prescription trends back to pre-COVID-19 levels. Of course, now we're keeping a close eye on developments related to Omicron. But I'll just close with what Steve was saying. The pharmaceutical supply chain has been and we believe will continue to be resilient, and that's both from a supply and a demand standpoint.

So we've talked in the past about the Alliance Health deal. I know when you were so gracious to do a call with me earlier this summer, but it's been about 7 months since the transaction closed. Maybe talk about what surprised you, whether it's an upside surprise versus your expectation? Or perhaps anything that's been a little more challenging as you think about that transaction. I've heard Jim reiterate that the high-margin -- high accretion rate, teen accretion. I'm sorry, I can't like put my words together here at the end of the day, high-teen accretion from the transaction. So from a financial perspective, it feels like it's gone well, but like I said, has there been any surprises, positive or negative, as you think about taking on that business?

We're really thrilled with how this has gone. I mean we knew the company fairly well, and we had -- our diligence was a little bit hampered, of course, by the pandemic. I mean imagine doing warehouse visits through Zoom, which is essentially what we did, not necessarily Zoom, but -- and even our auditors had to do due diligence over cameras looking at inventory sometimes and records. So it's been fascinating. And -- but I will tell you, our thesis has remained strong. These are very good businesses. They've been very well run financially. There's a development of the higher-margin services businesses. Our U.K. business is outstanding. The role that we have there is profound. For example, we do all the test kits for the whole U.K. We do over half of the vaccines there. And the infrastructure we have, just going and seeing the warehouses, we're able to get over there once and it was just the most thrilling for us, having spent $6.5 billion to actually get out there. And to see the level of integration between Alliance and Boots and the cross-stocking and the different services that we provide. So it's a very, very sticky business. So we were able to get over to Spain and France. Each of the 12 countries has their own unique challenges and opportunities. And we look forward to spending more time, but the acquisition has performed at expectations. I'd say the positive upside has been getting to spend time with the people. I really have enjoyed that. There's a shared sense of purpose that we have with the Alliance leadership and the Alliance next level down. And that's been very validating. And we've absolutely enjoyed the opportunity. The business is well run. It's been -- of course, it was stripped out of a public company, but there's a strong -- when we integrated World Courier, there was more challenge to getting them to understand the needs of a public company. So I'd say that, that's been a key difference. Jim, anything you'd add?

Yes, Steve, I would concur that financially the business met our expectations out of the gate, and we expect it to continue to meet our expectations. And it's been great to work with the people. I think the teams are working together really well on operational matters, on IT investments, on synergy plans that we're working on. It's great to see that everyone -- teams that are really focused on distribution and also these higher-margin businesses are working together really well.

Yes. Steve, we've known each other so long that I look back on 20 years ago in 2001 when you were running the specialty business at Bergen Brunswig coming over to Amerisource. And at that point, the company needs the right decision, right, to sell your medical supply business and to double down on specialty, right? So I want to give you credit for that today because I think you deserve that credit as we think about your specialty business. And I really want to just talk about a couple of things as it pertains to your specialty business. One, obviously, the strongest player from an oncology perspective, what are you most excited about right now? Will biosimilars really truly move the needle? And then secondly, you just talked about the European assets and how well that's going. McKesson tried to make a run at doing something around specialty in Europe and it wasn't a success. Do you think that you can have a big specialty business in Europe kind of similar to what you have here in the U.S.?

Yes. So our specialty -- as I said in the presentation, when you think about AmerisourceBergen, I hope one of the things you think about foremost is specialty and oncology and our wonderful presence with Part B drugs. Biosimilars are definitely impactful to AmerisourceBergen. We started talking about this a lot more in 2020. It's been a bit slower. I think one of the things that we'd encourage is a cleaner regulatory pathway to biosimilar approval. But I think that's absolutely starting to happen. And you're seeing the right type of companies with the long-term focus investing in the biosimilar market. And we're also learning that not all the biosimilar launches are equivalent, and we've seen some products have 5 or 6 different competitors. The sweet spot for us is obviously a Part B drug, where we can have a really value-based contracting approach where we can get the ION panels to really select one of the key products. And we've also been able to work with incumbent manufacturers, new manufacturers who are getting into the Part B and the specialty space in the U.S. And it's been a very virtuous cycle for us. Our margins vary depending on what our always and how many different competitors there are, but they're somewhere between a branded drug and a generic. And of course, many of the biosimilars, the unit price can be upwards of $1,000. So they also are able to afford the array of specialty services that we offer through companies like Lash and ION and Xcenda so -- and we're also able to move the needle on specialty in the rest of the world. Our business in Canada, NMR is a leading player in specialty. And a little bit -- let's just talk about specialty in Europe, and Jim will -- as he's done the whole day, will fill in some of the holes for me. But Specialty in Europe is mainly in the health systems. We hope over time that could change as a more diversified care strategy, I think, is good. But we're not going to change systems and we don't expect -- we didn't come in here with the thesis to say we're going to change the way our products get distributed into health systems. What we intend to do is to really raise the stake, have manufacturers be aware of the transatlantic knowledge that we have. We try to be very synced up. The sourcing teams we have, the contracting teams, the services teams are all working closely together. There's that shared sense of purposes. And we don't -- we're not -- this is important. We are not hampered by over relying on synergies. Our synergies are long term and will rely on a very solid infrastructure that we will invest in, in Alliance, which will match that the solid infrastructure for commercialization and specialty products that we have in the United States. Importantly, the company that you mentioned before did not have Alloga, which is such an important distribution vehicle and is so essential to the U.K. specialty distribution and increasingly in other countries. When we do the business reviews for other countries, even we're doing Turkey recently, one of the things that we're pressing the management team on and Juan Guerra, who heads up Alliance for us, is really pushing how do we get Alloga-type concepts and Alloga services into your market and have the strong market share presence that we have in many of the established markets. So -- and we're also open to other services, depending on what the health care system needs are. Is home care important. What are the needs of the community pharmacy and how else can we transport knowledge? So I think one of the key ways that we'll transport knowledge is through how we work with manufacturers, the data requirements, the reporting, the interoperability that is required. And that's where we really are trying to push the buttons on Alliance. And they are very receptive and very interested. As I said, we have a bunch of aligned purpose-driven team members. Jim, anything you'd add?

As most of you know, Steve founded our specialty businesses, and I don't think I can add. So thanks.

Right. That's kind of where we started. But Jim, let's talk about a business that you came from. When Steve mentioned that pets are part of our family, my little Bailey is definitely part of our family. I have a Cavachon and I love her dearly. If I think about this from just what you've been able to do with this business and integrate it, I think earlier, we had a conversation about what you've been able to do in the U.K. Can you maybe just give us a quick update? I know a lot of people got pets during COVID. I know the trend has been really strong, but anything you would just highlight on that side of the business?

Yes. So as most of you are aware, AmerisourceBergen has a very strong animal health business. And it's been a business that really experienced terrific growth and a market that's experienced terrific growth during the pandemic. As many households got pets, I would say, the human-pet bond even increased further as people spent time at home with their pets. And so I think in the companion animal market, that will provide a multiyear tailwind. And the growth rate might not be as high in the next 12 months as it was in the last 12 months. But people are -- these pets are going to be cared for, for many years, and they are such important parts of the family that it should provide a nice long-term tailwind in the animal health market. And then the production animal market also continues to be a very strong market for AmerisourceBergen.

In our last few minutes, Steve, you know I always have to ask you this question. Your stock has done really well over the last 12 months, but what do you think investors don't appreciate today that they'll appreciate when we, hopefully, we'll be sitting down together next year at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference?

So I think that during the pandemic, our purpose has never become clearer to us, being united in our responsibility to create healthier futures. The work we're doing, we haven't had a chance to touch on it, Lisa, but I did in my presentation, around the COVID antiviral therapies is remarkable. We're just so proud to do that. And AmerisourceBergen is focused on execution. We've got a strong management team. We're pretty tenured. We actually are very fond of each other, which is a big factor. And we focus on the right things. We received excellent guidance from our Board of Directors, and we want to be the place where you will be rewarded from investing. So we think long term about investment, perhaps we're more the niche European, the cliche European version, where we focus on the long term by making the right investments. And I can give you fantastic examples of that. The distribution network that we set about creating after the merger, the investments in specialty and being the leader in that, our thoughtful approach to biosimilar launches in the U.S., the enterprise investments that we made in the U.S. and we absolutely will make in Europe, all of those are going to position us to be the infrastructure company in pharmaceutical-based care. And we think that that's a great place to be, whether you're an investor or an associate or an executive. So thank you for the time today.

Thank you so much for your time, both Steve and Jim. It was great seeing you. Thanks for everybody for tuning in. If you have any questions, you can reach out to Bennett Murphy on the IR team over at Amerisource or anybody on my team. Thanks, guys. I hope to see you soon.

I hope to see you soon also.

In person.

In person. That's right. Take care.