Steven H. Collis
Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer at Cencora
Thank you. Bennett. Good morning and good afternoon to everyone on the call. Before we begin our results for the quarter, I want to take a moment to comment on the status of the proposed settlement agreement to address opioid related claims of states and political subdivisions. Since we announced last September that the proposed settlement agreement would move to the next phase, several more states have announced they intend to sign onto the agreement, increasing the number of participating states to 46. We are encouraged by this progress and over the next few weeks, we will review the level of participation by subdivisions and assume and determine whether to proceed with the final settlement. We look forward to providing an update once a decision has been made. AmerisourceBergen continues to work diligently with our partners to combat drug diversion while supporting real solutions that help address the crisis in the communities where we live, work and serve.
Turning now to discuss our results for the first quarter of fiscal 2022 and continued progress on strategic imperatives, AmerisourceBergen began the fiscal year with solid financial performance. Revenue grew 13% over the prior year to $59 billion. Adjusted operating income increased by 21% and adjusted EPS grew by 18%. Our growth reflected the benefit of Alliance Healthcare acquisition and solid performances across our businesses. Our results continue to demonstrate the value of our pharmaceutical-centric strategy, strong customer relationships, leadership in specialty and unparalleled global commercialization services. These differentiating factors are key drivers of our long-term growth and enable AmerisourceBergen to create significant value for all our stakeholders as a global healthcare leader.
Our solution-oriented culture and the agility of our teams has allowed us to strengthen our relationships with partners as we help them navigate increase complexity and challenges that the evolving pandemic presents. AmerisourceBergen's focus on leading with market leaders continues to position our company for success. Recently, we renewed our relationship with Express Scripts by extending our supply agreements through 2026. This extension reflects our focus on long-term lasting partnerships with anchor customers and enables us to continue to support patient access wherever a prescription is needed.
Patient access is more vital than ever, as we enter the third year of our fight against COVID-19. As I've said over the past year, we are proud to be a part of the solution to support the government response to the pandemic in the US. Through our work with the government and manufacturer partners, we are distributing COVID-19 antibody and anti-viral treatments to providers across the country. As pharmaceutical innovation continues to expand treatment resources to respond to the pandemic, we are playing an even greater role to leverage our infrastructure and expertise to support efficient access to COVID-19 therapies, in partnership with the federal government.
A newly authorized oral COVID treatments are a milestone in the efforts to curb the impact of the virus. And we are supporting the distribution to sites of care across the US. Our robust public-private partnerships with pharma manufacturers and the US government demonstrate the value of AmerisourceBergen's intellectual confidence as we have utilized our commercial strength and ability to collaborate effectively to quickly create solutions in the healthcare system.
Outside the US, AmerisourceBergen's network of global businesses, Alliance Healthcare, World Courier and Innomar in Canada are playing a pivotal role in supporting the COVID-19 vaccination efforts across 30-plus countries. The collective distribution support spans four continents and includes a wide range of services from third-party logistics to temperature controlled packaging, storage and transport. Alliance Healthcare continues to deliver strong results, while supporting the COVID-19 response in multiple countries from vaccination to testing, including in the UK where the team is supporting the distribution of vaccines and serving as a sole distributor of the rapid lateral flow COVID-19 testing kits to pharmacies.
Alliance Healthcare's performance underscores why we were so excited to bring this business in terms of AmerisourceBergen family and how this acquisition enables us to advance our role as a key pillar of pharmaceutical innovation and access globally. Our teams are working diligently and collaboratively to ensure the integration continues to progress successfully. Alliance Healthcare's foundation in wholesale distribution and the international segments significant footprint in complementary value-added services and solutions parallel AmerisourceBergen's US capabilities and provide us with a strong global platform for sustainable long-term growth and value creation and through our global biopharmaceutical manufacturer partners.
Creating value for all our stakeholders is paramount for AmerisourceBergen, and as we look at our networks of community providers across the globe, we remain focused on supporting this critical component in the healthcare system. Community practitioners from veterinarians to independent pharmacies and community special positions play a vital role in supporting local healthcare needs. Community pharmacies are key to facilitating health equity and access, particularly in rural and underserved areas, through our independent pharmacy network, Good Neighbor Pharmacy or GNP in the US and alliances Alphega network in Europe. We have continued to strengthen our relationship with these providers and support their ability to expand access to critical healthcare solutions.
Our GNP network has played an important role in helping communities address the pandemic. In partnership with the federal retail pharmacy program, GNP has helped to support allocation of 4 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to more than 1,600 pharmacies nationwide. These allocations are helping reach communities where help is needed most. Nearly 30% of the individuals vaccinated by pharmacies in our GNP network live in zip codes with a high social vulnerability index as defined by the CDC. The value of this initiative continues to grow for our communities and we are pleased to be working with the federal government to support the distribution of N-95 masks from the strategic national stockpile to our GNP customers currently enrolled in the program.
In our Alliance Healthcare business, we are also seeing significant growth in Alphega's membership as independent pharmacies recognize the value of working with Alliance and the services we offer. As a leading European network of independent pharmacists, Alphega Pharmacy members continue to deliver on their mission of helping to improve the quality of health in their communities. Alphega Pharmacy members throughout the pandemic have gone above and beyond to deliver care to their patients. These extraordinary efforts have gotten us numerous accolades from around the industry. We are excited to share best practices between Alphega and GNP to further the support we provide community pharmacists both in the US and Europe.
As we continue to build on our strengths, we are focused on expanding on our leadership in specialty. The growth in biosimilars has helped improve access to effective therapies while mitigating overall healthcare spending to make room for continued pharmaceutical innovation including the introduction of new therapeutics and additional indications for existing therapies to improve the standards of care.
Our leadership in specialty continues to provide us with the scale, partnerships and expertise to create significant value for our stakeholders. AmerisourceBergen's global scale and strong partnerships upstream and down make us a key part in connecting manufacturers and physicians. We continue to look at new ways to apply our existing capabilities and expertise to create further value through this linkage. Particularly as the shift to value-based care accelerates, by leveraging our distribution infrastructure, expertise and outcome and reimbursement and our investments in the physician practices services space, we are well positioned to contribute to pharmaceutical-driven outcomes and support the long-term success of this transition.
Access and commercial solutions become increasingly important as we look to the future with a strong pipeline of pharmaceutical innovation, particularly in specialty pharmaceuticals. More than half of the pipeline of new treatments are coming from small and mid-sized biotech and pharma companies. AmerisourceBergen's vast distribution reach and global commercialization services position us to be a partner of choice for these manufacturers.
Our expanded platform of manufacturer services allows us to deliver a range of logistics and supply chain services, market access and innovative solutions to help improve patient care with global reach and local expertise. AmerisourceBergen and Alliance teams are working collaboratively to leverage our complementary capabilities to create differentiated solutions for our upstream partners and help them expand access to care for patients around the world.
One example of how we are supporting access in the US is our recently launched AB disparities in cancer care initiative. This initiative is focused on improving access to all components of cancer care from expanding access to clinical trials and community practices to bringing awareness of health disparities to legislators. Using our trusted role as a partner to community practitioners and pharmaceutical manufacturers alike, we believe this program will help bring down certain barriers to high quality cancer care for patients in local communities we serve. This is an example of how our teams of our purpose are being united in our responsibility to create healthier futures every day.
Being guided about purpose ensures we are contributing to improving the well-being of human and animal populations by expanding access to quality healthcare, operating sustainably and upholding the highest standards of safety and quality. To help achieve this vision, we are focused on investing in our people, culture and commitment to ESG. A healthier future is also a more sustainable one. We recently published our 6th Annual Global Sustainability Report, which highlights the progress we made in fiscal 2021 on our environmental, social and governance initiatives and provide significant transparency into our business.
AmerisourceBergen's continued progress and commitment to advancing ESG initiatives is reflected by the Company's inclusion in the S&P Global Sustainability Yearbook 2022, one of the most comprehensive publications providing in-depth analysis on corporate sustainability. AmerisourceBergen is also committed to building a more diverse, incredible, inclusive and engaged workforce. Throughout this coming year and beyond, we will continue to focus on our people, our culture and our community as the first 3 pillars of the DEI work. This year, we added an important pillar, our progress. that will more closely link DEI with our purpose of creating healthier futures through expanding access to quality healthcare globally and promote health equity.
We are on it and our work in ESG is gaining recognition. Last month, Newsweek Magazine included AmerisourceBergen on its 2022 list of Most Responsible Companies. Newsweek's Most Responsible Company is a well-regarded ranking of corporate ESG performance and this recognition further underscores our progress on our objectives to improve access and equity in healthcare, create more resilient and sustainable operations across the supply chain and inspire our team members to achieve their potential. Our commitment to ESG is fundamental to our long-term sustainable value creation for all of our stakeholders, and we are focused on continuing to build on our ESG platform to support our team, partners and community.
We are pleased with our performance thus far in fiscal 2022 and the progress we continue to make against our strategic priorities to enhance our differentiated value proposition, strengthen our relationship with customers, drive innovation and build on our strong momentum. I remain inspired by the commitment and performance of our 42,000 team members who truly embodied our purpose in helping our partners navigate ever more complex and evolving global healthcare landscape. As a global healthcare solutions leader, AmerisourceBergen is creating differentiating capabilities to help advance pharmaceutical innovation and access.
Now, I will turn the call over to Jim for a more in-depth review of our first quarter 2022 results and to discuss our updated financial guidance. Jim?
