I run the healthcare tech and distribution sector here at Bank of America. We are very excited to have the Henry Schein management team here with us. We have CEO Fred Lowery and CFO Ron South. Thank you both for joining us. Really appreciate the time. Thanks for having us. Thank you, Allen. You know, before we kick off, Fred, would love to, you know, get a sense. Do you have any prepared comments, or would you love to make any comments about the, your first quarter as a public company CEO? Excellent. Thank you very much. No, it's two months in, and, you know, things just finishing, month two, and things are off to a good start. We had a good Q1. Really, healthy growth in our dental market. Overall growth was strong in our technology business. Growth was strong in our distribution business. We did see some softness in medical, but when you back out for flu, the underlying performance was actually pretty good, mid-single digits in medical as well. Good start to the year. Our margins were good in the quarter, so a nice expansion in margins. We recommitted to our value creation delivery of $125 million run rate net by the end of the year, and $200 million over the next several years, next couple years on a net basis. We reconfirmed our guidance for 2026. Off to a good start. Very excited about the opportunities ahead, and I'm sure we'll talk about that during the discussion today. Yeah, absolutely. Fred, you mentioned you've been in this seat about two months. You talked on the call about your 100-day plan. Would love to get a sense from you, during your first 60 days or so, as you think about the first 100 days, where are you spending the majority of your time? How should we think about what you're prioritizing during your first 100 days with the company? Well, first of all, it's really just me learning. It's just me trying to get out and spend time with our customers, spend time with our suppliers, spend time with our employees, our team Schein members, and just suck up as much as I can as a sponge and really evaluate what's going on in the business, assess what's going on in the business, understand the current projects that we have in place, which I've gone through that assessment to the point that I'm very happy to commit to our value creation opportunities. I think the other part is not just assessing, it's also determining where do we wanna invest in the future. You know, where are the big opportunities? Where are the unlocks? You know, one of those areas is leveraging AI and accelerating our new product development process, accelerating some of the capabilities that are that we're bringing to market, particularly on our technology business. I'm really excited about that. Another opportunity that we're working on is really aligning our commercial processes so that we show up with a customer value proposition that encourages the customer to buy from more than just one part of our company, so that we grow together as an overall company. Really changing the narrative from focusing on helping customers save money to actually helping customers make more money, helping them grow faster and grow more productively. Fred, you mentioned Henry Schein's value creation initiatives. It's a big part of the BOLD +1 Strategy- Yeah. ... to get Henry Schein back to consistent high single-digit to low double-digit EPS growth. On the call last week, or two weeks ago, you talked about a lot of different ways to improve the operating performance of the company, dynamic pricing, shift to own brands, specialty growth, centralizing back office functions. You also mentioned just now AI, and aligning some commercial opportunities. Would love to get a sense for you, your first 100 days, as you think about all these different places where Henry Schein could look to create value, are you looking at maybe one or two and saying, "These are the ones that I'm prioritizing," or, are there all these different opportunities going on at the same time? Trying to get a sense of what's prioritized and how you think about the different areas of focus here. Yeah, I mean, we're absolutely gonna deliver on the value creation items that you listed there. I think of them more than just an episodic event. I mean, we're gonna absolutely deliver what we committed to, but the pricing tools that we've put in place now, we'll continue to benefit from them over time. Our focus on growing our corporate brands, we will continue to do that over a period of time. The benefit from us creating an outsourced shared service, we'll continue to see that benefit over a period of time as well. Ultimately, my expectation is we'll develop a continuous improvement process where we'll continue to drive productivity for our, the enterprise, and we'll continue to be able to leverage that productivity to drive growth in the future. For Ron, as we think about the $125 million exit rate in 2026 for operational improvements, can you unpack that a little bit as we think about are there specific parts of that where you have very, very high degree of line of sight, maybe you have more confidence in? Which of those drivers might require a little bit more execution as we think about the confidence level of getting to that $125 million by the end of the year? Sure, Allen. You know, as we've mentioned before, you know, that $125 million run rate at the end of the year is the expected net run rate operating income improvement that we would have as we enter 2027. We do expect some benefits in 2026 from these activities, obviously, but those benefits are a little more back-loaded to the second half of the year. That's mostly due to the G&A portion of this, because the G&A does require some time, some planning, some transitional planning, because there are some structural changes that we're going through in terms of how we support the business from a G&A perspective. We want those changes to be sustainable, you know, as Fred said, but this isn't episodic. We want it to be something that is established so that going forward, as the company grows, we're able to scale this in a way that is, you know, able to serve the company without having to add a lot of additional costs as the company grows itself. You know, there are some structural things we're working through right now, but we'll begin to see a lot of benefit from that in the second half of the year. As opposed to gross profit optimization, that's more of a process that we're going through, but we're beginning to see some benefits from that now. We got a little bit of that in Q1. We're seeing well, I expect we'll continue to see some gross profit improvements in Q2 and as we progress through the year. Because those are more systematic, anticipatory changes to, well, how can we be pricing products in a more dynamic way? That doesn't necessarily mean just increasing price, but also decreasing price where we can be more competitive and not outliers in certain product categories. I think those are areas that require less planning, execution, and can provide us with a more immediate benefit. It's the execution that's necessary on the G&A side that begins to give us that savings in the back half of the year. We feel like we have a really a clean, a line of sight into how we're gonna execute on that, and that's what gives us the confidence to commit to that $125 million. Taking a look at your businesses, both medical and dental. On the call, you talked about as the quarter went on, it seemed to improve from a demand perspective there. I think you said that March was better than February, and April was strong. We'd love to get a sense of what you're seeing so far in April, and maybe early May as it relates to your guidance. Is there anything surprising you in April or May as it relates to the dental business specifically? And then I'll follow up on the medical side. In the dental business, can you talk about what you're seeing so far in April and May and how it relates to your guide? No, I would say the momentum we saw in April has continued into May. It is, you know, to get the growth that we want to have in dental, it requires us to take market share. Taking market share is also, you know, a component of that is also maintaining the customers you have, reducing the churn of customers you have, and we've done a very good job of customer retention, and we've been able to continue to take market share. We're quite happy with the continued momentum we're seeing into the second quarter on the dental side. As we think about the medical business, you called out a weak flu season, and I think the guide assumes that your organic growth in the medical business will accelerate after 1Q. Can you talk about what underpins the confidence or maybe back out what would the growth have been in 1Q ex flu and what you're seeing in the medical business that gives you confidence for the rest of the year? Certainly. As we said on the call last week, we estimated that when you take out the impact of point-of-care diagnostic kit sales, which is really, the demand for those products is largely driven by the respiratory illness season, whether it be flu or RSV or otherwise. Excluding that product category, our medical business grew in the mid-single digits. My expectations for medical as we progress in the year, there'll be less of an impact of that product category because it does tend to be heavier in Q4, Q1. Midyear, there's typically not as much demand in that product category. We do expect medical on a reported basis, on as reported basis, to, you know, to continue to see that growth that we saw in Q1 ex those diagnostic kits. Some of that is driven not just by core medical, but also by our home solutions business, which has been growing, you know, quite well for us. We now are getting probably greater than 10% of our medical revenues from our h ome solutions business. It's about a $400+ million run rate, and it does get better margins, it does grow faster, and it's been a great area of growth for us. Last question here really on the end market or macro. There's been some discussion around the derivative impact of oil prices, on other, you know, on input costs, things like resin. Can you remind us what your exposure is to oil-linked inputs and, you know, maybe give a little bit of historical context, around how rising commodity prices could impact your business? Yeah, you know, it's hard to say. You know, when you have the breadth of products that we sell, the number of SKUs that we sell, and certain product categories may be impacted by, you know, ultimately from the cost of oil and they may have some petroleum-based commodity to them in terms of the material that's used in them. You know, the approach we can take with those types of products is that as we see costs increase, to the extent we have to increase prices, we'll have to consider that. The beauty of the broader portfolio is that if we see other products that are not experiencing as much of a cost increase that are similar SKUs, we can redirect customers to those products or to our private label if we have a competing private label product. We feel like we can work with customers to get them to the products they want and still be at competitive prices. It's very much a very similar approach to what we took during the volatile tariff environment last year. We were able to mitigate the effect of that over the course of 2025, we think we can do something similar in 2026 as it relates to the cost of oil. One other thing I'll add to that is that it does impact in to a certain extent, freight prices. You know, the freight prices that we're paying. You know, and to the extent we have to increase our freight charges going out, we're working with customers to make sure they understand that if we've had to include some fuel surcharges. We feel like what we're doing there is still in line with market as we go forward. Okay, great. I think that one of the highlights of the quarter for us was the gross margin expansion in the distribution part of the business with margins up 35 basis points. Can you unpack the primary drivers of that gross margin improvement? It was really nice to see. As we think about the durability of those margins, how should we think about the sustainability of gross margin expansion or stability within that distribution part of the business? Certainly, Allen. I would say that you do see, first of all, you know, some of the beginnings of some benefits from our Gross Profit Optimization Initiative that we have in place there. That would include, we're seeing some stability in glove prices. I mean, for several years now, we've seen, you know, glove pricing coming down, eating into margins a little bit. We do see some stability in glove prices, and that's helping those margins. I would also say that, you know, we saw growth in our company-owned brands or private label as being exceeding the growth of the overall portfolio, and that group of products does get a better gross margin, and that's also helping us in that area as well. I do believe these margins can be sustainable going forward. Yes. Okay. Great to hear. One for Fred. As we think about your conversations with customers, you know, Henry Schein is the leader with their relationships in DSOs. Would love to get a sense of your initial conversations with those DSO customers. They're obviously utilizing Henry Schein in a variety of ways. What are some of the things that you took away from those conversations where Henry Schein can do more for some of those large and growing customers? I've had an opportunity to meet with most of our largest DSOs and some smaller ones as well. You know, the good news is that they see a lot of value in Henry Schein, and they, to a customer, know that there's more that we can do together. I think the areas of opportunity would be, one, around our corporate brands and leveraging more of our corporate brands with DSOs, and they have a really great, you know, way to drive compliance in that customer set. The other is around our technology, around our PMS software and the way we're building out the clinical workflows. You know, many DSOs see a lot of value in that and understand that it can help them from a productivity standpoint and actually from a profitability standpoint. Those would be two areas where I think there are more opportunities with DSOs for us to work closer together. Appreciate all of that color there. As we think about the merchandise growth within the dental business, it was a little bit better than we expected in 1Q. It seemed like dynamic pricing was part of that. Good demand was also part of it. Ron, about a year ago, you did some promotional activities, you know, that seemed to improve your growth rate in the back half of last year. Can you talk a little bit about the performance of those promotions relative to your expectations, what retention rate has looked like, and how that's contributing to growth here in 2026? No, I would say, you know, the promotional activity that we had, and it was largely concentrated in the second quarter last year, has really led to those market growth, I'm sorry, market share expansion that we've been able to have in the second half of 2025 and that continued into the first quarter of 2026. We've had great success in working with customers. A lot of these customers were people who were already buying from Henry Schein but were buying at low volumes. We really focused on how could we increase share of wallet with those customers and also develop a stronger relationship with them so that they didn't just view us as someone who they could buy merchandise from, but also how could we help them drive a more profitable practice. It has, you know, I think those promotions have really paid off, and that was clearly a contributor to the market share growth that we had in the first quarter of 2026. Great. Moving on to specialty, I think both value implants and premium implant growth slowed quarter-over-quarter in the U.S. You spoke a little bit about some timing impacting the softness there, but would love to get a sense of what you're seeing broadly in terms of U.S. growth rates, both in premium and value implants. You know, you've made some acquisitions there. Would love to get your confidence on growth rates over the remainder of the year and how things like M&A are contributing to that growth. Sure. you know, on the specialty side, the segment as a whole had growth of about 8%, the local internal growth there was 1.7%, which is a number that we feel like will improve as the year progresses. And we did have some timing issues within the quarter that we felt like impacted that growth rate. I can say from an internal perspective, our results in that segment were in line with our expectations. That's why we made a point to say we do expect that growth rate to improve as the year progresses. you know, in terms of value versus premium, in the U.S., we continue to see better growth in value, both in the market as well as within our product portfolio. Better growth in value than in premium. I believe what we're seeing there is more— any market expansion that is happening in implant tends to be highly concentrated in value. It tends to be coming from GPs who are expanding into doing implant procedures and are doing so using a value implant. We're excited about the transaction we were able to complete with our S.I.N. U.S. distributor, that we now own that distributor in the U.S. It gives us greater control over that product portfolio. We expect to be able to continue to drive growth, you know, with the value implants going forward. I believe in premium, our BioHorizons brand still competes very well. They are at an attractive price point for a premium implant. We still feel confident that we can get better growth out of on the premium side going, you know, as the year progresses. Outside the U.S. and Europe, what we've seen there is that it's been relatively steady growth. Camlog continues to be a very good, you know, performer for us in Europe, and we think that can continue. You know, DSOs have obviously been, you know, a big driver of growth in recent years, and obviously very important to Henry Schein. As we think about their growth in 2025 and moving into 2026, interest rates have, you know, they went lower, now they're moving higher. How would you think about the growth rates and the growth outlook for that large customer cohort in 2026 versus 2025? Is there any change there? Any moderation, any acceleration, anything to call out? I think we— you know, the DSOs have historically been growing, you know, faster than the balance of the market. I think that, you know, the DSOs that we work with, we have a, you know, a heavy concentration of the largest DSOs use us as their primary distributor. We have a— you know, working with a lot of them on not just on, you know, what merchandise and equipment are you buying, but also what expansion can you do into whether it be in specialty, what are some of the tools you can be using in technology. I think that is why you're seeing greater growth in DSOs than in the balance of the market. I think they will continue to, if they can follow their, you know, their business plans as they have, and they continue to find innovative ways of growing their practices, I think we'll continue to see the DSOs do well beyond 2026. Going back to the DSOs again, Fred, you mentioned that some of the opportunities to expand wallet share are corporate brands and PMS software. Can you talk about your conversations with those DSOs? You know, where specifically is the opportunity around corporate brands? Are there specific ones where, you know, you have two DSOs, one that has a larger adoption, you're kind of comparing the two, and you see an opportunity with the second one? Would love to get a sense of how you think about this opportunity. On the timeline of exploiting that type of opportunity, do you think this is something that could be done relatively quickly, or is this something that is more iterative and something that you could expand share in over a period of multiple years? Yeah, I'll start with the back part of it. I think it's something that we will expand the share over multiple years. It's not something that we're going to, you know, you know, see episodic or flip a switch and we'll get there. I think over time, we will continue to grow our relationship with DSOs, and as we do that, we'll see our share position grow in our corporate brands. I don't know that I would wanna point to one or two categories and say, "Hey, these are the exact places," because I think it actually does depend on, you know, the specifics of what that DSO is looking for, and there are opportunities in many different categories. I will tell you that there is a clear view from DSOs that they absolutely do wanna use more of our corporate brands, and they see opportunities to grow as well as we do. Moving on to digital equipment. In the quarter, sales were flat, and you called out lower ASPs from new entrants, something we've seen for a long period of time. It sounded like toward the end of 2025 that maybe some of the ASPs were stabilizing a little bit, but it sounds like that sort of reversed in 1Q. Would love to get a sense of, you know, how quickly is volume growing for digital equipment, and, you know, how material are these lower ASPs. I guess maybe an update on your thought on when that moderates- Sure. ... if you see any time period where that would be likely. Yeah. I mean, you're referencing the intraoral scanners and, you know, we did see volume growth there. I believe it's in kind of the mid-single digits that we saw in volume growth. A lot of that growth came from a greater demand for some of the lower-priced entrants. That's when, you know, the math of that ASP, you know, as they get a greater mix of that volume, that's what's bringing that ASP down. You know, it's a very attractive price point for a lot of practices who are currently not using an intraoral scanner, and there's still a lot of practices out there who have not adopted digital technology who are making these investments for the first time. I think that, you know, it could still be a little while on that. Think about it, as these practices acquire a scanner and begin using a scanner and understanding the benefits they're getting from that digital technology, they also become candidates to buy additional digital equipment that interacts with that scanner. While there is some pricing pressure and what it might create when you look at overall revenues on digital products, it does provide us with some growth opportunities down the road, as these practices begin to become more of a digital practice as opposed to an analog practice. With a few minutes left here, moving on to capital deployment and capital allocation. You've been very acquisitive over a period of many years across a lot of different areas, specialty, medical, and things like geographic expansion. As you think about your portfolio today, where's the most attractive areas where you're focusing on for M&A? Well, any M&A we do will continue to get, you know, a lot of scrutiny. We wanna maintain a very disciplined approach on M&A. Our focus will likely continue to be more in what we have, you know, coined as the high- growth, high- margin areas of the business. You know, specialty products, technology, value-added services. I would say in addition to that, you know, we've done a fair amount of acquisitions in the home solutions area over the last couple of years. We still like the opportunities there. We still believe we can do some fold-ins in home solutions. That is an area that while it might not qualify under our definition of high- growth, high- margin, it is higher growth and higher margin than our core medical business, so it is accretive to that piece of the business. We do see some opportunities within medical in that area as well. Your organic growth in the first quarter was about 2.5%. It was a little bit below the street. I think the expectation from the street now is that growth, organic growth re-accelerates to maybe 3.5% for the last three quarters of the year. You talked about some of the growth drivers in the business that should improve, can you speak to your degree of confidence that growth can re-accelerate for the remainder of the year? Yeah, 'cause I don't think we're gonna see the same headwinds in medical and in specialty that we saw in Q1. I think those were one-time, you know, that really kinda brought down that internal growth number. We expect that internal growth number to be better as the year progresses. One follow-up here on the S.I.N. business. You bought that business in 2023. Yes. You bought S.I.N. 360 very recently. Yes. Was that always part of the internal plan, or did something evolve there where that became more attractive? Would love to just get a sense of is this sort of the future roadmap, any thoughts you have there would be helpful. I would say it was clearly an opportunity that we saw as part of the acquisition of S.I.N. in Brazil. We knew that they had the S.I.N. U.S. distributor. It was a relatively new business. We had to work out, quite frankly, how well we could integrate it with our BioHorizons business. How would we go to market with those two businesses together? Once we kind of formulated that plan and began to see the opportunity and value in plans, it made the investment decision quite easy. With the last, you know, 90 to 100 seconds here, Fred, you know, you've been in the role for two months. As you think about your goals for the next year, what are the signpost or, you know, how are you gonna be grading yourself a year from now, to make Henry Schein or your tenure at Henry Schein a success after that one-year point? Well, I think it starts with us delivering on our guidance for our commitments for 2026. That would be, you know, clearly one thing. Also delivering on the value creation items. Aside from that, it's really about us having a clear view of the actions that we can take to accelerate growth and do it more profitably. As we develop that strategy, which will be an extension of our BOLD + 1 Strategy, I'm sure, if I can look back and say we've got a clear line of sight to doing that would say it would've been a successful year. Sounds good. I think we'll leave it there. Fred, Ron- Very good. Thank you. ... thank you very much for the time. Really appreciate it, and thank you to everyone in the audience for joining us.