All right, folks, thank you so much for joining. For our next session, we have Premier, who is at a very tumultuous and interesting year, so we're in for a good session. And with me, we've got Mike Alkire, the CEO, and [Craig McKasson,] CFO. Before we get into the question then, the number one topic we've been hearing about is Change. What does that mean for the industry? What does that mean for you guys? Let's start on that. Yeah. So I think you're meaning Change Healthcare as opposed to change in healthcare. Yeah. Never change in healthcare. It was just issues with Change Healthcare. Exactly. So I think everybody's aware they had a cyber issue, and it actually impacted the ability for our healthcare systems to get reimbursed and all the providers, really. It's really interesting. So the conversations we've been having with healthcare executives since then have been all around thinking through how, if something like this happens again, do they have alternate means to be able to get reimbursed? Because had this have gone out longer, this would have had significant impact, more than it does today, on their cash flow. And so it really brought up more conversations and questions, really, around resiliency. And as you know, during COVID, on our supply chain part of our business, we spent a lot of time really focused on creating resiliency in the supply chain area, ensuring that we don't have interdependence on one country for products and those kinds of things. And so I think it's along those same lines of thinking that if there are very, very significant capabilities, are there ways that they can create more resilient systems and services that can ensure that there's stability if a cyberattack like that occurs in the future? So that's been the conversations that I've been having over the last couple of weeks. I know, Craig, you were at the CFO conference last week. Yeah. I think the only other thing I would add is we don't anticipate it having a bearing on our business model given the services we provide to the healthcare providers. But we are obviously watching and monitoring our collections as they're, from a cash flow standpoint. As are we. Inhibited. So we're paying attention to that. Then lastly, I would just say the ransom that at least has been articulated that was paid is something just for all of us in healthcare to keep an eye on in terms of the focus on healthcare with these types of incidents moving forward. Is there an opportunity for any of your kind of more data-side sets in order to go in and sell into this? Because I know beyond being in clearinghouse, a lot of folks have brought up with me on the provider side that their main data exchange is going to change. Yeah. So I think to the degree that we can create, as you said, services that can leverage scale and have an ability to have backup architecture and those kinds of things, it does lend itself well to some of the capabilities that we have. And I know that as you think about the future, these healthcare systems are looking for ways to create scale anyways. So is there maybe some redundancy that we can build into some of our technologies like Remitra and the way that we look at inventories across multiple systems that can also serve as a redundant capability to support the healthcare system? So absolutely, those are things that we're giving consideration to. I'm sure we're really sick of talking about this. We've had a pretty interesting year. your strategic turn is announced. You went through the whole process. Can you kind of walk us through where we were, where we are now, where we're going? Yeah. So let me just start by saying management and the board is obviously committed to figuring out the ways to create the most amount of shareholder value. Over the last 18 months or so, there was just a lot of interest in Premier and organizations that had expressed interest in partnering with us in a variety of ways. And so it kind of lent itself to a situation where both Craig and I, as well as the board, thought that announcing strategic alternatives was the best course of action. And as you know, because you're in conversations and having pretty strategic dialogue with organizations that prohibit you from doing certain things in the market, and Craig and I wanted to make sure that there were certain things we wanted to do, but we were unavailable or not really able to do that. I think I gave you a heart attack when I asked to buy back before you announced it. Exactly. And so just certain things like that. So it made a lot of sense for us to go into the strategic alternatives discussion. We had organizations express interest in parts and the whole parts of the whole business as well as parts of the business and those kinds of things. And just as an outcome, just as a quick reminder, we did sell our non-healthcare GPO, and that's going to come out to be about $740-odd million. So that was a really, really nice multiple. Also, as a result of coming out of the strategic options, we announced that the board had agreed to a share repurchase of $1 billion. The first part of that was an accelerated share repurchase of $400 million. And so we've actually, since the announcement, retired 15 million shares of Premier stock. We also announced that there are two parts of our organization that we're incredibly happy with that have shown some really nice growth, but we believe they need some additional scale and capability in the market outside of what we could do on our own, and that being Contigo and our S2S, our direct sourcing business. Both a little different. S2S and direct sourcing, our interest really is to continue to converse with organizations that can create more scale in that they provide more of a product breadth of capabilities. We're really good at a few categories, but that capability needs to be much more broader to meet the needs of the healthcare systems. Then on Contigo, it's really just as a quick reminder, Contigo has the TPA or has the TPA for centers of excellence. So that's when a large employer wants to find health systems that actually do knees or hips or some other specific procedure, the TPA capability of Contigo actually administers that transaction. Then it also has a wrapper for healthcare systems that have health plans that when folks within their health plan are looking for services outside of the provider network, that Contigo offers a wrapper capability to support those health plans. So both of those obviously have a lot of interest. They've garnered a lot of interest in the market, and there's some folks that are interested in both things. I think the last thing I'd just add quickly is, out of the review, the last component is really a focus by the management team and the board on our core differentiating capabilities of technology enabling our supply chain and driving clinical performance improvement and margin improvement through technology and wraparound services. So capital constraints and limits to funding, a number of things. So diversifying out of these two is going to allow us to really focus on those two interrelated capabilities to really drive provider performance improvement. I'm totally going to go off track then dig into that. But wait, but first, but first, so you talked about monetizing those two assets, right? You said that there were folks that were interested in some of these assets, whole part, and not that much. And you also sold, for folks in the audience, the non-healthcare GPO for a very high multiple, right? It's like a double-digit revenue multiple. 14x EBITDA, which in that business, effectively, revenue and EBITDA was pretty equivalent. That's a crazy multiple. So how could we think about the valuation for some of these assets? Do they get valuation from that ballpark? Well, they're a little bit different asset class. So that's number one. Number two, it's a little early to tell. So Contigo, we were just sort of crossing the threshold of profitability. And so it's been a growth entity. And then S2S, while it, from a margin standpoint, doesn't drive a lot of margin, it does have a lot of characteristics that suppliers in the market would like to have access to, including the fact that it's utilized by a large number of our healthcare systems. And we were talking about resiliency for its resiliency play. So I do think that there's going to be some interest for both those assets. What kind of time frame can we see with this? How long am I maybe asking strategic alternatives in the market? Yeah. Well, we're out for one of the strategic alternatives. It's hard to judge. So we're in the discussions right now, and it's really hard to put a number on it because as soon as I say it's X time, it'll be X time plus a month or two. And so it's probably just easier to say we are passionate about bringing these transactions to a conclusion. It is a focus of ours. Now, Craig, when you talked to me about the outcomes of the review, I heard you went again to tech, tech, and tech. How? Is this, again, an M&A strategy because of the amount of cash that you guys have, or is this more of an organic investment? Yeah. It's a great question. So I'll say with everything, it's going to be a balance. So we do think we have the core technology infrastructure for the areas and aspects that we're looking to advance our capabilities for providers to improve margin. So as we've said and as you know, our competency is in supply chain. So we have the core necessary technology components to actually help healthcare providers aggregate, automate, and drive costs out of what they're purchasing. That doesn't mean there aren't always opportunities for inorganic infusion where there are new technologies that, more than anything, would actually continue to focus on AI or ML enabling aspects of the supply chain, which is a tremendously manual and inefficient process in healthcare today. So I think that you'll see us focus on that on the supply chain side. On the performance services side, we have a core stack of technologies and capabilities that do provide for identifying clinical performance improvement, operational performance improvement, financial performance improvement. There will always be new technologies coming to the market that we need to evaluate and determine. But I don't think you would see large-scale M&A in that part of the business. It would more be strategic tuck-ins that would augment the core capability stack that we have today. If I could build on that just a little bit, we've made some really nice investments in some of the technologies. So if you take our supply chain, even though Remitra has its financials reporting up under performance services, it is really part and parcel for our supply chain strategy. And what we're working through now is building out the service elements of that capability. So we've got the technology fabric. We're going to continue to build that capability out. A number of our large health systems already use the product. It's utilizing it in a little bit different way. And there's service elements that we have to continue to build out. So I think we're at this place where now we've got some of those key investments. Let's go figure out ways to get those implemented and get those operating appropriately. So that's on the supply chain. On the performance services side, we've been building out a number of capabilities, as Craig said, using AI, machine learning, natural language processing. Been really good in the areas of focus as it relates to high-cost imaging. But as you get into other areas where we need to continue to expand that technology, that's where we're going to be looking for some additional capabilities. So think about protocols for utilizing a high-cost drug or another therapy. But those are the protocols that we've got to continue to evolve and build out. If you had to lay out your investment thesis for someone who's likely new in the room, what would it be? Yeah. We're a very, very unique player in healthcare in that, obviously, we're incredibly tight with our healthcare systems and provide a variety of technology and services to help them drive performance improvement. And that's really part and parcel of who we are. It's really helping our healthcare systems reduce the cost of the services that they're providing, improve the quality, the outcomes, as well as doing it very safely, and then also building out capabilities to help them as they migrate to new models of healthcare. So think about pay for performance or think about continuing to build out ACOs and taking two-sided risk and all those kinds of things. So those are the core capabilities of what we've been really focused on over the years. But as part of the supply chain offering, we also have this incredible opportunity to work with our suppliers. And so the other part of where we want to continue to focus is bringing services to those suppliers. So think of the med device and the pharmaceutical companies because we do have such a vast amount of data that we can certainly provide insights that they couldn't get on their own. So I would tell you it's where we sit in the ecosystem, what our focus is, as well as the data that we actually get access to for providing those services. And then we've been talking about the technology that we've been building over the last number of years. I'd be remiss not to say we're very profitable. We generate a lot of free cash flow. The buyback. Having the ability to actually return capital to shareholders and look for opportunities to expand our capabilities that provide more value to customers as well. It does blow my mind. You guys are profitable. You have a dividend. You have buybacks. Why don't you think people appreciate that? I think that first, and Craig and I, we're continually trying to simplify this morning. So when I took over as the CEO, we had a whole bunch of different point solutions that sort of made up our capabilities. I have questions that we'll hate on that, apparently. Exactly. And our focus, though, really was, how do you simplify this? And we had to simplify it for our customer base, but we took a pretty big focus on simplifying it for the market as well. And then you heard us. You've been covering us for a while. You heard us begin to talk about enterprise agreements and enterprise licenses and those kinds of things because what we wanted to do was to create a brand of capability, PINC AI, which was really all about healthcare system performance, so using our data and our technology and our advisory services really to drive healthcare system performance. And so we have a whole bunch of technology and a whole bunch of capabilities that go into that, but we wanted to simplify the story. And so that was the reason for the rebranding of the PINC AI. But for the healthcare system, the healthcare systems were buying literally tens of different capabilities and technologies to help them run their healthcare systems more efficiently. And our focus was to say, "No, no, no. What you need is you need all these capabilities. But at the end of the day, what you really need is clinical decision support and then a capability to look at how you're performing as a healthcare system." But those are the two primary areas that you need your data and technology around. And so our focus has really been to actually simplify that message and simplify our data capabilities and technologies to have that clinical decision support capability that all those healthcare systems are going to need today as well as into the future. Yeah. What I would add to that, because I think it's the question people in the room are going to know, is we have been facing pricing pressure on our administrative fees in the supply chain services part of our business. We've been transparent about that. We had a different model and value proposition historically than some of the other organizations that we compete with in the marketplace. And so we've been managing through that process. That definitely leaves some question in certain investment minds of where does that end up, and where do we wind up there while we are not yet in a position to provide forward-looking specific guidance because we are. I know. I was I was going to ask you. Of course you were. We're working through the process of thinking through our contract renewal strategies. We haven't talked about this, Stephanie, but we do have multi-decade-long strategic partnership with the majority of these health systems. So we are embedded in their organizations. We are in their executive team meetings every quarter talking about strategically where they're going. This is not your typical vendor-customer relationship, but we are facing some headwinds in terms of the profitability. Having said that, still very profitable, still free cash flow generative, still in a position to deploy capital. We have said today the fee share that we provide, and for those that are new to the story, a portion of the revenue we receive from suppliers for all of the purchasing of supplies that the healthcare providers undertake. We give a portion of that back called an Administrative Fee Share. Today, we are in the mid-50s in terms of that share back. We have said we could see that get into the 60s as we go through these contract renewal periods. So I think that's a headwind to some of the investor thesis also is just seeing when that plays out. But I'll reinforce, once we're beyond that, we are still a very profitable organization with differentiated assets, incredible strategic relationships, and the ability to grow from there. So with that in mind, right now, it's set up so these renewals go through 2027, correct? Majority come up in June 30th, 2025, of those members that reorganized in 2020. A portion are in 2026 and 2027. Why wouldn't you want to pull all of that forward, just have a garbage year, and then just clear the air on that one? We're obviously very focused on creating shareholder value to the degree that you pull things forward in those models. These are contractually agreed to programs that are in existence. If they're going to be significantly negative impacting to our profit and EBITDA, it just makes sense to do this rationally over time as opposed to just pull the pieces off. Yeah. I think the color I would add to that is we have been focused since we took the company public in 2013 where we historically didn't have contracts. And then we had to get all these members onto a contract template, and they were all renewing on a waterfall basis. We are also trying to get to a more rational contract waterfall over time by spreading when contracts come up for renewal versus having a couple hundred large health system contract renewals all hitting at the same time. Okay. Is it fair? Now, we've got five minutes left. I feel like we talk a lot about data. We talk a lot about AI. Sometimes I feel like we talk about so much that it becomes almost meaningless. Exactly. Let me explain like I'm five. You've got Remitra. You've got Contigo. You've got the adjacent markets. You've got PINC AI. What's it? Okay. It's really interesting in that when you started going down the path talking about AI, machine learning, natural language processing, those have been the buzzwords of the day, and everybody is woven those into their talk track. It came up in every single one of these meetings. Absolutely. So we started down this path a number of years back. And first of all, I think everybody understands this. For AI to be effective, the algorithms have to have a lot of data to ensure that the accuracy of what they're actually producing is viable for the results that it will produce. So you need a lot of data. Premier has probably the largest dataset, clinical safety datasets, supply chain datasets in the country. So very large datasets that inform these algorithms. For us, as a five-year-old, you have this thing called an Electronic Medical Record that tracks everything that happens to you as you go through your care journey. There are three major EMR, Electronic Medical Records. You have the Epic, Cerner, and Athena. What we can do is when a doctor is sitting with a patient, there's unstructured text that they're writing that's happening in a procedure. And what we do is we bring context to that unstructured text. And then we're able to bring meaning to that to say, "All right. Here's the way that we want to make sure that we can build algorithms leveraging the information within that to do a few things." And now I'm going to answer your question very specifically. We can identify patients for trials. So we can, looking at lab values, looking at patient status that is written within the text, different things that are happening to that patient, we can determine whether or not that patient would be somebody who would be qualified for a trial that just was launched or is in the process of being launched. Why is that so important? Well, it brings a great degree of heterogeneity, geographic heterogeneity to trials, and that's what life sciences is all about. So that's one area of our focus, which is in life sciences, we're doing things around identifying patients for trial. The second is, as a healthcare system performs a service, they get reimbursed for that service from CMS. Usually. Usually. Change. Unless there's a technology glitch or some sort of cyber event that prevents that from happening. Sometimes a healthcare system, a physician, or a clinician doesn't document appropriately what's actually happening with that patient. That's really important to understand because depending on the severity of the disease or depending on the comorbidities, the other issues that that patient is facing, they could be reimbursed at different levels. What we can do is, using our machine learning and contextual engine, we can bring out everything that should have been coded for to ensure that these organizations are getting reimbursed appropriately. Those are two clinical areas that we're very focused on. On the supply chain side, when you talk about Remitra, it's pretty simple, actually. What we do is, if you buy something, a supplier invoices you for what you buy. What Remitra does is that we can take all those invoices in and understand what's happening in the healthcare system in terms of what they're paying for product. Are they utilizing product that they thought they were using? Meaning, are there stockouts and people auto-substituting products? You have to remember, some of these are incredibly large organizations that they'll figure it out that things have been auto-substituted, but it'll figure it out a month later or six weeks later and those kinds of things. What we're able to do with Remitra is pretty much real-time to understand when things are being invoiced that shouldn't be invoiced for. So by having all of that data, we can bring things like price parity and all those kinds of things. I know you're looking at the clocks, but the net of all of it is we do think it's going to be incredibly disruptive in that we should say, when you track fees, we get supplier reports. The supplier actually says, "This is how much we sold. This is how much administrative fees we owe for that account." What we can do, once we have all the invoice data, is flip that switch and say, "No, no. We're going to bill them because we have all the information, all the intelligence. This is what the invoice looks like. This is what your rebates look like." So it's a total disruption of the way that the process is actually being done today. All right. We're over time. If you had 30 seconds to tell folks one big takeaway that you hope they get out of this session, what would it be? Go first, though. You only have 30 seconds. You can split it 15-15. No, no. So look, I think at the end of the day, I'll echo what Craig said. We sit in an incredibly vital part of healthcare. Healthcare is a growing part of the business, of the economy. We've got incredible capabilities, very unique data assets, great services, great partnerships with our healthcare systems. And we've got a great business model that drives a lot of cash flow, very high-margin business. And we're very excited about the future of the business. All right. Well, thank you guys so much for joining me.