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Cardinal Investor Day 2025: Momentum, strong performance and multi-year growth

Members of its leadership team shared their strategies to continue to maximize the company’s potential, including making multiple investments in new facilities featuring the latest automation, technology-enabled customer solutions, and strategic acquisitions.

CEO Jason Hollar recently at the New York Stock Exchange, as he opened the company’s 2025 Investor Day. Image courtesy of NYSE Group. NYSE does not recommend or endorse any investments, investment strategies, companies, products or services.

DUBLIN, Ohio — "We’ve built a strong, resilient foundation. We have a unique breadth of capabilities and a consistent track record in a resilient industry; these will enable us to deliver compelling future growth," said CEO Jason Hollar recently at the New York Stock Exchange, as he opened the company’s 2025 Investor Day. Throughout the event, he and members of his leadership team shared their strategies to continue to maximize the company’s potential, including making multiple investments in new facilities featuring the latest automation, technology-enabled customer solutions, and strategic acquisitions.

Brief overview of the company shared during investor day.

“We’ve made tremendous progress, a credit to our dedicated team, strategic focus, relentless simplification and ruthless prioritization to drive continuous improvement,” Hollar said.

Highlights of that progress include:

  • Cardinal Health has raised its fiscal 2025 non-GAAP diluted EPS guidance to $8.15 to $8.20.
  • It has established preliminary fiscal 2026 non-GAAP diluted EPS guidance of $9.10 to $9.30 (13% growth at the mid-points).
  • The company has confirmed its long-term target of 12% to 14% non-GAAP diluted EPS CAGR for fiscal 2026 to fiscal 2028.
  • It has raised fiscal 2025 Pharmaceutical and Specialty Solutions segment profit: 12% to 13% growth, from 11.5% to 12.5% growth, and raised long-term target for the segment profit to 5% to 7% normalized growth.
  • Cardinal Health also has raised fiscal 2025 profit growth for its Other (Nuclear and Precision Health Solutions, at-Home Solutions and OptiFreight Logisitics) segment to 19% to 21% for the year, and raised long-term target for Other profit to ~10% normalized growth.
  • The Global Medical Products and Distribution (GMPD) segment has achieved positive profit and cash flow generation, thanks to the execution of its multi-year improvement plan. The company has narrowed GMPD’s fiscal 2025 profit: ~$130M, from $130 million to 140 million, and updated GMPD’s long-term target to $50M+ of profit growth per year after fiscal 2026.

Through all its businesses, “we span the entire spectrum of healthcare, providing unique value within the industry, and I’m confident in what lies ahead,” Hollar said.

From its legacy foundation of distribution, the company will continue to evolve and offer more complex products and services that will enable more value creation for all stakeholders.

“We’ve made tremendous progress, a credit to our dedicated team, strategic focus, relentless simplification and ruthless prioritization to drive continuous improvement,” Hollar said. Image courtesy of NYSE Group. NYSE does not recommend or endorse any investments, investment strategies, companies, products or services.

Investing in Pharmaceutical and Specialty Solutions

Pharma & Specialty Solutions is the company’s largest and most significant business. Its new Consumer Health Logistics Center (CHLC) in Central Ohio is the first step in a multi-year path towards increasing capacity and driving efficiencies across the company's pharmaceutical distribution network. The facility has begun to take delivery of inventory and, when fully operational in July 2025, will serve as a centralized replenishment center for the distribution of over-the-counter medications, treatments and diagnostic solutions for our pharmacy customers.

Pharma & Specialty Solutions also will build a new state-of-the-art forward distribution center equipped with the latest in automation technology. The new facility will increase efficiencies, capacity and customer service levels; the company currently is conducting an evaluation of potential locations for the new distribution center.

Pharma & Specialty Solutions continues to invest in new technologies, too, such as its new ordering platform, Vantus HQ, which creates efficiencies for customers doing business with us. Vantus HQ is a one-stop digital hub that gives retail pharmacists enhanced capabilities for searching products, tracking orders and accessing reporting. The platform was piloted earlier in fiscal 2025, and has now been rolled out broadly.

Several additional investments within Pharma & Specialty Solutions will bring together broad Specialty capabilities, designed to help the company achieve its goal of becoming a multispecialty leader.

  • The new Specialty Alliance is a multi-specialty management services organization (MSO) platform that will encompass the recently acquired GI Alliance, as well as the newly established Urology Alliance, following the company's broadened therapeutic reach into urology with the recent acquisitions of Urology America and Potomac Urology. The platform provides administrative and management services, so that providers can focus on patient care. The separately managed Navista oncology alliance also offers an MSO platform; together, these platforms now support approximately 2,200 providers across 28 states and more than 450 sites of care.
     
  • Specialty Networks will expand into oncology, and build its existing capabilities in gastroenterology and rheumatology. The Specialty Networks team has a long history of leadership within the area of urology; these expansions are a natural next step in our multispecialty strategy.
     
  • Continued investments in Biopharma Solutions, including in the Specialty Networks' technology solutions, PPS Analytics and SoNaR, leverage real-world data to improve patient care and clinical research in urology. (Both platforms are used to identify patients for clinical trials, manage patients’ adherence to clinical pathways and assess treatment effectiveness.) These technology solutions will launch into oncology and further expand in gastroenterology and rheumatology, in support of Cardinal Health's manufacturer partners and practitioner customers, including physicians served by the company's MSO platforms.

Additionally, Biopharma Solutions expects its Sonexus™ Access and Patient Support "hub" platform to more than double its supported therapies by fiscal year 2028.

Learn more about how our Specialty Solutions team supports independent specialty physician practices here.

“The industry will continue to evolve, of course, and Cardinal Health will evolve with it,” Hollar said. Image courtesy of NYSE Group. NYSE does not recommend or endorse any investments, investment strategies, companies, products or services.

Accelerating growth in the company’s Other businesses

The company’s three growth businesses, Nuclear and Precision Health Solutions (NPHS), at-Home Solutions and OptiFreight® Logistics, have been reported together as  “Other” since early in 2024. “Each of these businesses leads within its part of the industry,” Hollar explained. “Each is growing rapidly, and, thanks to secular trends like demographic changes, evolving consumer behavior, and technology advancements, we expect that growth to continue. Our investments in these businesses will continue to drive operational efficiencies and help us meet evolving customer and patient needs.”

Hollar detailed specific investments in each of the businesses.

  • NPHS plans to invest more $150 million over the next three years, enabling an expansion of its cyclotron network for PET products in 11 markets across the U.S. and a further expansion of its Center for Theranostics Advancement capabilities to support a strong pipeline of growth into the therapeutic areas of oncology, urology and neurology.

Learn how NPHS works to bring life-saving nuclear medicines to market for patients here.

  • at-Home Solutions has begun realizing anticipated synergies from its acquisition of Advanced Diabetes Supply (ADS), including the distribution network integration of the ADS business, expected to be completed before the end of calendar year 2025. at-Home Solutions announced the opening of its automated Fort Worth, Texas, facility and its plans for further automation distribution center expansion at three additional sites. This includes two new distribution centers planned in the West and the Northeast.
     
  • OptiFreight® Logistics, which provides expertise in logistics management to seven of the country’s top 10 health systems, and delivers more than $1 billion in savings to customers, will expand its offerings within the hospital pharmacy setting. This is a logical next step in Cardinal Health’s evolution, given the company’s freight management and pharmaceutical distribution leadership.

Cardinal Health also has begun to identify synergies and additional longer-term growth opportunities between these three businesses and Pharma & Specialty Solutions, including:

  • The NPHS business has significant overlaps with the customers and patients in the Biopharma Solutions business, including Specialty Networks and recently acquired MSOs, in areas including oncology and urology.
  • Leveraging our pharmacy expertise omnichannel platform capabilities in at-Home Solutions can provide connections to the customers and patients of both businesses.
  • Potential expansion opportunities for OptiFreight Logistics, in addition to its expansion into the acute pharmacy space.

Continuing to improve the Global Medical Products and Distribution (GMPD) segment
GMPD continues to execute its improvement plan, focused on accelerating growth of its Cardinal Health Brand products, and, at the same time, driving simplification and cost optimization. The multi-step effort builds upon the earlier progress of the GMPD improvement plan, which returned the business to positive profit and cash flow generation.

The segment continues to focus on mitigating the potential impacts of tariffs, which are currently directly affecting the GMPD’s Cardinal Health Brand portfolio of medical products. Though Cardinal Health Brand represents 2% of Cardinal Health’s total revenue, Hollar and his leadership team are working with policymakers, on behalf of customers, to minimize the impact of these changes.

Looking ahead
“The industry will continue to evolve, of course, and Cardinal Health will evolve with it,” Hollar said. “We are confident in our essential role of safely, securely and efficiently providing critical products and services. Few companies can offer the combination of resilient business model and compelling growth – the result of favorable trends and the direct actions we’re taking to evolve into higher-margin and faster-growing areas of the market.”

Hollar shared his appreciation for his leadership team and for the entire global team of Cardinal Health employees. “This team has driven our success over the past three years; they will drive our strategy going forward. We know this business, we understand the operations, and we understand our customers and their needs. Each of these leaders has deep benches of talent behind them.

“We are all united in the journey to be healthcare’s most trusted partner.”

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