As it relates to stop loss, you’re right, we’re seeing nice growth in that product line. We’ve got 13% year-on-year premium growth. We’re on track to achieve our target profitability in that business this year. So nice performance, and it continues to resonate with our clients. David, anything you want to add in that regard?
David Cordani: Yes. Thanks, Brian. And good morning, Justin. The item I amplify is, Justin, as you recall from prior conversations, part of our consultative approach and go-to-market approach is when you work with clients of a variety of sizes around the benefit design that matches their strategy, the clinical programs in support of that, that match your strategy, the service support programs that match your strategy. The final thing we work on is the funding mechanism. And as the market conditions change, we have the ability to flex between risk or guarantee cost, shared returns and/or self-funded with stop loss. And our stop loss program, as you call out, continues to perform well, grow well and resonate in the marketplace because it provides that peace of mind and predictability for employers around their cash flow and any dislocation that may happen in a given year.
So, our specialists in that space have a high-performing book. It continues to resonate well. And you’ll see ebb and flow over time based on market buying conditions, but continued growth.
Operator: Thank you, Mr. Lake. Our next question comes from Ms. Lisa Gill with JPMorgan. You may ask your question.
Lisa Gill: Thanks very much. Good morning. I just want to come back to the pharmacy side of the business for a minute and ask a couple of questions. One, when I think about the quarter, can you talk about the margin impact from: one, GLP-1s? I know you talked about strength there; two, the shift to biosimilars?; and three, the Centene implementation costs? Can you just talk about how each of those had an impact on the margin in the quarter? And then, just as a follow-up, when you talked about the 2024 selling season, more specific on the PBM side, can you maybe just give a little more detail as to how renewals went and what your retention rates are expected to be for ’24? Thanks.
Brian Evanko: Good morning, Lisa. It’s Brian. I’ll start. I think that’s a multiparter, and then Eric is going to chime in with some comments on the sales season. But as it relates to the quarter, overall, Evernorth continues to perform really well. So, I’d start there. Largely in line with our expectations when you put all the different moving pieces together. The individual components you kind of called out there, Eric referenced earlier, GLP-1 utilization does continue to build, which in the Evernorth business is a positive contributor to our earnings at this point in time, whether that be for diabetic indications or non-diabetic indications. So that’s certainly a net positive relative to the Evernorth business in 2023. On the biosimilar side of the house, you should think of, thus far, relatively low adoption of Amjevita in the first half of the year.
On the second half of the year, we obviously added two additional biosimilars into the National Preferred Formulary. And one of the reasons we expect acceleration in income growth in the third and fourth quarter is the impact of greater biosimilar adoption as well as improved overall positioning relative to the dynamics of competitiveness across the four drugs that will be on the National Preferred Formulary. But in the second quarter, I wouldn’t characterize biosimilars as a particular driver of the margin profile. On the Centene impact, we remain very much on track relative to the implementation against our commitments. As we mentioned before, we expect to spend about $200 million over the course of 2023. You should think of that as gradually building quarter-to-quarter over the course of the year.
And so, the money is being spent as we speak. And all those factors did impact the second quarter. But again, nothing in particular I would call out being significantly deviating from our expectations compared to what we expected three months ago. Eric, maybe you can pick up both on Centene and the selling season.
Eric Palmer: Great. Thanks, Brian. And good morning, Lisa. So, just a couple of other comments that I had on Centene. I’m really pleased with how we are working together to deliver an implementation program to serve Centene’s customers. We are on track, and there’s good momentum in the readiness for our January ’24 implementation. So, continue to be excited about that opportunity. With respect to the selling season more broadly, we operate in a competitive market, and the strength of our solutions really continues to resonate. We will deliver another strong retention rate. As we look to the 2024, I think mid-90%-s or higher, and consistent with our prior commentary around what a strong retention rate looks like. We’ll have additional new growth, new client wins on top of the large Centene win as well. So, feeling good as we kind of wind down the 2024 selling season at this point, and we’ll provide more detail on that when we provide our 2024 guidance later on.
