And so from our perspective I can tell you that for example Mary on the US Healthcare side which has its own collection of assets independent from Boots and Shields and CareCentrix and in the businesses that we have. Mary has been doing a complete strip down of every one of those businesses and looking at both is it staffed right, is it built for growth, do the market support growth and this is going to culminate in part and let me be really clear. I don’t want to send a message that there’s some big bang coming but that when we sit down with our board at the end of April, we are going give them outside in context about the forces in healthcare over the next 5 to 10 years we’re going then look at how does that impact the people that we serve, both the payers, the health systems, the consumers, the patients, pharma companies and then we are going to make a series of either recommendations or next steps so that the board is very clear where we’re headed in some things.
We have some things already underway as part of this as we go from examining things to testing markets and so forth, I’m not going to get detailed at this point about that. Other than to say again, it’s dynamic. It is across the company and I am super excited to have a fully staffed executive committee based here in Chicago to do it alongside me.
Operator: Our next question comes from Michael Cherny with Leerink Partners.
Michael Cherny: Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. So maybe along the lines of the push and pull between your previous guidance versus the updated guidance, just a couple of things. First, on the dynamics behind the retail decline, and you talked about the same store growth, but you’ve seen any changes in what you’re expecting on economics on a same store script basis in the back half of a year. And then just on healthcare AOI as well. I know you highlighted the strong EBITDA performance. I would have thought with the accelerated pace of VillageMD closures that you might see a better second half ramp. Are there any other puts and takes we should think about within the healthcare business that leads to the dynamics of your current expectations versus your day performance?
Tim Wentworth: I’ll let Manmohan take that.
Manmohan Mahajan : Yes, sure. So, look, as you think of the second half implied guide, a couple of factors to consider. And I’ll go through the in-order retail is the biggest factor from a second half perspective. We have seen the challenging environment continues to persist for longer than expected. And so we are lowering our expectation. I think we were at low single digits and now we’re expecting negative 3% comp. So that is going into it. Our decision to early winddown the sale leaseback program, as well as our decision, to sell Cencora shares through block trade versus using a VPS structure variable prepaid forward structure, is creating additional headwinds as I think about the guidance we provided last quarter. So those are three headwinds and the offset to that from a full year perspective is obviously one of the factors that the favorable tax rate we have in the year, now the timing of that has played out in the second quarter.
Now you had some specific questions on the script, and how do we think about that? If you think about the second quarter, our comp script growth ex-immunization of 2.9% fairly consistent with we’re market was we were holding our share. And as we think about, rest of the second half of the year. We expect us to continue to grow in line with the market it and hold the share. So that’s kind of the expectation we have on the script side. On healthcare, look, Village continues to take decisions to rightsize their cost structure and think about their clinical footprint. And they did make the decision to exit certain more locations. To us, to us, we are very pleased with reaching the first quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA in the segment. We want to be — we want take a prudent approach for the next half and therefore we just continue to maintain the guidance we have.
Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the Q&A portion of today’s conference. I’d like to turn the call back over to Tim for any closing remarks.
Tim Wentworth: Thank you, operator. And thank you for your questions and your time today. As we close, I just want just quickly remind you what you’ve heard today. Our second quarter operational results were in line with our expectations despite continued challenges in the US retail environment. We drove solid execution. I’m very, very proud of the team and cost discipline in our US Retail Pharmacy segment with continued strong performance in International and we had our first quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA in U.S. Healthcare. Now, driven by our recently solidified leadership team, I would remind all of you that there are, one member of the team actually is starting in two weeks, but basically now we’re all around the table.
We have come together to be committed to an intense review in the coming months and to the hard work that’s going to ensure that each asset in our portfolio advances our expansion into the fastest growing areas of healthcare. And as you saw this quarter, we are willing to revalue things that we take a second look at and make difficult decisions. And we’re going to do that, not in one big bang, but as it becomes obvious to us on a situation by situation basis that we can act. And, as I said before, everything is on the table as we identify opportunities that unlock value, validate existing pathways, and lead WBA into a successful future. We look forward to continuing to keep you updated on our progress, and again, thank you.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s presentation. You may now disconnect. And have a wonderful day.
