Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (NASDAQ:WBA) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Elizabeth Anderson: Hi, guys. Thanks so much for the question. One thing that’s been obviously a hot topic this year is utilization. Obviously, you guys have a mixed model that both has fee-for-service as well as value-based care lives. Can you talk through us how you sort of see those inflections in utilization impacting of the VillageMD overall — business overall? And then secondly, can you just comment more generally on sort of any additional deleveraging plans you have for this year? Thank you.

John Driscoll: I think on the utilization, utilization is our friend, obviously at City and at Summit, and has been more of a headwind in Village. The good news from a Village perspective is that even with that, increasing in utilization post-COVID, that we are particularly in our mature markets showing an improved margin profile on our full risk lives. And so it’s the way we solve for what’s a benefit of having a two-part portfolio is continuing to convert more of those fee-for-service lives to full risk lives with a better margin profile, and optimizing our cost base so that we can get the full value of that improvement in revenues.

A – Manmohan Mahajan: Yes, and I think on the question around deleveraging, couple of thoughts there. Number one, we’re absolutely committed to our investment grade reading. And as we’ve said, one of the key areas of focus here in last 6 to 8 weeks for me and Ginger has been cash management. I’ve gone through that as to how we’re going to drive the improvement there. And last I would point out is we continue to have a portfolio of investments which we look at simplification and optimizing that provides us flexibility.

Operator: Our final question comes from Eric Percher from Nephron Research. Please go ahead.

Eric Percher: Thank you. I’d like to turn to the topic of labor and ask to what extent you’re seeing headwinds from labor cost? And I think there’s probably a bit of a reminder on the one-time costs you saw on fiscal year ’23 versus fiscal year ’24?

John Driscoll: Yes, maybe let me start with the one-time costs. Look, we have significant savings here that we’re going to achieve in fiscal ’24. And obviously there is going to be a cost associated with it. But when I look at the cash flow impact in the year within ’24, we see a positive impact net-net from a cash flow perspective of cost savings initiative net of the costs associated with it. On the labor cost, yes, look, we have seen investments in last year and a half. If you think about Q1, Q1 would be the last quarter where we would see headwinds from a labor investment perspective. Because most of these investments were in play starting second quarter last year. Apart from that I think normal business course investments and labor will continue.

Operator: We have no further questions in the queue at this time. Ginger Graham, I’ll turn the call back over to you for closing remarks.

Ginger L. Graham: Thanks so much, and thanks everyone for joining the call and your questions. We really appreciate the feedback and the support. We are clear on our challenges and our priorities and we are focused on the future. We’re looking forward to your further question. So please reach out to our Investor Relations team. Thanks very much.

Operator: And this concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation and you may now disconnect.

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