As Cardinal Health nears its second anniversary since the company’s first investor day under CFO Aaron Alt’s leadership, steady progress has been made in its ambitious transformation. Alt reflects on the company’s trajectory since his appointment, saying, “We’ve deployed several billion dollars in acquisitions to drive our strategy.” This shift highlights the company’s focus on specialty distribution and related services—areas Alt tells us offer higher margins and greater growth potential than the company’s traditional core business.
Read MoreUnder Alt’s leadership, Cardinal Health has pursued both organic growth and strategic acquisitions, targeting key therapy areas like gastroenterology and urology. According to Alt, the company’s balance sheet has played a critical role, enabling investments and allowing Cardinal Health to return capital to shareholders through increased dividends and share repurchases.
With the recent increase in the company’s fiscal year 2026 profit estimates, Alt’s strategy appears to be paying off. “We’re doing what we said we were going to do,” Alt emphasizes, underscoring the transparency and accountability he has fostered during his tenure. Looking ahead, the company’s growth trajectory is set to continue as it leverages acquisitions and internal investments to expand its portfolio and drive long-term value creation.
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CFOTL: Some of what you highlighted in our earlier discussion was the importance of a strong balance sheet and growth-focused, as part of a growth-focused M&A strategy. Can you share with us how these recent acquisitions have aligned with your long-term growth plans?
Alt: Anytime as CFO, you deploy more than $5 billion in acquisitions, you take a deep breath and look at the business case and make sure that I’ve got line of sight, that we’ve got line of sight to how we’re going to create value with those funds. Because otherwise, we should be deploying them organically or giving them back to our shareholders. You know, in our case, we’ve done five pieces of strategic M&A, and I call it strategic M&A because two years ago, at our investor day back in 2023, we were very transparent with Wall Street that we were going to be investing in the business.
Read MoreWe were going to be investing in the specialty part of our business, the additional therapy areas that Cardinal had a presence in. But we were looking to grow our presence in specialty distribution and related services because of its higher margin, higher growth than our core business. And you know, in the world of “tell people what you’re going to do, do it, and report back.” Part of the joy for us as we approach our next investor day is doing just that—reporting back that we’ve done just that, and that we’ve done a number of strategic, significant acquisitions that have grown our profile, grown our exposure to specialty therapy areas like gastroenterology, like urology, along with some technology elements to support those parts of the business. So we’re quite excited about the inorganic elements of the portfolio. And as you point out, it’s enabled by the strong balance sheet that Cardinal Health has. The team has spent the last several years paying down debt so that we’d be in a position to take advantage of the strong cash flow we have to now invest right back into the business.
CFOTL: So I saw that the company has raised its fiscal year 26 per-share operating profit estimate. How does this fit into the larger growth story you’re crafting here for Cardinal Health?
Alt: Well, you know, we’ve been blessed in the last couple of quarters with some success where we’ve been able to consistently meet or beat the expectations on the outside. And at our Q3 earnings, we did raise our guidance for fiscal year 25 and provided some initial perspective on what’s coming for 26. You know, the in-quarter results, the short-term guidance updates, they’re a sign of progress. They’re a sign that we’re doing what we said we were going to do. But they’re only one signal. We look at both the quarterly results, but more importantly, are we investing for the long term? Are we generating the cash? Are we deploying the cash in the right way so that it’s not just one quarter of success, but a series of quarters of success as we carry forward? Because one thing that Jason’s very clear with his team on, and we try to be very clear on externally, is we’re going to tell you what our strategy is, we’re going to tell you what we’re going to do, we’re going to go do it, and then we’re going to report back, and then we’re going to do that all over again. And so every time we have a quarterly earnings cycle, that’s our goal: to report back on how are we doing against the commitments we made to all of our stakeholders.
Cardinal Health | www.cardinalhealth.com | Dublin, OH