Tenet Healthcare Corporation Stock

Good morning. Welcome to Tenet Healthcare's Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

I'll now turn the call over to your host, Mr. Will McDowell, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. McDowell, you may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call. I am Will McDowell, Vice President of Investor Relations. We're pleased to have you join us for a discussion of Tenet's third quarter 2026 results as well as a discussion of our financial outlook. Tenet's senior management participating in today's call will be Dr. Saum Sutaria, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Sun Park, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Our webcast this morning includes a slide presentation, which has been posted to the Investor Relations section of our website, tenethealth.com.

Listeners to this call are advised that certain statements made during our discussion today are forward-looking and represent management's expectations based on currently available information. Actual results and plans could differ materially. Tenet is under no obligation to update any forward-looking statements based on subsequent information. Investors should take note of the cautionary statement slide included in today's presentation as well as the risk factors discussed in our most recent Form 10-K and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Saum.

Thank you, Will, and good morning, everyone. Third quarter net operating revenues were $5.6 billion, and consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $1.355 billion. Adjusted diluted earnings per share increased 80% to $6.64 in the third quarter of 2026 compared to the prior year.

More importantly, after adjusting for onetime items related to contract transitions that generated adjusted EBITDA of $147 million that was not reflected in our previous guidance, the core business continued its strong growth trajectory in 2026 with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 21.8% and 10% growth in adjusted EBITDA over third quarter of 2025. We continue to manage through payer mix shifts and enrollment declines in the exchanges and execute on our technology-enabled growth and expense management plans that support our margin strength.

Our strong performance is driving significant free cash flow that we continue to deploy for the benefit of shareholders. Year-to-date, we have deployed over $1.6 billion for share repurchases.

Now turning to our segments. USPI generated $537 million in adjusted EBITDA, which represents 9% growth over third quarter 2025. Same-facility revenues grew 4.5% as our high-acuity strategy continues to yield benefits and is highlighted by our strongest quarterly performance this year with 12.8% same-store growth in total joint replacements in the ASCs over prior year.

USPI also had a very successful quarter in development with over $100 million of investments in the third quarter alone. We remain the preferred acquirer of assets in this space and continue to have an attractive pipeline of partnerships interested in joining USPI. Additionally, we have commenced patient care at 4 de novo centers to date.

Turning to our Hospital segment. Our performance in the quarter was driven by 3.2% adjusted admissions growth and strong margin performance from sustained expense efficiencies. The investments that we have made in support of our high-acuity strategy continue to pay dividends and drive incremental growth. Excluding the contract transition benefits that I mentioned, adjusted EBITDA grew a very attractive 11% over third quarter 2025, again, producing results ahead of our expectations. We are pleased with our performance in both operating segments, which continue to generate strong same-store revenue growth, attractive margins and robust free cash flows.

Turning to guidance for the rest of 2026. We began the year with attractive growth expectations and delivered an outsized and competitively differentiated increase to our guidance when we reported our second quarter results. At this point in the year, we are raising our full year 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance to a range of $5.05 billion to $5.2 billion, which represents an increase of $195 million or 4% at the midpoint of the range over our increased guidance after the second quarter. The guidance increase is supported by our continued expectations for strong fundamental performance as well as the onetime items in the back half of the year. Notably, over 40% of our total guidance increase for this year is from fundamental outperformance.

I'd like to now spend a few minutes discussing some early thoughts on 2027. After excluding the impact of the transition activities at Conifer, we expect our enterprise to deliver overall adjusted EBITDA growth in 2027. This assumes the current known regulatory frameworks. The value of our diversified business mix supports our belief in this outcome for 2027.

We are still conducting business planning, so details will come after the fourth quarter as usual. We are sizing further potential exchange headwinds and the estimated impact of Medicaid work requirements. USPI should not be materially impacted by these, and we expect same-store revenue growth, consistent margins and further expansion of the asset portfolio in our ambulatory business.

In the Hospital segment, we currently see healthy patient demand that would support same-store volume growth and a stable operating environment supported by disciplined cost controls in 2027. To help you bridge the years, we now expect various transition activities at Conifer to total $450 million of adjusted EBITDA in 2026. We do not expect these contributions to recur in '27, and I will reiterate that this is an estimate, depending on how the transitions proceed operationally. We will provide an update following our fourth quarter results. We are pleased with the results of this highly attractive Conifer transaction as the total value generated from the contract sale will now increase to approximately 15x 2025 adjusted EBITDA minus NCI.

In summary, we have a transformed portfolio of businesses with strong underlying fundamentals, disciplined operations and a business mix which is diversified for many of the reimbursement headwinds that are affecting the industry.

Finally, I will again reiterate our commitment to returning free cash flow to shareholders via repurchases, especially at our attractive valuation multiple in light of recent comparable multiples for combination ASC hospital platforms.

For more details on our results, I will now turn it over to Sun.

Thank you, Saum, and good morning, everyone. We again delivered strong performance in the third quarter of 2026, generating total net operating revenues of $5.6 billion and consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $1.355 billion. Third quarter adjusted EBITDA margins were driven by strong revenue performance and disciplined operating expense management, with continued progress on the efficiency initiatives that we outlined at the beginning of the year as well as favorable transition items as described in the earnings release.

I would now like to highlight some key items for both of our segments, beginning with USPI. In the third quarter, USPI adjusted EBITDA grew 9.1% over third quarter 2025 at $537 million, with adjusted EBITDA margins at 39.2%. Same-facility system-wide revenues increased 4.5%, with net revenue per case up 6.1% and same-facility case volumes down 1.5%, reflective of our high-acuity focus.

Turning to our Hospital segment, same-hospital adjusted admissions rose 3.2% in the quarter as demand remained healthy. Revenue per adjusted admission increased 0.2% year-over-year in the quarter, primarily due to strength in commercial employer revenues, offset by the impact of reduced exchange volumes.

Exchange admissions and revenues declined 18% from third quarter of 2025 and represented about 5.5% of consolidated net operating revenues in the third quarter of 2026. We recognized $32 million of out-of-period supplemental Medicaid revenues in the quarter. This compares to $38 million of out-of-period supplemental Medicaid revenues that we had in the third quarter of 2025. I would note that year-to-date, there is $124 million of favorable out-of-period supplemental Medicaid revenues related to prior years.

Finally, we recognized a net benefit of $147 million associated with the timing of revenue recognition in various transition activities related to Conifer in the third quarter of 2026. This amount is comprised of 2 items. First, our net operating revenues increased by $97 million due to revenue recognition timing. It is important to note that this is simply a timing shift between the third and fourth quarters and, as such, does not impact our full year 2026 revenues associated with the transitioning contract.

Second, we recognized $50 million of EBITDA from various transition activities, including expense reductions that took place earlier than we had originally anticipated. All in all, our operating discipline and strategic focus enabled us to deliver another strong quarter despite the patient coverage challenges that the industry is facing.

Next, we will discuss our cash flow, balance sheet and capital structure. We generated $1.1 billion of adjusted free cash flow in the third quarter, which brings us to $2.5 billion of adjusted free cash flow year-to-date. As of September 30, 2026, we had $2.67 billion of cash on hand, with no borrowings outstanding under our line of credit facility.

As previously announced, we issued $2 billion of senior unsecured notes that mature in 2034. We used the proceeds from the notes to retire $2 billion of notes that would have been due in 2027 and 2028. We now have no significant debt maturities until 2028.

And finally, during the third quarter, we repurchased 970,000 shares of our stock for $255 million. Year-to-date, we have repurchased 8 million shares of our stock for $1.615 billion.

Our leverage ratio as of September 30, 2026 was 2.11x EBITDA or 2.58x EBITDA less NCI, driven by our strong operational performance and financial discipline. We remain committed to maintaining a deleveraged balance sheet and believe that we have significant financial flexibility to support our capital deployment priorities and continue to drive shareholder value.

Let me now turn to our outlook for 2026. For 2026, we now expect consolidated net operating revenues in the range of $22.05 billion to $22.45 billion, an increase of $50 million at the midpoint of the range over prior expectations. As Saum mentioned, we are raising our 2026 adjusted EBITDA outlook range by $195 million at the midpoint, to $5.05 billion to $5.2 billion, reflecting the increased EBITDA expectations associated with our transition activities as well as the additional out-of-period supplemental Medicaid revenues that we recognized in the quarter.

Turning to our cash flows for 2026, we now expect adjusted free cash flow after NCI in the range of $1.925 billion to $2.155 billion, an increase of $100 million at the midpoint from our previous guidance range. This range includes the payment of about $150 million in tax payments this year for the Conifer transaction. Excluding these tax payments, this would represent $2.2 billion of adjusted free cash flow after NCI at the midpoint of our '26 outlook. Our businesses continue to deliver strong free cash flow conversion from our EBITDA performance while we continue to invest in high-priority areas to support future growth.

Turning to our capital deployment priorities, we are well positioned to create value for shareholders through the effective deployment of free cash flow. First, we will continue to prioritize capital investments to grow USPI through M&A. Second, we expect to continue investing in key Hospital growth opportunities to fuel organic growth, including our focus on higher acuity service offerings. Third, we'll continue to be active in share repurchases. We continue to see significant opportunity at our current valuation, continued operating performance and strong leverage position. And finally, we will continue to evaluate opportunities to retire and/or refinance debt.

We are pleased with our continued effective execution and remain confident in our ability to deliver our increased outlook for 2026.

And with that, we're ready to begin the Q&A. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Jason Cassorla with Guggenheim.

Great. I wanted to ask about commercial pricing. It's an area you've called out a couple of times or at least the past couple of quarters. Maybe can you just unpack what you're realizing on the commercial rate side, how you're working with payers as a partner to increase revenue yields, reduce administrative costs and the like, and how you're thinking about the sustainability of this commercial pricing favorability as you look out into the future?

Jason, it's Sun. Yes, I think our relationship with our commercial payers and commercial pricing overall hasn't changed very much at all from our prior commentary, right? We still are seeing good renewals, a lot of them at the 3% to 5% range. We're obviously fully contracted for this year and are basically over 90% contracted for next year as well. So we have good visibility.

The only other thing I would note is from a net revenue per just admissions rate, we said 0.2% this year -- or this quarter, excuse me. A lot of that is driven by, as expected, good pricing mix across our categories, and then obviously offset by exchange headwinds. The exchange headwinds represented about 1.8% headwind on our net revenue stat.

And then from an operational basis, look, I mean we try to have a win-win relationship with all our payers. We obviously have to be very diligent from our Conifer business operations on our revenue yield as we respond to different requests and, candidly, denial activity from the payers. And we performed very well, I think, from a revenue yield basis. And that really hasn't changed over the last several years in our commentary. And we think given Conifer's capabilities and the investments we continue to make in technology and Conifer overall, that we'll be able to sustain that.

Saum, I don't know if you have any other comments on that. Thank you for your question.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Ryan Langston with TD Cowen.

This is Bill on for Ryan. I just have a quick question on the state directed payments. So you disclosed a number in your filings about Medicaid supplemental payments. I was wondering if you could ballpark what percentage of those will not be subject to reductions under HR1?

Yes, we did -- we disclosed our overall state -- supplemental Medicaid payments, excuse me. And for this quarter, you'll see in our 10-Q, it will be $356 million total of supplemental payments. That being said, we don't disclose the proportion of which would be subject to HR1 activity going forward.

Fair enough. If I could just ask a quick follow-up then on just work requirements and thinking about that for next year. When you think about your total adjusted admissions, what percentage come from Medicaid expansion individuals?

So when you look at our admissions, I would say there's about 60% of our admissions that are from expansion states. I think that's about it. I think you know that we have markets like Michigan, where there's a lot of activity and we're important providers in that expansion state, that's an example. So it's about 60%.

Our next question comes from the line of Kevin Fischbeck with Bank of America.

Great. Just one clarification before I asked the question. When you said that you think you're going to be able to grow EBITDA next year ex Conifer, is that the only adjusted to $450 million? Or do we also have to take out the prior year Medicaid supplemental payments? And then I guess the real question is just about your view on surgeries broadly. There's been a lot of talk about ambulatory surgery backdrop, and I'd like to hear what you're seeing on that respect.

Yes. Let me start with the second question and I'll pass to Sun. I think surgical environment, look, I mean, from an industry perspective, in terms of what we're seeing, we're pleased with our results. Obviously, there are 2 components, the Hospital segment and the ASC segment, both of which, I think, are generally consistent or better than what we're seeing in the general industry.

Remember, on the USPI side, as I noted, we're still so focused on our strategy of acuity that you have to take those results in light of that. But again, I think competitively differentiated results there as well, both on revenue and volume. So we're pleased with -- we're pleased with that.

And that said, I would not say this is a gangbusters surgical environment right now, right? So you just have to take both of them together. And the importance of our strategy is probably the critical point here in terms of what's driving our confidence in the earnings growth going forward into 2027.

Yes. And Kevin, this is Sun. Just on your clarification question, yes, we do believe we'll grow total EBITDA next year once you normalize for the $450 million of onetime transition items that we called out this year.

Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Baxter with Wells Fargo.

I was hoping you could update us a little bit on what you're seeing on compensated care trends. It looks like in the third quarter, there was some uptick in both unpaid admissions and also, I think, a little bit more so unpaid outpatient visits when compared to the second quarter. Does that go beyond what you're seeing on the exchanges? Any kind of update just on the exchange trajectory throughout the year?

I mean, first of all, the primary comment I would make is that, largely, Q3 is a stabilization message from Q2, right? I mean if Q1 started with what would have been under the basic run rate of impact and Q2 accelerated, Q3 is a stabilization message is our main takeaway there. And then you're right about the slight changes there.

I don't know, Sun, if you have any other comments, but that's how we're viewing it.

No, nothing further to add, Saum. It's really exchange volume reductions that we discussed and the commensurate increase in unite care numbers that you're seeing. I don't think there's anything beyond that.

Our next question comes from the line of Whit Mayo with Leerink Partners.

Is there a revenue headwind that we should be aware of as we think about the hospital segment for the fourth quarter with CommonSpirit now gone? And is the $450 million headwind next year, is that ratably across each of the quarters? Or does it have a different slope to it?

Yes. Whit, this is Sun. The only revenue headwind we'll call out is the timing piece that we explicitly said, the $97 million that came into Q3 on a timing basis that otherwise would have been in Q4 instead. I think that's the only material one that I would call out from a Hospital segment perspective.

For next year, the $450 million, I would say a big portion of that is -- would be spread ratably throughout the year, and that is the overall contribution of the CommonSpirit contract that we saw this year. And then there is a portion, and we called out about $160 million total, between Q3 and Q4, that is going to be more, obviously, second half weighted given that some of the efficiency and transaction activities took place in the second half of the year versus the first half. So I think those are the major moving pieces.

Our next question comes from the line of Brian Tanquilut with Jefferies.

Maybe, Sun, as I think about the salaries line, I see it's down both sequentially and year-over-year basis. Is this largely driven by the Conifer transition or is there anything to think about in terms of the efforts that you guys have put in on SW&B? And is this the right baseline to basically adjust and build off of going forward?

Yes. I would actually say it's the other way around. I mean most of the efficiency you're seeing in our SW&B line is from all the things that we just talked about over the course of the year, where we, obviously, has spent a lot of time and energy and effort and have shown performance on cost controls in the base of HICS exchange reductions and other challenges. So there are a lot of moving pieces, obviously, in that line item, but a lot of -- majority of that is from our efficiency efforts.

Now as you get into Q3 and Q4, as again said, there are some additional efficiency impact that we'll see as we transition activities. But by and large, SW&B is from our efficiency efforts overall across Tenet Healthcare.

Our next question comes from the line of Pito Chickering with Deutsche Bank.

Just looking at the ASC growth engine for the next few years, ortho is a big one. But should we be thinking about other areas like urology, bringing to use the da Vincis, use XIs, urology, I mean kind of as you look past ortho, which again will continue for another couple of years, where is the next sort of big growth engine that we should be thinking about within ASCs?

Yes, Pito. For sure, orthopedics and the expansion of orthopedics cases beyond the current case mix is an important driver. But in addition, for us, as you know, we have been pursuing growth in urology, in general surgery, in advanced body robotics, in spine. I mean there are a number of areas, standing up some new cardiac centers, as I've always said, slower process, but still opportunity.

So the diversification in the higher acuity areas while maintaining and growing our base are both important drivers of that future. And really, the combination of that strategy with the regulatory framework and support for moving surgical care into safe, lower-cost settings are both things that I think will benefit us over a multiyear period.

In this environment -- and look, the regulatory environment is somewhat known and somewhat uncertain based upon what happens from an election standpoint. But I would say and reiterate what I noted in my comments, which is having the diversified platform at the scale we have it is a really important driver of our ongoing ability to build and grow this business at an enterprise level.

Great. And then a follow-up here, look, you raised the core EBITDA growth by sort of $3 million versus last quarter. I assume there's a lot of moving pieces within that $3 million. So can you sort of talk about the good guys and bad guys within that as it seems pretty solid considering the volatility we're seeing in the markets today.

Pito, I mean, I think as we kind of said in our prepared comments, the change in our estimates and guidance ranges was pretty mechanical this quarter, right, it was virtually all to do with the onetime items as well as the revenue recognition piece that we mentioned plus the out-of-period Medicaid.

Without those, I would say, from a core fundamental performance basis, we had a very significant raise last quarter, both for the first half of the year and the second half of the year. And I think we think we obviously delivered to our increased expectations in Q3. So I would say those are probably the moving pieces that I would point out.

Yes. I mean we're reiterating the belief in the strength of the business today and also our ability to manage that into the fourth quarter at the elevated levels that we've provided. And we think we have the foundation in place and the tactics for the fourth quarter in place given the demand we're seeing right now for a successful end to the year. .

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of A.J. Rice with UBS.

We've had now, with the announcement of the last week, 2 major deals where nonprofit health systems are buying surgery center assets, paying significantly higher premiums than what your business is being valued in the market. And you historically, I think USPI has generally been viewed in the industry as probably the premium surgery center asset.

I wonder with that backdrop, can you comment on, is this having any impact in the market on deals, the smaller deals, in terms of how people are thinking about pricing? Is it changing the competition for ASC assets in any way that maybe these guys are out of the market because they're in the process of selling or maybe the nonprofit systems are gearing up to be more active acquirers? And does it do anything to make you think about being more proactive in trying to get recognition for the value that's obviously there at USPI but doesn't seem to be recognized by the market?

A.J., I mean let's start with the last part of it. I mean, again, as I commented at the end, I think from a practical perspective, the 2 things that we can do are continue to deliver differentiated earnings growth. I believe that USPI has delivered differentiated earnings growth versus any other ASC platform in the industry, both recently and over a long period of time. I think the facts would support that pretty easily.

And the second thing is with our free cash flow generation, recognizing the attractive valuation of our equity relative to what are some reasonable valuations of, in this case, more recently, ASC hospital combination platforms, as I noted. So those are the 2 practical things. Look, we believe in continuing to build this business and do it in a differentiated manner.

In terms of the M&A market, look at the third quarter, again, right? A very successful third quarter in acquisitions, the vast majority of which were not competitive processes but came exclusively to USPI in those processes. And we have a terrific pipeline looking ahead. I know we keep saying that, but the reality is our acquisitions every year continue to confirm that that pipeline translates to actual acquisition activity and successful ramp-up of our ability to deliver synergies into those assets.

At the same time, our strategy is diversifying more and more inclusive of more rapid pace of de novo development, new tools in the toolkit about how we think about those de novo developments, a heavier focus of those de novo developments into some of the higher acuity service lines where we've built a differentiated reputation in the marketplace with physician and physician groups and MSOs that are investing in those specialties. So I think that's another important feature of what we are able to do looking forward.

And then finally, because of the value that we are providing health plans in the ASC sector and the government, candidly, our ability to move into new markets and new states with our contracting platform and move surgical care into lower-cost settings, without having to own more acute care hospitals, is another important differentiator in what we are able to do with respect to expanding USPI's scope and activity.

So again, as you can imagine, we spend a lot of time on this and how we remain competitively differentiated going forward, not just where we are today. And hopefully, that gives you a little bit of a flavor of it.

Look, in terms of the 2 recent ASC acquisitions, I personally extended my congratulations to both new owners. This is an important part of the market. And we have a lot of work to do together from an advocacy perspective in order to support and build the growing interest in ambulatory surgery, maintain high quality and safety, and also ensure that regulators understand the benefits that this portion of the surgical sector is providing to the cost of health care going forward. And so I look forward to those collaborations with those leaders.

Our next question comes from the line of Justin Lake with Wolfe Research.

You guys have done an incredible job of managing costs and improving margins at the Hospital segment in particular. I wanted to see if you can give us any color on where you see yourself in terms of the life cycle of that margin trajectory, effectively asking whether you still see meaningful opportunity here, or should we expect core growth going forward in the Hospital business to look more like top line growth ex items like DPP, exchanges, work requirements that are going to be transitioning?

Justin, thanks for the question. And we have spent a lot of time and energy making sure that our total business, including hospitals, as you noted, is running efficiently and we're finding cost opportunities wherever we can. And that's been a long-standing campaign for Tenet, obviously. This year, as we've talked about several times, we accelerated those efforts, including adoption of different technologies and AI tools, for obvious reasons in the face of some headwinds that we had in exchange as well as other dynamics.

Going forward, it's tough to say where in the life cycle we are, right? I think it's reasonable to assume that we will have access to even more improved technologies and other solutions as we go that we may not be aware of today but that we can adopt as we go in the future, and I think Tenet has shown the ability to do that. From a more operational basis, the operating environment, I think, is pretty stable, right, as we said in many times, from a labor standpoint, from our ability to manage our suppliers and other medical professional providers. I think there remains opportunity and we will continue to work on those, but I think we've managed that pretty significantly.

So listen, I think Tenet's been showing the ability to kind of dial up, dial down as the situation requires. We'll see as we get through our planning for '27 what all of the headwinds and tailwinds are. And obviously, managing our operating expenses will be a big part of how we deliver our commitments. So hopefully, that answers your question.

The one thing I'd add is that our commentary about 2027 is probably a reflection of how positively we feel about our controllable activities looking forward into the coming year.

Agree.

Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Mok with Barclays.

Total joints have been a strong category for quite some time, but it looks like that category reaccelerated at USPI this quarter. Is there anything to call out driving that reacceleration of total joint growth? And do you believe that share is still coming from hospitals?

Yes. I mean, I think when you say is that share coming from hospitals, I think it's coming from migration of cases from probably an HOPD to a freestanding outpatient setting. I think the driver of that is the continued efforts that we make in helping surgeons realize that they have a service-differentiated site of care that, as they get comfortable with it, they can continue to grow their activity in that environment, right? It's more convenient for them, it's more convenient for their patients.

They have -- one of the important things that we have, I think I've talked about before, is the ability to help these surgeons who are pretty smart about opportunity and risk with their patients, to use frameworks we've established to give them more predictability in terms of which cases are safe in the ASC environment likely to be successful, in which conditions they may want to think about that would drive them to continue for patient success and safety standpoint in the hospital. And those protocols, I think, are very helpful to growing the confidence in the surgical community of what they can achieve in a USPI ASC. And that's helping to drive the organic growth.

And it's a matter of -- it's a matter of really expanding the access to those protocols, which is really about how many surgeons trial an environment in the USPI setting. One of the things we do in this service line is give surgeons an opportunity to trial USPI centers without having to be joint venture partners or equity owners or other things. So that's a really important feature of what we create capacity to do in our environment. Because those could be future partners in perhaps new de novo and other centers.

Our next question comes from the line of Sarah James with Cantor Fitzgerald.

You guys have talked positively about surgical results versus the industry. Are you gaining surgical share in 2026? And is it on the Hospital, USPI or both? And how are you thinking about the surgical versus medical mix heading into '27?

Yes. So 2 things. I mean I would reiterate our strategic focus, right? We're primarily focused on growing and succeeding in share capture in our higher acuity surgical areas and continuing to build more access points in some of the more foundational ambulatory surgery center environments, which is effectively share capture by growing the number of surgeons or number of doctors affiliated with USPI.

In the high acuity areas, we're doing that, plus we are seeing growth that's based upon the question that we just answered around the migration from higher cost to lower cost settings. It's a combination of the 2, which is why you see higher growth rates. The summary from both of those is that we are increasing the proportional share that's happening in the lower-cost ASC setting.

In the acute care business, as I noted, this year has tilted a bit more towards both significant emergent and medical care on balance than surgical care, though both have been important drivers of our strategy. Remember, for us, again, the focus on that higher acuity segment is very important in terms of what we're doing. So that's what supports our revenue growth and case mix index growth, and the ongoing opportunities for expense management we have with our length of stay platform and the things we're doing there. So the mix of business gives us an opportunity to both grow revenue intensity and improve our expense management, which is why you see the margin strength that we're able to deliver.

Our next question comes from the line of Ann Hynes with Mizuho Securities.

Thanks on the visibility for able to -- be able to grow in 2027. Do you have any targets, meaning do you have a long-term target for each segment? And if you do, do you think you'll be able to grow within those long-term targets for each segment?

Yes, Ann, we have not indicated any kind of long-term targets in the segments other than what we sort of repeat year-over-year when we give guidance until there is full clarity about what's going to happen vis-a-vis HR1, which we believe is very highly subject to modification based upon election outcomes over the next few years.

Our next question comes from the line of Craig Hettenbach with Morgan Stanley.

Saum, in the Hospital segment, the transfer program has been an important driver of higher acuity growth and margin performance. Can you just touch on the strategy behind that and the durability of that strategy?

Yes, Craig. So look, I think it's very important in this environment coming out of COVID. This is more of a long-term strategy that urban and sort of larger suburban hospitals have an important role to play in providing access to more smaller suburban and more -- certainly more rural communities where the funding just hasn't been necessarily fully available to refresh [ capital], physician specialty capacity and other things coming out of the COVID crisis.

And at the same time, there are still people that live there, need access, get very sick and go to their hospitals. And we have a, very important to us, transfer program strategy that is willing and able to receive all patients from these outlying locations when there are needs, and importantly, return them to their home communities as appropriate as early as possible as well.

And our ability operationally to have built these successful partnerships have been sustainable, we found, over a number of years. I mean in the end, if you're a good partner to more rural and smaller suburban communities, they remember that, and you're reliable and you take their patients when they need it and you return their patients to them when appropriate. They remember that. And those relationships that have been built through the back end of COVID and all the way into today, are an important part of our strategy.

And look, we also have built a better expertise than the market in taking care of high-acuity patients and transfers because it's the heart of our strategy. We save intensive care unit capacity for these types of patients. We're very good at stepping people down out of the intensive care unit when their care is safe in that manner in order to create that capacity. And we also have emergency department, contracts and physicians that understand we take this obligation to these communities very seriously. And therefore, we create and save capacity for those patients in the emergency environment as well.

So it's a comprehensive approach that we don't think is very easy to replicate, in terms of what we have put in place. And yes, it's an important driver of our -- in the end, to simplify our high acuity strategy.

Our next question comes from the line of Ben Hendrix with RBC.

Just wanted to follow up on some of the joint procedure momentum discussion. And I realize that the strength you're seeing reflects the high acuity focus, service line initiatives, share capture, et cetera. I was just hoping to get a sense of some of the underlying demand trends in your market. I think one of your peers had talked about a lull in high-acuity ortho with clinic and imaging volume not necessarily converting to procedures. Wanted to see kind of what degree you're seeing delays build and if that's informing your growth expectations for '27.

Yes. I mean obviously, we've thought a lot about this, this year, and in various forums have kind of made comments about it. Again, I think what I said today was like it's not a gangbusters environment. On a differentiated basis, we're performing well, and I think that's good.

And I think secondarily, as I said, the commitment we have in USPI is to build and grow the revenues and earnings of the business and to be strategic rather than just kind of catchers of what's in the market. And I think being strategic has consistently helped us over the last few years in terms of how we've built the business. And so look, we anticipate continuing to do both.

I think as the coverage environment settles, maybe this demand environment will -- when I say settle, it will at least become more predictable as we look ahead. And hopefully, that in combination with settling some of the uncertainty around the election will also help settle 2027.

And from our standpoint, as we've gone through our planning process to date, we couldn't see anything visible that suggested that we shouldn't be able to deliver another, as I called it, consistent year ahead at USPI. And then on top of that, our -- I think I indicated our M&A environment is tracking towards the raised guidance for this year that we gave earlier this year in terms of our ability to have more affiliates -- more affiliated centers that at USPI. So we're looking forward to 2027 from the perspective of ambulatory surgery.

And our last question comes from the line of Benjamin Rossi with JPMorgan.

Great. I guess I'll end with following up on some of the surgical comments. So Saum, you've discussed OR productivity a good deal in framing your high acuity strategy. Just with surgical growth in negative territory across segments year-to-date, can you give us an update on how OR dynamics and throughput are working, how clinics are managing through anesthesia coverage and how you're approaching things like OR scheduling and physician recruitment as you take on these longer-duration cases?

Yes. Well, I think I've indicated before, I mean, one of the sort of just simple operational benefits of longer case times in higher acuity surgery is productive OR capacity utilization. Like anything else, it's a fixed asset. And in the case of ambulatory surgery centers, it's a fixed asset that's only open for a certain number of hours every single day or at least every week day generally. And so the importance of that OR utilization as a driver of our revenue growth is something that we track very, very carefully. And to the point I think you're making, the improvements in those areas are helpful to us.

Look, there are still operational areas that we are working on improving. Some of the new tools that we're working with trialing in patient outreach, including agentic solutions with respect to improving case cancellations and reminders could be important drivers over time. Some of the analytics that we're learning from with some of these new tools that help us think about how to organize better operating room schedules to maximize the utilization, short cases versus long cases, turnover times, what generates efficiency.

I mean some of these things, in the past, you would have to rely on the intuition of center leaders who've just been [ experienced doing ] it. Now with the availability of analytics tools, you can actually put a lot of that retrospective data into algorithms that will help you decide better how to manage your OR scheduling even from that perspective. So we're trying all of that stuff in the spirit of being better ASC operators and the way in which this organization embraces the use of many of these AI-based technologies. And we'll see what works looking forward. But I hope that those things, in partnership with our doctors, continue to help us improve the efficiency and accuracy with which we run our operating rooms.

The other things that happen in that environment, of course, are all of the things related to accurately capturing charges, preparing preauthorization. I mean all of those areas have opportunity for technology to benefit the way that we're doing those things.

I think your last question or part of your question in there that I'll wrap with here is on the anesthesia side. I think largely that market, which hasn't been a favorable line item from an expenditure standpoint, has somewhat stabilized. And I think it's well known in the industry that we focus our work with a preference on in-network anesthesia, and we do our best to make that clear across the board.

Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. And this also concludes today's conference. And you may disconnect your lines at this time. We thank you for your participation. Have a great day.

All right. Awesome. Thanks, everyone, for being with us today. Really pleased to have Tenet Healthcare with us for this chat. As I'm sure you know, Tenet operates ASCs, acute care hospitals and a revenue cycle management business. With us from the company, we're pleased to have Saum Sutaria, Chairman and CEO; Sun Park, CFO; and then Will McDowell from Investor Relations. Will, I understand you wanted to say before we get started. So I'll flip it to you, and then maybe we'll get right into it.

Yes. Thanks a lot, Steve, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. In the context of our conversation today, we may be making some forward-looking statements. In relation to these statements, I suggest you refer back to the cautionary statement within our most recent earnings release as well as other SEC filings. And I'll turn it back to you, Steve, for Q&A.

Great. Okay. Well, thank you again for so much for being here. Maybe a good place would be just to start right off the top going into USPI. I mean, obviously, you've spent a great deal of time kind of familiarizing Wall Street and the investment community with the high acuity strategy. I guess, like as you take a step back, like maybe give us a minute or 2 kind of state of the union, like where does the high acuity strategy sit today? What are some of the key milestones that you've achieved in that business over the past couple of years? And how are you thinking about the further kind of growth and expansion of the business over the next couple of years?

Yes. No, happy to do so. It's very nice to see robotics behind us because that's obviously one of the key thrusts in terms of the high acuity strategy. Look, if you look at the ambulatory surgery space today, there are -- obviously, there are plenty of growth and refreshment opportunities in some of the longer, more traditional service lines. But there's also a tailwind in the industry, moving things out of hospital-based or just more acute-based settings into the freestanding outpatient setting. But that transition isn't as simple as simply having reimbursement in place or an inpatient-only list or if it takes appropriate infrastructure technology, physician training, clinical protocols.

And so we really focus on that with respect to our ability to move things into that high acuity setting, whether that be bone and joint care, spine care, robotics. We've recently re-upped significant robotics partnership to continue to build and grow in that environment. We've talked in the past about urology. We've been building different models in the cardiovascular arena to try and look at that market, which is a longer-term opportunity, as we've always said. But the ability to bring new physicians, new procedures, new innovation into the ASC setting will continue to fuel growth in the sector over time. So our focus is on revenue growth, right? We've been very clear about -- our focus is on revenue growth, supported by acuity growth. Margin structure being obviously something we've done a very nice job of preserving both with scale and efficiencies and throughput in the ASCs. And then we have an active inorganic strategy that is complemented by a de novo strategy with new syndicated partnerships.

And so, if you look at all the discontinuity and everything going on in health care services right now, in this business, we're just laser-focused on running our strategy and our playbook and our advantages in the market, et cetera, because we're not really very much affected by much of what else is going on. And so we're pleased with how things have gone in the last couple of years, and we're certainly pleased with our ability to build and grow the number of assets this year so far.

Yes. Great. Okay. We'll touch more on that. I guess when you think about what are really going to be the most important couple of service lines and what you need to do to kind of distinguish yourself as a provider of choice in those areas, I guess, where do you think you'll be investing the most over the next couple of years?

In the ambulatory surgery business.

Through USPI.

Yes. I mean the largest growth opportunity is still building and growing the bone and joint opportunity in that space. There's just so much more from a hospital outpatient department-based perspective that can move. There are so many more centers and markets that have those opportunities that exist. Their physicians in settings where they have an opportunity to migrate cases at a higher volume with good case selection. So if I were to name a single opportunity for the next 2 to 3 or 4 years, I think that's it from a high acuity perspective, along with the things I mentioned before, supporting that environment.

Got it. And as you think about maybe the demand environment more broadly in the ASC space, I guess, how would you characterize it? Obviously, it's a little harder to judge purely just [ based on ] cases we know do not directly translate directly to demand in your market. So using your case growth is not always the most apt way to do it. But how do you think about the healthiness of demand and maybe what you're seeing to the extent there is any impact from the consumer that's playing out or not as you see it?

Well, from a case perspective, we do focus on seeing longer-term trends, ability to grow high acuity, right? So we do report on orthopedics, for example, and how that's going. And there's a reason that we report on that and actually spend time internally strategically thinking about because that's what's going to drive revenue growth in the business. It's what's going to diversify the service mix. It's what's going to add acuity. It obviously creates value for any payer, government or private, which helps to keep us in our in-network strategy with our payer partners in that area and have the annual multiyear contracts that provide us with appropriate escalators in that space to continue to build and grow the ASC business, which is obviously very attractive from a value-based standpoint.

So all of those things fit together in terms of how we think about the future revenue margin, sustainability of contracting platform growth in the ASC business.

And then I guess in terms of policy tailwinds, obviously, things like phasing out the inpatient-only list gets a lot of attention. The first tranche has a pretty heavy focus on MSK, and of the later tranche it seem like they have much more of a heavy focus on cardio. I guess how meaningful is that to help accelerate some of the transition from a volume perspective to you guys?

Well, I mean, let's just think about this comparatively, like in an industry where so much of the recent regulatory activity has not been overtly favorable to the broader sector, having half of our business where virtually everything that comes out from a regulatory perspective is a tailwind or a benefit to the business or will help grow and diversify the business over time. It's terrific, right? Because it takes a platform that we have with an array of health care services and has half of the earnings in an environment that we're heading into that has a very, very nice growth runway ahead of it. I very much think that's helpful to us.

Okay. And then it seems like you're running a bit above pace this year in terms of the inorganic component of the business. Maybe just update us on what you're seeing there and what's exciting to you from an investment point of view at the moment?

I mean, look, USPI's reputation in the marketplace is so strong from an operational perspective, from a value-add perspective, these days from the perspective of making single specialty centers, multi-specialty centers, doing the kinds of things that help to build and grow the business for our physician partners in a constructive manner. Those capabilities are harder to find because of the array of services that we're capable of providing in our ASCs that it provides a very nice runway of growth in the marketplace that our ability to buy and integrate assets have has not been subject to inflationary pressure in terms of the multiples we're paying and our ability to add value based upon bringing centers into the network, bringing on supply chain savings and other things has been very significant.

So the returns we're generating just reinforce that messaging with the doctors that, hey, you go with USPI, yes, you're going to play by a certain set of rules in terms of management, compliance and other things. Hopefully, they're high quality. But you're also going to get a tremendous amount of benefit from that activity. And I think that reputation is just spreading.

Yes. And I guess to build on that, I guess, how would you characterize the deal environment more broadly, I guess, valuation, how competitive are sort of the assets that you're looking at?

Like I said, the valuations have been in similar ranges. We have not experienced significant inflationary pressure there. Our ability to add value, if anything, is better over time than it was. And the competitive environment, I mean the ASC space generates a lot of interest. I wouldn't say the competitive environment is any more intense, maybe even a little bit less intense interestingly today than it was a few years ago as different assets have less access to cash and other things to pursue M&A.

I guess is that characterized by either hospitals maybe like putting less capital towards developing like ASCs and competing with you to kind of keep things in network? Or do you say that's maybe characterized by private equity and maybe third-party ASC developers?

I don't know. I mean it varies market to market. I would just say that our impression in our deals especially because we're competing for the A quality assets, the environment has not become more competitively intense because there has just been less organized activity or available cash and some of the organized companies to be as aggressive in pursuing M&A in the ASC space. We've been a beneficiary of that.

Okay. And then would you say there's -- as you look out, especially as your balance sheet is a lot different than it was a couple of years ago, like opportunities potentially to do larger deals? I mean, maybe not as large as like the SCD transactions you did going in a few years back, but maybe something that's like a step above like a tuck-in transaction?

Yes. I mean, general answer is absolutely yes. If you look at our cash flow generation, if you look at our leverage profile, the room we have to flex within all those parameters, I think that's very flexible. And I think a couple of years ago, we did the covenant transaction. I think that's a good example of sort of a medium-sized asset that we've been able to tuck in, generate all synergies and get to a very productive steady state. So those types of transactions are, I think, very feasible.

Okay. And obviously, you guys have done a really nice job of improving margins across the whole business. I guess as you look out at the next couple of years and focusing kind of on USPI specifically, and we'll have more of a hospital-focused conversation in a little bit. I guess what do you think of as the key margin opportunities and key cost opportunities that are still in front of you in that business?

Well, with USPI, obviously, building and growing the acuity because the reimbursement environment would be more favorable there because, again, we're taking things out of much higher cost settings in the USPI. You can generate better reimbursement. The second is asset utilization in the centers, right, continuing to increase the asset utilization. For us, that's OR utilization productive OR utilization time. And I talk about this somewhat, I won't dwell on it, but the idea that you're doing a high acuity procedure that takes 1.5 hours versus trying to do 5 procedures where you have to turn over the room 5 times and you have a bunch of idle time, that actually matters in the way you're generating asset utilization in an OR, and that's one of the drivers of our strategy. That's the second thing.

And then the third is just continuing to make sure we have the discipline of applying the things that we do from a scale perspective in cost management at USPI, right? Even though it's a much more distributed retail outlet type of business, there are ways in which to think about that cost. There are ways that we can utilize our shared services in the global business center. We have -- I think we've alluded to in the past, we have inside of USPI, a scaled revenue cycle capability or company really that provides a lower cost to collect with better collections, continuing to expand that.

So we shouldn't shy away in the USPI business just because it's a higher-margin business from applying those scale opportunities to improve margins, and we don't shy away from it exactly from that perspective.

Okay. Maybe to pivot to the hospital business for a little bit. I mean one thing that stands out is the cash flow and the leverage profile of the company has improved is that the past couple of years, in particular, you've been able to take up CapEx to closer to 5% of revenue. I think, before 2022, like the average over the course of a few years was more like 3.5%. So a pretty big increase in your ability to put growth capital into the business. How should we think about some of the things that have been targeted as a result of that incremental cash flow and what the return profiles you're targeting are?

So yes, I think big picture, as big of a priority as M&A for USPI, so is continue to invest capital into our hospital business, right, focusing on higher acuity strategies, service lines, those products and service lines and capabilities in each market that Saum was saying before, it make us a critical part of the overall care negotiations and the value we offer to the communities. So that's going to continue.

If you kind of look at our recent trend lines, I think it's fair. We've accelerated our capital expenditure in the hospital, especially if you kind of normalize for the divestitures we've done over the last 2, 3 years. Part of that has been 3 new hospital builds, 3 or 4 new hospital builds that we've done and completed over the last 3 or 4 years. But if you look at our guidance this year of about $700 million to $800 million of CapEx, the vast majority of that is for the hospital space and that is continuing that activity.

The other thing that I'd point out is, part of the reason that we've been able to be resilient this year from an earnings standpoint in the hospital space in the face of exchange headwinds and other things has been the CapEx investments that we made over the last 2 to 3 years that have resulted in additional growth and contribution. So all those things, I mean, I think we've seen the value. As we go forward, we always look at it market by market, but we think in the face of exchange and then potentially OBBBA changes, we still think our markets are very investable. There's a lot of service lines that we can still invest in. So we'll keep it in there.

Yes. And I think when you talk about the high acuity strategy and making it specific to the hospital, I guess, are there things that you'd highlight as sort of the top areas to prioritize investment over the next couple of years to keep the high acuity strategy moving forward with specific regards to the hospital?

Well, one, when people are in an environment where either for themselves or people around them, there's dislocation in their coverage. And we are admittedly in an environment where there's some population -- it's in dislocation. There's some population that may be more stable, et cetera. Like our focus is on ensuring that we are successfully investing in and looking at market share opportunities in things that are indispensable or less elastic, as I like to say, right?

So obviously, our work in the emergency department, including capital there, trauma programs, there's still a huge need for high-quality neonatal care and associated obstetrics programs. Of course, we're now operating in markets where, generally speaking, compared to our past portfolio, our risk factors in those areas have diminished significantly. Our investments in broad-based and expansive cardiovascular programs, including the addition of structural heart capabilities in every one of our -- most -- everyone pretty much of our markets, neurosurgical capabilities, complex spine. There's an array of services where you just kind of over time, broaden that playbook.

And because a lot of our foundation is built off of services like trauma and other things where you need to have the coverage to support a high-quality trauma program you build off of the specialists that you need for that coverage to start to build elective tentacles in those programs. And so that it helps to balance the utilization for those doctors from that perspective. And that's kind of how we build out our markets. And we couple that with obviously very active willingness, given our focus in high acuity of being a receiving hospital for transfers when patients need that in a very open way that helps to support what we're doing from a high acuity perspective.

And again, we found that demand is less elastic. It supports consistent growth in revenues and our ability to grow margins and is not dependent upon counting every widget of volume in the way that we kind of proceed in each market.

Got it. Okay. That's helpful. And then to kind of expand a little bit on the competition point of view and the market share point of view. I guess do you feel like competitive dynamics have changed at all as you like study your markets? Like I think there's obviously questions out there, whether the material upswing of sort of Medicaid supplemental dollars or maybe 340B economics and to not-for-profits are maybe helping them catch up in terms of making investments. I guess have you noticed anything like that as you study?

I mean other than the exchange subsidy headwind, there's a lot of theoretical proposals out there that could affect the economics of the markets and our competitors that haven't necessarily come to be yet, right? But certainly, everybody is concerned about those things. I mean if I were to highlight one thing from our perspective in our markets, USPI is highly instructive because even though around about 5% of our ASCs are actually tethered or near Tenant hospitals and such a broad strategy. But the concept of having appropriate ambulatory access points in our markets has been something we've been focused on for the last 4 or 5 years.

And I think as pressures come in the industry, if some of these things were to come true, the general response in the industry is often to hold on to things tighter, more employment, more control more. And in order to combat that, if that's not your mindset because our mindset is to allow independent physicians to succeed and work with physicians on a more constructive basis in employment where necessary for scalability and other things is to provide and own more outpatient access points in our markets. So in every one of our markets, we're looking at those opportunities. We're looking at investments in that -- we're looking at partnerships because we want to create an outpatient access environment that makes it easier for those patients to access our inpatient environment when they need it, either on an emergent or elective basis.

And that is a bit of a shift in the market, right? If you think about post-COVID, you could just grow out of that COVID environment that shut things down without being as deliberate about all of your multifactor outpatient access points. That environment is changing a bit where you have to be very thoughtful of those things now on a broader basis.

Got it. That's helpful. And then when you look at the acute care [ at hospital ] portfolio, obviously, you had a bit of a stretch there. We were able to do separate really interesting and financially helpful transactions. I guess, would your expectation be at this point that your portfolio is likely to be more stable moving forward? Or do you think there could still be some opportunities to maybe refine it a little bit further opportunistically?

And there are always opportunities to take a look at things. It very much depends on the portfolio and an opportunity. We're very happy with the portfolio we had. And as Sun said, we find the portfolio investable for growth at this stage, and that's what we're focused on.

Okay. And then within the hospital business, where you obviously report Conifer, I guess how should we be thinking about the opportunities for Conifer, obviously, going through like a relatively major change with everything going on with CommonSpirit. I guess how do you think about the potential of the business for the next couple of years, specifically trying to mitigate some of the drag that the CommonSpirit contract would otherwise generate for the company?

Yes. Well, I don't -- I mean, I guess there may be a P&L drag in the short term, but we're still incredibly pleased with the transaction and the yield for Tenet on the transaction by any measure. It's highly accretive. Look, I think there's 2 things going on. This year is a transition year. We're very focused on making sure that transition goes as smoothly as it possibly can, it takes 2 to do that. And so we're focused on doing that with obviously a long-term client of Conifer over time working together to do that. So that's a lot of activity, which will result in the opportunity to then pivot the business and do other things.

We've already started doing a set of things that help to improve the efficiency, improve the exposure to offshore capabilities that we've built, improve the ability to deliver more with AI. We're already doing that. I mean if there's a place where that's accelerated, it's Conifer in this period of time. So I would expect our cost to collect. And value proposition in the market to only get better and better from that perspective. And then once this transition is done and we're through with all of that activity, which, by the way, happens by the end of this year, completely, we're much more free to go back to the market with what we have built. And just like we've done with the exchange arena where we started planning a year ago to execute, I think our work in planning and that ability to improve the cost to collect is already underway.

And so we should be able to take that to market in the early part of the new year.

And then maybe just to expand on that a little bit, it does, to your point, it seems like there'd probably be the most opportunity for like a structural improvement in cost in this part of the business really relative to anything else inside of your portfolio. I guess like -- how do you think about the longer-term opportunity to really change the cost structure at Conifer?

Well, the opportunity to improve the cost structure at Conifer, again, lies in more automation, more utilization of our captive that we own in the global business center because we've built very reliable capabilities there that work in the Tenant account. We want them to work in multiple accounts. And then for more complex workflows, the ability to simplify them or at least make them more reliably predictable with AI, reduces the variability in what we're doing. We're seeing that already. And I don't think we should think about this as kind of an arming up with these -- and then the other side is going to arm up. I mean the reality is that the payment adjudication process costs too much for everybody.

Even if all sides "arm up" with automation and AI and other things, we're still [ being ] the amount of cost and waste that goes into adjudication of claims down in total, that's good. There's more to reinvest in healthcare services from that perspective. And then it's about actually building the right set of algorithms and rules engine in between to improve yield. But I don't think there's anything negative about bringing the overall cost structure for both sides of the industry down in terms of what it costs to adjudicate a claim, and we're obviously doing that on our side.

Got it. Okay. And then just to look at the results that the hospital business has put up year-to-date, obviously being quite impressive, like raising your guidance even without the help of incremental Medicaid dollars, very impressive. I guess how do we generally think about the drivers of the outperformance versus your expectations? Like if we were to think about volumes versus payer mix versus acuity versus costs, like what's the biggest bucket or 2 about like what's going better year-to-date for the company.

I don't think there's a rank order, right? I think all 4, 5, 6 of those dynamics have applied. Year after year, I think we've shown the ability to grow our acuity, keep our payer mix strong, right, and then have operating discipline around expenses around it. So that's been kind of the core model. Now obviously, coming into this year, we've all talked about it many times. We saw the exchange headwinds being an incremental headwind and plan for that, prepared for that a long time ago with additional efficiency initiatives. And then finally, the third leg was what I mentioned before, investing CapEx over the last 2 years to generate sources of growth.

So I think all those have worked for us. If you look at our margin profile, if you look at the acuity change versus our margin improvement, certainly the operating expense savings have been up, I think very valuable. So we look for that to continue. And then the second thing is probably, again, on the OpEx side, it's really both things, right? It's the continued discipline around labor productivity, length of state management, those kind of blocking and tackling things. They've been just as important as some of the additional more technology AI-based things that we've done. So a short answer would be [indiscernible].

Okay. Fair enough. Yes. And the cost side was going to be where we went next. I mean SWB, I think, was down 1% year-over-year on a per AA basis. I guess, again, like a lot of that probably comes down to like the state management. I guess maybe help us think about kind of the durability of that level of performance. Obviously, underlying wage inflation is still something that you're dealing with. I guess, how do you think about maybe both of those dynamics, I guess, through the balance of this year and maybe kind of any early thoughts on we're seeing some slowdown in the data in terms of like acute wage inflation. Do you feel like you're seeing any of that start to materialize in your markets as well?

Yes. I would say, in general, our labor situation has been very stable, and that's been very stable, and that's been the case for the last several years, right? It's no secret that in the -- with nurses and other health care providers, right, there is a general shortage in general for the industry, right? So -- but even with that, we've been able to keep our wage rates very stable and then manage also contract labor. Now it's at 2% or so of SWB. And then the third component is professional fees. Admittedly, they've been growing materially, but at 10% growth that we were seeing this year. It's still very manageable and fits within our overall guidance framework. So I think all those things are good.

That being said, in terms of kind of what's left, right, it's tough to get -- for example, contract labor down below 2%. That's tough for -- in our industry, labor wages, general wages to go below to 2.5%, right? So a lot of what we'll have to do is manage again, even more productivity, even more efficiency in the construct. Because the other thing we decided to do on a market-by-market basis also, we could invest a little bit more of [indiscernible] to generate EBITDA. And that's perfectly fine for us.

So maybe then to pivot a little bit to the exchange dynamics. Obviously, it seems like compared to peers perhaps, like we're tracking much more in line with your initial expectations. So that's good to see. I guess just remind us how you're thinking about the exchange dynamics going into the back half of the year. And then I guess the other question out there is just really for the exchange volume that remains in the system. It does seem like at least in some markets, there's been a pretty material shift to bronze type products with higher cost sharing, higher deductibles. Do you feel like you have your arms around collectibility there, how long do you feel like you need to kind of know that you feel good about the assumptions you've made on that part of the business in particular?

Well, look, quality -- I mean first of all, having a vehicle like Conifer that helps with appropriate patient collections, payment programs and other things that people can accommodate is very helpful. I would also say that by the time people are in an acute care setting, especially if they have multiple chronic illness, they will burn through that co-pay deductibility environment. And obviously, the reduction in demand isn't one-for-one with coverage because it's -- I mean, our business is more focused on the people who consume chronic care, right? And so they tend to have a better approach to finding their way to alternative coverage. We help them find alternative coverage in the environment, et cetera.

So I think having that support system is definitely good. Look, I think the other thing is you have to be prepared to receive the emergency care no matter what. And obviously, that's a point of intervention where you can work with people that may not have coverage for that episode to help them figure out what else they may be qualified for. In many cases, they don't know. And that's another point of intervention where we've now injected Conifer enrollment staff into finding those people and helping them find a solution from that perspective.

So look, I think what's happened right now is the dislocation. A lot of people have become uninsured. Over time, we think that that's going to improve in terms of the coverage is the people that need it, find alternative coverage Obviously, it's ramped up through the course of this year. First quarter was lower than we thought. Like I'm not sure that the quarterly approach to giving thoughts on that was as well thought through as it could have been. But it's clear what's happening now. And from our perspective, more importantly than anything else, we planned for the dislocation last year and executed on the things we needed to do to offset it. And that's kind of our mindset for the following year.

Okay. Just again, another policy issue, I guess, coming up over the next couple years will just be the implementation of Medicaid work requirements and Medicaid expansion population. How is the company thinking about that? And to the extent that it seems like, I guess, USPI probably pretty unimpacted by all of this, but just general thoughts on how it impacts both the businesses would be great.

Yes. Just as a note before we talk about that, USPI has been largely unaffected by the exchange piece this year. Even though the numbers are -- what the numbers are, USPI's exchange demand hasn't really been affected that much perhaps because it's a lower cost, lower co-pay environment, it's actually created a shift. But we've been surprised at the elective surgery comparison between hospital and USPI.

Look, I don't have anything particularly bright to say about the Medicaid work requirement aspects. Like we all know the history. They've been tried, hasn't worked great in prior iterations. I don't know how it's going to work this time and what impact it will have. Could there be short-term dislocation and the people that need coverage, find other coverage or figure out ways to qualify? Probably. But I don't have any great insight into how states are going to do this, this time around versus the 3 or 4 times that's been tried before, where it hasn't been particularly effective.

Okay. Fair enough. And then one question we're kind of asking all companies is with really so much focus on like AI, I guess how do you want the investment community to be thinking about the AI investments that you've made to date, what kind of investments might be still in front of the company? And what a couple of the most exciting use cases for your businesses might be over the next couple of years that will come to learn more about?

Well, there's a tremendous amount of opportunity using AI. Look, I think the more important thing is the availability of opportunities and ideas. It's having a rigorous ROI framework for what you're going to get out of the investments. There is a cost, right? That cost -- to the extent you're using any frontier model support even if it's through a vendor, is real from the cost of tokens, and other things that are either passed through or direct. And -- so you have to have a very rigorous ROI assumption. And that goes back to what have been the critical margin and growth levers that we have been pulling the business without AI. Like the idea that we're going to invent some new lever that's going to create an opportunity. Is it -- so I'd rather focus on if we care about OR utilization and OR capacity, utilizing tools from an AI perspective that helps my OR scheduling, that's logical to me. If length of stay improvement is a place we have differentiated ourselves in the industry in the last 2 or 3 or 4 years, attempting to automate that complex workflow and provide better -- because I know that's critical to efficiency going forward, that's logical to me.

The idea that I'm going to get a totally new lever yet is not logical to me from that perspective until I can understand and see that ROI equation. And that's why I think on the administrative side, on the payment side, there's a lot more enthusiasm for the potential returns because we understand the algorithm that impacts the return on investment there, better than in areas where it's more experimental.

Yes. That's great. Awesome. Thank you so much. I think that's going to be all we have time for. But thank you so much for being here today. We really appreciate the time.

Thanks.

Welcome to Tenet Healthcare's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session for industry analysts. [Operator Instructions] I'll now turn the call over to your host, Mr. Will McDowell, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. McDowell, you may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call. I am Will McDowell, Vice President of Investor Relations. We're pleased to have you join us for a discussion of Tenet's second quarter 2026 results as well as a discussion of our financial outlook. Tenet senior management participating in today's call will be Dr. Saum Sutaria, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Sun Park, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Our webcast this morning includes a slide presentation, which has been posted to the Investor Relations section of our website, tenethealth.com. Listeners to this call are advised that certain statements made during our discussion today are forward-looking and represent management's expectations based on currently available information. Actual results and plans could differ materially. Tenet is under no obligation to update any forward-looking statements based on subsequent information. Investors should take note of the cautionary statement slide included in today's presentation as well as the risk factors discussed in our most recent Form 10-K and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And with that, I'll turn the call over to Saum.

Thank you, Will, and good morning, everyone. We continue to deliver results exceeding our goals based on the fundamental performance of our business. Hospital volumes and same-store revenue growth in both segments are strong, reflecting our commitment to higher acuity and value for payers. Margin strength is supported by timely execution on our technology-enabled expense management plans that we described at the very start of the year. Second quarter net operating revenues were $5.6 billion and consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $1.304 billion, which represented an adjusted EBITDA margin of 23.2%. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA grew 16.3% over prior year. Year-to-date, our fundamental outperformance totals approximately $97 million across both segments. Adjusted diluted earnings per share increased 52% to $6.12 in the second quarter of 2026 compared to prior year.

As we noted last year, we are operating in a dynamic environment characterized by payer mix shifts and insurance enrollment uncertainty in both the exchanges and Medicaid. Despite these challenges, the growth and expense initiatives that we had planned and have implemented and continue to focus on enabled us to deliver a clean quarter. We are optimistic about the rest of the year and are increasing our revenue, adjusted EBITDA and cash flow guidance for 2026.

USPI generated $542 million in adjusted EBITDA, which represents 9% growth over second quarter 2025 and 25% of our full year 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance for USPI. We are pleased with USPI's continued outperformance as we set an aggressive EBITDA target as a percent of the full year for the second quarter that we were able to exceed.

Same-facility revenues grew 5% as our high acuity strategy continues to yield benefits and is highlighted by 10% same-store volume growth in total joint replacements in the ASCs over prior year. We have a robust pipeline of partnerships interested in joining USPI this year. USPI is the premier Ambulatory surgical asset in the space and the leading provider of low-cost, high-quality care that benefits all stakeholders across the health care ecosystem.

Turning to our hospital segment. Second quarter 2026 adjusted EBITDA was $762 million, which was well above our expectations and represented 22% growth over second quarter 2025. We reported 18% adjusted EBITDA margins in the quarter, which were driven by strong volume growth, disciplined expense management benefits from growth initiatives, which were partially offset by the expected impact of reductions in exchange enrollment. Again, these drivers were ahead of our core assumptions and contributed meaningfully to our outperformance in the quarter.

Importantly, we continue to see attractive growth in our commercial managed care revenues. Regarding the exchange marketplace, exchange revenues have declined a significant 17% compared to second quarter of 2025. We are seeing highest impact in states like Florida, Arizona, Michigan, South Carolina and Texas. In light of the challenges that the decline in exchange enrollment presents, we are flexing our cost base and building an appropriate baseline on which to grow in the future with a focus on continued margin strength. Our consistent results are driven by a transformed portfolio of businesses, continued strategic focus on higher acuity specialty services, strong leadership at the local level and an ability to effectively manage through the current dynamic environment. Additionally, it's important to note that year-to-date Conifer results are in line with our prior expectations, and we continue to manage through the conclusion of a third-party contract.

We have also capitalized on our compelling valuation and deployed $1.36 billion to repurchase 7 million shares in the first half of 2026 with 5.7 million of those shares repurchased in the second quarter. The positive impact on EPS is significant as we look forward to the rest of the year. As we did note in our press release, the Board of Directors has authorized a $2 billion increase in our share repurchase program. We continue to be -- we expect to continue to be active in share repurchase over the balance of the year.

Turning to 2026. The guidance that we established at the beginning of the year was robust given the dynamics the industry was facing, but so were our plans for realizing results from our recent growth investments and our expense and AI initiatives. At this point in the year, we are raising our full year 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance to a range of $4.83 billion to $5.03 billion, which represents an increase of $295 million or 6% at the midpoint of the range over our prior guidance. The guidance increase is differentiated and primarily supported by fundamental strength in our businesses and our expectations for continued growth into the second half of the year.

As we note in our adjusted EBITDA bridge in the investor deck, our guidance raise is supported by approximately $100 million of fundamental outperformance in the first half of the year and an additional $60 million through a continuation of those fundamental drivers into the second half of the year.

Additionally, based on the Ambulatory surgical acquisitions that we have made so far this year and the robust pipeline of deals that we see ahead, we now expect to exceed $300 million in full year M&A spend in 2026. We are confident in our ability to achieve our increased guidance as it is powered by continued strength in our core business drivers, same-store revenue growth, effective expense management and strong free cash flow.

For more details on our results in the quarter and our guidance looking ahead, I now turn it over to Sun.

Thank you, Saum, and good morning, everyone. We delivered strong performance in the second quarter of 2026, generating total net operating revenues of $5.6 billion and consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $1.304 billion. Second quarter adjusted EBITDA margin was 23.2%, driven by strong revenue performance and disciplined operating expense management with continued progress on the growth and cost efficiency initiatives that we outlined at the beginning of the year.

I would now like to highlight some key items for both of our segments, beginning with USPI. In the second quarter, USPI's adjusted EBITDA grew 8.8% over second quarter of '25 at $542 million, with adjusted EBITDA margin at 39%. USPI delivered a 5% increase in same-facility system-wide revenues with net revenue per case up 6.3% and same-facility case volumes down 1.2%, reflecting our high acuity focus.

Turning to our hospital segment. Second quarter '26 adjusted EBITDA grew 22% to $762 million, resulting in an adjusted EBITDA margin of 18%. Same-hospital inpatient adjusted admissions rose 2.6% in the quarter, a sequential improvement from first quarter and further validation that the demand environment remains healthy as we expected. Revenue per adjusted admissions increased 3.3% year-over-year in Q2, reflecting the work we do to grow acuity as well as an increase in supplemental Medicaid revenues, partially offset by the impact of reduced exchange volumes. Exchange revenues declined 17% from second quarter '25 and represented about 5.5% of consolidated net operating revenues in second quarter of 2026. Finally, we recognized $92 million of favorable out-of-period supplemental Medicaid revenues related to prior years in the second quarter.

In the second quarter of '25, we had $70 million of favorable impact related to prior years. We had not assumed any of this favorability in our initial guidance for 2026. And I would note that we had a clean beat in the quarter even without these incremental Medicaid revenues. We continue to demonstrate our ability to manage through a dynamic period for providers, delivering strong results despite the headwinds that the industry faces.

Next, we will discuss our cash flow, balance sheet and capital structure. We generated $444 million of adjusted free cash flow in the second quarter, which brings us to $1.422 billion of adjusted free cash flow year-to-date. As of June 30, '26, we had $2.17 billion of cash on hand with no borrowings outstanding under our line of credit facility. And additionally, we have no significant debt maturities until late 2027.

And finally, during the second quarter, we repurchased 5.7 million shares of our stock for $1.04 billion. Year-to-date, we have repurchased almost 7 million shares of our stock for $1.36 billion. As Saum noted, the Board of Directors has authorized a $2 billion increase in share repurchase authorization, again, reflecting confidence in our strategy and our ability to execute over the long term.

Our leverage ratio as of June 30, '26 was 2.33x EBITDA or 2.9x EBITDA less NCI, driven by our strong operational performance and financial discipline. We remain committed to maintaining a deleveraged balance sheet and believe that we have significant financial flexibility to support our capital deployment priorities and continue to drive shareholder value.

Let me now turn to our outlook for 2026. For fiscal '26, we now expect consolidated net operating revenues in the range of $21.9 billion to $22.5 billion, an increase of $300 million at the midpoint of the range over prior expectations. As Saum mentioned, we are raising our '26 adjusted EBITDA outlook range by $295 million at the midpoint to $4.83 billion to $5.03 billion, reflecting the strong fundamental performance of our businesses. At USPI, we are now expecting '26 adjusted EBITDA of $2.16 billion to $2.22 billion. And in hospitals, we are raising our '26 adjusted EBITDA outlook range by $285 million at the midpoint to $2.67 billion to $2.81 billion. This increase is driven by fundamental improvements in our operations that benefited our results in the first half of the year and that we expect to continue into the back half of the year.

In addition, we now expect a contribution of $140 million from recently approved increases in certain supplemental Medicaid programs, plus the out-of-period revenues from prior year that I already mentioned. Of this $140 million, about $20 million is expected in the second half of our fiscal year. Finally, we expect third quarter '26 consolidated adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of 23% to 24% of our full year consolidated adjusted EBITDA at the midpoint. And we expect third quarter '26 USPI EBITDA to be in the range of 24% to 25% of our full year USPI adjusted EBITDA at the midpoint.

Turning to our cash flows for '26. We now expect adjusted free cash flow after NCI in the range of $1.825 billion to $2.055 billion, an increase of $225 million at the midpoint from our previous guidance range. This guidance range includes the payment of about $150 million in tax payments this year from the Conifer transaction. Excluding these tax payments, this would represent $2.1 billion of adjusted free cash flow after NCI at the midpoint of our '26 outlook. We remain focused on strong free cash flow conversion from our EBITDA performance, including the continued outstanding cash collection performance of Conifer while continuing to invest in high priority areas of our businesses.

Turning to our capital deployment priorities. We are well positioned to create value for shareholders through the effective deployment of free cash flow. First, we will continue to prioritize capital investments to grow USPI through M&A. And as Saum noted, we have made good progress so far this year and have a number of future opportunities to support our expectations for USPI M&A in '26. Second, we expect to continue investing in key hospital growth opportunities to fuel organic growth, including our focus on higher acuity service offerings. Third, we'll continue to be active in share repurchases as we continue to see significant opportunities.

And finally, we will continue to evaluate opportunities to retire and/or refinance debt. We are pleased with our continued effective execution and remain confident in our ability to deliver on our increased outlook for '26. Our transformed portfolio of businesses is delivering more predictable results, and our capital efficiency is enabling us to create shareholder value through effective capital deployment.

And with that, we're ready to begin the Q&A. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Craig Hettenbach with Morgan Stanley.

Saum, I wanted to dig into the work that you've done on the cost structure that's driving this margin expansion despite some of the industry headwinds, including the exchange. So if you can just provide some examples of some of the things that are kind of playing out in the margin, that would be great.

Sure. Thanks, Craig. I think there's 3 or 4 things that are probably important to consider here. One is just traditional search for efficiencies that one would imagine, including our more traditional productivity strategies, contract renegotiations on purchase services, supply standardization, right? Things that are part of our toolkit that we're doing all the time that, as I indicated at the start of the year, about a year ago, June, July of last year, we began planning so that we could hit the ground running executing on January 1 of this year.

The second category is what I would describe as more clinical operations cost improvement. And we really didn't feel that category 1 would be adequate and adequate to sustain us through the next few years. And so we put increased effort into length of stay management, service level management, for example, in the emergency department, throughput in the hospital, scheduling efficiencies and better utilization of our operating room and cath lab assets, both in the hospitals and the ASC business. As an additional initiative, more complex, frankly, requires more behavior change and process redesign, but very important to what we're doing. The secondary benefit of that work, of course, is that it supported the service levels for patients and physicians, especially in the important emergency department area so that it's easier for them to gain access.

And then the third area is more what I would describe as the technology-driven, both automation, AI type work, combined with what we are doing in our global business center. The deployment of these technologies has been both domestic and in the global business center. It helps to improve productivity. It -- in some cases, can literally automate or replace work. And over time, we are seeing the benefit in our core cost structure in those areas, not just in the payments arena, but also in some of our support overhead structures at the facility or the corporate level.

So really, all 3 of those areas were things that we had planned or spent time planning last year. And I think the benefit we're seeing is we were just able to hit the ground running on execution in January. And so it is accrued into the business over these first 2 quarters.

Our next question comes from Benjamin Rossi with JPMorgan.

I just wanted to turn to the Ambulatory segment for a moment. So given the strength across revenue per case to start the year, I appreciate some of the moving pieces in your 3% to 6% top line growth expectation. I know the press release cited acuity and service mix, but could you just walk us through puts and takes going into expectations for that segment? How you're thinking about service line expansion opportunities this year and some of the more promising specialty areas on your radar? And then with the inpatient-only list, are you seeing any lift to start the year across either volumes or pricing from this first tranche of MSK procedures rolling off?

Yes. Well, I think from a service line standpoint, we continue to focus on pushing the envelope of clinical appropriateness in the Ambulatory surgery setting and doing it safely. So orthopedics, but expanding the range of orthopedics, that is obviously supported by some of the changes in the inpatient-only list. Those programs continue to scale. As we've indicated, we have seen success with our physician partners in urology. Our robotics program continues to expand significantly. And when I say robotics here, I'm not just referring at all to orthopedics. I'm talking about core general surgical type robotics work that we see as important. We see increased activity in bariatrics. And again, as we have indicated over time, just kind of a steady, slow but steady march into the cardiovascular space, which will take some time.

The other thing that we have done after really studying the spaces over the last couple of years is started to increase the acuity in some of the more core legacy service lines. So in particular, GI and ophthalmology, we've started to push further into higher acuity procedures, right? So duodenal endoscopy and associated procedures and biopsies, retinal work or retinal specialization in the Ambulatory surgery center, things that begin to improve or increase the acuity and expand the array of services in some of those core service lines in addition to what I described as more of the surgical frontier service lines that have a lot of growth in front of them.

Our next question comes from Matthew Gillmor with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

I wanted to ask about the exchange performance. I appreciate you didn't change the guide. I was just curious how things played out relative to your expectations in terms of the decline in the revenues and the volumes, patients shifting over to commercial coverage or becoming uninsured. Any commentary there would be great.

Yes. Go ahead, Sun, do you want to...

Yes. Matthew, it's Sun. So first of all, just resetting on the metrics, I may have said in my prepared remarks about exchange volume. I meant exchange revenues in the quarter were down about 17% exchange volume, admissions down about 13.5%. So I would say both of these metrics were roughly in line with our expectations both for the quarter. As we exited Q1 into Q2, we expected after the grace periods for exchange erosion to increase, obviously, from Q1 to Q2. And then we expect the overall market trends that we saw in Q2 to roughly continue into Q3 and Q4 rest of the year, which is why we didn't change our guidance. This all resulted in about a $65 million revenue headwind on exchanges in our Q2 numbers, which we were able to pivot both from an OpEx standpoint as well as other growth initiatives and deliver results.

And then the only other thing I would add is, I think we are roughly seeing a pretty consistent conversion from exchange patient volume into uninsured on a pretty much one-to-one basis. So we did see a proportionately equal increase in uninsured volumes in our Q2 as well. And we expect that to continue as well into the second half.

Our next question comes from Stephen Baxter with Wells Fargo.

I wanted to ask about the revenue per adjusted admission trend in the second quarter. It improved a lot from where it was in the first quarter, the softer number that you posted then. Could you help us unpack the factors that are driving the improvement? And then in the release, you cited strength in the commercial book as a call out. Is there something happening there kind of above and beyond the normal type rate increases we've come to expect in that part of the business?

Go ahead, Sun. I don't think there's anything abnormal there.

Yes. Stephen, yes, on the NRAA, we did see softness in Q1, which at that point, we said we thought it was a temporary Q1 artifact and that we thought our long-term acuity strategy would play out. And I think in Q2, it did. I think the only moving pieces we would highlight in our NRAA stat is 2 things. One is we did have out-of-period supplemental payments, like I said, of $92 million, but we had $70 million in the prior Q2 of '25. So a relatively small net impact. And then probably the largest headwind in our NRA was obviously the exchange revenue movement, and that represented almost 2% of headwind in the quarter. So we were very pleased with our overall acuity. It goes right in line with the commercial volume increases. And as Tom mentioned, I don't know that there's anything special to call out there. Thanks for your question.

Our next question comes from Pito Chickering with Deutsche Bank.

Looking at the ASC volume weakness this quarter, how much is tied to HICS and slower electives versus your focus on higher acuity procedures? Did you see any geographical differences in electives across your portfolio depending upon the HICS exchanges? And is the overall demand sort of still there across your portfolio as you think about your broad base? And then last part of this multipart question here. Looking at your inpatient surgeries, how much of that did you capture in your ASCs versus weakness in inpatient?

Yes. Well, I don't -- I mean, from our perspective, the ASC volumes were strong because we're focused on the growth that we see in our high acuity service line priorities, just like I highlighted in joint replacements. I mean, 10% year-over-year growth, given how large our portfolio has become is outstanding growth from my perspective. So the vast majority of the impact there continues to be a migration of lower acuity quick pain procedures and other things into the office space setting or just deliberate migration of those sorts of cases. We're very pleased that we continue to be able to deliver strong revenue growth, 5% quarter-over-quarter in this environment, consistent with our strategy.

I couldn't tell if the question on geography was for the Ambulatory surgery business or just surgeries overall, I will answer the latter. I would say that surgical business overall, at least where we saw pressure on the elective side, primarily in the hospitals, tracked with some of the states that I described in my prepared remarks about where we're seeing the highest impact from the exchange enrollment declines.

And I -- look, we had strong emergency department volumes, strong emergency department inpatient surgeries. Our elective surgery book was under more pressure on the inpatient side, but elective outpatient surgeries in the hospital or hospital outpatient-based department were actually quite strong. And that I attribute largely to the fact that over the past couple of years in these hospitals, especially as we've been doing more work at USPI, we have been investing in hospital-based outpatient surgical programs. And I think that's probably the driver of why the elective outpatient surgeries look -- continue to look strong in this current environment. Like it was an offset to what impact you might have seen from the exchanges, right, the investments we made there. That's the way I would think about it.

Our next question comes from Whit Mayo with Leerink Partners.

You guys are going to have a lot of cash in the next few years. The leverage is pretty low. You've upped the buyback. Just any comments around targets for buybacks this year, other areas for capital deployment that we should expect and maybe thoughts on where your head is around a potential dividend.

Yes. Thanks, Whit. I mean just at a high level, I'll reinforce the commentary that Sun made. I mean we do think at compelling valuations, multiple valuations that given our growth prospects into the future, given the continued expansion of our USPI portfolio that share buybacks are an attractive use of our free cash flow generation, which, as we indicated, is also improving for this year. Our hospital business, we continue to see good returns, as you can see from both our margin improvements and our volumes in our strategic growth initiatives. We will continue down that path.

I think the only thing we've said there is that we're a bit more cautious on large-scale hospital builds until we understand market environment and expansion opportunities there. We've kind of been focused on 1 to 2 per year, as you know, recently, and we're a little bit more cautious on that to just make sure that the market conditions are right. But otherwise, our investments in the segment continue to be strong. And then obviously, the deployment and increase in our guidance for deployment of capital into the USPI segment this year. Sun, do you want to -- I don't know if there's anything you want to add to that here.

No, I don't think -- I would maybe add 2 things. One is, as we look forward into our debt position, I mean, I think it's very well managed. We have maturities spread over the next several years that I think are well within our ability to either refinance and/or pay down. So we're very comfortable there. And then what you mentioned, our free cash flow generation, even if when we look at ourselves on a free cash flow yield metric, we feel our shares are still very well discounted based on the free cash flow yield. So I would just point that out.

Our next question comes from A.J. Rice with UBS.

Maybe 2 things real quick. I appreciate the bridge in the slide deck. It's helpful. There's a lot of focus on core growth. If I'm looking at the slide that has the normalized performance for '25 at about $2.39 billion and you've got a line growth in cost efficiencies of $388 million, that looks like you're seeing about 16% year-to-year growth in -- on that area. Is there anything you'd call out as unusual cost efficiencies? What would you say is the sort of underlying core growth?

And if I might slip in one thing. Saum, you mentioned the states where you've had the unusual HICS hit, Florida, Arizona, Michigan, South Carolina and Texas. I don't think we're surprised by Florida and Texas, but I am a little surprised by the expansion states, Arizona and Michigan that they are seeing big disenrollment. Any thoughts about that? I think the feeling has been that most of this would be targeted at non-expansion states, but there's a big drop-off there, too. Any thoughts on that?

Well, why don't I start there and then I'll -- for the last question, and I'll pass it back to Sun for the first question. Yes, it's interesting. The -- and you can see the enrollment numbers publicly have been impacted in those states. I mean, unfortunately, these states, which are swing states really must have had a lot of members with -- needing the support of premium tax credits in order to continue to acquire product. And we haven't dug into it deeply enough to understand if the issue is that there just isn't enough coverage from a bronze metal product standpoint that's attractive enough versus other states or if the issue has been that eligibility for Medicaid for those at the lowest levels of income who would have required the highest premium support is just -- they're just not qualifying for that Medicaid.

So I mean, you can see it in our numbers. Our exchange -- the exchange admissions are down, uninsured is up. It's not quite 1:1, but it's certainly in that 80% to 100% of that range. And so you can see that is happening. And it's bigger in numbers in those states that I called out. Sun -- the first part of the question on the bridge.

Yes. I mean, A.J., I don't know that there's anything unique or abnormal that I would point out, right? I mean it's an aggregation of a lot of the themes that we mentioned, our acuity focus, the growth investments that we've made to help grow the acuity and the volumes in our hospitals. Obviously, OpEx management, both from a kind of a planned looking ahead standpoint that we did last year into this year as well as being nimble on a site-by-site, facility-by-facility basis depending on how things are going.

Commercial rates, as we've talked about, have been as expected this year. We've managed through some of the operating expense pressures around professional fees. It has grown about 10% since last year, which was per our expectations, and we've managed it. And then we've also called out separately the supplemental Medicaid revenues that were either out of period or not in our original guidance from a change standpoint. So yes, I think those are the only things I would call out.

Our next question comes from Justin Lake with Wolfe Research.

I wanted to dig in on your strong year-over-year revenue growth in the quarter. So from your disclosures, it looks like it's being driven by this commercial and Medicaid. So maybe you could tell us what your commercial employer group revenue growth looked like in the quarter? Give us some idea there. And then on Medicaid, your revenue was up about $125 million year-over-year. I know you had this $90 million of out-of-period, but last quarter, in the second quarter of '25, you had $70 million. So really, that's only $20 million of the $125 million year-over-year increase. I'm curious what drove the other $100 million plus in Medicaid revenue growth year-over-year and how we should think about that going forward?

Okay. Well, let me address some of the Medicaid piece and then Sun, if you want to go back on the commercial part of the question, the first half of the question, we'll go in reverse order again. I mean, I think 2 things here around Medicaid. First of all, we are very much committed in our markets. And as you know, we have some very large markets in trauma -- multiple trauma centers in environments with a heavy Medicaid population. It's not just Southeast Michigan, where we've been very committed to that mission for a long time, but it's certainly in other states Memphis and Tennessee, the central part of California, the desert part of California, where there's significant need for high acuity Medicaid-related services. I mean this is why -- and we have been focused on growing those service lines. And of course, we receive all patients from that standpoint.

In addition, Justin, our continued efforts to be a trauma receiving center for outlying hospitals that simply can't take care of the sickness level of the patients they're seeing extends to all payers as well. We accept all payers in the community when we're providing those services. And of course, those types of cases, combined with our investments in our neonatal intensive care unit business, drive revenue growth. And so that's largely what it is.

And look, I've said this all along, this whole notion that somehow state-directed payment program monies, assuming you accept the construct are not monies that are earned, doesn't make a lot of sense to me because you really do have to put in place the services, make capital investments, work with physicians or attract them to build some of these sophisticated service lines for the sickest of Medicaid patients who also deserve access to good quality health care. And we do that. And we consider that some of those payments that help support those investments are things that we earn and should be part of our core as opposed to not. But nevertheless, we sort of describe what's happening in the core separate from SDPs given the way we talk about things today. But make no mistake, we will continue to invest and grow and build those services for all payers in the hospitals.

In terms of forecasting out what that implication is for Medicaid revenue growth going forward, I'll be honest, I'm not going to do that today only because I haven't looked at that in the way that you asked the question. So I'm not sure I could provide a very well-informed answer. But conceptually, the reasons for it are what I described in addition to the state-directed payment program portion that you called out from Q2 of last year to this year. Sun, do you want to take the commercial portion of the question?

Yes. I think when you look at our disclosures, you'll see our managed care category down about 2.7% in terms of mix of proportion of revenues that it represents. Now obviously, that downward trend is driven by exchange, as we talked about. If we look at outside of exchange, other commercial payer classes, I can tell you from a -- both from a volume and a patient revenue standpoint, it's up low single digits quarter-over-quarter. So I think we're pleased with that.

And then, Justin, just the only other bridge I would give you in terms of the Medicaid delta. You're right, Quarter-over-quarter, '25 into '26, our supplemental payments are up. The out-of-period numbers explain roughly $22 million to $25 million of that. There are 2 other components that are sort of mechanical in nature. One is additional programs that were outside of our guidance for this fiscal year and the increase in Florida program would be a good example of that versus our original guidance. And then as Saum said, the rest of it is through the care we provide, the volume growth, some program adjustments and some timing items. So hopefully, that helps.

Our next question comes from Sarah James with Cantor Fitzgerald.

I want to isolate the growth, not the efficiency aspect, but the growth on the hospital segment earnings guide bridge. Earlier, you listed out some contributors. They all sounded sustainable around rate negotiations and other aspects. But then the guide sounds like you're assuming the second half benefit is just over about half of what you recognized in first half when I take the $100 million versus the $60 million as a proxy, I know that's total company, and I'm focusing on hospital here. But is that delta just conservatism? Or is there a good portion of the year-to-date hospital segment nonefficiency growth drivers that's transitory?

Well, I think it's more that we're prudent about the fact that from Q1 to Q2, obviously, the exchange or HIC impact accelerated significantly. And it's very possible that even though the rate of growth and the negative impact won't be the same as it was from Q1 to Q2, it could get a little bit worse, right? I mean we're not blind to the trends. And as I indicated, the most important thing is we were prepared for them and continue to be prepared for them. So I think it's very consistent with our overall guide. Sun, I don't know if you want to add to that.

No, I would just say, Sarah, listen, if you look at our full year '25 versus '26 growth on a normalized basis, right, it's very heavy, right? It's about 14%, if you look at our IR deck. Now we did have a difference in growth factors just driven off of a '25 baseline difference in Q1 versus Q2 of our first half. As we get into the second half, I think we're projecting, if my math is roughly correct, about 11% growth in the second half versus last year, while overcoming the expected exchange headwinds. So we feel that's still very much in line with our original fairly aggressive guidance into this environment. So we feel good about it.

Our next question comes from Scott Fidel with Goldman Sachs.

I was hoping you could maybe talk about the HOPS proposal and walk through some of the more significant, I guess, sort of reform elements to 340B that they proposed in terms of the increase in the facility reimbursement while cutting the drug reimbursement and ultimately hoping how that sort of translates or transmits from like hospital outpatient to ASC and ultimately, how you think that proposal, what the key effects could be for the ASC business from a pricing, from a volume and from a sort of a margin perspective?

Yes. I mean the -- we -- obviously, the outpatient rule -- proposed rule at this point was a little -- it had a few curve balls in it and was a little bit different than in the past. So we're obviously still studying that. I mean the 340B reallocation could be material. At the same time, they accelerated the recruitment, which fundamentally, we're not even sure the legal basis of. So there's a lot of moving pieces here that we're still looking at. And I think as we move ahead into the year, at the right time, we'll have synthesized those various moving pieces into what we think the math looks like and share that when we talk about the following year.

Our next question comes from Kevin Fischbeck with Bank of America.

I guess when I look at that guidance assumption that the exchanges are going to be relatively similar in Q3 and Q4 relative to Q1. I guess, historically, we've kind of seen exchange enrollment drop off year-over-year. And last year it didn't happen as much. So I would have thought that, that number would ramp a little bit more in the back half. So just curious on your thoughts about that and then kind of how to think about exchange as a potential headwind into next year? Should it be something similar to what you're seeing this year, less thoughts there?

Yes. I mean I really don't want to guess about exchange enrollment in the following year without the data points of seeing what happens in the next 2 quarters. As I indicated a few moments ago, we have thought about the fact that in our view, our estimates were about right. We knew that from Q1 to Q2 would be the big data point about how much it increased. It did, in fact, increase substantially. And we planned for that to really moderate into Q3 and Q4 based upon what we would imagine the trend line would look like, and we've built that into our guidance.

I mean it's -- this is not a game of perfect forecasting. It's a game of using the available data, which often lags a little bit and what we're seeing in our business and what we're seeing with Conifer doing enrollment work in terms of how much of that enrollment work is related to patients who are prior on exchanges versus Medicaid or something like that. It's been mostly exchanges becoming uninsured. And that's how we've made our forecast looking forward.

Our next question comes from Ann Hynes with Mizuho.

I just want to focus on the surgery center. I don't think we've gotten a breakout of service line or procedures by modality in a while. Can you let us know how that's trending? Like how many new procedures are orthopedic versus gastro? Maybe how is that trending versus the past 3 years and maybe the growth rate within each modality, that would be great.

Yes. I don't -- I mean, I think that we generally have published that once a year in terms of the overall proportion. And I guess we can do that again at the end of the year. But I would tell you that the primary migration, if you will, or change is just a continuation of growth in the higher acuity service lines so that they continue to become a bigger and bigger proportion of the revenue in the business. The case counts, again, as we've talked, the case counts are sometimes so skewed by high-volume, low acuity cases.

And unfortunately, other than what we're doing, there isn't really a good measure to compare a single orthopedic surgery versus 7 procedures that are done in 15 minutes each in the same time frame in the way that case counts work. So we obviously focus on the revenues, focus on the growth rates of the important higher acuity frontier kind of service lines that we're adept at working on.

And then as I indicated today, we have started work a couple of years ago on looking for opportunities that are now starting to get built into the business of newer type of procedures in both GI and ophthalmology to see about moving them from the hospital setting to the ASC setting. And we'll see how that goes.

Our last question comes from Brian Tanquilut with Jefferies.

On the quarter. Saum, maybe as I think about just all the comments prior to your release here, all these KOL calls pointing to weakness in volumes, it obviously doesn't sound like you're facing that. So is this a share gain situation? Maybe more broadly speaking, you and I in the past have talked about your view that volumes are going to remain strong because of demographic trends and whatnot. So just curious where your mind is now in terms of volumes and what you're seeing in terms of share at the local level for your assets.

Yes. I mean let me start, first of all, I'll sort of move from what I'm most sure about to less sure about. And what I mean by that is when we look at our business, we have obviously migrated our hospital portfolio to markets that we thought we had better growth opportunities in and better return on invested capital opportunities in we've stepped up our capital expenditure in those markets the last couple of years on growth initiatives, and we're seeing results from that.

If you go back a couple of years, I think people would have asked the question, can Tenet step up capital investments in hospital markets and see returns either from a growth or margin perspective, that was an open question. And our job was to test that post all the divestitures and demonstrate that what we did with the portfolio restructuring would, in fact, add value for our shareholders over time. And we're seeing evidence of that, which I'm pleased about because it means that our work is paying dividends in those areas. And so I think what we're seeing, at least in our volume environment is a good background environment coupled with the benefits of the returns on the investments that we've made.

And then when you add on top of that the fact that we had planned so actively out of concern for what would happen with the exchanges in 2027 that we were able to hit the ground running in January on our expense initiatives, the combination of those things have supported earnings and happened to have supported earnings ahead of our expectations that we created.

Now if I just step back because I went through this exercise just reflecting on the past couple of weeks at where kind of our volumes look like and some of the reports that are out there about overall volumes. I mean, this is not an environment to be pessimistic about with respect to the acute care industry. I mean the fact is that these 2-plus, 2.5-plus percent type of volume numbers that we're seeing published from others in the industry and including us, when you look back over a few years or you go back pre-COVID, I mean, those are healthy years. And you see as many quarters or years where it's above that as it is below that.

So this is not an environment that one would describe as negative. I do think some of that is general demographic trends, aging, chronic disease burden and things of that nature, but it's also a reasonable environment. So I generally am more optimistic. We're not seeing -- in our business, we're not seeing some kind of consumer pullback occurring right now. Where we have pluses and minuses in the ASC business for the quarter, I would say it's more geographically based or exchange related after you get past the stuff that we're doing to get rid of low acuity in that setting, more than it is some systematic view that consumers are now deferring care. I don't see that yet in the results that we have there. And I think we should continue to be optimistic that if we work on access, if we make it easy for doctors and patients to get in, if the service levels improve, I think the demand is there.

And that's the assumption we're making with our guidance increase into the balance of the year that we will be able to manage that and deliver that based upon what we have achieved in the first half of the year.

We have reached the end of the question-and-answer session, and this concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.

Thank you.

[Audio Gap] conversation with Tenet Healthcare. Presenting today, we have Saum Sutaria, who's the Chairman and CEO; Sun Park, who's the CFO; and Will McDowell from Investor Relations. If you -- I don't know, do you want to start off with some exciting forward-looking statements?

Sure. Thanks, Kevin, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. In the course of our conversation today, we may be making some forward-looking statements. In the context of those statements, I'd suggest you refer back to our cautionary statement, included in our most recent earnings release as well as other SEC filings. Back to you, Kevin.

All right. Thank you. Yes. So I guess maybe if we're going to start off, I think there's a lot of focus on utilization and volumes. And kind of given all the disruption that kind of happened in Q1 from weak flu, from weather in certain markets, can you talk a little bit about how you're seeing kind of core demand in your markets today?

Yes. No, that's a good place to start. So first of all, I mean, for us, I think this was a pretty straightforward quarter. The volume from the respiratory season in the first part of the quarter in January was obviously lower than what we saw prior year. But sequentially, every month got better. So if January was below expectations, March was above expectations, and the trend line improved nicely.

And importantly, for us, like we didn't have a situation where month-to-month, we were trying to climb out of some kind of earnings hole. We flexed appropriately in January. We felt very good about the earnings coming out of the first month. We accelerated going into the second and third month.

And obviously, in the acute business, which is what I think you're generally referring to, we ended up outperforming in the quarter. And our SDP environment and other things were pretty clean from that perspective relative to our guide. So we were really pleased coming out of the first quarter with a beat of $50-ish million on that segment and the things we were able to achieve there.

Importantly, our new hospitals that we had built and had ramped up in Florida, for example, they're ramping up nicely. So we feel very good about that. Our physician practices, which we monitor very closely, are busy because they're a precursor to what may happen in a hospital down the line. So we feel very good about our physician practices, mostly were specialty-based right, are busy.

That's a good sign for USPI. USPI had a good utilization quarter. We grew the acuity. We grew the revenue at the high end of our range. And despite the storms and whatnot, we were able to recover to the point where we had, again, a good quarter that beat our expectations by a little bit and launched us off into the second quarter.

So I think we're comfortable with where things stand from a utilization perspective after the first quarter. And I think probably the most important statement related to that is we're comfortable that the algorithm that completes the year to our guidance is intact. And in fact, we feel more bullish about it today than we did at the beginning of the year because of what we've learned in the first quarter about the ability of our operations to deliver what they need to deliver.

Yes. So maybe that's the next place to go to because Q1 had so many moving pieces as far as like the Conifer deal and SDPs and all that. So like when you think about those moving pieces, what do you think the core growth was at Tenet kind of in Q1? And what does that imply kind of for like the rest of the year?

Yes. So we've been getting this question a lot. I mean, I think there were a couple of normalization items, obviously, right? We had the Conifer $40 million in our Q1 this year, and then we had $40 million of out-of-period Medicaid payments in Q1 of '25. So basically offset each other.

Once you normalize for that, I mean, the other big change was obviously HICS impact, right? And we talked about it being, let's call it, down about 10%. As a reminder, we sort of thought about the full year impact to be about 20% impact. So certainly better than what we had thought.

But I think taking a step back, it's reasonable to think that Q1 was whatever it is, and then it will get worse over the course of the year due to the grace period dynamics and effectuation dynamics and things like that. So I think all that, as Saum said, is within our expectations, and we've accounted for that, and we feel good about being able to manage all that.

Your question about core growth, I mean, I think the only context I would add beyond the actual numbers is that our Q1 of '25 was an exceedingly strong quarter. Just to remind everyone, we were at 17.5% margins on the Hospital segment. Offsetting that -- there were some probably some timing amounts between our Q1 and Q2 of last year.

So when we take a step back, we're not necessarily focused on the algebra of Q1 versus Q1, Q2 versus Q2, all those things. We take a look at our performance in Q1, how we were able to flex our operating expense management with volume. And as Saum said, if you sort of annualize our current trends, we feel very comfortable about the rest of our guidance.

Okay. Is there anything else that you would point to just as like anything ramping up through the year or anything that you would say should be getting better sequentially versus just a normal continuation of year-over-year trend each quarter?

Well, I think the first thing is that the growth strategies that we have in place -- again, I think we're referring to acute. The growth strategies that we have in place, including the focus on a high acuity business, where we've put capital behind that makes sense. And we see ourselves continuing to deliver results and expansion of services in those areas.

Our, as I said, physician practices and physician affiliations, which in many of these markets have been building, makes sense. As you know, we've stepped up our capital expense in the RemainCo hospital business after our transactions from a couple of years ago. So we feel more confident about the growth opportunities there. So that's a positive.

And I think in the fourth quarter call, not the fourth quarter '25 call, we did outline that we had made plans over the course of 2025 for things we would do from an expense reduction standpoint, both what I would describe as traditional levers and more innovative levers with technology, AI and other things. We're executing on those, and those will build over time. It's not like we finished all that in 1 quarter, right? So those will build over time.

So again, I come back to -- when we look at the balance of the year and we see obviously going from an algebraic Q1 to Q1 to a 10% full year core growth, right, from '25 to '26, we're more confident now than we were at the beginning of the year that we're on that trajectory, and we see both the utilization and expense opportunity to deliver on that.

Yes. So I guess just talk about the utilization again a little bit more. So when we look at least the public company average volume growth, like Q2 2023 was kind of the peak from a hospital volume perspective, and it's been decelerating. It's back to target. So it's not like we were below target in 2025 per se, but we were back to the long-term averages again. And now we've got some headwinds from a coverage perspective. Like what makes you think that like 2026 could be a normal year from a utilization perspective, we won't see something below that?

Well, let's talk about utilization in the industry as I see it anyway, and then let's talk about Tenet. Because I think probably the most important response I would give to your -- the peak was whatever quarter you said in 2023. That wasn't the peak of our -- Tenet's Hospital segment performance, right? Think about it, right? We've improved margins, improved earnings, grown the business and successfully built stronger platforms since that peak of utilization, right?

Because I think -- and this gets to the second part of my answer, which is the strategy which is based not upon chasing volume, but upon high acuity business. And really, what we guide internally to and externally to at USPI is revenue, right? We're looking to grow revenue and grow earnings in a way that improves over time, return on invested capital in the business by being rational about what we're growing and having a more focused strategy.

And that strategy coming out of COVID, we said it at your conference 4 or 5 years ago, I think. We're not chasing pre-2019 volumes exact because we believe the market has changed. The benefit of building a platform around patients with multiple chronic illness and high acuity gives us a degree of efficiency between the growing Medicare segment and the multiple chronic illness commercial book and those in Medicaid who have the same sort of medical problems with one set of investments in technology, in physician types, in service lines that we can build and grow more efficiently. And that's how ROIC has improved as the margins have improved.

From a long-term perspective -- and it actually goes back to something we started saying here at your conference a number of years ago. Look, we always said that our view was COVID unfortunately caused the mortality of about 1 million to 1.5 million people prematurely that were in the last 5 years of their life. And therefore, there was a demand hole created, and that demand was going to rebuild over 5 years as people got back into the last 5 years of life. And you would have outsized utilization, right? And that's what we've had. And here we are 5 years later, and it's normalizing, okay?

So I think that thesis holds. And what have we done over the last 5 years? We've improved the business, but we've also ridden a utilization wave. We always knew that going into '26, '27, '28 and beyond, the algorithm to build and manage earnings in the acute care hospital segment would have to change to a growth strategy and an efficiency strategy at the same time in a balanced way that would grow earnings. And that's why we began to plan and make that pivot in 2025, and now we're delivering on that pivot. And I think that can be very attractive in the acute segment for the next 4 or 5 years.

And then, of course, our ace in the hole is that half of our EBITDA is coming from a line of business that's not affected by Medicaid, not affected by the exchanges that much, has significant growth ahead of it in the ambulatory segment. And so the company's progress despite the headwinds can still look good. That's how we're thinking about this long term. I actually think our business diversification, USPI acute, is more powerful and advantageous to us in the next 5 years than it has been the last 5 years, right?

Yes. I mean, that's definitely one of the things we like about Tenet right now. But I guess just to stay on the hospital side before we pivot to the USPI side, you talked about deemphasizing low acuity stuff, focusing on the high acuity stuff. What should we be thinking about? What service lines are we talking about here as far as where the investment is and where the growth is going to be for you guys?

Yes. I mean, broad-based cardiovascular, significant amount of work in neurosciences, both stroke and degenerative neurological disease, surgical and medical, significant expansions in robotic surgery and what's happening there, cancer surgery, especially with the incidence of a number of types of things post-COVID that we've seen escalate are important activity in interventional radiology labs and other things, the delivery of not just diagnostics, but therapies in that market. We're investing in that. Those are the types of services that we're focused on. In addition to like trauma and like the traditional high acuity, right?

Yes. Okay. And then you mentioned that the exchange subsidies were kind of running at about half of what you thought they might be in Q1. Is that your experience? Or is that what you were accruing to? Because I know there's a lot of questions about the paid premiums as far as Q1 goes. So how are you thinking about that?

Yes. That's the experience we saw in our admissions in our mix, as well as what we saw in our revenue impact as well. And just because we've gotten some questions on these as well, just to kind of say it here. We take very careful assessment of all of our payer groups, obviously, including exchange in the last quarter, and we feel we're very appropriately reserved from a revenue basis. So I think our metrics are pretty parallel between admissions and revenue.

Okay. And then when you think about that impact, did it change at all through the quarter? Like you talked about Q1 being lower and then ramping through the year. Like did you see a ramp through the quarter? Or is that...

Yes. So on a volume basis, we talked about that. From an exchange basis, we looked -- I don't think there were any discernible patterns that we could really point out. We'll obviously find out more as we get into Q2.

Okay. And then when we think about USPI, which is a unique business for you as far as how big it is a part of your business versus your hospital competitors. The shift to outpatient has been this thing we've been talking about for a long time now. In some cases, you could argue it's been going on for 20-plus years. Like, where are we in the shift to outpatient? Everyone loves their baseball analogies. What inning are we in?

Yes. Well, I mean, I don't think -- like it's almost -- baseball analogies, I'm not sure anybody has ever gotten -- we've been perpetually in the like third or fourth inning, right? I mean -- I actually think the next 20 years, we're going to see the same thing. It's just going to be higher acuity work in the ASCs.

You have to think about the market this way, which is that you have traditional service lines in the ASCs that continue to grow because of population demand and other things, but there's also a lot of replenishment work you have to do in those traditional service lines. As doctors retire, you bring new ones on, et cetera. And so the growth comes mainly from a demographic perspective, right? Then you have new service lines or newer service lines in the ASCs that are still ramping to their full potential in orthopedics, in spine, in robotic surgery, in urology.

And so the reason we spend a lot of our time disproportionately in those areas, there's lots of new doctors you can bring into the ASC environment in those areas, right, that have never been there before. And that creates a different opportunity to grow versus some of the high-volume but low acuity quick type of procedures that used to dominate in our ASCs.

And so that shift is really important because what that shift is doing aside from short term, strategically giving us a better base of earnings and a better value proposition for the payers because that work comes out of hospitals, it's giving us a runway to grow new doctors in an ASC business. Whereas if we were traditional service lines only, you spend more time replenishing than you do growing, if that makes sense.

Yes. No, it definitely does. Yes. So I guess maybe thinking about it that way, when you think about those lower acuity, the GI [ ortho ] penetration from a doc perspective, like where is that versus like an ortho or a cardio?

Yes. Very different, right? Very different for ambulatory gastroenterologists who have, whatever, 5 to 10 years of practice because they've earned enough to be able to buy into an ASC. Many of them have ASC affiliations already, right? Whereas in orthopedics or in spine or in other areas, you have a lot of doctors that can still enter the market. Both are great parts of the portfolio, but they require different work and different thinking. And as you think about building for the future, you can't take one at the expense of the other. You have to do both.

Yes. And then when we think about that business you mentioned, I think everyone right now is thinking ortho is still a big driver, but maybe it's getting towards -- is it getting towards the end of the inning analogy? And then is cardio ready yet? It wasn't -- it seems -- like people talk about cardio, but it also kind of seems like that's maybe a harder lift in some ways. So how do you think about that trend?

First of all, I think there's a lot of growth opportunity in orthopedics. And even in just hips and knees, let alone shoulders and ankles and other things, the inpatient-only list is evolving. I think there's opportunity in all of those areas. But just frequency-wise, there's still more opportunity in growing hips and knees. And even at our scale, we're still reporting very attractive growth rates in those areas. It tells you there's demand if you can build the right platform for the doctors to work in.

Cardiac is, as you know, for, again, multiple years and probably here as well, I've said I don't think this is going to be transformative over the last 5 years. It hasn't really been, and there's reasons for that. I mean, many of the doctors are employed by health systems. It's a heavy Medicare predominance. It's expensive to build those ASCs because you have to have a cath lab and a C-arm and all of the radiation protection. It's different than just buying some colonoscopy units or whatever, right? So the math on the economics is a bit different.

It will grow. It will grow more slowly. We're heavily invested now in really building out unique EP models to bring more EP into the ASC setting. We're partnering with some manufacturers on that to really design a good model, and we're excited about that. But it's going to be a multiyear build.

Yes. And then can you talk a little bit about your acquisition strategy? You guys have already earmarked $250 million for deals. What do you look for when you look for M&A within USPI?

Yes. I mean, we're looking for very good physician partnerships, ones that are looking for healthy growth rather than cashing out. We're looking for doctors that will work with the type of quality, safety compliance protocols that we expect. Our complication rates in our ASCs are much, much lower than industry average. We take that seriously.

And one, doctors that want to be in network with payers, right? We are insistent that we're in network with payers. And we contract on a freestanding ASC basis, not getting into HOPD and other sorts of things in the ASC business. And those types of things, when you combine it with the high acuity focus, we're bringing -- that's how we tend to be deploying our energy with our development team.

Yes. Actually, can you just -- I want to have you say that again, the second part because I get the question a lot about site neutrality because I think that there's a conception among some that, oh, you're a U.S. -- you're a hospital company and you've got surgery centers, that must mean you have a lot of site-neutral exposure. Can you just talk about your site-neutral exposure?

We have no site-neutral exposure. Every one of our ASCs is on freestanding rates today. I mean, I really -- maybe there's 1, I don't know, but I'm not even sure there's 1. So I think all of our ASCs are on freestanding rates today.

And of course, we do have surgical hospitals within the USPI portfolio. So they have some site neutrality risk. But remember, with site neutrality, at least my opinion, surgery is not the first area. Imaging, lab, those sorts of area. Well, these specialty surgical hospitals, they don't do a lot of that work.

And I'll add to this by making the comment about Tenet on the acute side. Our business model at Tenet is not focused on driving HOPD work, right? I mean, we're not a large employer at scale of primary care that then is driving business into an HOPD diagnostics environment. We use freestanding diagnostics where we own things like imaging and other things. They're generally in the freestanding arena. And so as an entity, we have, I think, less site neutrality exposure than one might assume because of our business model choices on the acute side and because of our contracting strategies on the ASC side.

Okay. That's perfect. And I guess as far as the inpatient-only list, because you have a hospital business and a surgery center business, like how do you think about the puts and the takes as far as that shift goes?

I mean, yes, you're going to win some and you're going to lose some, but the upside is on the ambulatory side, right? I mean I'm just saying, like I don't -- you can't fight that. You have to have a strategy in the acute care hospitals -- that is our belief, you have to have a strategy in the acute care hospitals that's focused on enough acuity that really drives the success in that market such that the siphon of certain low acuity things doesn't disrupt your hospital success strategy. That's why -- that's another reason we're focused on that high acuity business. Right? Because it's -- that's not moving outpatient.

Yes. So actually, just to go back to the M&A commentary, what do you think as far as multiples go? It sounds like you've got a very particular criteria. It sounds like these are great assets. What's the pressure on multiples right now?

On the ASCs?

ASCs, yes.

No, same. I mean I don't think we've seen a substantial change in the multiples. Of course, we focus on the post-synergy multiple more than we do the acquisition multiple. Some places, we can do better than others when we improve supply costs or improve throughput or bring them in network into the plans.

So internally, we think that way. But we're not seeing multiple -- we haven't really seen multiple changes in the acquisition environment for the assets we're buying for many, many years. It's really been in a generally stable range.

Yes. Your Q1 deal flow is pretty strong, like -- so should we expect then, the $250 million to be kind of a low number? Or is that just timing, when things come together?

Yes. I mean, it's -- obviously, it's always lumpy quarter-to-quarter. But yes, you're right that we would, of course, based upon Q1, love to target a higher number for the year, right? I mean, as long as there are assets with the characteristics I described earlier and opportunities that are there, and we have a pipeline that can support it, no question, we would continue to build and grow above the guide, if that's what it ends up being.

Yes. So I guess one of the questions that I've had about the company is just the cash balance. Like -- it just seems like you've got a lot of cash there. You've had it for a little while. Are you trying to signal something? Like, is there something we should be thinking about from a larger transaction perspective or capital deployment? And why not -- your debt is now callable. Why not take down the 27-plus tranches?

Yes. So first of all, I think from a debt management standpoint, that's on the menu, right? And I think we're focused on a couple of things. One is just making sure our annual debt, either repayment or refinancing stacks, there's no one big year where we're under pressure, right? We did some of that when we pushed out some of our unsecured in '28 to a much later period last time. So those are kind of the longer-term strategies we're focused on.

And then there's -- the interest rate environment right now is volatile, unpredictable, whatever word we want to use, right? So I fully expect as we get closer to the maturity date, we'll make appropriate decisions on whether we pay down debt or not. And if you look at our near-term debt stack, the interest rates on those instruments are actually pretty good, right? They're from a different generation of financings. They're in the 4% and 5% range. So with cash on balance sheet versus that, post-tax basis, it's actually pretty -- it's not enough to really make a huge difference. So we'll make the appropriate decisions there.

On the cash balance side, you're absolutely right. We're in a very strong cash position. We're generating a lot of free cash flow after NCI. This year, we're expecting about $1.7 billion free cash flow after NCI. We also have a lot of cash still coming from the Conifer transaction over the next 2, 3 years.

So a couple of things. One, our cash position right now isn't meant to signal some sort of -- we're hoarding our acorns for something, right? We fully recognize that our shares at current multiples are -- we feel highly undervalued. So we're going to be aggressive, repurchase of our stock. As Saum said, there's -- USPI M&A is always priority #1 for us from a capital allocation standpoint, all those things.

So I think over a course of reasonable time over multiple quarters, if you take a look back at us a year from now, 1.5 years from now, you'll have seen us utilize our balance sheet in a good way. On a monthly basis, on a quarter-over-quarter basis, it may look like we're carrying a cash balance in a certain period. So -- but our longer-term strategy on capital allocation is -- hasn't -- one, hasn't changed. And then two, I think we can -- we have a lot more flexibility.

Yes. So I guess maybe just remind us all. So debt leverage targets that you have?

We haven't publicly talked about a specific leverage target, but we're sitting at 2.8x EBITDA less NCI. We're very comfortable operating in that range. And certainly, we could flex up and down several half turn off of that and still be in a very comfortable position. So we're good with where we are.

Yes. Is there -- I mean, all the capital has -- I'm trying to think. I guess you've built maybe a hospital, but like pretty much all the capital has been towards the USPI side of things. Like would you be buying hospitals? Is there -- or is that just not the focus for the company?

No, no. We spend capital in our hospitals for both maintenance, IT and strategic initiatives every year, right? I mean -- and so there is a significant CapEx that goes into the -- maintaining a very strong Hospital segment, which is obviously very important to maintaining a very strong USPI. So there is capital that goes in there.

Yes, M&A capital on the Hospital segment has not been high. We haven't really been in the acquisition market for hospitals that way. I mean, if opportunistically, something were to come up that's a natural extension of a market that would be accretive to us, we would, of course, look at it. Look, we've proven the ability to buy things, integrate them and make them perform. We do that reliably, right? And we have a process that we run from an integration.

So we're not afraid of it. But there hasn't really been a need to. We have built a few hospitals, as you point out, and those are doing very well. That's important because that hasn't always been the case with the company, but it is happening consistently with the hospitals that we've built. They're doing well. And so if there are natural extension opportunities on big market positions we have where there's population growth, commercial population growth, we would examine them for expansions, but in targeted type of builds, right? They're specialty hospitals, almost.

Yes. And then one of the themes that is capturing everybody's attention is AI. If you think about -- what do you guys think about the opportunity for AI for you, I guess, in each business, if it's a separate opportunity? And then is there anything that people are getting ahead of their skis on as far as what we're all excited about AI, are we too excited on XYZ?

Yes. Well, let me just say that I think there's a dialogue that goes on out there about -- are certain industries or certain companies going to end up being winners or losers from AI. And that's a pretty stark -- winners and losers, right, from AI. And I think for any company or any industry like ours, there is a chance that you're going to win on some things and lose on some things depending on who is applying the AI and how they're applying it.

The imperative on us as a management team is to grow our capabilities and expertise to drive the company to become a winner from AI, period. Right? And if that takes different talent or different leadership or different, that is an opportunity we have to capture, and we have to be open to that.

Now where are our opportunities? We have a lot of opportunity in Conifer. We've talked about that. I think people understand conceptually, the automation of the payments environment in particular parts of the chain in the revenue cycle that could materially reduce the cost to collect. That is a game changer not only for our own economics, but also since we have a third-party service company, the ability to go to market with a very different value proposition at a cost to collect 1% below what we charge today. That's a significant movement in the industry if we can get there. So we are absolutely focused on that.

Then there are things in the -- what I would describe as overhead and corporate function environment. So it's not just overhead, but the things we do in compliance, in accounting, in audit. That because we operate in a much more standardized model, we have the ability to more easily apply these tools, right?

So if you just -- the simple concept I think of is you have engineers that have this incredible ability to apply these AI models, but they don't know anything about your business and the workflow and what people do that makes that workflow work. So you have to be able to partner with them to do that. Now if you enter an environment with an engineer and you have 10 markets and you're doing length of stay management 10 different ways in 10 markets, guess what, that engineer is going to have a very hard time helping you.

On the other hand, if you're like us, where you've spent years standardizing our workflows in Tenet across almost everything we do, we have more ability to utilize the capacity and intellect of those engineers to help us with our people to build and use those tools. That's why we're seeing some early benefit from doing this.

So I gave an example the other day on the call about analytics in Conifer and standardizing and automating some of those analytics using AI tools. Well, we produce the same reports for ourselves internally in every one of our clients. They're not different. So we were able to do that and reduce that cost by 60%. Now is everything going to get reduced by 60%? I don't think so.

But the point is that we have to be open to doing that and trying it. And I think the most important thing that we've put in, in the company right now is the governance that allows us to review everything and decide what moves forward, but more importantly, what pilots do you kill early because there is no business case. Otherwise, you spend a tremendous amount of money on pilots that aren't going anywhere. And that governance is important to making this successful in terms of how we deploy AI. And with that, I think we're going to be a net winner from this. And it will build over time.

Yes. And this -- maybe the way you just described that is the answer. But I think when we think about AI, I think one of the powerful things about it is that it is AI. And I think there's a conception potentially that everyone can roll it out and everyone can get the same benefits from it because it will help you get there. And you're arguing that there's a potential comparative advantage you can outcompete the rest of the industry potentially in what you're doing.

Well, I believe that. I think that from what I have seen and experienced and immersed myself in, it is very important to be able to combine engineering capacity with real workflow know-how. And the more the workflow is standardized, it's been easier for them to operate in that environment to help us build tools.

Where it's less standard, they, of course, struggle a bit more to help you build that. And I think that, that work that we have done over the last few years, whether it be in Conifer or standardizing our clinical operations or other things or even some of our -- the way our corporate functions work and do audit or compliance around the company will give us more opportunity to accelerate using those tools.

All right. I think that's all we have time for. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much for inviting us.

Good morning, and welcome to Tenet Healthcare's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

I'll now turn the call over to your host, Mr. Will McDowell, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. McDowell, you may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call. I am Will McDowell, Vice President of Investor Relations. We're pleased to have you join us for a discussion of Tenet's first quarter 2026 results as well as a discussion of our financial outlook. Tenet's senior management participating in today's call will be Dr. Saum Sutaria, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Sun Park, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Our webcast this morning includes a slide presentation, which has been posted to the Investor Relations section of our website, tenethealth.com. Listeners to this call are advised that certain statements made during our discussion today are forward-looking and represent management's expectations based on currently available information. Actual results and plans could differ materially. Tenet is under no obligation to update any forward-looking statements based on subsequent information. Investors should take note of the cautionary statement slide included in today's presentation as well as the risk factors discussed in our most recent Form 10-K and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And with that, I'll turn the call over to Saum.

All right. Thank you, Will, and good morning, everyone. In the first quarter, we reported net operating revenues of $5.4 billion and consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $1.16 billion, which represents an adjusted EBITDA margin of 21.6%. We are pleased with the start to the year, performing above our previously provided expectations. As anticipated towards the end of last year, the operating environment is dynamic. There are payer mix shifts, seasonal effects and insurance enrollment uncertainty in the exchanges and Medicaid that impact demand. Despite these challenges, we delivered a clean quarter characterized by disciplined operations, benefits from execution on our previously described expense opportunities, stable volumes despite headwinds and as a result, significant free cash flow generation.

USPI generated $484 million in adjusted EBITDA, which represents 6% growth over the first quarter of 2025 and a robust 22% of our full year 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance. We are pleased with USPI's start to the year as we set an aggressive EBITDA target as a percent of the full year for the first quarter that we were able to exceed. We have seen a pattern over the last few years with a modest shift towards an increased distribution of cases and, therefore, earnings into the first quarter. Given our focus on acuity, same-facility revenues grew 5.3% at USPI, highlighted by double-digit same-store volume growth in total joint replacements in the ASCs over prior year. Our operations in the first quarter were somewhat impacted by two major winter storms and uncertainty from vendor cyber attacks, however, our operating teams managed through them and were able to reschedule many of the procedures lessening the overall impact in the quarter.

We have a robust pipeline of assets interested in joining USPI this year. As such, we've had a particularly strong start to the year investing $125 million in the first quarter to acquire 7 ASCs. Additionally, we have commenced patient care at 3 de novo centers. This represents half of our targeted full year spend already completed in the first quarter.

Turning to our Hospital segment. First quarter 2026 adjusted EBITDA was $678 million, which was nicely above our expectations and represented 27.5% of our full year 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance. We reported 16.7% EBITDA margins in the quarter, which were driven by disciplined expense management and growth initiatives, which offset the expected impacts of unfavorable payer mix and reductions in exchange enrollment. The results in the quarter reflect no significant changes in supplemental Medicaid program revenues compared to our original expectations.

We have seen declines in exchange coverage with same-store exchange admissions down about 10% compared to first quarter 2025, but not yet at the level we assumed as the average for the full year. We continue to assess the overall environment for effectuation rates and the impact on future exchange volumes, but we believe we have the tools to manage this impact under a variety of scenarios. We continue to make investments in technology to enable growth and streamline operations. We are executing on the expense initiatives that we discussed on our fourth quarter 2025 earnings call and are recognizing the benefits. These initiatives include engagement tools, which are improving recruitment and retention efforts, process automation to address length of stay and capacity controls, which improve our clinical throughput. Among these things, we are executing on AI-related capabilities in our hospitals, physician practices and the global business center to drive further efficiencies, most of which have been useful for supporting extending the productivity metrics of our team.

Importantly, we have learned that while all of these tools will not work in a pilot state, setting up a governance that either green lights for rapid scaling up or red lights for shutdown help us remain focused. We have included third-party EMR integrated solutions with -- which will increase our clinician productivity, decrease administrative burden and improve patient access through programs such as ambient scribe, automated discharge summaries and autonomous professional fee coding in various pilot programs. Additionally, we have increased back-office AI automation, which is improving productivity and consolidating third-party spend to reduce costs. For example, we have almost doubled or more the productivity of our Conifer analytics team.

As we look forward, we are actively identifying and piloting agentic workflows to transform further business processes. So far, our work has enabled us to more than offset the expected and unexpected headwinds that arose in the quarter. Regarding full year 2026 guidance, as in prior years, at this time, we are not addressing the underlying outperformance in our business units during the first quarter. We're pleased with our year-to-date performance, we're reaffirming our full year guidance, and we'll address our expectations for the full year in the future. As a reminder, after normalizing for the non-recurring items that were reported in 2025 in the first quarter of '26 and excluding the headwind from the expiration of the premium tax credits, our 2026 adjusted EBITDA is expected to grow at 10% at the midpoint of our range. And finally, we continue to see significant opportunity to utilize share repurchase at our current valuations. We repurchased 1.35 million shares for $318 million in the first quarter of 2026 and expect to continue to deploy capital for share repurchase over the balance of the year.

In conclusion, we adapt to the environment, focus on strong clinical quality recommit to helping our doctors have an easier environment to operate in and focus on delivering reliable earnings in this transitionary period. Our balance sheet is strong, and our diversified asset mix with a focus on ambulatory care gives us a significant strategic advantage in the market as we look ahead.

And with that, I will turn it over to Sun for more details. Sun?

Thank you, Saum, and good morning, everyone. We had a nice start to the year in the first quarter of 2026, generating total net operating revenues of $5.4 billion and consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $1.162 billion. First quarter adjusted EBITDA margin was 21.6%, driven by disciplined operating expense management, including good progress on the expense initiatives that we outlined last quarter.

I would now like to highlight some key items for both of our segments, beginning with USPI. In the first quarter, USPI's adjusted EBITDA was $484 million, with adjusted EBITDA margin at 36.7%. USPI delivered a 5.3% increase in same-facility system-wide revenues with net revenue per case up 5.6%, and same facility case volumes down 0.3%. As Saum noted, volumes were impacted by the winter storms early in the quarter, and while we were able to reschedule many of the procedures, there was an overall impact.

Turning to our Hospital segment. First quarter 2026 adjusted EBITDA was $678 million, resulting in an adjusted EBITDA margin of 16.7%. This represents 27.5% of our expected full year '26 adjusted EBITDA. Same-hospital inpatient adjusted admissions rose 0.6% in the quarter and were impacted by a decline in respiratory admissions of 41% compared to first quarter '25. This driver represented a 90 basis point reduction in admissions growth in the quarter. Revenue per adjusted admissions declined 1.5% year-over-year in the first quarter '26 due to the impact of reduced exchange volumes within our overall payer mix and the year-over-year impact of the $40 million favorable out-of-period supplemental Medicaid revenues that we reported in the first quarter of 2025.

Exchange revenues represented about 6% of consolidated revenues in the first quarter of '26, a 9% decline from first quarter of '25. Our consolidated salary, wages and benefits was 40.5% of net revenues in the quarter, consistent with our performance from the prior year despite the net revenue headwinds, demonstrating our ability to flex our operating model. Overall, operating expenses per adjusted admissions were also favorable to our expectations, which contributed to our outperformance in the quarter. In the first quarter of '26, we recognized a onetime approximate $40 million favorable revenue adjustment as a result of the completed Conifer transaction. This amount was included in our original guidance. And I would also note that this adjustment is not included in our revenue per adjusted admission calculations. We recorded supplemental Medicaid revenues of $304 million in the first quarter of '26, consistent with what we assumed in our guidance.

Importantly, we did not benefit from out-of-period supplemental Medicaid revenues related to prior years in this quarter. We're pleased with our ability to manage through the various dynamics throughout our first quarter and feel we have the ability to deliver on our commitments over the balance of the year.

Next, we will discuss our cash flow, balance sheet and capital structure. We generated $978 million of adjusted free cash flow in the first quarter. And as of March 31, 2026, we had $2.97 billion of cash on hand with no borrowings outstanding under our line of credit facility. Additionally, we have no significant debt maturities until late 2027. And finally, during the first quarter, we repurchased 1.35 million shares of our stock for $318 million. Our leverage ratio as of March 31, '26, was 2.24x EBITDA or 2.83x EBITDA less NCI, driven by our strong operational performance and financial discipline. We remain committed to maintaining a deleveraged balance sheet and believe that we have significant financial flexibility to support our capital deployment priorities and drive shareholder value.

Let me now turn to our outlook for 2026. As Saum noted, we are not making any adjustments to our full year 2016 outlook at this time. While we had strong fundamental outperformance in the first quarter, have continued confidence in our ability to achieve our full year targets, it is early in the year, and we will plan to revisit our full year guidance as needed in subsequent quarters. As such, we are reaffirming the full year '26 guidance that we initially provided in February.

Our outlook continues to exclude any contributions from potential increases in supplemental Medicaid programs that have not yet been approved and finalized by CMS. For second quarter '26, we expect consolidated adjusted EBITDA to be 24% to 25% of our full year consolidated adjusted EBITDA at the midpoint. We expect that USPI's EBITDA in the second quarter will also be 24% to 25% of our full year '26 USPI EBITDA at the midpoint.

Turning to our cash flows for '26, we continue to expect adjusted free cash flow after NCI in the range of $1.6 billion to $1.83 billion. This range includes the payment of about $150 million in tax payments for the Conifer transaction this year. Excluding these tax payments, this would represent $1.865 billion of adjusted free cash flow after NCI at the midpoint of our '26 outlook. We remain focused on strong free cash flow conversion from our EBITDA performance, including the continued outstanding cash collection performance of Conifer, while continuing to invest in high-priority areas of our businesses.

Turning to our capital deployment priorities. We are well positioned to create value for shareholders through the effective deployment of free cash flow. First, we will continue to prioritize capital investments to grow USPI through M&A. And as Saum noted, we have had a strong start to the year and have a number of future opportunities to support our $250 million annual target for USPI M&A. Second, we expect to continue investing in key hospital growth opportunities to fuel organic growth, including our focus on higher acuity service offerings. Third, we'll continue to be active in share repurchases. We continue to see significant opportunity at our currently compressed valuation multiple. And finally, we will continue to evaluate opportunities to retire and/or refinance debt.

We are pleased with our strong start to the year and remain confident in our ability to deliver on our outlook for 2026. We continue to execute our strategy across our transformed portfolio of businesses resulting in a more predictable, more capital-efficient company that is well positioned to drive value through effective capital deployment.

And with that, we're ready to begin the Q&A. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Ryan Langston with TD Cowen.

Payer denials this year appear to be broadly accelerating across the industry. Are you seeing this activity increase in your business? And maybe is it more MA versus commercial? And is the rise in uninsured -- or uncompensated care you're seeing primarily related to the exchange subsidy expiration, or is there anything else you could call out there?

Yes. Thanks for the question. Payer -- I mean, denials, I would say, payer disputes, many of which can result in denials and back and forth are are high. They have been high, as I've said before, they're too high for what is appropriate, especially when comparing back to kind of pre-pandemic periods just as a marker. I don't think that in our business, we have seen a net impact of disputes and denials changing in this quarter relative to before, so meaning last year. So look, they're high, they have been too high, but we don't see a meaningful trend this quarter that's different. We can only guess obviously with the slight increase in uncompensated care that some of it has to do with the expiration of the exchange subsidies.

Our next question comes from A.J. Rice with UBS.

If I look at the last number of quarters, there's been consistency of outperformance in the hospital segment overall. I wonder if you could talk maybe broadly because we haven't talked about markets in a general sense. Is there -- are there some markets where you've implemented strategies that you'd call out that have been particularly successful. And as you look across the portfolio, maybe discuss some markets that still have an opportunity for significant improvement as you deploy new strategies to improve their performance.

Thanks, A.J., and I appreciate you calling out the strength of the hospital business over the last few years. We have been focused on a broad strategy of obviously increasing acuity focusing on our ability to succeed with our transfer centers, adding new surgical programs and increasing our emergency-related services, especially trauma programs and other things. And in a combined sense, that is a -- it's a global strategy. I mean, implemented locally, but we have opportunities and are implementing in every market that we have. As you're aware, based upon the portfolio shifts that we made, we remained in markets in which we thought the execution of our overall strategy would be successful. No, look, there are things like, for example, enrollment in the exchanges that differ state to state and what the impact will be. So there are some differences there in terms of what's happening, in terms of throughput and other things that it may impact even the uninsured piece. But if you step back and now sort of with my commentary today, which is that we're in this transitionary period, where there's some coverage changes that are occurring. We'll see how all that settles out. But when you look at the opportunity to find efficiencies, you look at the support services for the hospitals, and you look at some of the automation opportunities that I described. Once again, those are available in each market. Of course, some markets are bigger than other markets. So at a dollar level, you might get more impact in one market than another, but they're scaled appropriately and are available in each of the markets. So if you look at our earnings in the first quarter this year, they were driven by consistency across our markets in terms of the efficiency opportunities. Look, the other thing I would point out is just good old fashion discipline around flexing our cost structure. We kind of knew early in the year by the time we had given guidance that one of the winter storms that already come through, and we were able to maintain our SWB as a percentage of our top line by flexing even though the revenues were going to be a little bit more challenged. So some of this is just continuing to maintain the old-fashioned -- "old fashion" discipline of anticipating and flexing intraorder, which, of course, is also an opportunity available in all markets. I hope that helps.

Our next question comes from Jason Cassorla with Guggenheim Partners.

I wanted to go back to your prepared remarks around your efforts around length of stay and throughput improvements you're clearly seeing the benefits there given length of stay has been down about 3% in each of the past 6 quarters by our math, but that improvement is coming despite your high acuity service line focus, which would naturally carry a higher length of stay. I guess could you just double a little bit more on the length of stay opportunity for you and what that run rate looks like as you move through the rest of the year and beyond?

Yes. No, I appreciate the question. And you're right that the two are actually coupled in an interesting way, which is in order to maintain available capacity to always service the high acuity needs that arise in the community, whether from direct arrival at our hospitals or for outlying hospitals that might need help or support, which we always try to say yes to you have to make sure that your throughput and capacity management is good enough to have the availability of beds to be able to say yes, for those things. And so we see the two being very intricately linked in terms of a requirement to succeed in the high acuity strategy. Now look, you're right that as the acuity goes up, there's a length of stay headwind that does come with it because the cases are more complex and and longer. But look, we're pleased with the fact that we are managing that overall length of stay to something better than even breakeven in terms of our reported length of stay because that's creating capacity in our hospitals. And I would remind everybody that part of the strategy, of course, is capital avoidance on additional capacity that's really not necessary when you can improve productivity that way. So again, for us, all these things are intricately linked and look, we're pleased that some of these new tools that we're trying out are helping to add to our more traditional length of stay management that we've talked about over the last 4 or 5 years.

Our next question comes from Brian Tanquilut with Jefferies.

This is a tough quarter, so congrats on beating that [indiscernible] line. Maybe just on the Medicaid side. A lot of your peers have spoken about Medicaid trends, whether that's immigrants not land paperwork. And just curious, what are you seeing in the Medicaid book? And as we've seen uncompensated care step up here, which was across the space, right? How much of that is Medicaid versus maybe exchange members versus other dynamics?

Yes. No, I appreciate it. And obviously, it's somewhat speculation. But I guess we sort of speculate based on our markets. So I'll be a little bit careful of how sure I am in my answers, but I would say that, look, Medicaid is down a little bit, and we see a little bit more of that in places like California, that does suggest that some of what's happened is either disenrollment or lack of renewal of enrollment with populations that may not have been qualified to begin with based upon at least federal regulations, so that's one fact point that we see. The second question that has been out there, especially because we are in a lot of important border communities where we do a lot of work for the broader communities that are there. Look, we do see a little bit of hesitation at times with those populations. We partner a lot with the important FQHCs in those markets. And there's just kind of this tone of hesitation. The impact at the end of the day has been on the hospitals minimal because obviously, we're there taking care of people who are sick and have needs. But on the outpatient side, for people who are doing more primary care and other things in the community, we're hearing about a little bit more impact and certainly hesitation from coming into consumer care.

Our next question comes from Scott Fidel with Goldman Sachs.

I think my question probably ties to the last two. But I wanted to ask it from just the -- from the acuity and case mix perspective, overall for the -- for both the hospital and the USPI, how those rates look year-over-year? And maybe you could layer in on the tailwind side, the proactive service line expansions and investments that you've made on higher acuity and then on the headwind side, obviously, some of these dynamics or dynamics relating to the dynamic environment that we saw in some of the end markets in the first quarter.

Sure. Well, let's start with USPI. I mean there's no question there about the increase in acuity. I mean, I called out -- I mean, we've had -- we obviously are on the outpatient side, probably the largest single provider of outpatient joint replacements when you collectively look at almost 570 assets at USPI, many of which do orthopedics. And we're still posting double-digit growth in total joint replacement surgeries within the ASCs and off of a pretty high base. So it just suggests that demand is out there, right? If you create the right operating environment for these surgeons and give them an efficient safe way to do the work, the demand is out there. And so we continue pushing in our high acuity strategy. I mean you can see it in the revenues, and when you add to that as you asked for other service lines, the types of things we're doing in urology, the types of things we're doing in robotics, we're probably up to over 150 robotic surgery programs in the ASCs that are general surgery based. Those types of things are growing quickly. I mean the only services that are declining are the high-volume, low acuity areas, which is, as we've said, we're less focused on in this diversification path. So again, in summary, on the USPI side, the acuity is growing. The case mix is improving in the direction we want to. We have a good number of service line starts and physician additions. The assets that we're acquiring are also supportive more of the service line strategies that we're interested in. And our de novos that we open will also have the opportunity to do this type of higher acuity work. So I would say that, that looks very good. On the hospital side, the journey that we've been on is obviously -- I mean, we made this decision in the very early part of the pandemic. It's been 5 years that we've been really pushing this high acuity strategy. And you see it in the CMI, the margins, the net revenue per case, all of that. This quarter obviously has some differences that Sun can go into in terms of the comp to the first quarter last time with a bunch of onetime items. And look, the CMI for the first time, was down a little bit, but this is temporary, right? We had some weather-related issues. We had some -- we certainly had a decline in the intensity and volume of the respiratory business. But as I said, we made up for that significantly by flexing and also by focusing more on some of our other type of work in the hospitals. And I think the quarter ended up fine. Like I don't think anything changes going forward just because there was one quarter with significant respiratory impact.

Our next question comes from Craig Hettenbach with Morgan Stanley.

On the back of the $125 million invested in USPI in Q1, really strong starts to the year. Saum, can you just talk about the M&A engine what's working and also just context of why a tenant might be a preferred acquirer of choice out there in the marketplace?

Yes. Well, I mean, I think what's working fundamentally what's working is that USPI has just got a multiyear track record of acquiring assets, adding value to them, both clinically our quality performance is consistent. Our ability to bring these facilities in network and do well is consistent our broad-based an ongoing supply chain and purchased services agenda helps to reduce costs and create efficiencies. And then our business development team is terrific in helping these centers oftentimes go from single specialty to multispecialty or help them design their OR operations if they're already multi-specialty to be able to do those more efficiently, as I've always talked about, right, the ability to do kind of "dirty and clean surgery" in the same center with the right protocols and the right scheduling. I mean all of these things are things that we work on consistently, but we're just ahead in the market when it comes to executing on these things. And I think physicians know that, I think many of the MSOs that we partner with know that, the health systems that we partner with not only know that, but because of the expertise of some of these health systems, they contribute actively to our quality improvement agenda and other things, I mean Baylor, Memorial Herman. I mean these guys are experts in many of these areas, and they contribute actively to the partnership in USPI to make those improvements. So look, I think all of those things has created a nice virtuous cycle of reputation enhancement as we do these things, and we deliver on what we say we're going to do. So we're still very selective. Our diligence processes are robust. We still say no to more centers than we say yes to. And that's fine because we still think that the opportunity for high-quality ASCs supports USPI's growth algorithm.

Our next question is from Justin Lake with Wolfe Research.

Just a couple of numbers questions for me. First, your guidance assumes $250 million of exchange impact for the year. I apologize if I missed it, but do you have a number for the quarter maybe relative to what we would have thought maybe is a $60 million, $65 million run rate? And then on DPP, in your slides, you talked about $22 million to the DPP down $22 million for the year. I'm curious, does this include the $40 million decline because of that period so that you were actually up [ $18 ] million excess.

Good question. Sun, do you want to take those maybe in reverse order.

Yes. Justin, it's Sun. Yes, you're right on the DPP question. That includes the $40 million. So if you normalize for that for '25 out of period, then it would be a slight increase. So you're correct. On the [ HICS, ] we mentioned that exchange revenues in Q1 were about 6% of our consolidated revenues as a comparator in Q1 of '25, it was about 6.5% of our consolidated revenues. So if you kind of do the [indiscernible] a 9% to 10% decrease in revenues versus Q1. So I would say it's roughly at half of kind of the overall 1 year kind of 20% reduction in volumes that we kind of talked about in February. And we do expect with all the dynamics around kind of the first quarter and the grace period with some of the enrollees or re-enrollees that I think our guidance range of kind of 20% reduction and $250 million overall impact is still pretty consistent.

Our next question comes from Kevin Fischbeck with Bank of America.

Yes. I guess two questions. One, maybe following up on that one. So the Q1 impact is lower. Is that how -- is it lower but in line with what you thought Q1 would be because you always assumed it would ramp? Or was that potential area of the outperformance? And then you talked a little bit earlier about flu. I know one of your competitors had a pretty high margin decremental margin on lost volume in Q1. It sounds like you did a better job flexing costs. Any way to kind of size what you think the EBITDA impact was to both USPI and the hospitals from the flu and the weather disruption.

Yes, it's Saum. I can take the latter part of it. I mean I don't know about flu specifically, but just I mean we look at respiratory ER traffic, admissions and other things. And similar to what we've heard, for example, respiratory admissions were down like 40% in the quarter. and it had an earlier effect. I mean, if I look at the quarter, January to February to March, things improved steadily month-over-month, week-over-week almost. So that by the time we were in March, in the early to middle part of March, we had a keen sense that the revenue and admission and volume intensity was increasing, but because we had kind of anticipated the impact early in the quarter, we had already done some of our cost flexing. And then, of course, as we talked about, previewed on our fourth quarter call, we had developed a more systematic type of cost agenda in the second half of 2025 that we executed that added to our savings. And so just -- it created a situation in which the anticipation of the need to flex plus other cost improvements plus the month-over-month improvement during the quarter, allowed us to outperform in the hospital segment, what our expectations were despite some of these headwinds. I -- in terms of what our expectations were. I mean we had sort of made a simple linear assumption. I would say that the outperformance in the quarter in the segment is a combination of the two things, one being the cost management and efficiencies; and two, being that the first quarter exchange impact was probably a little bit less than at least a simple linear assumption for the full year.

Our next question comes from Ann Hynes with Mizuho.

Maybe we can shift to the Washington outlook. Is there anything that you're paying attention to on the regulatory and legislative outlook, especially on the regulatory with the upcoming outpatient rule. Is there anything that we -- that is on your radar screen that we should be aware of?

Sure. I mean, obviously, the -- we're keenly awaiting the outpatient rule, especially given the type of policy commentary that's been coming out of CMS, HHS, broadly and CMS supporting care in lower cost settings. And one of the ways to help that, of course, is to provide robust or more robust outpatient rate support relative to what was sort of as expected, but nothing incredibly positive on the IPPS side. So we're looking forward to seeing that. I would tell you, other than the commentary they're making, I don't have any proprietary insight to share. We, of course, have been following all of the discussion and commentary about the various parts of the sector. And look, from our perspective, we're just trying to stay on the right side of the value equation, having efficient health systems being accessible at all times, efficient in what we're doing and obviously providing surgical care at scale at half the cost sometimes of what it is to do the same work in a hospital. So with USPI, I mean. So look, I think all of those things we feel like we're well positioned as we look ahead. I mean I -- if you really look at USPI, and I know this question was asked maybe as a sub-question earlier by Kevin, USPI had an even cleaner quarter despite all the noise because it's the weather impact was there, but you don't really see that much of an impact from the exchanges or Medicaid in that business, as we've pointed out before.

Our next question comes from Pito Chickering with Deutsche Bank.

Looking at -- back to hospitals at your first quarter, I understand that there's $22 million of loan payments, offset by recoveries of $40 million this quarter. But when we normalize sort of the margins, sort of get to, I guess, the 15% range is generally where your guidance is. And if I think about margins for hospitals, generally, they the year is better than just the first quarter because of the strong fourth quarter. So I guess, can you just walk me through how we should think about the hospital margins with 1Q, excluding the $40 million as a bridge into the rest of the year?

Well, I'll start on, if you want to add that. I mean, look, I think that if you come back, step back to our guidance for the year, which is in the Hospital segment, a 10% normalized year-over-year growth which there was obviously some discussion and dialogue about when we put it out there. We feel very confident that we're on track to that. Now some of that's going to be margin improvement. Some of that is because we had visibility from our work in the second half of 2025, which was going to be expense management, execution of expense management initiatives that we were designing this year that we would see benefit this year from and obviously a enhancing. So I don't know that the algorithm is exactly like it would be in a normal year. The respiratory volume impact in Q1 is a headwind to margins because those tend to be capacity filling and margin accretive, we overcame that, and as we sort of return to normal operations, plus have a year where we are executing on a broader efficiency strategy. I would say that we think that this year's performance will support margin growth in the Hospital segment. I don't know if you want to add to that. But like we feel very confident about the balance of the year.

Yes, I think that's right. The only thing I would add, Pito, is if you kind of just look at our Q1 hospital margin of 16.7%, you're right, we should normalize for the onetime [indiscernible] for $40 million. And then the only other thing I would mention is, like we said, the exchange impact likely sort of grows over the rest of the year from what we had in Q1. So that probably damps down margin a little bit on a run rate basis. But when it's all said and done, as Saum said, kind of a year guidance, of sort of 15% implied margins, I think that's still right on our expectations.

I mean on the impact, I get the guidance that you've given virtual in the first quarter, but the uninsured payer mix declined year-over-year in the first quarter, I thought that would have been increasing. So I guess, how does that fit within that [ HICS ] guidance you guys have provided.

Well, I mean, look, I think we should watch and wait, right? I mean effectuation rates and other things are important to track the first quarter often is a relief valve for payment premiums and other things. So I would say we watch and wait. From our perspective, the way we think about this year is anticipate that the challenge could increase and plan accordingly in a disciplined way to manage to the earnings guidance that we have given. I mean, if -- obviously, if the impact is less or if the uninsured impact doesn't increase as much. Those are all opportunities for outperformance for us. I mean, I would just reiterate, we're not spending a lot of time thinking about downside risks right now. We're spending our time thinking about how the strategy in both segments plus our expense opportunities plus how this exchange uninsured Medicaid market plays out could create upside opportunities for us. That's where our mindset is right now after this quarter.

Our next question comes from Whit Mayo with Leerink Partners.

I just wanted to hear more about the reserving and revenue recognition for the exchange patients, what the underlying estimates are for attrition and maybe what the exit rate on the decline in volumes was within March.

Hey, it's Sun. Listen, I think on a -- on your first question, we obviously pay through Conifer, very close attention, patient by patient, if we can, on their ex coverage status, premium payment status, all those details that you would imagine. And I think, again, we'll review this as the year develops and we get more data. But I think we're very appropriately reserved on our overall patient population, right, including [ HICS. ] And that sort of speaks to kind of the numbers that we shared in Q1, where admissions were down, as we said, 9% and if you do the algebra, I think revenues from [ HICS ] is down probably 9% to 10% as well. So it's sort of 1:1 is where we're sitting. So I think we're in a very reasonable situation there. And then like we said, we'll continue to observe the sales go. From a month-over-month trend perspective, I mean, our overall volumes, not just fix but overall, improved through the course of Q1 coming into March, which, again, I think, gives us some confidence into our rest of your guidance. On [ HICS, ] I don't know that there's any trends that we would point out. I think in January being sort of a great period for a lot of the enrollees, I mean I think that did help January numbers somewhat. But again, I think it's too early to kind of have any trend discussions.

Our next question comes from Stephen Baxter with Wells Fargo.

I wanted to ask about the same-store revenue per admission decline of 1.5 points in the first quarter. I guess we do have a lot of moving parts with some of the Medicaid changes you discussed and also the exchanges. But on the other hand, you also have less flu, which I think would trend to push up some of those metrics. I hope to just get a better sense of some of the moving parts that impacted that metric? And then maybe a direct comment on what you're seeing on commercial and whether that's a headwind in the quarter that assume gets better through the balance of the year.

Yes. I mean, why don't we should probably just start with the comp from the prior year and then the math because it's -- for us, it really wasn't that worrisome so. I don't know if you want to just walk through that perhaps.

Yes. I think just on a popular [indiscernible] basis, I mean, we said NRAA was down 1.5% in the Hospital segment. A lot of that between the $40 million of [indiscernible] Medicaid, we run out in Q1 that we didn't have in Q1 of '26, and then the reduction in [ HICS ] that, as we talked about, presumably moved volume into uncompensated or other payer classes. Those two combined, I think, was worth 2% to 2.5% of NRAA headwind. So once you normalize for that, we're sort of at 50 bps to 1%. Then I think there are some other moving parts that we talked about. Tom, I don't know if you want to comment directly on flu. But yes, I think flu impacted our emissions, but in the scheme of our total adjusted admissions base and our net revenue base, it's a relatively small component. So whether or not flu was there not, I don't know that impacts NRAA that much.

Yes. I mean the only other thing I would add is clarifying point, but also the onetime Conifer $40 million that we announced, even though it was part of the hospital segment, we excluded that in looking at the NRAA because that's appropriate. It wasn't related to the case volume. But just in case anybody is looking at the math that way. So I mean, in summary, look, I would say the biggest driver was the [indiscernible] period thing, and we had a very high NRAA in 2025 back to what my overall commentary. The acuity strategy is working very, very well, and we're not worried about it. And obviously, it did not have an impact. In fact, it was the opposite, we outperformed on the earnings despite the revenue, which is just right now, a marker of the flexibility and operating discipline, I think, that's required in this environment as things settle out. I suspect in the coming months and when we talk again, we'll probably have a lot more insight into how I sense that the desire for predictability, how the exchange market and uninsured at Medicaid will settle out for this year, which will give us a much better opportunity to kind of update our guidance for the year based upon the outperformance so far.

Our final question is from Andrew Mok with Barclays Bank.

You mentioned that 8 volumes were down 10%, and you had expected unfavorable payer mix. But when I look at the managed care mix disclosure, it actually looks relatively stable year-over-year. So can you help us understand what you saw on payer mix inside of that, including the moving parts on the government side.

Hey, Andrew, it's Sun. -- sorry, go ahead, Saum.

No, you go ahead, please. Sorry.

Yes. Sorry. I was going to say, Andrew, yes, we did see the 10% reduction as we talked about. But I think your question on the rest of managed care sorbent that. One reminder, when we report managed care, we also include managed Medicaid and managed Medicare in that component. So I think we saw a reasonable strength in so the payer mix is, to your point, it remains to be stable as a percent of total revenues. So I think that did offset the [ HICS ] impact a little bit. Again, we'll see. I think Q1 in terms of payer mix trends, we were happy with, but I think there's some more trending and data that we need to see into Q2 before we can make some more detailed comments.

And the only qualitative thing I was going to add there was just -- look, I think that as people come off the exchanges, they find different employment and other things, especially those that need health care have family they need to cover. We do think there's going to be some percentage of them that obviously pick up commercial coverage, and we've talked about that before. That's good. And then we did have strength in Medicare. I mean, we do a lot of work on appropriate utilization, appropriate admission rates from the ER appropriateness of interfacing with these plans on Medicare Advantage. And we have strength in the Medicare side in addition, which, again, is consistent with our acuity strategy given what these patients need. So I appreciate what you're seeing in those metrics. It does look better than I would have expected based upon the theory of the case of what could have happened with the exchanges. And again, it's just -- for us, it just all goes to the point that the trend line in Q1 of the type of headwinds was more mitigated than the simple straight-line assumption for the year. And again, we're pleased that it helped drive outperformance rather than a headwind we couldn't catch up to.

We have reached the end of the question-and-answer session, and this concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.

Welcome back to the Barclays Global Healthcare Conference. My name is Andrew Mok. I'm the facilities and managed care analyst here at Barclays and I'm pleased to welcome on stage Tenet Healthcare. We have Saum Sutaria, CEO; Sun Park, CFO; and Will McDowell, Vice President of Investor Relations.

So why don't I kick it off to Will for a prepared statement, and we'll dig into Q&A.

Thanks, Andrew. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. In the context of our conversation today, we may be making some forward-looking statements. I would suggest in the context of the statements, you refer back to our cautionary statement filed with our most earnings release as well as other SEC filings. And with that, I'll turn it back to you, Andrew, for Q&A.

Great. Maybe to start, Tenet has delivered mid-teens EBITDA growth over the last 2 years. Yet your guidance this year still embeds an impressive 10% core growth. How would you contrast the strong organic growth underpinning this year's outlook with what drove results in prior years?

Well, I think as we said, look, at a big picture level, we're still in a reasonably good demand environment. Our strategy, of course, has been very focused on high acuity care, both in the ambulatory business and in the acute care hospital business. That demand continues to be strong. It's obviously less elastic in many ways in terms of what we're doing there. The last couple of years, especially as we've gone through our portfolio reorganization with obviously some asset divestitures but also a few new hospital buildings.

We have increased the amount of capital that we're spending in the markets that we retain with the confidence that our market positions are strong, that our ability to build and grow services for the community have been attractive opportunities, and we expect to see some returns from those investments as everybody would.

And then finally, as we indicated, 2026, we think, is an important opportunity to really take a look on a broad basis at the cost structure of the organization and begin to prepare for the coming years with some cost-reduction initiatives that I think will be accretive to this year's results.

And so when you look at the totality of that, and sure, you can step back and look at the last few years and our success there. But if you look at the totality of that and look forward, which is what we've done, we got very comfortable with the guidance that we provided for 2026.

Great. And there does seem to be a big step function change in cost savings in the guidance this year. How much of that reflects new enablement from AI versus deliberate cost actions taken in anticipation of a known headwind?

Well, I think both -- I mean, I'm not sure that there isn't overlap between those two, right? I mean, in other words, we've spent a lot of time improving the efficiency of the organization at all levels, obviously, first and foremost, in our operations. .

But also in -- over the last few years, rightsizing our overhead structure as we have gone through some asset divestitures from a hospital market standpoint, and we've -- we committed to when we started that program, and we delivered on some of that rightsizing.

So when you look at the opportunities ahead of us, a lot of it does have to do with the ability to remove work, automate work, find opportunities to use technologies like AI to find efficiencies or enable our workforce to be more efficient and increase the span of management control in what we're doing in the hospital business in particular. On the ambulatory side, some of those initiatives might have a slightly different purpose, right?

I mean sure, there may be some efficiencies that we gain. But at the same time, the ability to pilot and over time, deploy some of these technologies could also help us with asset utilization, for example, right? If you think about the ambulatory surgery business, the asset utilization is a key operating statistic that we follow in terms of our ability to generate returns from the fixed capital structure that we have there. So these technologies, we think, will help us not only on direct efficiencies productivity, but also things like improving asset utilization over time.

Great. Maybe digging into the hospital segment a bit. You've included a $250 million ACA exchange headwind in your 2026 guidance. Can you talk about any sort of observations you're seeing so far this year, how that's playing out? And could you highlight the most important variables embedded in that assumption that will influence the year?

Yes. Let me bounce it to Sun.

Yes. On the second part, these are all moving targets where we use our best judgment, but it seems to be that a lot of us are sort of projecting, call it, 20% reduction overall of enrollment. I think something that we thought hard about is that some of our particular states, Michigan, Arizona, as examples, at least the enrollment data that we saw in January seem to have a little more pressure.

So their state-to-state variability as well that we try to reflect. On the positive side, we do think there's probably a small proportion of these 10% to 15% of these patients who will find rotation into other coverage, i.e., other commercial coverage, whether it's through job switch or [ what have you ]. And then two other dynamics that we're tracking closely. One is how many of these patients are moving from maybe silver to bronze which for us, I think, is fine, based on our contracts. And then elective coverage, right?

So the other dynamic we try to put into our guidance number, we do think patients who lose coverage, especially the elective procedures will probably be impacted. So all those things kind of went into our $250 million guidance. Obviously, the vast majority of that is in the hospital space. And without commenting specifically on Q1 dynamics, I mean, I think we're seeing something along those lines.

Right. And what impact do you think that shift to bronze would have on things like utilization and acuity trends?

I mean for us, again, from an acute hospital standpoint, right, the bronze -- silver to bronze coverage, I think is, like I said, fine, and won't have very much impact. As you start talking about physician visits, HOPD activities, things like that, you could see certainly impact there. But again, for us, that's a very small part of our hospital business.

Right. If we look at same-store admissions in the hospital segment, I think it has declined for the first time in 3 years in the fourth quarter, your initial outlook embeds 1% to 2% volume growth. That's below recent history. Could you frame how much of that moderation is due to the disruption to the ACA exchange coverage versus any change in underlying demand?

Yes. I mean, look, these are projections, right? I mean, sure, that's going to be a part of it. I think we left this year play out. The fourth quarter had a relatively softer, at least from prior year, flu season our acuity was still strong. Obviously, our net revenue was still very strong, and the margin performance was outstanding.

So I think we let this year play out to see what happens. Our guidance is based upon, as I said right upfront, to belief that despite these movements in coverage that will play out over the year, we still see a relatively strong underlying demand environment for -- in particular, what we're focused on in terms of high acuity care in combination with the initiatives that we have invested in over the last couple of years.

So where it lands, we'll see. We're actually, again, as I would say, reiterating and pretty confident in the fact that we've given what is reasonable guidance for this year, we think.

Right. And on the last earnings call, you noted commercial rates are tracking in the 3% to 5% range with strong visibility through 2027. How have you been able to secure such strong commercial rate particularly as we move further away from pandemic era inflation?

Yes. Well, look, look, I think there's a lot of turmoil in the payer and provider markets, that's playing out very publicly, right? And there's a lot of situations where plans and providers, both in the MA and commercial business or out of network, and you read about this all the time. I wouldn't say fundamentally that the nature of the negotiations have changed very much. I would say that the topics that generate contention are similar. I don't think they've changed very much.

I think there's a lot more noise around them. But for us, what I think is becoming clear and clear is that there is a value that our combined portfolio brings to whether you're a government payer, a private payer in the government lines of business or the commercial business based upon 3 or 4 simple things. One is a commitment to site of care savings, in particular, with the ambulatory business, but also in our acute care business, we have much less of an extensive hospital-based outpatient model for things like lab, X-ray and other things.

We push into a freestanding setting even in our own practices that we have there. So we have less exposure there. Those are 2 things. The third is in our acute care business, we tend not to be, from a commercial standpoint, the premium priced competitor or the highest priced competitor in the markets in which we operate, we aim to provide value to the payers.

And the last piece is we have been very disciplined about reasonable utilization. I mean things that are clinically appropriate, appropriateness of admission from the emergency department, for example, is something that many of the health plans often recognize us for in the discussions that we have with them around that. So we feel like we have a more defensible, both operations and pricing platform. It's value creating for both parties.

And therefore, as we look forward, we tend to be able to negotiate reasonable rate escalators with the payers as we look forward. And over time, it provides value to both parties.

Right. Sticking on with the commercial market, there's been mixed data points on the strength of U.S. employment. What trends are you seeing across your core markets? And how are those showing up in payer mix or utilization?

I mean, I would say the employment environment is still pretty strong. I mean we have more recent job reports that may have gone up or down or whatever, but I think overall unemployment rate is still at very, very attractive levels in the United States when you look at it historically.

So I wouldn't say that we're seeing -- I mean I wouldn't say that we're seeing any obvious impact from employment -- macro employment rate related demand in our health care services environment.

Great. Let's move on to USPI. There's been a continued shift in the growth of USPI with growth tilted more towards revenue per case in recent years. Do you expect that to continue in 2026? And is there anything in particular driving the strength this year?

I mean we're focused on doing more of the same, operations excellence, transitioning where we can to higher acuity -- lower volume but higher acuity procedure mix, where those opportunities exist, building upon strategies with respect to new innovative services. Obviously, the inpatient-only list discussion supports that in terms of the new opportunities or growing opportunities there?

And then just -- I mean, the reality is the core markets of orthopedics and other things are still from a volume standpoint, very large and have opportunities to move from an HOPD to an ambulatory environment. So our focus from an operational service line, physician relationship, et cetera standpoint is very, very similar. We had a very good year last year with respect to our ability to onboard and acquire new assets into the portfolio.

We see a similarly strong environment in front of us with the pipeline for 2026. So I would expect that we would have a successful year there as well. And as I said, we're working on some of the things for the future, they'll take a little bit of time to embed more technology into this business to see if we can improve some of the typical operating statistics that are more managed in a traditional manner today to improve them for the future.

I wanted to follow up on that inpatient only list. I think you previously you framed that as a gradual tailwind for USPI with some early opportunities in spine and urology. How is that policy shift influencing your physician recruitment strategy, capital allocation and payer contracting today?

I mean, look, on the margin, we're focused on actually translating the opportunities created from the inpatient-only list down to a list of very specific assets service lines, physicians that we would target in bringing them on board. But remember, in the areas of especially urology, we have led the way in terms of our partnerships and building that into the ASC environment. We've talked about it for a couple of years.

It's been successful. We've been piloting and growing spine programs, in particular, with orthopedic spine -- but now, obviously, the opportunity to bring more neurosurgical spine into the ambulatory surgery environment. And there are other things, electrophysiology and cardiac which is, of course, more voluminous as an opportunity but requires a different configuration of operating room. You can't just stick them in a normal ASC, those opportunities, I think, will grow over time. And yes, you bet, it's the focus of design, physician relationships, capital, all of it as we look ahead.

Great. There's also been ongoing discussions in Washington around site-neutral payments. if hospital outpatient reimbursement were to move closer to ASC rates for similar procedures, how do we ensure that ASCs continue to differentiate and retain their value proposition?

Yes. Well, let me just say, at least first from my perspective, from a site-neutral policy perspective, while there's a range of outcomes being discussed, at least from my time spent in that regulatory and legislative environment, the focus is much more on things like lab, x-ray, rehab than it is on surgical cases which legitimately both clinically and operationally oftentimes need the structure of an acute care hospital versus a freestanding ambulatory setting, et cetera.

So if I were to place my bet on where any kind of policy might land in this area, it will focus more on those much lower acuity areas. So I mean, we're not terribly focused on what that change would be. I would remind everybody that our ASC platform is already on freestanding rates. And we think that's important. But that's not really the case because we're worried about HOPD price compression in surgical care.

Great. Let's transition to Conifer. Revenue cycle management has become an increasingly strategic priority for hospitals, which capabilities of Conifer's platform are driving the greatest benefit for hospitals today and which capabilities do you expect to accelerate with full ownership of Conifer?

Yes. No, that's a really good question because if you look at our results with Conifer, which have been outstanding, both for us and for our clients, as we have noted or even as our clients have noted, the drivers of revenue cycle performance over the last decade have largely been around the discipline that true workflow automation can create in the back end of the revenue cycle in accounts receivable, the discipline around the mid-cycle, but in particular, around accuracy of coding and clinical documentation.

And then third, what I would describe as an ability to build a more globalized workforce to have an attractive cost to collect for all of that work. And that pays dividends every single day. I mean you can see it in our cash results every quarter.

I do think your question is an insightful one about how you look forward in the revenue cycle, right? So one is the cost to collect should come down because much of that work can either be automated or be supported very actively to much bigger spans of control using artificial intelligence, number one. Number two, I think the ability to really enable the front end which has been the talk and as you've seen in the industry, expensive acquisition after acquisition that hasn't paid off, which we have actually stayed out of, I think, becomes a real opportunity now in terms of just the discipline around registration, insurance capture, accuracy of billing, preauthorization, I think there's a real opportunity there now because the technology is finally ready to help from that perspective.

And then if you go to the back end of the revenue cycle, the ability to utilize artificial intelligence to have a much more disciplined approach to capturing what comes out of the clinic or the hospital in the physician's own documentation, starting from scribe, all the way to producing the code and delivering the claim to the payer or the government for payment becomes another real opportunity. So the game is changing in this space in terms of what the value drivers will be.

Right. Denial intensity also remains elevated across the industry. You've described building tools and mechanisms with payers and using technology to improve dispute resolutions. How do you measure the success of those efforts? And what's the remaining bottleneck here?

Yes. I mean the -- first of all, dispute and denial rates have been going up at a rate and have gone up at a rate that is obviously frustrating because it creates cost back and forth that somewhat we would argue somewhat unnecessary.

Look, the key metric to look at is the yield on the dispute and denial rate, right? So for us and in our platform within Conifer, while the dispute and denial rate has gone up significantly our yield rates have not gone up anywhere near that rate.

So that's a success. Problem is going from here to here, meaning dispute rates down to what the actual yield rate, there's a bunch of costs that comes in, in terms of generating the same yield that you think you deserve. That's where the opportunity to reduce cost is. I mean if we're going to have this back and forth with increased rates of denials and disputes, you would ideally find a way to manage that to the same efficacy with a much lower cost. And that's where we're spending our effort.

Great. Maybe to finish up here on capital deployment. Tenet has a meaningful cash balance now and you expect roughly $3 billion of free cash flow in 2026. Can you outline, how you'll be balancing capital deployment this year between growing USPI, investing in hospital service lines, share repurchase and debt retirement?

Yes. So we feel very fortunate to be in such a strong leverage and free cash flow position. Look, if we take a step back and take a look, despite some of the things that we just talked about today, whether it's exchange or future reimbursement that may or may not present to ourselves. We still feel that our business is very investable from a capital standpoint. Whether it's the high acuity strategy in the hospital space, whether it's USPI, obviously, both organic and inorganic opportunities, Conifer that we just talked about from a technology standpoint. So there's still a lot of opportunity to invest capital.

So I think you'll see us continue to do that. Kind of the same rationale that implies from a -- what do you still do with the rest of the cash flows. Because even after that, there's a lot of flexibility. And we honestly do feel our shares even at -- even after the recent performance are very attractive for long-term investments. So yes, you will see us do that. Last year, we were a little over $1.3 billion of share repurchases. We think that was a very good investment. So you'll see us continue to go on those trends.

And then look, we talk about a little bit less now and that our leverage is in such a 2.25x EBITDA. So it's a less frequent topic, but we still remain committed around a deleveraged company and being very disciplined with the balance sheet. So you'll see us opportunistically address our debt load as well.

Great. And as you look at specific service lines to invest in on the hospital side, where do you see the greatest opportunities there?

Well, I mean, as I indicated before, our focus on the acute care side in terms of investments tends to be more service line oriented in the high acuity space than it does sort of lots of infrastructure for general med-surg. So I mean we're back to trauma, cardiovascular, neurosurgery, invasive cancer surgery, broad-based general and abdominal surgery, robotics, those sorts of things.

Great. Well, with that, we're just about out of time here, so why don't we stop there. Saum, Sun, Will, thank you so much for joining us today, and please enjoy the rest of the conference.

Thank you for having us.

Good morning, and welcome to Tenet Healthcare's Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I'll now turn the call over to your host, Mr. Will McDowell, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. McDowell, you may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call. I am Will McDowell, Vice President of Investor Relations. We're pleased to have you join us for a discussion of Tenet's fourth quarter 2025 results as well as a discussion of our financial outlook. Tenet's senior management participating in today's call will be Dr. Saum Sutaria, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Sun Park, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Our webcast this morning includes a slide presentation, which has been posted to the Investor Relations section of our website, tenethealth.com.

Listeners to this call are advised that certain statements made during our discussion today are forward-looking and represent management's expectations based on currently available information. Actual results and plans could differ materially. Tenet is under no obligation to update any forward-looking statements based on subsequent information. Investors should take note of the cautionary statement slide included in today's presentation as well as the risk factors discussed in our most recent Form 10-K and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Saum.

Thank you, Will, and good morning, everyone. We reported 2025 net operating revenues of $21.3 billion and consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $4.57 billion, which represents 14% growth over 2024. Full year adjusted EBITDA margin of 21.4% improved over 200 basis points from the prior year.

Our fourth quarter results were, again, above our expectations, driven by strong same-store revenue growth, high acuity and disciplined cost control. I would note that our full year adjusted EBITDA ended the year nearly $500 million higher than the midpoint of our initial expectations.

USPI continues to deliver attractive results. Volumes were strong and mix was good. Adjusted EBITDA grew 12% in 2025 to $2.026 billion. Same-facility revenues grew 7.5%, highlighted by double-digit same-store volume growth in total joint replacements in the ASCs over prior year. This performance was once again well above our long-term goal of 3% to 6% organic top line growth.

We had an active year in the M&A and de novo activity lines as well, investing nearly $350 million in 2025 and adding 35 facilities to the portfolio, and the pipeline for both M&A and de novo development remains strong as we look into 2026. We remain the preferred acquirer and developer of assets in this space.

Turning to our Hospital segment. Adjusted EBITDA grew 16% to $2.54 billion in 2025. Same-store revenues per adjusted admission was up 5.3% over the prior year as payer mix and acuity remains strong. We've continued to reinvest back in our business to further our capabilities, stepping up our growth capital in 2025.

And finally, over the past 3 years, we have been active repurchasers of our shares, retiring approximately 22% of our outstanding shares for around $2.5 billion since our share repurchase program began in the fourth quarter of '22. We expect to continue to deploy capital for share repurchase, particularly at our current valuation multiples. Our portfolio of businesses is now more predictable with consistently strong performance in both the Hospital segment and USPI. Our results represent a continuation of a multiyear track record of strong same-store revenue growth, improved margins and disciplined execution by our management team. We remain focused on driving further organic growth supplemented by accretive M&A at USPI.

Turning to 2026 guidance. We are projecting full year 2026 adjusted EBITDA of $4.485 billion to $4.785 billion, driven by ongoing strength in demand and acuity, physician recruitment and service line expansion as well as additional sites of care joining the portfolio. We are also tackling expense management more structurally in anticipation of the next few years. We anticipate full year adjusted EBITDA for USPI of $2.13 billion to $2.23 billion. The continued mix shift of services towards lower-cost sites of care will be furthered by the beginning of the phaseout of the inpatient-only list in 2026. We see this as a gradual tailwind for USPI that will play out over several years. In this first year, we see opportunities in areas such as high acuity spine and urology procedures.

We have detailed tactical plans to capitalize on the opportunity and are actively operationalizing our capabilities to serve patients in 2026. USPI continues to be a high-growth, capital-efficient business that delivers high returns on capital expenditures.

Turning to our Hospital segment. We are expecting adjusted EBITDA in the range of $2.355 billion to $2.555 billion in 2026. Our plans reflect the headwind associated with the expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits on the exchange marketplace. We continue to closely monitor enrollment levels as well as the potential off-ramps for individuals to obtain coverage through a lower metal tier commercial plans or other options. We are assuming a 20% reduction in overall enrollment as we have more significant exposure in states such as Arizona, Michigan and California. We recognize the uncertainty regarding effectuation rates as individuals make determinations if they can afford their premiums and the resultant expected increase in uninsured rates and have conservatively taken these matters into our initial guidance.

Additionally, we are implementing cost savings plans to help mitigate this pressure and we'll continue to engage with our patients to ensure that they have good access to care. We are confident in our ability to achieve the strong core earnings growth we forecast for 2026. The significant margin improvements that we have made over the past few years provides us a strong foundation from which to grow our transformed portfolio of businesses. We carry momentum into this new year, and have many opportunities to expand our services and deliver value for patients, physician partners and in turn, our shareholders.

And with that, Sun will provide us a more detailed review of our financial results. Sun?

Thank you, Saum, and good morning, everyone. We are very pleased with the performance in 2025, which again demonstrated robust same-store revenue growth in both the hospitals and USPI segments and adjusted EBITDA that exceeded our expectations each quarter, driven by continued high patient acuity favorable payer mix and effective expense management.

In the fourth quarter, we generated total net operating revenues of $5.5 billion and consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $1.183 billion, a 13% increase over last year. Our adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter was 21.4%, a continuation of our improved margin performance over multiple quarters.

For full year 2025, net operating revenues were $21.3 billion and consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $4.566 billion, a 14% increase over '24. Adjusted EBITDA margins in '25 was 21.4%, up 210 basis points from the prior year.

I would now like to highlight some key items for both of our segments, beginning with USPI. In the fourth quarter, USPI's adjusted EBITDA grew 9% over last year, with adjusted EBITDA margins at 40.5%. USPI delivered a 7.2% increase in same-facility system-wide revenues, with net revenue per case up 5.5% and same-facility case volumes up 1.6%.

Turning to our Hospital segment. Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA was $603 million, a 16% increase over fourth quarter of '24. Same-hospital inpatient adjusted admissions were flat and revenue per adjusted admissions grew 7.5% year-over-year. Our consolidated salary, wages and benefits was 40.2% of net revenues in the quarter, a 110 basis point improvement from the prior year. And our contract labor expense was 2.1% of consolidated SW&B expenses.

Next, we will discuss our cash flow, balance sheet and capital structure. We generated $367 million of free cash flow in the fourth quarter and $2.53 billion of free cash flow for full year '25. As of December 31, 2025, we had $2.88 billion of cash on hand with no borrowings outstanding under our line of credit facility. Additionally, we have no significant debt maturities until late 2027. And finally, during the fourth quarter, we repurchased 943,000 shares of our stock for $198 million. We repurchased 8.8 million shares for $1.386 billion in 2025.

Our leverage ratio as of December 31 was 2.25x EBITDA or 2.85x EBITDA less NCI, driven by our strong operational performance and financial discipline. We remain committed to a deleveraged balance sheet, and believe that we have significant financial flexibility to support our capital deployment priorities and drive shareholder value.

Let me now turn to our outlook for 2026. Our 2026 outlook assumes continued growth in same-store volumes and effective pricing as well as strong operational efficiencies and disciplined cost controls. Additionally, we anticipate further contributions from M&A and de novo center openings at USPI. In addition, we're also assuming same hospital admission growth of 1% to 2%, adjusted admissions growth of 1% to 2% and same-facility USPI revenue growth of 3% to 6% for 2026. Importantly, our outlook does not assume any contributions from potential increases in supplemental Medicaid programs that have not yet been approved.

Also, we believe that the expiration of the enhanced exchange tax credits will result in lower volume growth and a less favorable payer mix. We estimate that this represents a $250 million impact to our 2026 adjusted EBITDA, primarily in the Hospital segment. Clearly, there are a wide range of potential outcomes here, and we will continue to monitor enrollment levels and effectuation rates. We will also leverage Conifer's capabilities to assist our patients with their insurance coverage.

Based on all those items, we expect consolidated net operating revenues for 2026 in the range of $21.5 billion to $22.3 billion and consolidated adjusted EBITDA for 2026 in the range of $4.485 billion to $4.785 billion.

There are 2 normalizing items that I would like to call out when comparing 2026 adjusted EBITDA to the prior year. First, we reported $148 million of prior year supplemental Medicaid payments in 2025. Second, in the first quarter of 2026, we will recognize a onetime $40 million favorable revenue adjustment as a result of the completed Conifer transaction. After normalizing for these items and excluding the headwind from the expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits, our 2026 adjusted EBITDA is expected to grow 10% at the midpoint of our range.

Finally, we would expect first quarter 2026 consolidated adjusted EBITDA to be 24% of our full year consolidated adjusted EBITDA at the midpoint. We anticipate that USPI's EBITDA in the first quarter will be 22% of our full year 2026 USPI EBITDA at the midpoint.

Turning to our cash flows. For 2026, we expect adjusted cash flow from operations in the range of $3.2 billion to $3.6 billion. Capital expenditures in the range of $700 million to $800 million, resulting in adjusted free cash flows in the range of $2.5 billion to $2.8 billion. And adjusted free cash flow after NCI in the range of $1.6 billion to $1.83 billion. This range includes about $150 million in tax payments for the Conifer transaction. Excluding these tax payments, this would represent $1.865 billion of adjusted free cash flow less NCI at the midpoint of our 2026 outlook. We remain focused on strong free cash flow conversion from our EBITDA performance, including the continued outstanding cash collection performance at Conifer while continuing to invest in high priority areas of our businesses.

Turning to our capital deployment priorities. We are well positioned to create value for shareholders through the effective deployment of free cash flow, and our priorities have not changed. First, we will continue to prioritize capital investments to grow USPI through M&A. And as Saum noted, we see a strong pipeline to support our $250 million annual target for USPI M&A in 2026. Second, we expect to continue investing in key hospital growth opportunities to fuel organic growth, including our focus on higher acuity service offerings. Third, we'll continue to have a balanced approach to share repurchases and depending on market conditions and other investment opportunities. And finally, we will continue to evaluate opportunities to retire and/or refinance debt.

In conclusion, we had another outstanding year in 2025 with strong revenue growth, disciplined operations and very attractive free cash flow generation. We are confident in our ability to deliver on our outlook for 2026 and can continue to drive value for patients, physician partners and shareholders.

And with that, we're ready to begin the Q&A. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Ben Hendrix with RBC Capital. Ben, are you there?

We'll go to the next one. Our next question comes from Stephen Baxter with Wells Fargo.

I was hoping that perhaps you could expand a little bit on the same-store hospital volume performance in the quarter and any moving parts there? It looked like it was a little bit weaker than the trend. And then just as you're thinking about hospital volumes in 2026, it looks like at the midpoint, you might be looking for that to potentially improve a little bit versus the 2025 performance. So just, I guess, help us think about the moving pieces there with the exchanges and the core performance.

Yes. I mean, obviously, our acuity was good, which is what we're really focused on in the fourth quarter. Flu. I mean, I would just say from our standpoint, the respiratory season was probably a little weaker than otherwise might have expected. And that's probably the basic explanation.

In 2026, understanding all the moving pieces, as I indicated in my comments, we had invested significantly in growth capital during the year, and we expect to see returns from some of those investments into 2026, and thus the improvement that you pick up on.

Our next question comes from Whit Mayo with Leerink Partners.

When you say, Saum, that you're tackling expense management more structurally, what do you mean by that? And can you elaborate on what's incremental about the cost efficiencies that you expect to see this year?

Yes. Structurally, what really refers to the notion that we are looking as opposed to what I would describe as more traditional annual expense management. We're looking, as we've talked about over the past year, more thoroughly at the deployment of technology, basically that allows us more expense reduction opportunities, and that includes application of those technologies in our global business center. That's a little bit of a different pathway than before, more sustainable, more what I would describe as modernization of the business given some of the new tools and technologies available to us. It's not just AI, which has, I think, become kind of the central buzzword for this, but there's a lot more that can be done in automation.

And then the other thing is just as we look at our clinical throughput, application of those technologies ramping up in our clinical throughput, we believe, is another area to take things to the next level. So whether that's areas like length of stay management or throughput in some of the more high-value portions of the hospitals, real estate, et cetera, ORs, ERs, et cetera. Those kinds of things become more structural in nature. That's what I meant by that.

Our next question comes from Ben Hendrix with RBC Capital Markets.

Apologies for getting cut off earlier. I just wanted to get a little more color on the hospital admission growth guide, the 1% to 2%. Just wanted to talk a little bit about the slowdown from last year, the degree to which if we can parse out that slowdown between exchange expiry, between kind of investments toward higher acuity and higher margin capabilities in the hospital setting and then also just a general slowdown of admissions that we've been seeing across the acute sector to begin with. So just any commentary you can offer there.

Ben, it's Sun. Saum already commented on kind of the Q4 mission, including sort of the flu respiratory season being sort of not material for us. And then as we get into 2026, a lot of it has to do with this CapEx and technology investment that we've made in '25, creating some volume momentum coming into '26.

On your question about the exchange, as we said in our comments, there's a pretty wide range of potential outcomes here. As Saum mentioned, we're assuming about 20% decrease in enrollment. But we'd have to then -- there's lots of areas where -- what happens to those volumes, right? Do they -- those people find -- do those patients find alternate coverage and other plans, alternative plans. Certainly, a big majority of them could become uninsured. But that volume will still show up at our hospitals, obviously, and in USPI. It's just the question then becomes, can we optimize our cost and efficiency. So our range anticipates some impact of lost volumes, but I think our EBITDA range, and as we discussed, our lost EBITDA range is quantifying the exchange a little bit more.

Our next question comes from Matthew Gillmor with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Maybe following up on the cost efficiencies. Are you able to quantify what you're able to pull through this year. I was also curious about the timing, building throughout the year such that you'll get a year-over-year benefit in future periods? Or do they take place earlier in the year, so they're all captured in '26?

Yes. No, we're not providing specific guidance between that. I mean, if you think about our guidance core growth of EBITDA standpoint. I would just expect that embedded in there is both the value of the initiatives that we have invested in through capital and growth strategies for this year and expense management strategies that would be more -- as I said, more structural over and above what we might have done in a typical year. And as I indicated, the thought process behind those isn't just about 2026, it's about being prepared for the years ahead.

Our next question comes from Kevin Fischbeck with Bank of America.

Yes. I just want to follow up on that point. I guess, when we think about that type of growth, I mean, is this the type of growth that you think is sustainable in out years as we think about offsets because 10% is a pretty big number to be thinking about. And so I just want to understand, is this new focus on expense management replicatable? Or are you -- is it kind of -- this is what we're doing in year 1, and that's it? Or is this is what we're doing in year 1, and we should be thinking about similar types of opportunity in the out years because it is a little hard to bridge what would normally be viewed as a hospital business that might grow 3% to 5%. Now you're saying it's 10%, like, is that sustainable?

Well, Kevin, I mean, I think 2 things. One is we've built up a track record of acuity growth and net revenue per case growth ahead of generally what the market does. Our margin expansion over the past, not just 2 years, as I indicated, but even beyond that in the Hospital segment itself has been significant above and beyond the asset sales that we did, which obviously helped some of that margin improvement. We said all along that we kept the markets where we felt like we had the best opportunities for growth and leadership.

And as we look ahead to the environment that may be coming in '28, '29, et cetera, with OBBB and other things, now is the time to take on the challenge of really being well prepared for that. And so look, we understand what the core growth guidance is. We think it's very attractive guidance. We think there's a lot of work that's going to be required to get there and creativity. But on the other hand, that's exactly the work we should be doing given the platform that we've built. And so that's what we're going after.

Our next question is from Josh Raskin with Nephron Research.

I want to stay on the same topic and Saum, appreciate what you just said. I sort of looked at it, margins are up 680 basis points since 2019 and the Hospital segment is up 660 basis points. So it's not really mix. It seems as though we've heard a lot about process improvement and optimization at Tenet for a couple of years, and now we're hearing about this new focus on expense management.

I'd just be curious to get your view on just the broader technology agenda, specifically, including AI and overall business, including revenue cycle management. And just do you think there's additional step function improvements in margins. I guess that's the main question. Do you think we're going to see continued margin improvement like we've seen in the past?

Yes. I mean I don't -- obviously, we're giving guidance in a year where there happens to be a headwind that we've done our best to quantify with respect to the exchange premium tax credits. Stated a different way, if those headwinds weren't there, we've been saying all along that we continue to believe there's margin expansion opportunity in the Hospital segment. The urgency with respect to much of what we're talking about doing is enhanced because of the -- what's happened on the exchange marketplace or what hasn't happened on the exchange marketplace as the case may be.

The other thing I'm mindful of is that there are -- what happens with respect to many of these reimbursement items might change over the next couple of years, right? So we're not really planning out to that level of specificity for '27, '28, et cetera. There are elections that happened between now and then that could alter, modify or just transform policy from where it is today. But I think this gets back to the first part of your question, which is, as we look around the environment, we've done a lot in this organization to improve reliability, accountability, the types of efficiencies we've taken as we've scaled the company down in the Hospital segment, reliably moving our overhead structure in line with that. All the things you would expect from an organization that is attempting to be best-in-class in what it does.

And now with the advent of many of these technologies in AI and automation, the ability to actually begin to deploy those and see if we can drive the next level of improvement, we're better set up for that now because we have more standard processes. We have more standard workflows. We have labor standards and supply standards that have been uniformly disseminated across the company. It's much harder to do those things when every market is doing something very different versus having established those standards. And we've done that. And we've consistently demonstrated that establishing those standards have improved our business. So now it's about taking that to the next level, and that's really what we're talking about.

Our next question comes from Justin Lake with Wolfe Research.

Wanted to follow up on some of the guidance stuff. I appreciate all the details. You mentioned -- obviously, the DPP, you gave us the onetime benefit there last year that comes out. I'm just curious if you could specify, is DPP other than that flat year-over-year? Or any change within that core guidance? Maybe you could also give us the run rate of DPP. And then I thought your estimate of the impact of the subsidy expirations was towards the higher end of my expectations at least. And I'm curious how you treated at least your thoughts on the potential shift of some of these enrollees back to employer commercial. What you've assumed there versus, let's say, I think UHS or one of your peers is assuming none and one of your peers is assuming 15% to 20%.

Justin, it's Sun. Thanks for your question. On your question about the Medicaid supplemental payments. Yes, as you pointed out, so a couple of numbers here. We finished 2025 with $1.34 billion in total supplemental payments. And obviously, we pointed out about $148 million of that is out-of-period payments. So let's call it $1.2 billion effective run rate for 2025. In '26, our guidance assumes effectively a pretty consistent number with our '25 normalized baseline. So hopefully, that helps.

And then on your question about exchange, yes. I mean, like we said, we assume about 20% overall reduction of enrollment. I would say on your question about our assumptions for people finding alternative plans, including commercial, we're about 10% to 15% as our internal assumption. Now all of that, again, depends on what we've seen in Q1 and what run rates we see, but that's our assumption embedded in our guidance.

Our next question comes from Peter Chickering with Deutsche Bank.

Can I ask about sort of the first quarter guidance, normally, you guys are getting more than 24% of EBITDA in the first quarter. I think in the script, you said that 21% come for the ASCs, which is normal. So it means that the change is actually in the Hospital segment. So is this something fundamental like the flu or lower surgical demand? Or is this just the $40 million of prior period DPP from last year or something else? And then just a quick clarification. Can you quantify the DPP that you received in the fourth quarter of '25?

Peter, it's Sun. Just to be clear, our USPI Q1 guidance is 22% of our full year guidance in Q1 for USPI. And then for our Hospital, you're right. I think the $40 million onetime benefit in Q1 kind of skews the total rates. Other than that, we see pretty standard annual Q1 percentages as a percent of full year. And then for your question on DPP Q4, we had $315 million.

Our next question is from Andrew Mok with Barclays Bank.

This is Thomas Walsh on for Andrew. With Conifer services to CommonSpirit concluding at the end of this year, could you frame the current plan to redeploy existing resources to growth opportunities and otherwise reduce expenses to rightsize the cost structure?

Well, I mean, we have a full year of service that we have to execute with respect to Conifer and our client this year. So we're not expecting to take cost reductions this year from that perspective. If anything, we may both increase revenue and cost if we end up doing more from a transition service standpoint, and that may come with a margin.

After that, we've talked about the fact that we have other growth opportunities that are already locked in starting in and around 2027 that will allow us to redeploy talent in that direction. So we can see that we'll be rebasing a bit the business at Conifer and preparing it for future growth. I mean, I don't know, I would kind of just go back to the core of what actually happened here in what we did. I mean if I were to be very simple about this, we had an expiring contract for which the cash flow that we would have taken in between 2026 and 2032 was basically breakeven at best because at the end of that period, we would have significant obligations to the client in terms of payments that would need to be made and equity that we'd have to buy back.

I mean one thing that may not have been so clear, we haven't made cash distributions from that joint venture in the last decade, and that resulted in a pretty significant buildup of redeemable noncontrolling interest and other liabilities. So what we did was we retired $885 million of those obligations on the balance sheet and got back 23.8% of the equity that was in the joint venture for $540 million. And then if you look at the remaining 6 years of the transaction of the contract that got dealt with in the transaction, we received $1.9 billion in accelerated cash flow over 3 years that would have come over 6 years in the contract and the present value of those 2 things was roughly double what we would have got by running off the contract.

So I mean, we've gone back for what it's worth and done the math. If you just look at this on an NPV basis after tax, the incremental value from actually running out the contract that we've created, again, post-tax present value was north of $1 billion. We calculate $1.1 billion. I mean this was absolutely the right path to go down in addition to getting complete control of the strategic future of Conifer. How we deal with that in 2027 and beyond, including growth opportunities, investments that we can now control in reducing the cost to collect and positioning Conifer to be more competitive, is the work of 2026 that we have in this asset. But maybe that kind of bottom line calculation now that we've had a chance to look at what the earnings will look like in the out years based on what we know today is helpful in framing what we did in this transaction. Again, after-tax NPV of about $1 billion to $1.1 billion is what we calculate. We're pleased with the outcome.

Our next question is from Scott Fidel with Goldman Sachs.

I was hoping maybe you could elaborate a bit on -- for the ASC business, how you're thinking about and planning for investments that could be either around the new facilities in terms of organic or de novo expansion. From a case mix and procedure perspective, just interested in where you see underlying demand is strongest, where you see the best opportunities to continue to drive the trend that you've had of favorable case mix and profitable sort of acuity procedure growth in some of these specialty areas in the ASC business?

Yes. No, thanks for the question. I guess I would make 3 comments. One is that I alluded earlier to the inpatient-only list and additional opportunities there. I think that will be a slow tailwind going forward as there are more things that qualify in that area. I think USPI is well known to be kind of at the leading edge of the innovation in higher acuity procedures in that area. We continue to build on our urology platform, looking forward to doing more spine work there. A lot of the robotics capabilities that we have brought into the ASCs continue to allow us to find new avenues of expansion. And obviously, the large ongoing opportunity that we continue to see double-digit growth in our joint programs across the network.

All those areas are, I think, attractive looking forward. We had a big M&A year, and a lot of the value that USPI brings after we acquired the assets and get into those settings is the planning for service line diversification and whatnot. So we have a big cohort this year. Usually, it takes about a year to start to work on new physician entry and restructuring of the operating schedules where possible to bring some of that higher acuity in. Sometimes, as we've talked about in the past, it removes lower acuity procedures in the context of doing that. When you get new centers, usually takes a year or so to kind of get that done. So we have a lot of work to do in that regard.

And then the last point I would make is that Q4 as we expected about a year ago, we said that we saw a ramp going forward. Q4 had a nice pickup in GI case recovery as well. And that was an important driver of that performance. So I think it's the same this year. We expect the year to build over the year stronger and stronger. The first quarter last year was an incredibly strong quarter for us because of a lot of the synergies that dropped on the Covenant transaction, the CPP transaction in Q1 of '25. But as we kind of overcome that this first quarter, we expect to see growing momentum in the business looking ahead.

Our next question is from Ryan Langston with TD Cowen.

Can you tell us where exchange volumes and revenues tracked in the fourth quarter? And I know you don't assume any pickup from the supplemental programs that aren't approved. But do you have any insight into where we're at in the approval process for the pending programs like Florida, Arizona, California?

Ryan, on Q4 for exchanges, we were about almost 7 -- I'm sorry, 7.5% of total admissions for HICS. And then a little over 6%, 6.5%, somewhere in there of our total consolidated revenues was from exchange. On your question about Medicaid supplement payments, yes, we are obviously tracking all these sort of the pending submissions and approvals in some of the states that you mentioned. We don't -- I don't know that we have any specific updates to provide at this time. We'll obviously continue to monitor.

Yes. I mean I think it's just worth reemphasizing we haven't put anything in our guidance about programs that haven't yet received approval for '26. Anything incremental, sorry, I should be clear. Anything incremental in our guidance.

Our next question comes from A.J. Rice with UBS.

Maybe just some comments on what you're seeing with managed care contracting. Obviously, that sector continues to be under pressure with some of the government programs, et cetera. And I wondered, is there any change in discussion in terms of the pace of new contract or contract renegotiations or terms or just general update in rates?

Yes. A.J., it's Sun. No real change in our commentary. Look, I think we have very positive and successful conversations with payers in general based on Tenet's overall service lines and what we bring to the table, including USPI as part of the overall package as well. Our commentary on rates is pretty consistent. We see 3% to 5% range from payers. And overall, from a contracting standpoint, we're virtually contracted in 2026, I would say, high 90s. And then even for '27, we're about 80% contracted. So I think we're in a very good spot. Thanks for your question.

Our next question is from Sarah James with Cantor Fitzgerald.

Can you elaborate a little bit more about what you saw in payer mix in 4Q for USPI and then unpack what you're assuming for Hospital and USPI as far as the scale of change in '26 between 1Q '26 and 4Q '26?

I'll take the second half of it. I don't think we're anticipating any different -- if you're asking the question about are we anticipating any sort of a different mix quarter-to-quarter than we saw in the amount of EBITDA that we generate in the Hospital segment or USPI proportionally, I don't think we're saying that at all.

I mean this is always the case where you could have movement of a percentage point or something like that up or down depending on -- we deal with winter weather, we deal with hurricanes, we deal with -- but we rebook those things and attempt to deal with them. Sometimes that's intra-quarter, sometimes it's out of quarter. So I'd personally focus on the overall guide and our message in terms of the percentages for Q1 aren't meant to imply that we're changing our proportions for Q2, 3 and 4. Yes...

Got it. I guess I was thinking more in terms of as effectuation takes place, if you would expect the payer mix to change at the end of the year and to what degree compared to your assumptions [ on 1Q ]?

Yes, I would say that -- I mean, there's a reason why the guidance range is wider than it normally is. I mean we don't know, right? I mean we're tracking it. We have a unique vantage point with Conifer because we do enrollment work as well. So we get a bit of a view into what that enrollment work is yielding in terms of where are people going, what reaction are they having to their premiums as they get exposure to them. So I think we'll have some leading-edge insights there. But let's be honest, it's not perfect at this stage. It's very early in the year. And I think the guidance is appropriately broad in the Hospital segment because we really don't know exactly how that's going to translate. We've been transparent with our assumptions with you all so that you can see where that's going to run relative to what actually happens.

And Sarah, this is Sun. On your question about payer mix on USPI. I would say it's been very consistent. As Saum mentioned, we have some GI that came back. So that will tweak the overall mix a little bit from a payer standpoint, but nothing substantive. So we're very pleased with our payer mix. In Q4, we reported at USPI net revenue per case growth of 5.5%, total EBITDA margins above 40%. So I think all those metrics show very strong revenue acuity.

Our next question is from Benjamin Rossi with JPMorgan.

Just as a follow-up for the ambulatory side. For the $30 million EBITDA headwind across ambulatory from the EAPTCs expiring, how much of your payer mix for the ambulatory segment came from the ACA exchanges in 2024 and 2025? And then did you see any pull forward across that cohort here during the fourth quarter, given your typical seasonal dynamics for ambulatory?

Yes, Ben, we don't disclose that information in terms of the segment. But we've been pretty clear all along that the HICS exposure at USPI is significantly less than the hospital segment. And no, we did not see any significant pull forward. We looked for it. Remember, we talked about this a quarter ago as well. We looked for it, but we did not see any significant pull forward.

Next question comes from John Ransom with Raymond James. John, are you there? Are you muted, John?

Sorry, can you hear me now?

We can.

Sorry. There's a big narrative over the past few months that providers are getting on top of payers with coding advances assisted by AI, particularly claims resubmissions are easier. Is that exaggerated? What inning are we in? And just given that you're positioned owning Conifer and being a provider, what's your position on that debate?

Yes. I mean, John, I can only comment for Tenet and I guess, to some extent, for how we operate at Conifer. Our coding has always been appropriate, compliant. It's -- we audit carefully. We haven't changed our coding practices over the last few years, either for ourselves or necessarily for our clients. We aim for very high degrees of accuracy and we have not made changes in those areas. We have obviously been successful in increasing our acuity, which has supported our net revenue per case in terms of our pathway there.

And finally, just to unpack a little bit the question earlier related to this with Sun's comments about our managed care contracting environment. We also don't have extremely heavy HOPD market drive from what we're doing. So we do a lot on the basis of freestanding outpatient in what we do, and that ends up being a value to the plans. We have not found ourselves in conflict over coding practices. We find ourselves in conflict over the nature of the amount of time and energy we put into disputes, denials, underpayments and things of that nature. That have a process back and forth that you got to work through. But increasingly, we've been setting up systems with the health plans to have adjudication mechanisms to work with them on in order to resolve these things in a less resource-intensive way. Some payers have been better than others about doing that with us, but that's the path we're moving down.

Our final question is from Craig Hettenbach with Morgan Stanley.

And I appreciate all the details given the fluid backdrop in terms of puts and takes on this year. Saum, just keying off of your comment of taking an active approach to buybacks, especially at the current valuation multiple given the significantly stronger balance sheet, free cash flow generation and CommonSpirit kind of proceeds, how are you and the Board just thinking about kind of the right cadence here of buybacks?

Well, yes, I mean I purposely indicated I purposely noted and indicated that -- I mean, all these things link together, right? I mean it's not just that we have significant cash on the balance sheet. We just described maybe in more detail today, the kind of value we just generated from the Conifer transaction. Effectively, a portion of that transaction was like debt retirement, right? I mean it was an obligation on the balance sheet that was real coming up in the next few years.

And so then the other proceeds from that go back into investing in the business, investing in USPI, and it gives us the opportunity for more share buybacks. And I would link this to our guidance for 2026 in terms of -- I know we've talked a little bit about our growth rates and core growth rates. I mean we attempt to operate and behave like a company that trades at a higher multiple. We will deploy our balance sheet like an organization that recognizes that the multiple has a valuation that's attractive to buy back shares. And I think we've done that over the last year.

I mean that's our mindset, right? We expect to perform at that level. We also expect to deploy our balance sheet in a way that demonstrates we have confidence in our ability to operate. That might be the easiest way to describe how we think about the 2. They're interlinked for us.

We have reached the end of the question-and-answer session, and this concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.

Greetings. Welcome to the Tenet Healthcare Analyst Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this conference is being recorded.

I will now turn the conference over to Will McDowell, Tenet's Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you, you may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call. I am Will McDowell, Vice President of Investor Relations. We're pleased to have you join us for a discussion of Tenet's announcement of our accretive Conifer transaction. Tenet senior management participating in today's call will be Dr. Saum Sutaria, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Sun Park, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Listeners to this call are advised that certain statements made during our discussion today are forward-looking and represent management's expectations based on currently available information. Actual results and plans could differ materially. Tenet is under no obligation to update any forward-looking statements based on subsequent information. Investors should take note of the cautionary statement in today's press release as well as the risk factors discussed in our most recent Form 10-K and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

One note before I turn the call over to Saum, as we discussed in today's release, our fourth quarter 2025 adjusted EBITDA is expected to be at the upper end of the guidance range that we had previously provided on October 28, 2025, driven by continued strength in same-store revenues and disciplined expense management in both the hospitals and USPI. We will not make any further comments about 2026 guidance or other details about 2025 results on this call.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Saum.

All right. Thank you, Will, and good morning, everyone. I'm very pleased to announce that we have closed an accretive asset sale regarding Conifer's revenue cycle management services contract with CommonSpirit. Conifer has been providing high-quality services under this contract since 2012. This transaction results in total value to Tenet of $2.65 billion comprised of a mix of cash payments reduction of material balance sheet liabilities and the value of the additional 23.8% of Conifer equity that we acquired as part of this transaction. This amounts to an approximate just under 14x multiple on the impacted 2025 adjusted EBITDA less NCI.

We have spoken in the past about our belief that there was hidden value in Conifer relative to our overall equity value. This transaction is a clear example of that. Now while this is another example of an attractive asset sale, this is a complex transaction that may not have been expected by the public markets. And as such, we wanted to have this call to provide a more fulsome discussion about the value we have generated.

I'm now going to turn the call over to Sun, so he can provide some details about the transaction. Sun?

Thank you, Saum, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to spend a minute to walk through the mechanics of the transaction, so you can understand the economics and the value that we have generated as a result. There are several components, so we'll review them step by step.

The key components of the transaction are as follows: First, Conifer will continue to provide revenue cycle services to CommonSpirit through the end of 2026 as financial terms that are consistent with the existing contract. Said another way, we expect the same amount of adjusted EBITDA in 2026 from our services that we would have recognized had the transaction not taken place. For context, estimated annual adjusted EBITDA less NCI from this contract in 2025 was approximately $190 million.

Second, because the equity transfer of CommonSpirit's stake in Conifer is retroactively effective as of January 1, 2026, we will not record any income available for noncontrolling interests, or NCI, expenses related to CommonSpirit. All of Conifer's economics will be recognized by Tenet in 2026, such that our NCI expense will be lower by approximately $100 million.

Third, CommonSpirit will pay $1.9 billion to Tenet over the next three years, $540 million in the first quarter of 2026, followed by three equal annual installments of $453 million at the beginning of the first quarters in 2027, '28 and '29, respectively.

Fourth, in the first quarter of 2026, Tenet will pay $540 million to CommonSpirit to address the elimination of CommonSpirit's capital account and execute the redemption of their 23.8% equity stake in Conifer, again, effective as of January 1, 2026. This $540 million payment to CommonSpirit will offset the $540 million first installment payment due to Tenet in 2026.

CommonSpirit's capital account of $885 million is largely reflected on Tenet's balance sheet and the line item: redeemable noncontrolling interest in equity of consolidated subsidiaries. We will reduce this balance in the first quarter of 2026. And finally, Tenet's additional paid in capital balance will increase by $305 million as a result of the transaction.

And with that, I will turn the call back to Saum.

All right. Thank you, Sun. We understand CommonSpirit's desire to in-source their revenue cycle and support their broader transformation objectives. For over a decade, this has been an excellent relationship for Conifer and we have supported CommonSpirit's industries and contributed to a strong revenue cycle foundation for their future. We're proud of the work we have done for them, and we look forward to seeing them continue to advance their important mission in the communities they serve.

Conifer is deeply committed to innovation in its work and automation to reduce the cost to collect in its operating model for both Tenet hospitals and third-party clients. As we look to the future, we see opportunities to leverage Conifer scale to advance offshoring, automation and apply AI to drive greater efficiencies and enhanced capabilities to better serve clients. It is imperative these investments continue and in a manner that is aligned throughout our organization. This transaction returns full strategic control of our growth and future in Conifer to Tenet.

In summary, this transaction further strengthens our cash flow position over the next several years. As we step into 2026, we will be focused on actively deploying capital to generate shareholder value. With share repurchase being an important priority for us in addition to continued M&A in the ambulatory space and capital expenditures to fuel organic growth, all the while maintaining a deleveraged balance sheet.

And with that, we're ready to begin with Q&A. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Brian Tanquilut with Jefferies.

Congrats on the quarter. But just maybe to focus on this Conifer topic today. As we think about the remaining partners and equity holders within the Conifer book of business, I mean, how are those conversations going? Obviously, this is a big client that's transitioning away. So just curious if you're hearing any reactions or what you can share with us, Saum, in terms of where we -- how we should feel confident that you'd be able to retain the remaining portfolio of clients?

I don't think -- I mean I don't think that's even a topic of conversation. I mean, Conifer's client service and results, including for Tenet have been excellent and continue to be excellent. You guys see that every quarter in terms of what we report. And from our standpoint, we have new clients coming on board. So we expect to substantially redeploy resources at the end of this year for our growth objectives. So I wouldn't think of this as anything other than a highly accretive asset sale happened to be a contract rather than what we've done in the past, which are hospitals. But from our standpoint, the return of strategic control of Conifer fully to Tenet is important for the types of investments we're going to be making in the future. So we fully believe in the opportunity in this market and our ability to grow.

Our next question comes from the line of Josh Raskin with Nephron Research.

This is actually Marco on for Josh. Just one quick one to start. I know you stopped disclosing Conifer level results back in 2023, but it would just be helpful if you could frame where that business currently sits relative to the revenue and EBITDA contribution? And then the real question is just you spoke to expansion of investments in AI, automation and on some other areas in Conifer. Can you just recap where investment spending has been focused over the past year or two? And then just give a little bit more detail on the magnitude of that ramp-up that you're speaking to? And what functionalities you're actually trying to improve moving forward?

Okay. Let me answer. There's a lot of questions in there. Let me give you a brief answer to some of them. First of all, we're not going to talk more about -- you can imagine the ink is just dry on this. So how we think about Conifer beyond the numbers that Sun gave you around EBITDA minus NCI impacted EBITDA minus NCI for 2025 of $190 million. It's pretty much the extent of what we're going to do today. We obviously have an earnings call coming up in -- and more after -- during and after that, where we'll have some more detail about that with respect to how we see Conifer playing out over the year. Obviously, we're going to need to make that clear.

Look, from our standpoint, we've been -- I've been talking about this for the better part of 1.5 years in terms of some of the investments that we've been making in the business to support the revenue cycle for ourselves and for our clients at Conifer in particular, in improving the conversion of automated scribe based notes and other things into appropriate claims. Areas like coding, where we have been investing in automation areas like denials management, where we have been investing in AI-driven solutions to improve the speed and veracity of dispute management with the insurers and also enhancements that have been made with automation technologies, some of which are powered by AI, some of which are powered more by advanced analytics to enhance our automated workflow tools, which is one of the things that makes Conifer so efficient and reliable in the work that it does.

So from our standpoint, none of that changes, right? We're on a multiyear path here to improve, which results over time and reductions in the cost to collect. That's a good thing because it takes resources away from what is an administrative function and allows people to redeploy them into clinical areas and that makes Conifer more and more competitive in the marketplace over time. So none of that changes. So we are very, very much focused on continuing that journey and doing it with full strategic control of Conifer so those decisions can be made by Tenet.

Our next question comes from the line of A.J. Rice with UBS.

Hi, everybody. Just trying to understand your comments about stepping up consideration of offshoring, investing for AI and other capabilities. Were you constrained under the current arrangement by maybe your partner's limited willing to commit capital on doing things so that now you have the ability to -- as a sole strategic controller of Conifer to step up spending? Any sense of how much incremental capital outlay you would direct towards Conifer on a go-forward basis? And then often, when you have a restructuring like this, there's expense reduction opportunities, have you commented on how you might adjust the cost structure beyond '26 in Conifer? Or do you think you can redeploy that into other growth right away?

Yes. So A.J., a few different things. First of all, I mean, this was a joint venture. So in a joint venture, both parties work together collaboratively, usually to make investment decisions and other things. So I wouldn't characterize that as being constrained. I mean we had a joint venture partner and we made decisions on a variety of these things together. So I don't want to put any kind of sense of blame that one party was constraining the other. We were in a situation where we both had to make decisions together. We're now not in that situation, but that doesn't mean that both parties didn't have good ideas throughout the life of the joint venture. And so we will both be heading in slightly different directions at this point, but I don't want to leave the impression that one party was constraining the other because I don't think that's fair to either party.

Right now, we are entirely focused as Sun indicated. 2026 is going to be a busy year because it's a big account, and we are responsible for servicing the account through the year. And with the same terms and earnings and other things that we would have expected. And then there will obviously be a transition that comes at the end of it.

Our current growth agenda is going to allow us to redeploy a lot of our people, technology, resources very, very quickly from that standpoint. And we continue -- in the last part of your question, we continue to grow and increase the amount of activity that we are pursuing offshore within the Conifer business and in fact, more broadly, within the Tenet business, so that our global business center in Manila is scaling up and has scaled up over the last year. We'll provide an update on that on the earnings call. But it continues to scale up, and we would anticipate doing the same in 2026.

Again, I come back to a very important point here that I've tried to make, which is the ability to combine workflow automation, AI and offshore creates a real opportunity to lower the cost to collect over time progressively in this outsourcing business, which is just going to make Conifer more and more competitive in the marketplace. Separate all of that from -- at the end of the day, this is just a highly accretive asset transaction that made sense at this time.

Our next question comes from the line of Justin Lake with Wolfe Research.

I appreciate you running through the numbers. I just want to make sure I kind of understand the economic impact here. So you're saying, I think if you said $190 million of EBITDA minus NCI and $100 million of NCI, you're saying EBITDA here is around $300 million, let's say, ground numbers, NCI $100 million. You keep the EBITDA, you'll lose the NCI of '26 and then in '27, the $300 million of EBITDA goes away. First of all, is that the right way to think about it?

And then secondly, the all-in cash, when you think about the inflows and outflows and maybe the cost of kind of running this thing and exiting it and all that, can -- is there a number that you want us to think about like an after-tax number potentially in terms of kind of a net that we should be thinking about after all is said and done, of kind of cash to the company that we should pencil in?

Okay. So a few things. Justin, why don't -- Sun, why don't you walk through the numbers again and then I can provide some color on maybe some of the areas, Justin, that you've asked about.

Yes. Justin, I think you're largely correct on your first part. Yes, the EBITDA less NCI for this contract was approximately $190 million, as said. The $100 million of NCI reduction that we will see in 2026 is, of course, reduction on the value we get from our revenue cycle services to CommonSpirit, but also to other non-CommonSpirit agreements as well. So that's on the overall Conifer book. So I would just make that distinction on the $100 million of NCI expense. We're not commenting specifically on the EBITDA for impact for '27 yet. As Saum said, we have a lot of work to do to plan through that.

And then Saum, back over to you.

Well, yes. And then do you want to talk about the two very direct cash components of this, which are the cash payments plus the direct liability reductions on the balance sheet? Maybe just cover those for Justin again and then I'll comment.

Yes. Sorry about that. Yes. Justin, I guess right, on the $1.9 billion payment to us, that will largely be a normal taxable structure. As a reminder, if we were receiving revenues throughout the rest of the contract, those would -- the income there would have been normally taxable revenue streams as well. So I think it's apples-to-apples.

On the other cash component, where our balance sheet will see a reduction of $885 million of capital account plus some smaller amounts in other liabilities, I think the tax piece there gets relatively modest, and we'll have more information about that as we go. But I think the largest taxable component is the $1.9 billion that I just mentioned.

Yes. And then the last piece, of course, is the direct reduction on the balance sheet liabilities, which obviously at the end of this contract would have been something that we were making payments on in addition to whatever the cost of redeeming the equity would have been. So that's how I would think about it. Obviously, by bringing back our 23.8% equity, we obviously pick up other value in the ownership of that equity, right, because we now own 100% of it. That's the only noncash portion, Justin, I guess, is the way to answer that, the value of the equity. The rest of it is all a direct benefit.

Our next question comes from the line of Sarah James with Cantor Fitzgerald.

Can you talk about Conifer's AI investment strategy a little bit more and how you're prioritizing opportunities across the front-end mid-cycle versus back end of rev cycle in terms of ROI?

Well, as I said, we don't think of this as an AI-only environment. I think there are multiple things that go into this, including automation and robotic processing that contribute to this. Some of those technologies may be powered a bit by AI. But there are areas where AI is very helpful in creating efficiencies and generating the -- what I would describe as prior paper-based or human capital-based approach to doing things. Sometimes it's augmenting, sometimes it's checking, sometimes it's producing paper-based things in a more automated fashion like denials management processes and coding.

There's also just analytics which don't really get powered by AI, but advanced analytics that drive workflow efficiencies. So if you think about in the revenue cycle, a lot of what helps make the people who are running it more effective is having the algorithms in place for millions and millions of claims to sort them as accurately, efficiently and quickly as possible in order to generate the highest yield.

So our investments are split between things we're doing to drive automation, things we're doing to improve the reliability and speed of the workflow and things where we are deploying AI in order to either augment what people are doing or in some cases, replace what people are doing in a higher fidelity way. And the combination of those three things drives our investment strategy. The objective, of course, is straightforward. It's reduction in the cost to collect, stepwise over time, which makes the business more competitive from a pricing standpoint. And secondly, improving the yield and the speed at which you realize that yield, which is really the product that Conifer produces for the marketplace. That's how we think about it. And strategically, our investments are focused across those areas, both with our domestic and global business center today. Does that help?

Yes. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Whit Mayo with Leerink Partners.

When CHI obtained its equity stake years ago in Conifer, did they give you cash for that equity stake? I don't think they did. And is that partially why they're paying back to you $1.9 billion to account for the ownership? And can you also just remind us the time frame that this contract was structured to run through?

The contract began in 2012. It was -- it would have ended 20 years later, so 2032. And with -- I don't know if I don't believe there was a capital contribution at that time, but you may know...

I don't think so. I don't think there was not, Saum. And then with the $1.9 billion is related to the revenue cycle contract, not necessarily the equity. That's just the breakup fee.

Our next question comes from the line of Craig Hettenbach with Morgan Stanley.

Just wanted to circle back on how this could influence your capital allocation strategy. So first, just as you've delevered the balance sheet, you're still kind of comfortable operating around current leverage ratios. And then on USPI, is kind of the strategy there still mostly focused on tuck-in type deals?

Well, the capital allocation priority categories haven't changed, right? I mean growing USPI, I think we forecast already in 2025, we would be well above our $200 million to $250 million in capital allocation. We continue to see a very strong pipeline for USPI. Sometimes those are individual tuck-in centers. Sometimes those are multicenter businesses that we're acquiring. We also have a robust de novo strategy that we're investing in significantly as that ramps up. We've talked about the investments in organic growth that we're making, obviously, with better margins and returns on capital in our hospital segment. Of course, within that segment is Conifer, and we've already talked about the capital allocation priorities there.

We're cognizant of the fact that this is, again, a highly accretive transaction and contributes to cash relative to what this asset was being valued at, and that gives us an opportunity, as I indicated in my comments, first and foremost, around share repurchase especially given our trading multiples today. So the categories don't change. We just have an opportunity to accelerate, and we have more cash available to us to redeploy in share repurchase.

Our last question will come from the line of Kevin Fischbeck with Bank of America.

Great. Just wanted to understand a little bit better to make sure that I understand the EBITDA impact that you're talking about. I understand that you're not able to fully put a point on 2027 EBITDA. But when you talk about the $290 million going away. Is that kind of your view about the EBITDA of that business plus whatever deleveraging? Could you talk a bit about how you're going to redeploy assets. I wasn't sure if that $290 million assumes maybe there's some drag or fixed cost leverage or whether that assumes full redeployment of assets?

And then this comment about the investments you're going to be making, are these comments kind of normal course that these are the types of investments we've seen at Conifer year after year where you're just kind of orienting them in a certain way? Or are you talking about a step-up of investment in 2027? And beyond that might create a drag in the out years?

Kevin, I just want to clarify the EBITDA minus NCI, the impact of EBITDA minus NCI that we're talking about is $190 million, and it's upon that $190 million that I described the upfront approximately 14 multiple of the total value in this transaction, not $290 million. We haven't commented -- I mean, obviously, we haven't commented any further about how this is going to look in '26, let alone '27. As I said, the ink is just drying on this, and we have some work to do to understand how we're going to manage the business over time. And remember, in 2026, we still have a contract of services that we need to run, and we're going to generate, in addition to everything we talked about here, the usual revenue and margin on this contract during 2026. It's just that we won't have to share any NCI expense given that our equity was redeemed retroactively to January 1 of this year. So that will create additional earnings in 2026 as a result. And then in 2027, there will be a change. We haven't said what that change is going to be. We're obviously mapping are growth opportunities, both from the perspective of clients that are already locked in that we plan on onboarding and redeployment of resources and assets.

But I mean if ultimately, the question is about do we realize that there is probably some restructuring activity that's going to have to take place? Yes, of course. But mean from my perspective, we've demonstrated the operating discipline to manage our business effectively and grow our earnings and margins despite having had other asset sales. So you can fully expect that the level of attention to the operations will be the same. What's different in this situation is that we have growth opportunities that are already in front of us. And so we expect redeployment of our resources, people, talent, technology, et cetera, as a first priority for Conifer as we come to the end of 2026 and the beginning of 2027, and we'll guide to that at the appropriate time.

If anything, if I close, I mean, from a qualitative perspective, all that means is, for us, the actual embedded value in owning 100% of Conifer is even higher given our future growth that's already locked in with this redeployment that will occur. And we feel very good about that.

Thank you. We have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's teleconference. Please disconnect your lines, and have a wonderful day.

Good morning, welcome to Tenet Healthcare's Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

I'll now turn the call over to your host, Mr. Will McDowell, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. McDowell, you may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call. I am Will McDowell, Vice President of Investor Relations. We're pleased to have you join us for a discussion of Tenet's third quarter 2025 results as well as a discussion of our financial outlook. Tenant senior management participating in today's call will be Dr. Saum Sutaria, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Sun Park, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Our webcast this morning includes a slide presentation, which has been posted to the Investor Relations section of our website, tenethealth.com. Listeners to this call are advised that certain statements made during our discussion today are forward-looking and represent management's expectations based on currently available information. Actual results and plans could differ materially. Tenet is under no obligation to update any forward-looking statements based on subsequent information. Investors should take note of the cautionary statement slide included in today's presentation as well as the risk factors discussed in our most recent Form 10-K and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And with that, I'll turn the call over to Saum.

All right. Thank you, Will, and good morning, everyone. We had another quarter of strong performance where we exceeded our expectations for revenue, adjusted EBITDA and margins.

Third quarter 2025 net operating revenues were $5.3 billion, and consolidated adjusted EBITDA grew 12% over the third quarter 2024 to $1.1 billion. This represents an adjusted EBITDA margin of 20.8%, which is 170 basis points improvement over the prior year, driven by our strong same-store growth and continued operating efficiency. USPI continues to excel, and we generated $492 million in adjusted EBITDA, which represents 12% growth year-over-year. Same-facility revenues grew by 8.3% in the third quarter, highlighted by 11% growth in total joint replacements in the ASCs over the prior year.

Our M&A and de novo activity remains robust as we acquired 11 centers and opened 2 de novo centers in the quarter, including facilities specializing in high acuity procedures such as spine and orthopedics. We have already spent nearly $300 million on M&A in this space year-to-date and expect to continue adding additional centers in the fourth quarter. The M&A and de novo pipelines remain strong.

Turning to our hospital segment. Adjusted EBITDA grew 13% to $607 million in the third quarter of 2025. Same-store hospital admissions, adjusted admissions were up 1.4% in the quarter. And third quarter 2025 revenue per adjusted admission was up 5.9% over the prior year as payer mix and acuity remains strong. In September, we opened our newest hospital facility in Port St. Lucie, Florida. This facility expands capacity in one of the fastest-growing areas in the country. The hospital will provide comprehensive emergency in specialty care and is focused on leveraging state-of-the-art technology, including robotics and advanced cardiac catheterization techniques.

Turning to our full year guidance. At this point in the year, we are once again raising our full year 2025 adjusted EBITDA guidance to a range of $4.47 billion to $4.57 billion. Building upon our substantial post second quarter guidance increase, indicating the confidence we have in our business this year, we have now increased our adjusted EBITDA guidance by $445 million or 11% at the midpoint of the range from our initial guidance. Additionally, we are increasing our investments in capital expenditures in 2025 and now expect to invest $875 million to $975 million to fuel organic growth in the future, a $150 million increase at the midpoint over our prior expectations.

In addition to this increased investment, we are also raising our expectations for full year 2025 free cash flow minus NCI to a range of $1.495 billion to $1.695 billion, an increase of $250 million at the midpoint from our previous guidance range. This increase is driven not only by the fundamental growth in adjusted EBITDA, but also by the strong cash collection performance of Conifer.

Let me turn to 2026 with a few points. Uncertainty about the enhanced premium tax subsidies and the impact on reimbursement and enrollment in the exchanges still exists. Approvals for various increases in state directed payment programs for 2026 are still pending. Currently, in our hospital segment planning process, we see healthy patient demand that would support same-store volume growth and a stable operating environment supported by disciplined cost controls in 2026. Our strategy, which is more focused on higher acuity services, has delivered a track record of improved margins and strong earnings growth over the past few years. The return on invested capital for this improved portfolio of hospital assets is such that we have confidently increased our CapEx per bed from prior levels to higher levels in both 2024 and 2025, and we should continue to see the benefits of that into 2026.

At USPI, we expect same-store revenue growth in line with our long-term expectations, a continued focus on high acuity cases, operational efficiencies and disciplined cost controls. Additionally, we expect further contributions from M&A and de novo development. I would note that USPI is less exposed to Medicaid and the exchanges and our ASCs are on freestanding rates. We will continue to operate and invest in this attractive segment. In summary, we continue to deliver our commitments for sustained growth, expanding margins, a delevered balance sheet, and improved free cash flow generation. Our strong execution is driving attractive EBITDA growth that we are converting into significant free cash flow and our transformed portfolio of businesses are well positioned to drive sustained performance in the future.

And with that, Sun will provide us a more detailed review of our financial results. Sun, over to you.

Thank you, Saum, and good morning, everyone. We delivered strong results in third quarter 2025, with adjusted EBITDA above the high end of our guidance range, once again driven by strong same-store revenue growth, continued high patient acuity, favorable payer mix and effective cost controls. We generated total net operating revenues of $5.3 billion and consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $1.1 billion, a 12.4% increase year-over-year.

Our adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter was 20.8%, a continuation of our improved margin performance over multiple quarters. I would now like to highlight some key items for both of our segments, beginning with USPI, which again delivered strong operating results. In the third quarter, USPI's adjusted EBITDA grew 12% over last year, with adjusted EBITDA margins at 38.6%. USPI delivered an 8.3% increase in same-facility system-wide revenues, with net revenue per case up 6.1% and same-facility case volumes up 2.1%.

Turning to our hospital segment. Third quarter 2025 adjusted EBITDA was $607 million, with margins up 160 basis points over last year at 15.1%. Same-hospital inpatient adjusted admissions increased 1.4% and revenue per adjusted admissions grew 5.9%. Our consolidated salary, wages and benefits was 41.7% of net revenues, a 160 basis point improvement from the prior year and our contract labor expense was 1.9% of consolidated SWB expenses. These improvements continue to be driven by our data-driven approach to capacity and labor management and disciplined operating expense controls.

Finally, we recognized a $38 million pretax impact for Medicaid supplemental revenues related to prior years in the third quarter of 2025. As a reminder, in total, year-to-date, we have recorded $148 million of favorable pretax impacts associated with Medicaid supplemental revenues related to prior years. Next, we will discuss our cash flow, balance sheet and capital structure. We generated $778 million of free cash flow in the third quarter, amounting to $2.16 billion of free cash flow year-to-date, which is up 22% over the same 9-month period in the prior year. As of September 30, 2025, we had $2.98 billion of cash on hand with no borrowings outstanding under our line of credit facility. Additionally, we have no significant debt maturities until 2027.

And finally, during the third quarter, we repurchased 598,000 shares of our stock for $93 million. Year-to-date through September 30, we have repurchased 7.8 million shares for $1.2 billion. Our leverage ratio as of September 30 was 2.3x EBITDA, or 2.93x EBITDA less NCI driven by our outstanding operational performance and continued focus on financial discipline. We believe we have significant financial flexibility to support our capital allocation priorities, and drive shareholder value and are very pleased with our ongoing cash flow generation capabilities. We remain committed to a deleveraged balance sheet.

Let me now turn to our outlook for 2025. For '25, we now expect consolidated net operating revenues in the range of $21.15 billion to $21.35 billion, an increase of $150 million over prior expectations. As Saum mentioned, we are raising our 2025 adjusted EBITDA outlook range by $50 million at the midpoint to $4.47 billion to $4.57 billion, reflecting our outperformance in the hospital business. This is in addition to the substantial $395 million guidance raise that we announced in the second quarter. At the midpoint of our range, we now expect our full year 2025 adjusted EBITDA to grow 13% over 2024.

Turning to our cash flows for 2025. We now expect free cash flows in the range of $2.275 billion to $2.525 billion, distributions to noncontrolling interest in the range of $780 million to $830 million, resulting in free cash flow after NCI in the range of $1.495 billion to $1.695 billion, an increase of $250 million at the midpoint from our previous guidance range. This reflects our focus on strong free cash flow conversion from our EBITDA growth, the continued outstanding cash collection performance of Conifer and continued investment into high priority areas of our business.

Now turning to our capital deployment priorities. We are well positioned to create value for shareholders through the effective deployment of free cash flow and our priorities have not changed. First, we will continue to prioritize capital investments to grow USPI through M&A. Second, we expect to continue investing in key hospital growth opportunities to fuel organic growth, including our focus on higher acuity service offerings. Third, we will evaluate opportunities to retire and/or refinance debt. And finally, we'll continue to have a balanced approach to share repurchases, depending on market conditions and other investment opportunities.

We continue to deliver consistent growth and a disciplined operations, which has translated into outstanding financial results. We are confident in our ability to deliver on our increased outlook for 2025 as we continue to provide high-quality care for our patients.

And with that, we're ready to begin the Q&A. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Kevin Fischbeck with Bank of America.

Great. I wanted to ask you about the Q4 guidance and kind of the expectations for utilization. Are you guys building anything in there for higher utilization before these subsidies expire? And how do you think about the capacity, I guess, particularly within USPI to accommodate utilization there? And then I guess, secondly, you mentioned that USPI is insulated from the headwinds for next year, but just trying to understand a little bit where you do see that pressure. I guess can you talk a little bit about exchange exposure within USPI.

All right. There's a lot of questions in there, Kevin. So let me just tackle one by one. And Sun, we can kind of complement here. First of all, we haven't built in anything nor are we seeing any kind of rush to the office, if you will, with respect to the exchange subsidies. We're not planning nor are we saying that we expect them to expire at this stage. I think much of what we're hearing is that it may take time, but a compromise will be achieved from our intelligence coming from Washington. So we're just sort of patiently waiting to see what happens there.

From a capacity utilization standpoint, at USPI, we typically have, as you know, busier late November and certainly December and have planned for staffing and capacity stretch that happens in that time period every year. So the simplest way to look at it is we're not worried about our capacity to take on the demand that we would see in the typical end of the fourth quarter USPI. We began planning for that every year, months in advance with a very well-established protocol of how we do things. And there should be no reason that's different this year, including if there happen to be more demand that came because of the -- any kind of change in the exchanges or whatever that may be ahead of us from that perspective.

What we have said about exchange business at USPI is a couple of things. One is there's a lot less exposure there on a per case or revenue basis than in the hospital segment. And the reason for that we have said is that we typically see the exchange business, especially newer exchange members behaving with consumption patterns that are more similar to, for example, Medicaid and that explains some of the difference.

Sun, I don't know if there's anything you want to add here.

Yes. Just a couple of metrics, Saum. I would also just note for USPI, our implied Q4 guidance is about an increase of $80 million roughly from Q3 into Q4, which is fairly standard, if you look at our historical pacing and change into Q4. So I think we remain confident in our -- both our capacity as well as our ability to take care of those patients.

And then in exchange, I would just note that for Q3, exchange was 8.4% of our total admissions and 7% of our total consolidated revenues. So a slight increase in total as a percent of admissions from Q2 and reasonable relatively flat in terms of total percent of consolidated revenue. So we do see continued strong exchange performance, but at this point, no significant increase in Q3. So we'll see in Q4. Thanks for your question.

Our next question comes from Scott Fidel with Goldman Sachs.

Wanted to hopefully just draw a little bit more to the CapEx inputs for the year, including the increase in the CapEx guidance. Maybe if you can talk about specific allocation of capital related to the increase and then maybe bucket some of the key larger investments that you're making within the CapEx for the full year?

Scott, I appreciate the question. So I would just characterize the increased capital expenditure as more investment in both program or clinical program infrastructure, service line support and various other growth strategies in the hospitals. I mean, obviously, our CapEx plan for the year included the residual capital that was required to open up the Port St. Lucie Hospital. So this is capital expenditure that has extended above and beyond that where we see opportunities for growth.

Look, as I indicated, the demand environment continues to be very healthy and we see opportunities. And the efficiency with which we operate, our focus on service levels to the physician community, we see the opportunity for them to choose our site as a location of care for their patients more and more. Obviously, the way in which we tend to deploy this capital is focused more on our high acuity strategy, so things that are relevant to the cardiac care unit, intensive care unit, cath labs, high-end imaging, et cetera, surgical programs. But that's really how we're making the investments around the country. And as we reviewed them, through this business planning cycle, we felt it was a good time, given the demand that we continue to see through the third quarter to go ahead and make those investments and raise our guidance.

Our next question comes from Craig Hettenbach with Morgan Stanley.

Yes. I want to just extend that just focused on free cash flow here, the increase to guidance. You mentioned kind of improved cash collections at Conifer. You also have margins coming up. So any other context around kind of free cash flow and importantly, just the sustainability of those trends as you see it?

Sun, go ahead.

Craig, thanks. Yes, as mentioned, this has been a long-term focus of ours, making sure not only EBITDA growth and EBITDA margins come through, through strong operational performance. also then making sure that converts through free cash flow. And we listed some of the key drivers there. Obviously, the continued improving and a fantastic performance by Conifer on cash collections. Obviously, growth in EBITDA comes through.

And then probably a couple of other things that I'd point out. More broadly, in terms of working capital management, we have spent a lot of time and focus on making sure we're optimizing all components of there. And then obviously, one of the additional benefits of our continued deleveraging is improvement in interest expenses, which also helps our free cash flow generation. We believe these operational efficiencies that we've implemented similar to our margin performance, whether it's Conifer or working capital management or continued EBITDA generation, we obviously will work hard to make these sustainable over a long period of time.

Our next question comes from Jason Cassorla with Guggenheim Securities.

Great. I just wanted, Sun, to go back to your commentary around the implied 4Q guidance on USPI. At the midpoint, it would imply year-over-year growth, a little over 8%, which is still strong, marks a little bit of a deceleration from like the low to mid-teens you've done this year. Just any thoughts around that? Is it conservatism? Anything from a timing perspective, like the pace of development coming online that's impacting that? Just any further detail around the implied fourth quarter guidance for USPI would be helpful.

Well, Sun, we can -- let me start. I don't think anything we're saying about the business demand, organic performance really changes. I mean, obviously, we have certain assets at a larger scale and various other pricing elements that begin to lap year-over-year from that perspective. And so if anything, it's just math, basically. But there's really no -- I mean we don't there's no implication. We're not looking at this fourth quarter at USPI really any differently than in prior fourth quarter. As I said, we're intensely just focused on the ramp-up of business that we typically would see. Sun?

Yes, I don't think I have anything further to add, Saum. Thanks.

Our next question comes from Ann Hynes with Mizuho.

Great. Just looking at the -- obviously, margins and cash flows have been very strong. Costs have been very good. going into 2026, especially the labor environment, I think that's better than expectations in 2025. Do you expect that to continue into 2026 on the labor side? And then any other inflationary pressure you would call out as we do our models, that would be great.

Go ahead, Sun.

Sure. And while we're not commenting specifically on '26 yet, we'll note a couple of things. You're right. Our labor environment has generally been very strong and conducive to our operations. whether it's full-time labor expenses, whether it's our management of contract labor and other premium labor, whether it's pro fees, I think they've all been to our expectations. And in the current environment, as we sit here today, don't see any meaningful changes coming.

In terms of other inflationary pressures, again, not commenting specifically on '26, but obviously, the other topic that we've talked about is tariffs, we've said that for 2025, we've been able to manage that fairly well due to both our sourcing optimization exercises, whether it's contracting, whether it's working with our vendors, whether it's picking the right products, as well as through efforts through our GPO. So we remain confident based on our contract structure that we have a couple more cycles where we'll be able to manage this. But obviously, as we get into the future years, we'll have to remain nimble on the tariff dynamic.

Our next question comes from Benjamin Rossi with JPMorgan Chase.

I guess just checking in on Conifer, how did Conifer's contribution within the Hospital Operations segment shake out during 3Q? And then you've previously mentioned Conifer's ability to sit with patient eligibility and enrollment services during things like Medicaid redeterminations. I guess should the ACA exchange subsidies expire, do you think Conifer could have a similar utility for you in helping identify patients with lost coverage and to be eligible for coverage elsewhere?

Well, I mean, that's a very good insight about some of the capabilities that we have in Conifer. And by the way, I would flip it the other direction as well. Given the time frame we're at, but the likelihood -- the positive likelihood of a compromise that we keep hearing, it will also be important that we have invested in the right capacity and capabilities to utilize Conifer's ability to help with enrollment and enrollment in our markets in our clients' markets on the exchanges if the exchange enrollment time line gets delayed or extended.

So yes, obviously, the capabilities to help enroll in other products is there, but we're also ramping up our investments and approach to support what might be a little bit of a dislocated enrollment time line on the exchanges given the potential for a later compromise. So it will work well on both dimensions, and we have been investing up in both our staffing and field deployment in preparation for that already. Conifer is performing well according to our expectations within the segment, not a lot else to comment on there. I mean obviously, we are really happy with the way it's performing in the market for us and our base of clients from a cash collection standpoint that I noted before.

Our next question comes from Ryan Langston with TD Cowen.

Nice to see the ASC volumes positive. Any particular service lines or maybe even geographies driving this? And maybe same thing for the acute side, any hospital service line stronger or weaker than you expected in the third quarter?

Yes. No, I appreciate the question. A couple of things. I mean we said this at the start of the year when we gave guidance that we kind of saw the environment USPI picking up later in the year just given -- we look very carefully, obviously, at how busy our positions are. And as we looked at that, we saw it ramping up in the latter part of the year. I would say probably the biggest driver of that growth in addition to the core of the higher acuity services that we're investing in, ortho, spine, some of the things we're doing in robotics and other things. Those things continue to go strong.

We saw just based upon the numbers, healthier GI recovery into the third quarter which is kind of what we were expecting, given what the volumes and business of our physicians look like in the first half. So that was probably an outsized driver of the USPI volume contribution. On the hospital side, and you can tell from the city net revenue per case, et cetera, I mean, that environment continues to be strong. Obviously, things like trauma and high acuity emergency visits and stuff. There's less elasticity there, right, with market conditions, given the nature of that.

The only thing I would note on the hospital side is that especially outpatient visits, which contribute to adjusted admissions, the respiratory and infectious disease volumes were a little bit lower than perhaps expectations. And that just may signal some sort of a slower start to the respiratory season. The numbers certainly seem to indicate that. But again, we're talking about the third quarter, right? So it's less of a harbinger than 1 would say. But factually speaking, the infectious disease respiratory areas are the only areas I would call out on a proportional basis.

Our next question comes from Justin Lake with Wolfe Research.

I might have missed it, but I was hoping to get an update on total contribution from DPP provider taxes in the third quarter. and your updated estimate on that benefit for the year. And then I appreciate you pointing out the $148 million of prior year DPP that we should think about as being kind of onetime, I assume. Any other items we should consider for 2026 in terms of that bridge year-over-year versus kind of typical growth?

Yes. Justin, on the DPP in Q3, we had about -- recorded almost $350 million, $346 million of supplement Medicaid programs, of which we noted $38 million of that was prior year. So that brings us to about a little over $1 billion of -- $1.02 billion for year-to-date in fiscal '25, then of that $148 million was out of period. So I think we're on track. It's right in the middle of kind of our expectations once you normalize for the out of period prior year payments. And then in terms of normalization. I would say from a technical math basis, the $148 million of Medicaid supplemental payments that we pointed out are the largest normalization factor for '25 and '26, obviously, there are a lot of other dynamics that we -- that Saum touched on in his opening comments around reimbursement and other dynamics that we'll have to take into consideration as we get deeper into guidance in our next earnings call.

Our next question comes from Brian Tanquilut with Jefferies.

Just a question on capital allocation. Obviously, you've set goals for USPI's acquisition spend, and you've already exceeded that. And then how should we be thinking about that and then the buyback in terms of how you're thinking about your thrown capital to buyback since you've hit your M&A targets already?

Yes. I mean the M&A targets every year are obviously guidance that we go into the year with respect to expectations of what we're going to do. We're responsive to a marketplace, as you can imagine. And we're very careful about our diligence in maintaining our high bar for acquisitions. This year, we have found more opportunities, a broader pipeline certain processes that may have been competitive in addition that we want and just continued momentum on our de novo strategy.

So mean the kind of cash flow that USPI generates, we can fund those increases. Now obviously, if you go back historically, with the platform deals that we have done, we've also outspent our typical guidance. So yes. Look, we try to update that as we go quarter-to-quarter based upon what we're seeing in the environment and what we're bringing on board. Obviously, having these additional assets on board is positive for the organization going into the following year. And as I noted, we also continue to see some more opportunity in the fourth quarter. So we'll see how that all plays out. I mean we just remain focused on executing the M&A and de novo strategy. And if we do it with the appropriate diligence and onboarding, we're just updating what the spend looks like in a given year.

Look, on the second point, we've been very active repurchasers of our shares this year. I would continue to reiterate at our trading multiples were long-term active repurchasers of our shares this quarter, obviously, was lower than the prior quarter. There's also a lot more uncertainty in the market. And we feel fine about what we've achieved this year in that regard.

Our next question comes from A.J. Rice with UBS.

As you start to think about 2026 budgeting together, et cetera, are there any particular areas on the expense management side. I know you've talked a little bit about some of the things you're seeing this year in labor. But whether it's labor supplies, other there are opportunities for incremental savings or programs to initiatives to move forward? And then obviously, there's a lot of discussion about AI, whether there's anything on AI that's worth calling out that you're focused on being able to deploy that.

A.J., so short, medium, long term, kind of all embedded in there. We have undertaken over the last few months and ongoing business transformation initiative that is designed to look for those opportunities and also do contingency planning given the uncertainty in the marketplace. Those opportunities would include how we think about all aspects of what I would call labor costs within the organization.

Obviously, this year, as we have noted before, we have done some work to rightsize our corporate structure, given some of the asset divestitures that we've had in the past. It has very much been our philosophy to -- I think you know this, to use advanced analytics and where we have the ability to more automation and leveraging our global business center, which is continuing to perform well and scale up. This will -- this year proportionately will be one of the larger scale up years in the last few years. within the global business center, which we feel very good about.

So there are a lot of opportunities there. Sun already talked about supplies, I won't say a lot more there, and we continue to invest actively in improvement opportunities and our ability to drive more efficient and better collections in Conifer, some of which we've noted in earlier parts of this call. So very much comprehensively looking at these opportunities. But with the mindset of finding both shorter-term and longer-term opportunities that will impact the business.

Our next question comes from Josh Raskin with Nephron Research.

First was a quick clarification, I think, on Kevin's question. Did you see the contribution from exchanges, the revenue contribution was less than the percentage of adjusted admissions? And then my real question just sort of getting back to the M&A environment for the ASCs. There's been a couple more reports, media reports in terms of maybe a competitive landscape. And I'm just curious if that's been changing or if you're seeing anything on valuations yet? And as you speak to your conversations with physicians, maybe how they're evaluating opportunities in ASCs as well?

I think the commentary, going back to the first question from Kevin was simply that the exposure to exchanges either on volumes or revenue is less than in the hospital business, USPI, the exposure whether you're looking at volumes of exchange patients or revenue from exchange patients proportionally in their business is less than the hospital business. That was what the comment was. I hope that helps clarify.

The ASC opportunity, first of all, I would say it has so many different dimensions in terms of the growth platform that we have built at USPI, right? We're active in de novos. Those are more focused on higher-end specialties and partnerships with our more proactive health system partners. So there's really 2 threads there. We've worked hard to work with MSO organizations that are deploying capital and scaling their businesses to be the partner of choice on the ASC side. I think that has played out very nicely. And really there, the strategies are across multiple different service lines, GI, orthopedics, stuff that we do with MSOs in ophthalmology, obviously, our urology platform, et cetera. So there are multiple avenues of growth that develop there.

Of course, we talk about the acquisition market a fair amount. And in that acquisition market, we have been, for a long period of time, the partner of choice. It's the reason we've scaled so effectively. But physicians to get to your question of what are they looking for? I mean they're looking for somebody who's delivered a consistent track record who has demonstrated the ability to grow, who has demonstrated the ability to take on new assets and find that other doctors tell them that it went well when onboarded. And they're looking -- many times, single specialty physicians are looking for somebody who has a proven track record to help them diversify their business. to grow the center and make it multispecialty, which is, as you know, something that USPI has historically been very, very good at in terms of running larger multi-specialty type of centers that help these physicians get to the next level of maturity in their investments.

So when I look across the board on the way the market works, we continue to be the advantaged party in what it takes to build and grow this segment. And so that's what gives us the confidence to continue ahead to spend more than we had originally thought we would spend and look forward to a healthy pipeline in 2026.

This is Sun. Josh, just to give you the numbers again. What we said was for [indiscernible], it represents 8.4% of our admissions in Q3 of '25 and 7% of our total consolidated revenues. So the admissions that is a little slightly higher than the revenue stat, and that's been consistent for us historically. Hopefully, that helps.

Our next question comes from Whit Mayo with Leerink Partners.

So CMS is this new Wiser model in fee-for-surface Medicare that starts next year. Do you see any impact on prior for administrative work for USPI? I know it's only 6 states, but Texas is one of them and knee arthroscopy and certain implants. I think there are an area they're focused on. So just any thoughts or insight into how you're preparing for this.

Yes. Well, there is some movement in the preauthorization space in fee-for-service Medicare. As you correctly note, the Wiser program still has some uncertainty about how and what scope of services that will be implemented for. But yes, we have taken into consideration what will be required there. There are really 3 threats to it. One is premiering documentation, understanding of documentation requirements for appropriate care. Two is actually consistently complying with those. And three is the operational element of managing our scheduling to be complemented by preauthorization having been achieved. So we're sort of prepared to do all of that. I mean we don't talk about it much, but we have a very capable revenue cycle function within USPI that deals with all of the end-to-end type of services that are required there. And so we feel pretty good about that.

Look, the other thing is that in any marketplace, when these types of things are introduced, there's an adjustment period. But also physicians have the opportunity to adjust different mix into the centers as they fill their -- especially the ones that have block time. And so I think part of the move here will also be to increase commercial mix and work with the physicians to increase their commercial mix in that process.

Our last question comes from Andrew Mok with Barclays Bank.

This is [ Thomas Wilson ] on for Andrew. As we await the finalization of the hospital outpatient role, could you comment on whether the removal of the inpatient-only list is a net positive or net negative for the enterprise?

Okay. So that came through really garbled. I think the question was, is the inpatient only rule list going away? And is that a benefit to us. I don't know that it's going away. I think there's been discussion about the inpatient-only rule list and what that impact would be. I mean, obviously, for us, the benefit would be in the USPI segment and potentially a push for more in certain types of volumes that have been in the hospital setting into the outpatient setting.

In our acute care hospital segment, because of our greater focus on high acuity work, proportionally, and it's not to say that we don't have the business. But proportionally, those cases wouldn't be affected as much as maybe a typical general acute care facility. But we haven't done any quantification of that, that we've shared anywhere. I think this policy is still very much up in the air being discussed and not even at the point where I would say that we're engaging in rule-making discussions about it.

We have reached the end of the question-and-answer session, and this concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.

Thank you.