McKesson Earnings Call Insights: Med-Surg Business and Branded Price Inflation

McKesson, Inc. (NYSE:MCK) recently reported its third quarter earnings and discussed the following topics in its earnings conference call.

Med-Surg Business

Lisa Gill – JPMorgan: I had a question John, on the med-surg business. Clearly 15% is really strong. Jeff talked about the extra day and the acquisitions being 4%, but 11% growth. Can you talk about where that’s coming from and how you see that business evolving. Was part of this flu and therefore more one-time-ish or are you seeing a pickup in the overall business?

John H. Hammergren – Chairman, President and CEO: I think we’re seeing a pickup in the overall business Lisa. I think we’re doing a better job of penetrating our existing customer base from a sales perspective selling more of what they need to run their practices and clearly in the alternate site markets, we’re growing rapidly in home care and extended care. I also would say that I think we are gaining some additional new customers as we progress with our value proposition in our offering. We’re making our sales force more efficient through the productivity tools we’re giving them. So, they have more time to spend with the customers and we’re providing tools to our customers frankly so they can order more efficiently from us. I would also say that the flu impact as we began to see it was more late in December. We might see some of it in our fourth quarter. Clearly the January and February effects, we’ll see – it won’t really be that material on med-surg, but it’s an important part of our business and clearly we are seeing an uptake in physician office visits and emergency room visits et cetera in our industry, but I think overall, it’s just kind of solid momentum across the board and almost all of the businesses that comprise Med-Surg and continued traction with the value proposition that we’ve given to our customers.

Lisa Gill – JPMorgan: And then just as a follow up, Jeff, thank you so much for all the detail, this is very helpful. But when we think about the technology in the deferred revenue the 16 million and the 30 million, can you give us an idea of when that will ultimately be recognized?