Leerink analyst David Larsen noted that Cardinal Health (CAH) pointed to generic pricing and sell-side pressure and incremental investments as primary reasons for its FY18 and FY19 adjusted EPS forecasts missing expectations, but he believes there may be other challenges the business is facing too. Cardinal's loss of Prime Therapeutics and Walgreens' (WBA) recent wins from CVS Health (CVS) are other factors that may have hurt Cardinal, said Larsen, who added that both of those will benefit AmerisourceBergen (ABC). The analyst, who also said he is incrementally more cautious on McKesson (MCK) and Owens & Minor (OMI) after Cardinal's call, has an Outperform rating on AmerisourceBergen and Market Perform ratings on Cardinal Health, McKesson and O&M.

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Evercore ISI says that while neither OptumRx nor Cardinal Health (CAH) would confirm the winner of the contract, McKesson (MCK) confirmed it had won the contract beginning in July. Cardinal this morning announced that its pharmaceutical distribution contracts with OptumRx, which represented 16% of fiscal 2023 revenue, is expiring at end of June and will not be renewed. Evercore estimates the win would represent a 50c-65c earnings per share benefit to McKesson on a full-year basis or likely half of that given the contract does not start until July. The firm does not see Cardinal's announcement as "heralding a broadly more competitive period for the distributors, but rather a one-off contract shift given what was likely an off-market contract."

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