Cigna at Morgan Stanley Conference: Strategic Growth in a Disruptive Market

On Wednesday, September 10, 2025, Cigna Corp (NYSE:CI) presented at the Morgan Stanley 23rd Annual Global Healthcare Conference, outlining its strategic growth and resilience in a challenging market. CEO Brian Evanko and CFO Ann Dennison highlighted Cigna’s robust performance, including a 13% compounded EPS growth over the past decade, while addressing both opportunities and challenges in the healthcare sector.

Key Takeaways

• Cigna reaffirmed its full-year and 2025 EPS outlook, showcasing confidence in its financial performance.
• A $3.5 billion investment in Shields Health Solutions aims to bolster Cigna’s role in the specialty drug market.
• The specialty pharmacy sector is poised for growth, with biosimilars offering significant savings potential.
• Cigna’s M&A strategy focuses on bolt-on acquisitions, share repurchases, and strategic capital deployment.
• AI is being leveraged to enhance operations and customer experiences.

Financial Results

Cigna reported a 13% compounded EPS growth over the past decade, reaffirming its full-year outlook. The company anticipates Q3 EPS to exceed 25% of the full-year EPS, with Evernorth’s performance expected to mirror last year’s Q3 and Q4 results. CFO Ann Dennison highlighted an incremental EPS growth of 4% to 5% from capital deployment strategies, including share repurchases and M&A.

Operational Updates

The company’s investment in Shields Health Solutions, valued at $3.5 billion, is a strategic move to enhance its presence in the specialty drug market. Shields serves approximately 80 health systems nationwide, and the investment is expected to expand Cigna’s addressable market. Although financial details of the income stream remain undisclosed, the investment aligns with Cigna’s growth strategy.

Future Outlook

The specialty pharmacy market, valued at over $400 billion, is experiencing high single-digit growth. Cigna aims to increase its in-house distribution to 50% across its specialty business. The adoption of biosimilars, with $100 billion worth of drugs facing competition by 2030, presents a significant savings opportunity. The company also introduced a $0 out-of-pocket offering for Stelara in May.

Q&A Highlights

During the Q&A session, Cigna addressed its M&A strategy, focusing on bolt-on acquisitions and evaluating each opportunity against potential buybacks. The company is also exploring AI applications to optimize operations and enhance customer experiences. In the pharmacy benefit management sector, Cigna reported strong retention rates and is working constructively with lawmakers on PBM reform.

For a comprehensive understanding of Cigna’s strategic initiatives and financial outlook, refer to the full transcript of the conference call below.

Full transcript - Morgan Stanley 23rd Annual Global Healthcare Conference:

Erin, Host, Morgan Stanley: Good morning, everyone.

Erin, Host, Morgan Stanley: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to day three of the Morgan Stanley Healthcare Conference. Before we get started, for more important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley Research Disclosure website at morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you do have any questions, please reach out to your relevant Morgan Stanley sales representative. Happy to have with us today The Cigna Group. We have CEO Brian Evanko with us, as well as Ann Dennison, EVP and CFO of The Cigna Group as well. Thank you so much for joining us. Before we get into kind of Q&A, I want to hand it off to Brian to talk a little bit about or give a little bit of an intro. Thanks.

Brian Evanko, CEO, The Cigna Group: Thanks, Erin. Appreciate you and Morgan Stanley hosting us here today. Ann and I look forward to discussing anything that’s on your mind, but just maybe a couple introductory comments before we get going. We just reported our second quarter results last month and delivered a good performance and reaffirmed our full-year outlook. Last week, we reaffirmed the full-year EPS outlook yet again. The company’s performing. It’s obviously a very disruptive environment that we’re operating in right now, but our company continues to deliver. We’ve delivered historically. We’re delivering now, and we’ll continue to deliver into the future. In fact, if you go back over the past decade, we’ve had 13% compounded EPS growth and look forward to another strong year here in 2025.

That comes back to our three strong scaled growth platforms: our health benefits business, Cigna Healthcare, and then in Evernorth, our service company, we have our pharmacy benefits services business, Express Scripts, and our specialty pharmacy business and specialty care services business, I should say. All three of those are strong scaled platforms that continue to grow, and we’re confident in those businesses continuing to grow in the future. The second thing I wanted to highlight that’s a net new item is just last week, we announced a sizable investment in Shields Health Solutions. For those of you not familiar with Shields, this is the leading, by far leading, company in the specialty space as it relates to serving health systems. The specialty drug market, if you’re not familiar with it, is an over $400 billion addressable market.

Today, we have a very strong position in the prescription drug-oriented part of that market, which is about 60% or so with our Accredo specialty pharmacy. We were comparatively weaker in the medical benefit component of the specialty drugs market, which is the other 40%. Our investment in Shields immediately gives us a very strong presence in that part of the market. This is a $400 billion plus addressable market, high single-digit secular growth annually going forward. We’re already strong in the drug-oriented component with Accredo, and now we’ve, overnight, become much stronger with our presence in the medical benefit component of the specialty drug market with the investment we made in Shields. Along with that, we reaffirmed our 2025 EPS outlook, but the company continues to perform in a difficult environment. Just a couple of comments I wanted to start with, Erin, before we get to what’s ever.

Erin, Host, Morgan Stanley: Great. I want to stay on the topic of Shields since it’s so recent as well. Can you give a little bit more detail on the financial and strategic merits of the investment, how you see this kind of integrating over time, and maybe some more specifics in terms of the genesis of this transaction?

Brian Evanko, CEO, The Cigna Group: Sure. I’ll start with some strategic aspects of it, and then I’ll ask Ann to chime in on the financial components of the transaction. As we think about any inorganic opportunities for the company, they go through three filters for us. One is it’s strategically aligned with where the company’s headed. Two is it financially attractive. Three is there a high probability of completing the transaction. This one ticks all those boxes. Strategically, as I mentioned earlier, it’s an asset in the category of one in this space, far and away the leader as it relates to serving health systems. Financially, it was attractive, and Ann will reference that in just a minute. We obviously got the transaction completed. On the strategic merits, really importantly, maybe I’ll unpack a little bit more of what I was talking about earlier with the 40% of the specialty drug market that serves providers.

Today, we have a strong distribution business in that part of the market with CuraScript, which is about a $25 billion business for us. Think of this as distributing high-cost, complex specialty drugs to providers, to hospitals, to health systems, to clinics. Where we didn’t have as strong of a position is in the actual support for those health systems in managing and running their own specialty pharmacies. That’s what Shields does at a tremendous level. Our investment in Shields was designed to get us into that part of the specialty drug market. Think of large health systems. Shields currently serves about 80 of them across the country. All the hospitals and clinics that attach to that, there’s about 1,000 of those that are in support of the 80 health systems.

They are running their own specialty pharmacies, but in a lot of cases, they’re not optimizing the way they’re running it. We help them with drug procurement. We help them with inventory management. We help them with clinical care coordination across different sites. Those are all the things that Shields does to make the hospital’s specialty pharmacy optimized and run more effectively. The hospitals and health systems are looking for this because increasingly, their core businesses are under financial pressure. If you think about the challenges of payer mix, the challenges of wage inflation, and associated dynamics along those lines. For us, the ability to have this position in Shields gives us exposure to a really high-growth part of the market and a part of the market where the health systems really need help. They need help to optimize and manage their specialty drugs more effectively.

That was the strategic rationale why we did this. It made a ton of sense for us. It was, quite honestly, a no-brainer strategically, which leads to the financial component of the transaction. Ann?

Erin, Host, Morgan Stanley: Great. On the financial side, $3.5 billion investment. The investment is in a non-controlling preferred. There is an income stream associated with it. We haven’t disclosed the specific details, but I would describe it as not material to our overall results. Excuse me. As Brian said, we’re extremely excited for the strategic element of this. When you think about our capital deployment framework as well as over the long term, sort of the incremental EPS that we get from capital deployment of 4% to 5%, it’s either coming from share repurchase, M&A, or debt paydown in those categories. Shields fits nicely into this construct with a long-term strategic bend to it.

Erin, Host, Morgan Stanley: That’s great. I want to talk a little bit broader specialty. I just always view that that’s an underappreciated part of just the market or part of the Cigna story and the $400 billion market going high single digits. I mean, it’s bigger and faster going in a lot of areas of traditional kind of healthcare services or the insurance businesses that get a lot more attention. I want to shift gears to that and just talk about what your long-term prospects are across that business, how you see your competitively advantage or the differentiators for Cigna, and what that means in terms of potential for growth above the market.

Brian Evanko, CEO, The Cigna Group: Sure. I’ll take this one. Again, coming back to the highest level, $400 billion plus addressable market, high single-digit secular growth. About 60% of that is in direct-to-patient specialty drugs. We serve that market through Accredo, which is our specialty pharmacy, both in terms of the drugs going direct to the patient, but also our support for those. We have over 600 home infusion nurses that go into people’s houses and help them to inject or infuse the specialty medications themselves. That business is strong, scaled, continues to grow at really attractive rates. One of the reasons we win is because of the clinical expertise we have in that business. I tend to describe it, it’s more like a care delivery business as opposed to an insurance business or a PBM business.

It’s more like a care delivery business because fundamentally, these are all high-cost, clinically intensive drugs that require case-by-case, in some cases, temperature control or very specific handling. We serve about a million patients today through Accredo. Last year, we filled about 8 million prescriptions on their behalf. One of the reasons that we’ve established a differentiated position is the clinical expertise that we have, all the pharmacists, the pharmatechs that we employ, the home infusion nurses, and importantly, the manufacturers of specialty drugs. They don’t just want to give these drugs to anybody. You have to be someone that they trust as it relates to your specialty pharmacy capabilities in order to get access to some of these specialty drugs. The limited distribution drugs, which are some of the rarest and most complex, we have the most access to these of any specialty pharmacy in the world.

We have access to over 70% of all the LDDs that exist. As a result of that, we’re not just in Cigna’s network with Accredo. Our Accredo specialty pharmacy is in many competitor payer networks or competitor PBM networks. In fact, about 40% of our patients are unaffiliated with our Cigna Healthcare or Express Scripts businesses. Those are the reasons why we win in that part of the market, which again is the more pharmacy direct-to-patient part of specialty. The other 40%, which is a direct-to-provider, we’ve had this position in CuraScript that I was describing earlier, the distribution to the medical professionals, but we were not as strong in the actual helping the providers run their specialty pharmacy capabilities, which is what Shields does. Shields is a fee-based business.

We’re getting fees from the health systems and the hospitals to help them, assist them in operating their specialty pharmacies, which increasingly are important because many of these systems hadn’t historically focused as much on the prescription drug part of their operations, but now they are because prescription drugs continue to be a bigger percentage of the total pie. It’s an opportunity for many of these systems to generate more revenue in a time where they’re really constrained financially.

Erin, Host, Morgan Stanley: Okay. I’ll switch to biosimilars like biosimilars, Stelara, Smyre. Those can be a meaningful opportunity on the specialty pharmacy side. I think $100 billion by 2030 is how you sized it. How is this playing out relative to your expectations, given some varying adoption curves across biosimilars?

Brian Evanko, CEO, The Cigna Group: Yeah. We see biosimilars and generic specialty drugs as a great savings opportunity for America broadly. To your point, there will be $100 billion of drugs today that are subject to biosimilar and generic competition by 2030. We are right in the midst of that as it relates to the capabilities we have across our Evernorth platform. From our point of view, this is a classic case of it’s a win-win for the financier, whether it’s an employer-client, health plan, or an individual. It’s a win for the patient because it’s a lower out-of-pocket. It’s a win for us because whenever we fill a biosimilar or generic, instead of a high-cost specialty drug or brand drug, it ends up financially being equivalent or better for us on a per script basis.

For all those reasons, we believe biosimilars and specialty generics are just a huge opportunity for the American health system. Humira was the first really one of scale, right, which hit the market a year or two ago. As it relates to where we are now, at the end of the second quarter, we had over 70% of eligible Humira scripts that were filled by a biosimilar. That’s been really good progress. We expect that metric will tick up over the balance of the year as well. In May, we introduced a $0 patient out-of-pocket for Stelara, which is the next largest biosimilar that’s been introduced. We’ve seen good uptick in the three or four months since we put that opportunity into the market. Both Humira and Stelara now have $0 patient out-of-pocket offerings available, which again speaks to the win-win opportunity with these biosimilars.

Erin, Host, Morgan Stanley: You mentioned CuraScript several times, and I don’t want to go over too much more on that, but I do want a little bit of an update on how much you’re doing now in terms of CuraScript. I think the goal was to get to 50% in-house distribution across your specialty business. I think you were at 20% roughly. Where do you stand today and how is progress on that front? Do you anticipate taking that entire business in terms of distribution?

Brian Evanko, CEO, The Cigna Group: Yeah. Yeah. Your numbers are broadly right, Erin, in terms of the way to frame the situation. CuraScript today for us is about a $25 billion business. It’s been growing double digits annually for a number of years in a row. Most of the distribution is focused on the provider community, meaning we don’t really distribute to retail pharmacies, etc., with CuraScript. We do have a partnership, a longstanding partnership with Sencora, which has continued to be constructive and productive. We just extended that over a multi-year period last year. We continue to look drug by drug at what makes sense for us to be able to distribute ourselves through CuraScript versus through a partner who we have a good relationship with in Sencora. Biosimilars in particular, the ones I just referenced for Humira and Stelara, do lend themselves to our CuraScript capabilities.

We’ve tended to use that capability for the newer biosimilars that come to market. We expect the CuraScript business will continue to grow attractively in the future.

Erin, Host, Morgan Stanley: Okay. Before shifting to pharmacy benefit services, I want to ask a little bit about Evernorth just broadly and the seasonality here. This was one area that was a big question area for investors after the second quarter call, on sort of the Evernorth earnings progression in the second half. Could you talk a little bit or provide a little bit of an overview on how we should be thinking about that quarterly progression? What are some of the moving pieces, not only, I guess, across Evernorth, but The Cigna Group, the broader enterprise as well, Cigna Healthcare, Evernorth for the remainder of the year?

Erin, Host, Morgan Stanley: Sure. Coming out of the second quarter, we had provided some guidance. I think in some cases, that guidance we were providing was taken as a point estimate. I think what’s important to note, if we go straight to Evernorth, there’s nothing out of pattern that we would expect in the third or fourth quarter. When you think about the third quarter and the fourth quarter, the third quarter is going to look and feel distribution-wise and the fourth quarter like it did last year. The levels of growth versus last year for the third and fourth quarter, we expect them to look similar to what we saw last year. That’s on the Evernorth side. On the Cigna Healthcare side, we expect the third quarter to be about a little bit less than 25% of our full-year outlook.

If you look at the entirety of our EPS for the third quarter, we expect that to be a little bit higher than 25% of the full-year outlook. In that vein, these are meant to be directional guidance, not point estimates as folks are thinking about modeling those out.

Erin, Host, Morgan Stanley: Okay. Great. I’ll switch gears to the PBM, and then we’ll get to Cigna Healthcare. On the PBM side of the business, how would you characterize the current 2026 selling season? You’ve had a multi-year renewal with Prime Therapeutics or with Prime. Are there any other contracts, I guess, up for renewal?

Brian Evanko, CEO, The Cigna Group: Yeah. The 2026 season for us in the pharmacy benefit services space specifically is just about wrapped up now, and there’s only a few left to go. Broadly speaking, another year of strong retention. We’re on track for that mid-90% or higher level in the pharmacy benefit services business, as you referenced, Erin. Earlier in the year, we announced a multi-year renewal of Prime Therapeutics, which we’re thrilled to do. They’ve been a great partner to us. That validates, from our point of view, that some of the largest, most sophisticated purchasers continue to value the services that we provide, even though there is obviously some buzz and some noise in the market about alternative models to some degree. We continue to have a strong level of retention, continue to have high satisfaction rates from our clients, and are pleased with the ongoing growth of that business.

Erin, Host, Morgan Stanley: Okay. Great. GLP-1. A little bit over 50% or so of employer relationships currently cover GLP-1 for weight loss. It’s flatish year over year. How would you characterize that remaining 50% bucket in terms of their readiness to cover GLP-1s beyond the diabetic indications? Everett North has announced several innovative programs around this over the past couple of years, whether it’s the $200 out-of-pocket cap, EncircleRx, EnReachRx, NGuide Pharmacy, Clear Network, a lot of other initiatives in and around this category. Can you comment on the reception of those, the adoption of those, and how you’re addressing GLP-1 broadly?

Brian Evanko, CEO, The Cigna Group: Sure. That was a multi-parter. Let me know if I get all of this. Broadly speaking, we’re really proud of everything we’ve been doing in the GLP-1 space across The Cigna Group. Obviously, these are innovative medications that are making a difference in a lot of people’s lives, and we want to make sure that they’re accessed in an affordable way that ensures patient safety. A lot of our programs that we’ve introduced have been anchored around those themes: access, affordability, and patient safety. You mentioned over 50% of our clients have covered GLP-1s for weight management. That’s specifically our Evernorth portfolio, where we tend to have larger employers on average and health plans on average. In the Cigna Healthcare portfolio, which is our health benefits business, we tend to skew a little bit to smaller employers.

There, we have 15% to 20% that cover it for weight management, just to give you a little bit of a sense of the contrast there. To your point, it’s been flat-ish year over year in terms of the percentage of employers covering it. We still are seeing utilization growth because even with the same percentage of employers, there’s net utilization growth in those that have access to it. As it relates to those that don’t cover it, there’s a lot of interest, but the affordability hurdle is a big one for many employers to get over. Some of the employers we cover have higher rates of turnover in their employee base, and they have questions about whether they’ll see the return or whether the return will be the benefit of a different employer in the future. Those are some of the barriers that still exist.

The programs we’ve introduced, EncircleRx, EnReachRx, NGuide Pharmacy, have all been anchored around those themes of affordability, access, and patient safety. Importantly, patient safety is one we’ve been very focused on because there are many non-FDA-approved versions out there, in some cases compounded versions, that more and more you hear stories about the ingredients not being quite right. You also have risk of people microdosing to try to stretch their finances and things along those lines. We’re very focused on making sure that the drugs are being used in the right way. The programs you made reference to, EncircleRx, EnReachRx, NGuide Pharmacy, are all designed around that. In some cases, it means lower prescription volumes for us, which we’re okay with because over the long run, we think it’s the right thing to do to ensure that there’s the access but with the right patient safety wrapped around it.

In May, I think this was also in your question, we introduced a new program which involved a reduction in the net price for the FDA-approved versions of the GLP-1s and an out-of-pocket cap of no more than $200 per person per month. If you think about that, it made the financial picture a little bit more attractive for an employer who’s covering it because they got a lower net price and they got the cost sharing from the patient. The patient was capped at $200, in many instances, lower than that, which competes very effectively with direct-to-consumer offerings and other ways that they could access the medication. That was an example of another program that we introduced to try to encourage affordability, access, and patient safety. We’re really proud of what we’ve done in this space. There’ll be more innovations to come in the future, I’m sure of it.

Erin, Host, Morgan Stanley: Okay. Great. I do have to ask on PBM reform, similar to, you know, for years now, I feel like. Earlier this year, Arkansas passed a law calling for the separation of pharmacies and PBMs. That’s since been delayed or deferred. There are other states that are pursuing rebates, spread pricing reform. I guess, what’s your view on some of these recent reforms and proposals? It seems that some of these reforms around kind of price transparency, rebate, discount, kind of pass-throughs could be manageable. The PBM model has evolved, right? I do think, you know, what is the biggest risk, I guess, in your view at this point?

Brian Evanko, CEO, The Cigna Group: Sure. There’s a lot in this topic. As you can appreciate, ideas tend to move over time in terms of where the focus is in the PBM space. We don’t try to protect the status quo as it relates to our business here. To your point, we view our model as a durable model that can evolve and flex depending on any changes in regulation. For us, it really comes back to why clients hire us. They hire us for the affordability we deliver, so better unit costs than they can secure themselves. They hire us for the clinical programs that we introduce to ensure patient safety of the drugs. They hire us for the administration of their benefits.

Those are the three value creators that, regardless of what government regulation may come, as long as those three value creators still exist, we’ll be able to earn an appropriate return for that. We view our margin profile, which is circa 4%, as a durable margin profile in any of those potential scenarios. As it relates to where the government tends to focus, it’s a little bit of a moving target. Right now, it looks a little bit more focused on the government programs, meaning Medicare and Medicaid and some of the provisions within those, which were a little bit smaller on a relative basis. We’re a little bit larger in the commercial employer space. What we’re seeing, and we’re engaging constructively with lawmakers in D.C. and in the states, we believe that it will be manageable for us ultimately, provided that those three value creation levers are not compromised.

Erin, Host, Morgan Stanley: Great. Also, part of the new administration, there is a lot more noise around drug pricing, whether it’s through IRA, mostly for nations. There is also a lot of push around this direct-to-consumer type of model as well. Can you provide us your latest in terms of what you’re hearing on this front, what this looks like for The Cigna Group, if there’s any implications? It seems like some of the direct-to-consumer stuff, whether it’s really direct or otherwise, seems to be a little bit more around cash pay. Can you talk a little bit about what that means for the model?

Brian Evanko, CEO, The Cigna Group: Yeah. This topic, whether it’s MFN or direct-to-consumer, specific details really do matter in terms of exactly what are the implications for different competitors in the industry. The details still are being ironed out, as you can appreciate. Now, the spirit behind Most Favored Nation makes all the sense in the world, right? You would want the U.S. to be on equal footing with other countries as it relates to net pricing. The implications of that ultimately are still a little bit unclear to us. Again, we’re engaging constructively with policymakers and lawmakers on those topics. Direct-to-consumer models intuitively make sense. We have access, or we offer access to our InsideRx program today for individuals that may want to go cash pay or use our discount cards.

Where the challenge with those models ultimately is in high-cost specialty drugs or the high-cost branded drugs because someone who has a drug that costs $20,000 per month, a direct-to-consumer model is a tough model to imagine. You think about the $4 million gene therapies, direct-to-consumer models. The financing of those is where the challenge starts to really come in. You could see maybe the model growing a little bit on the lower cost generic side. Even in that situation, we have enough capability across our platform that we’re confident we’ll continue to thrive.

Erin, Host, Morgan Stanley: Great. I want to shift to Cigna Healthcare. I know a lot of you have questions on that. What are your latest thoughts on the utilization trend? On your second quarter call, you called out heightened pressure across the stop-loss book. It does seem to be in line with your expectations, how you characterized it before. Could you comment on what you’re seeing from a utilization standpoint?

Erin, Host, Morgan Stanley: Yeah. Sure. I’ll talk a little bit about that. Coming into the year, we expected higher utilization. We continue to see it. If you’re looking at the commercial book, the biggest pressures that we’re seeing there are on the specialty injectables and the behavioral health side. I should say they are the biggest contributors to cost spend. That is what we expected, and we continue to see that as the year goes on. With respect to stop-loss, as a reminder, for the last year, our loss ratio there was in the low 90%. Coming into this year, we expected that to be higher. We’re seeing similar sort of drivers, but we are seeing it play out as we expected it to be. It is higher, and it’s in line with our expectations.

We’ve added a lot of other data elements in order to support the analysis that we’re doing on a day-to-day, month-to-month basis in order to track it. We’re keeping a very close eye on it. It is tracking to what we expected of being a higher MCR for this year than last year. Maybe the last thing I’ll mention is on the exchange business. We did see some higher utilization, maybe about $30 million of pressure in the second quarter. We’ve built that into what we expect the pressure to be there throughout the back half of the year. We’re pretty much seeing what we expected in our estimates. It’s built into our guide.

Erin, Host, Morgan Stanley: Broadly, and in your reaffirmed guide, AK, that broadly assumed consistent trends are in line with your expectations into the second half. Okay.

Erin, Host, Morgan Stanley: Yes.

Erin, Host, Morgan Stanley: Can you clarify the pricing environment? You mentioned also on the second quarter call that you see the market taking a more broadly conservative approach from a pricing perspective. Can you describe the environment right now, what your anticipation is heading into 2026, and are there any deviations from that narrative with specifics around the commercial product?

Erin, Host, Morgan Stanley: I’ll touch on that. No deviations from what we’ve said before. Like I said, we saw elevated trends last year. We expected to see them again this year. In our pricing, we expect to price 2026 at a higher level than 2025. That’s sort of playing out in the process as we go through this year.

Erin, Host, Morgan Stanley: Okay. Going back to the exchange business, you talked a little bit about the utilization environment that we’re seeing. Can you talk a little bit about the long-term margin growth profile that you’re thinking about for that business? Do you still see this market as attractive in the long term, just given some of the recent volatility there and the likelihood or potential for should enhanced subsidies, which it changes every day now, sunset at the end of the year? How are you thinking about that, and how are you thinking about the prospects of the exchange business?

Erin, Host, Morgan Stanley: Sure. I’ll start. Brian, if you want to add anything, we still believe the individual exchange market is an important part of the ecosystem for those that don’t have access to employer or governmental plans. As we said coming out of the second quarter call, and we’ve been talking about, we’ve been pricing for margin and not for growth. To ensure that we’re managing our margin appropriately, we are doing that again this year. We’ve submitted our prices for 2026, and we’ll manage to what happens in the market. Of course, if the environment changes and there’s a change in the perspective around the subsidies, we’ll have to shift and work with the states to see if there’s anything that needs to be done there. Everything that we have submitted for 2026 is already in.

Erin, Host, Morgan Stanley: Okay. I want to switch gears back to M&A and capital deployment. Brian, at the beginning of our discussion, you talked about some of those key parameters that you’re thinking about when it comes to M&A. Will Shields help to explain your future M&A strategy here? How are you currently viewing the M&A environment and your areas of focus? Has anything changed in terms of how you’re thinking about M&A versus a year ago, and still commitment also to buybacks as well?

Brian Evanko, CEO, The Cigna Group: Sure. I’ll start. If you want to comment at all on buybacks or anything else, feel free. Overall, as I mentioned earlier, the three criteria continue to guide us in terms of strategic alignment, financial attractiveness, high probability of close. We’re generally interested in things that either expand our reach. The Shields Health Solutions deal expanded our addressable market. We had a part of the market where we were not as strong, and we felt like we could get an immediate boost through the investment we made in Shields Health Solutions. Things that expand our addressable markets, expand our reach are interesting, or things that deepen our capabilities in the existing platform. For the time being, we’re very focused on bolt-on-oriented acquisitions. Think of up to high single-digit type billions. That’s what we define as a bolt-on. The Shields Health Solutions deal kind of fits squarely within that.

We’ve had some other smaller ones as well in the last year or so. We’re focused on that as it relates to M&A-oriented priorities. Ultimately, each of these have to compete against buybacks. We always look at the accretion from buybacks. Whenever we talk about our growth algorithm and 4% to 5% of EPS accretion coming from capital deployment, that is fungible between buybacks and M&A. When we do a deal like Shields Health Solutions and we say it’s a material EPS, that’s in comparison to doing buybacks, right? We hold ourselves to that standard as opposed to something where we allow a less accretive transaction to still be acceptable. Buybacks are ultimately the standard for us. We’ll continue to repurchase shares in the future. Obviously, we have to keep the balance sheet in a good position.

Erin, Host, Morgan Stanley: Yeah. I think as far as this year goes, we had said coming out of the second quarter, even coming into the year, we expect sort of a barbell approach to buyback. Now, with the Shields Health Solutions investment, we expect to push out some of those buybacks a little bit further, at least as it relates to this year, but obviously agree with everything Brian just outlined. Great. Lastly, a big theme for us at Morgan Stanley is kind of AI, AI diffusion across healthcare, how healthcare systems, how healthcare providers, how healthcare services more broadly can leverage AI and technology. Can you talk about some of those technological advancements that you’re seeing and that you’re utilizing and investing in that could drive some mid-to-long-term opportunities?

Brian Evanko, CEO, The Cigna Group: Yeah. At The Cigna Group, we’re very excited about the concept of AI and all the potential use cases in the healthcare system. We’ve both hired talent and upskilled existing talent to make sure that we’re properly positioned here. Broadly, you can think of it in three categories for us: one being the better, faster, cheaper. How do we take operating expenses out without sacrificing quality of what we’re delivering? That’s kind of category one. Category two is things that are more precise and personalized for individual customers or patients. An example of that would be earlier this year, we introduced an AI-powered virtual assistant to our Cigna Healthcare customers to make their care experience more personalized. The third category is what we characterize as net new business models.

We don’t have a lot of announcements in this category yet, but it’s an area that we’re actively exploring and looking to innovate. Think of it in those three buckets: better, faster, cheaper, more precise and personalized, and then net new business models. Some of those tangible use cases are things like our contact centers, pricing and underwriting where we’re exploring things. There are some clinical use cases that we’re exploring as well. Obviously, that last category, we’re going very carefully to make sure that patient safety is never compromised.

Erin, Host, Morgan Stanley: Okay. All right. Thank you so much for the time, Brian. I really appreciate it. It was great to discuss your notes. Thank you.

Brian Evanko, CEO, The Cigna Group: Thank you, Erin. Appreciate it.

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