Cardinal Health, Inc.

Cardinal Health, Inc. is an American healthcare services and products company that distributes pharmaceuticals, manufactures and sources medical products, and provides specialty practice-management services, generating $222.6 billion in revenue in fiscal 2025. With approximately 57,700 employees and operations anchored in Dublin, Ohio, Cardinal Health sits at the center of the U.S. healthcare supply chain — moving roughly one of every three pharmaceutical products dispensed in the country and supplying medical products to the majority of U.S. hospitals.

This is a story about a low-margin distribution franchise that has spent the last three years remaking itself through acquisitions at the higher-margin edges of healthcare: specialty physician practice management, radiopharmaceutical theranostics, and at-home chronic-care supplies. The transformation is not yet complete — the company carries $9.3 billion in debt following a $5.3 billion acquisition spree in fiscal 2025 — but the earnings power it has unlocked is real: non-GAAP diluted EPS rose from $5.85 in fiscal 2023 to $8.24 in fiscal 2025, and management guided to $10.70–$10.80 in fiscal 2026, implying a second consecutive year of 30% growth. The file turns on a single question: whether the Specialty strategy is genuinely accretive to returns over a cycle, or whether Cardinal Health has levered up to buy growth that the market already priced in.