Cardinal Health

Core distribution is a pass‑through business with razor‑thin margins; pricing power is structurally limited.

Where Cardinal does have better latent pricing is in higher‑margin areas: specialty physician MSOs, access/hub services, logistics, at‑Home DME, and Nuclear/theranostics, all of which showed strong profit growth in Q1 FY2026. Still, consolidated gross margin remains low, and competition from McKesson and Cencora constrains pricing.

We therefore credit modest future margin expansion from mix but not classic unilateral pricing power.