Cardinal Health, Inc. CAH

Our econometric model shows Cardinal Health is delivering meaningful top-line growth with operating leverage: SG&A elasticity is 0.89x, so SG&A expands slower than revenue, suggesting most growth comes from volume and mix rather than fatiguing selling costs. The holdout test for SG&A produced 64.7B vs 65.6B actual, a -1.5% miss, and overall MAPE of 3.5% across 65 quarters, implying the forecast is reasonably reliable but with a modest bias toward underpredicting costs as activity climbs. This means margin resilience should hold if growth remains productively channeled into higher-margin services rather than heavier SG&A push, though acquisitions or payer/pricing headwinds could erode that leverage. Key risks to watch are regulatory/pricing shifts, volume volatility in pharma distribution, and integration costs from any M&A-driven growth.