IN Brief:
- Medline finished 2025 with $28.4bn net sales and $2.4bn in new customer signings.
- The company is expanding goods-to-person automation and launching a bulk-picking pilot in Ohio.
- Mpower is being positioned as a “control tower” layer for forecasting, inventory, and disruption management.
Medline has accelerated its warehouse automation programme and is preparing a broader customer rollout of an AI-based supply chain platform after its December 2025 Nasdaq listing.
On its first earnings call as a public company, Medline executives said the business is preparing a mid-year expansion of Mpower, developed with Microsoft, as a digital “control tower” for Prime Vendor customers. The platform is intended to automate and streamline forecasting, inventory stabilisation, substitution workflows, and approvals, while flagging potential supply disruptions before they hit service levels.
In parallel, Medline is scaling the physical layer. The distributor said its Colorado facility has received its first AutoStore installation, while two California sites have added second systems. Medline now operates AutoStore across 19 US facilities with more than 2,100 robots, using the goods-to-person model to increase speed and accuracy for “less than case” picking.
The next step moves up the cube. Medline is preparing a bulk-picking pilot at its Columbus, Ohio, distribution centre with Symbotic, which executives described as Symbotic’s first customer deployment in healthcare. The target is higher throughput on high-volume goods, with AI-powered robotics doing more of the movement and sequencing work across complex order profiles. CEO Jim Boyle framed the goal as lifting throughput and reducing labour pressure by extracting more productivity from existing space, rather than relying on large footprint expansion.
The automation push sits alongside a growth year driven by major contract wins. Management said the company added $2.4bn in total new customer signings during 2025, including the US Department of Veterans Affairs and a large faith-based integrated delivery network that consolidated from five distributors to Medline. Boyle told analysts, “They want resilient, sustainable supply chain partners that can deliver value, get the right product to the right place at the right time, at the lowest cost on a consistent basis.”
The financial backdrop is supportive, but not frictionless. Medline reported fourth-quarter net sales of $7.8bn, up 15% year-on-year, with full-year net sales of $28.4bn, up 12% versus 2024, including 11% organic growth. Adjusted EBITDA for Q4 was $805m, with margin pressure attributed to higher costs, including tariffs, and increased investment in headcount and operations.
Tariffs remain a clear operational constraint for a distributor that sources and manufactures across multiple geographies. Management said the net tariff impact totalled about $290m in 2025 and guided to an annualised net impact of roughly $490m in 2026 after planned mitigation strategies, alongside continued capex aimed at capacity, systems, and automation.
That mix of growth, automation, and cost pressure also explains the tone around Medline’s IPO. Boyle told Reuters, “We’re going to run the business exactly the same way we ran it yesterday. It (the IPO) just allows us to buy down debt and amplify our voice.” The listing priced at $29 per share and upsized to more than 216 million shares, giving Medline additional financial headroom as it pushes harder on warehouse execution technology.
