Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Tom Galucci with Lazard Capital.
Tom Galucci - Lazard Capital
I guess just to be clear then, Tom, relative to the 13% to 15% for next year that you had initially discussed, when you talked about the PBM being down 10% or 12% on operating profit, are we looking at something more like a 2.75 or 2.80 number on an EPS basis?
Thomas M. Ryan
Well, you can -- we are not going to obviously give you the totals but you can kind of roll it up and get to the number. But it’s -- as I said, when we did these and I gave you those projections, it was basically single to mid -- single mid digit -- low mod digit single growth for the PBM, so we were looking in the 2% to 4%, 2% to 5% range for growth when we gave you those numbers and obviously it is going to be less than that, as I said, in the 10 plus range. So you can kind of roll it up and get in the ballpark.
Tom Galucci - Lazard Capital
Okay. Obviously the Achilles Heel I think for the stock and certainly it looks like for next year in terms of overall growth is going to be the selling side on the PBM business. Can you give us maybe some more granularity as to why in the long run you are still optimistic about the combined model and maybe sort of what has gone wrong in the last year or two and why you think that is going to get better in the next year or two?
Thomas M. Ryan
The reason I still have confidence and we continue to have confidence in the combined model is because of the -- what we are seeing in the marketplace from new clients and the money and the time that we are saving not only the plan but the members. So there is uptake on it and listen, this is all about results, so I am not Pollyanna here. We get it. We have to produce better results on the PBM side.
Having said that, I think it’s important to segment the pieces. We had some big losses. We had a lot of wins. We renewed contracts. We are getting more share of the spend from those contracts but we in fact when you lose -- we lost Coventry, which we lost the Med D business and then we obviously expected to lose the commercial business. Chrysler, we lost the retirees. It’s the smallest piece of it. It went to where Ford and General Motors was with Michigan Blues. We didn’t lose the actives. And then the Med D was a really big headwind for us. That was a huge hit when you look at obviously the spread issue and then also the live.
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