Q4 2022 Marpai Inc Earnings Call
Speaker 1: I number.
Speaker 2: Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Marpe Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Did you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero.
Speaker 2: After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions.
Speaker 2: Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Simon Lee, who is Vice President with Marpe. Please go ahead.
Speaker 3: Thanks, operator. Welcome everyone to our fourth quarter and full year 2022 call. With me on the call today are Marpe's Chief Executive Officer, Emundo Gonzalez, and Chief Financial Officer, Yoram Bibring. Before turning the call over to Emundo, please note that we'll be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe are important when a...
Speaker 3: statements made during this call will be forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reforms Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause the actual results of Marpe to differ materially from those expressed or implied on this call. For additional information, please visit www.fema.gov.
Speaker 3: Please refer to our cautionary statement in our press release and our filings with the SEC, all of which are available at marpehealth.com. And with that, I will turn the call over to Marpe CEO , Amundo Gonzalez. Amundo? Thanks, Simon, and good morning to everyone, and thank you for joining us. It's a pleasure to be here to discuss our Q4 and full year 2022 financial results.
Speaker 3: For some of you that are joining for the first time, let me just take one minute and review who we are and our strategy. Marpesa Technology Company, which is reinventing how employers around the country manage their spending on healthcare. Often this is the second largest expense for businesses.
Speaker 4: outside of payroll.
Speaker 3: We work with employers that elect not to buy traditional health insurance for their employees, but rather they self-insure. What we do is create company health plans and manage them for our employer clients.
Speaker 3: Almost 100,000 people carry a Marpe card in their wallet or often a digital card on the Marpe app, which they present to doctors' offices, pharmacies and hospitals around the country, just as one would with health plans from Blue Cross or other large insurance companies.
Speaker 3: Our value proposition is simple.
Speaker 3: We save employers money by engaging our members proactively in a manner that improves their health. And yes, healthier employee populations cost our clients less. That's what we do. Our revenue comes from management fees.
Speaker 3: that employers pay us to manage their health plans, as well as fees from a portfolio of ancillary services, including care management, our team of nurses who guide patients on their healthcare journeys.
Speaker 3: 2022 was a transformational year for Merpay.
Speaker 3: We closed the acquisition of Maestro Health in November 22, and this acquisition dramatically increased the size and scale of our business in both revenue and the number of employee lives whose healthcare we manage.
Speaker 3: At year end, we managed over 42,000 employee lives on behalf of approximately 188 self-funded employers across the country.
Speaker 3: To give you an idea of our new scale, last year we paid over 1.15 million medical claims, which cost over $462 million to our clients.
Speaker 3: Now Maestro's business was quite similar to ours in terms of their core offering.
Speaker 3: It's also an administrator of health plans.
Speaker 3: It had similar clients which are employers with hundreds of employees.
Speaker 3: and it had a long-term commitment to serving the members of its health plans.
Speaker 3: Because the businesses are so similar, we have the opportunity to gain efficiencies by eliminating duplicative positions.
Speaker 3: standardizing systems from two to one in most areas, and cross-selling products from each legacy client base.
Speaker 3: We have made much progress since the acquisition in all of these fronts, but there is still much work to do.
Speaker 3: Joram Bibring, our CFO , will give a detailed analysis of the results of Q4 and 2022 as a whole. But let me take a minute to describe the effects of our acquisitions on our revenue over the last few years and how I see 2023 developing. Our net revenues have gone from zero in 2020.
Speaker 3: 34 and 35 million.
Speaker 3: Given the nature of our business, where clients enter into contracts with us of no less than one year, we have relatively good visibility on revenue.
Speaker 3: Now, 2023 is a foundational year where we are setting the groundwork to reach profitability in 2024.
Speaker 3: I've said before that my goal is to create a substantial public company that benefits our members, our clients, and of course our shareholders.
Speaker 3: So what should investors look for during 2023?
Speaker 3: In my mind there are three big strategic items before us and each is important as we reach toward profitability.
Speaker 3: First, we have an opportunity to grow our business based on clients we already have.
Speaker 3: During 2023, we are selling all the new products that we have gained via the acquisition of Maestro Health to the Marpe client base.
Speaker 3: I mentioned in previous calls that the per employee per month revenue, this is a key metric in our industry, at Maestro approaches $50, while at Marpe it is approximately $33.
Speaker 3: Our goal is to bring our total base up to $50 per employee per month.
Speaker 3: Second, investors can see the transformation of our business during 2023 looking at adjusted EPDOM excluding discontinued operations.
Speaker 3: This measure excludes severances, unused leases that are no longer necessary in our joint business, and other one-time expenses related to our integration of the two companies into one.
Speaker 3: We believe this metric will improve every quarter of 2023 as we continue to implement our integration plan. We'll be sharing this with you on future calls. Third, investors should also monitor the future, which we believe is all about value-based care.
Speaker 3: and see how we play a role in this. Let me explain.
Speaker 3: Venture capitalists have spent over $20 billion in recent years on some amazing healthcare companies that attack a particular disease or condition.
Speaker 3: These have spent much capital on solutions that reverse A1C for people with diabetes, for example.
Speaker 3: They have the products, the medical staff, and the data on efficacy. They also put their fees at risk and work with the largest employers in America.
Speaker 3: Now they do this because they need a virtual insurance pool since they're putting their fees at risk. We've partnered with these companies to bring the solutions to the lower middle market, companies with 100 employees or so versus say 5,000 employees. We have made significant investments in AI and other technologies.
Speaker 3: to create a marketplace for these solutions to our member base.
Speaker 3: Think of a mini Amazon for the healthcare space, one that matches your healthcare journey to the most appropriate evidence-based provider. Members love it because these solutions make them healthier. Members love it because these vendors charge only on consumption.
Speaker 3: There are no fixed fees and all these vendors have published ROIs.
Speaker 3: We have announced the creation of an ecosystem of very specific partners that are value-based like Virta for people with diabetes and Vori for people that are suffering from muscular skeletal issues. More are coming.
Speaker 3: This is a pillar for us in bringing better health to our members as a goal in itself. But the other beneficiaries of course are clients, the self-insured employers.
Speaker 3: but will also have lower overall healthcare costs.
Speaker 3: As I mentioned, a healthier employee population costs less.
Speaker 3: a healthier employee population costs less. More to come here.
Speaker 3: Let me turn it over to Yoram for a detailed overview of our financial results. Thank you, Edmondo, and good morning, everyone. As previously mentioned by Edmondo, the main event of the fourth quarter was the closing of the master acquisition on November 1st.
Speaker 5: It means that our fourth quarter results include two months of Maestro's operating results and due to the materiality of this acquisition, most of the changes in our revenues and expenses from Q3 to Q4 were a result of this acquisition.
Speaker 5: which contributed $3.4 million of revenues and $5.4 million of operating expenses.
Speaker 5: Revenues for the fourth quarter of 2022 were approximately 7.6 million compared to 4.9 million in the third quarter of 2022.
Speaker 5: Included in our fourth quarter revenues are the $3.4 million that were derived from the master or legacy customers, while the revenues from the Marpe's legacy customers declined by $700,000 due to the termination of the contract with a large customer who was not meeting his contractual obligations, which we told you about on the second and third quarter calls. For more information, visit www.marpe.com.
Speaker 5: As of December 31st,
Speaker 5: Our total number of employee lives was 42,107, of which 16,762 were employees of Legacy Marpe customers and 25,345 were employees of the Legacy Maestro customers.
Speaker 5: As you may recall, we finished the third quarter pre-Maestro acquisition with 16,357 employee lives, which means that there was a slight increase in the number of the MarPay Legacy employee lives. Going forward, we are not planning to separate the Legacy Maestro and MarPay in our reporting.
Speaker 5: We're doing it now, as this is our first quarter as one company, and there is no other way to provide any meaningful comparative information without this separation.
Speaker 5: We are quickly becoming one company and most, if not all, of our operating departments are now running with one team led by one manager.
Speaker 5: This does not mean that we have completed the integration process to the full extent, as this is still ongoing. But we have done a lot in terms of integrating the people side, which is where most of the costs are versus the system side and infrastructure side that take more time.
Speaker 5: to integrate and where more care needs to be taken to avoid customer related issues.
Speaker 5: Moving on to expenses. I will be comparing the 4th quarter 22 expenses to the 3rd quarter 22 expenses.
Speaker 5: Cost of revenues historically included cost of processing and adjudicating claims, customer service costs, and amount charged by third-party vendors for their services that we resell to our customers.
Speaker 5: With the acquisition of Maestro, we are now also providing care management services that are delivered by our nurses and cost containment services that have a labour component as well. And all these costs are now also included in our cost of revenues. Our cost of revenues for the fourth quarter, excluding depreciation and amortisation expenses,
Speaker 5: were approximately $4.8 million or 63% of revenues versus $3.6 million or 74% of revenues in the third quarter.
Speaker 5: Our gross profit was $2.8 million, or 37% of revenues in the fourth quarter, up from 1.3% or 26% of revenues in the third quarter.
Speaker 5: The reason for the increase in the gross profit was that Maestro and Silery products, primarily care management and cost containment, have a higher margin than the margin on administrative services.
Speaker 5: and that drives the overall blended margin higher. We expect our gross margin to remain higher than our historically reported gross margins, which preceded the Maestro acquisition.
Speaker 5: Our fourth quarter operating expenses, not including cost of revenues, depreciation and amortization and stock-based compensation expenses, were $9.8 million, an increase of approximately $4.2 million compared to the third quarter, but these expenses were amounted to $5.6 million.
Speaker 5: Approximately $3.3 million of the increase were due to the inclusion of Maestro and the Solidator results for the first time.
Speaker 5: We are expecting to reduce our ongoing operating expenses starting in Q1 and continuing throughout the year.
Speaker 5: Operating loss for the fourth quarter was 8.9 million, compared to 5.8 million operating loss for the third quarter. Approximately 2 million of this loss was from the Maestro Legacy business, as the efficiencies associated with the integration of the two companies are not yet reflected in the fourth quarter results. This will start changing in the first quarter and accelerate in the second and third quarter.
Speaker 5: We will aim to report to you our results with and excluding what we call discontinued activities, which are mainly costs of leases of unused facilities, severance costs and other one-time costs.
Speaker 5: Fourth quarter we recorded $259,000 of non-cash interest expense.
Speaker 5: This relates to the amount that we owe for the acquisition of Maestro, which we booked based on the present value of the purchase price.
Speaker 5: We will continue to accrue this non-cash interest quarterly until the purchase price amount will be paid in full. You can find the details of this transaction or SEC filings and we will be happy to try to answer any questions you might have about the deal terms during the Q&A session.
Speaker 5: During the quarter, we also recorded the non-cash tax benefit of $521,000. Our net loss for the fourth quarter was approximately $8.5 million or $0.41 per share, compared to a net loss of $5.8 million or $0.28 per share for the third quarter.
Speaker 5: Excluding net interest expense of $115,000, net tax benefit of $521,000, stock-based compensation of $680,000 and depreciation and amortization expenses.
Speaker 5: as well as one-time asset write-off cost of approximately $1.3 million, adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter was a negative of approximately $7 million compared to a negative of $4.3 million in the third quarter.
Speaker 5: Moving on to guidance.
Speaker 5: We expect 23 annual revenues to be between $34 to $35 million. We expect first quarter 23 revenues to be in the range of $9 to $9.3 million. First quarter revenues are expected to include approximately half a million of one-time revenues from one of our new ancillary products.
Speaker 5: which were acquired through the Master Acquisition, as well as half a million of one-time run-out revenues.
Speaker 5: acquired through the Master Acquisition, as well as half a million of one-time run-out revenues. And with that we will open the call for questions. Operator?
Speaker 2: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star and then 1 on your touch tone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset before pressing the key.
Speaker 2: If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then 2.
Speaker 2: At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster.
Speaker 3: Good morning, Paul Swell. In terms of the partnerships that you've been adding, can you talk about how that can impact your combined company over the next two years? Thank you.
Speaker 3: Yes, thank you. Thank you, Alan, and good morning to you. So the ecosystem is just beginning. We have announced two partnerships. We will increase this to probably about a dozen value-based, evidence-based leaders in the healthcare space.
Speaker 3: This is good for our populations as a whole because what we're doing is basically mapping the disease states that affect the different populations we're lucky enough to serve and basically getting the best vendor in the country, I'm not exaggerating, in the country and the world to map that. We're really the first to bring this to the lower middle market as I mentioned briefly because in many cases these companies have to focus on the Fortune 500, Fortune 1000.
Speaker 3: simply because they're putting fees at risk so that they need a bit of an insurance pool. Now, what we did here was go to these companies and say, well, forget about the client with 100 lives. Let's say you're a law firm with 100 lives, right? It doesn't matter. It's not addressable to you. Treat me, Mark Payne, as someone that has 42,000 lives.
Speaker 3: and I'm your client, right? And I will pass these programs onto my customer base. So these solutions are definitely life changing for many of the members. What's also interesting is that all of these companies that we've partnered with...
Speaker 3: the impact of the ecosystem on our clients.
Speaker 3: can be in the hundreds of dollars per employee per year, often equaling what one of our clients would pay for medical claims for a month. Now you know this business, Alan. There's no.
Speaker 3: the slope of the healthcare curve only goes up, right, in terms of cost.
Speaker 3: So if we're going to our clients and saying, look, do you want a free month? That's very material. That's very, very material to them. And I'm including in that calculation, you know, all the fees to the vendor, our fees that we get for managing everything. And still there's a pretty positive result. So.
Speaker 3: This is very exciting for our clients, obviously for our members who have an opportunity to access these best in class solutions as well.
Speaker 6: And then just following up on that, how do we think about how more pay would maybe benefit financially from this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so for Marpe, you know, it's very clear. So we have taken the approach of creating essentially a marketplace. As I mentioned in the remarks, I mean, think of a mini Amazon, right, which has all that you need in healthcare as a member of a plan, right? So,
Speaker 3: We know because of all of the investments we have made in technology and different elements of artificial intelligence, we can pinpoint who is on what healthcare journey in terms of our member base. So we know not only that you are...
Speaker 3: a person with diabetes. That's easy by the way. You don't need to advance AI to do that. You can just look at the claims.
Speaker 3: But if you're trending towards that, it may not be so obvious.
Speaker 3: The other thing that we do is understand which members may be best suited.
Speaker 3: for which solution, right? So Virta, for example, our partner in the diabetes space is not for everyone, right? It is and it's only available in one language, for example. We serve members with half a dozen languages, right?
Speaker 3: So, we are able really to tailor make the match in a very smart way and basically steer that member to the best solution for him or her. That's really the difference. Now financially, what it means...
Speaker 3: is that these companies don't have a cost of acquisition, right? Because I'm essentially delivering a member that's ready, willing, able to sign up for their services and start using the service. So basically I take a big slice of their revenue.
Speaker 3: in exchange for them not having cost of acquisition. So more members in this ecosystem, obviously more revenue for MarPay.
Speaker 6: That's great. And it's a way to think of that, Steve. Just last question on this. For you, you're the...
Speaker 6: That would be relatively high margin compared to your other offerings.
Speaker 3: Well, it is. This particular piece here, if you look at it as a standalone, I mean, this is a software-driven fee. So, our approach in the marketplace...
Speaker 3: It's first and foremost to understand you and what healthcare journey you are on. But then afterwards it's really to communicate with you if there is something that can make a big difference in your life.
Speaker 3: And that's a multi-channel approach. That's a software, largely a software driven approach. So we obviously communicate via text, pings on the app, in some cases also phone calls by our clinical team. And our lift there is not really...
Speaker 3: providing the service, remember we're not the provider, we're the payer, it's really matching you with that payer. So one would expect software like margins in that brand new revenue stream. People start showing revenue.
Speaker 3: from this ecosystem this year, and obviously that ramps up next year as well. That's great, thank you. And then you talk about how most of your...
Speaker 6: Most of your contracts are one year plus, and I believe that most of them have a January 1st start date. Is there any qualitative comment you could talk about how you feel the renewal season went?
Speaker 3: Look, for the beginning of this year, we had several items kind of in play. First and foremost, on the legacy Marpe side, and we had managed to kind of clean up the first... I suppose we might have Sem Verify video for this segment. I wonder if I need to learn to read the words.
Speaker 3: Our renewal rate was in the 90 some percent, which is very, very good. That business, by the way, when we bought it was only retaining about 70%, meaning that they were losing 30% of their business a year. That's not sustainable. So I do feel some of those...
Speaker 3: customer basis that we have acquired have stabilized. And obviously we're working very hard to keep those clients. That's really the mark of success here. On the Maestro side I would note that most of those clients...
Speaker 3: actually do not have one-year contracts but multi-year contracts, right? Three to six-year contracts. So that revenue base actually does not come to the market every year and it is staggered, right? The dates of renewal in the Maestro base are also heavily weighted to one-one.
Speaker 3: But the amount of the total base that actually comes to the market that year, even for a renewal or for a price check or whatever, is not all of the customer base. So be careful.
Speaker 6: Okay, thank you
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 6: I guess more on thinking about the financials. In terms of revenue...
Speaker 6: How do I think about the revenue for employee lives under coverage kind of as
Speaker 6: as a mix between both of you and how to think about.
Speaker 6: what that could mean if you move more to the to the maestro business model of everything that they have
Speaker 3: Yeah, let me share some high-level thoughts on that specific metric because it's a very key metric and then Yoram can also share his thoughts on that. So look, right now as I mentioned, the Maestro base is at approximately $50 per employee per month of net revenue.
Speaker 3: zero charges more for admin fees. We actually charge less than the legacy Marpe base. What has happened is that we're now the beneficiaries, Alan, of the tens of millions of dollars that were poured into product development by the previous owners, by AXA.
Speaker 3: And they created a whole portfolio of ancillary products. Okay, so those products would take an employee life that may have, say, $22 in admin fees. That's a traditional fee that any TPA would get.
Speaker 3: up to $50 per employee per month. Now, what are some of those ancillary products? Well, first, of course, it's care management. So we have a full-blown, you know, multi-million dollar business staffed by nurses and other clinicians that help employees on all of their healthcare journey. So if someone's coming out of the hospital,
Speaker 3: a nurse is reaching out to them, making sure they have their follow-ups, the proper care to not be readmitted into the hospital, right? The readmissions are a big driver of cost and also of, in some cases, deterioration of member health. So our job is to make sure employees...
Speaker 3: essentially members of our plans, have the right care at the right time.
Speaker 3: And of course, we make money off of that because those nurses are charging the plan as a medical claim for this guidance and this management of the employees. That's just one business. If they can do this, there's a very large risk ladder either across conjunction with each other or to the interface.
We also have a full-blown business in processing all of the claims that are not in network. So the out-of-network claims is also a very lucrative business. And that is what's driving really the journey from $22 to $50, right? That's also what's driving the margin.
Now, on the Marpe side, again, we're starting at $33, so our base is similar, kind of in the mid-20s for admin fee where the difference is ancillary products. Now, the issue is that in the Marpe side, the ancillary products were not ours.
We were partnering with someone to do out of network with another vendor partner to do care management, etc. So now that we own all these, we don't just take a little fee by providing these, but we can actually provide the service and capture all the revenue. That's how you get to 50.
I'll share with you that in our internal estimates, we call it 50 by 50, right? So if you would reach, again, just the TPA business, our core business, we think breaks even at 50,000 lives at 50.
Now, if you're at 55, you can have a lower number, but it's 50 by 50 is the key metric here.
And we're on our way. Yoram, would you like to share anything on that? I think maybe one thing I want to add, just one thing because I think Mundo said it very well, is that in terms of value-based care, we're not really expecting substantial addition to the PEPM this year. It might be a little bit in the fourth quarter.
It's really more than 24, but we expect to see more material revenues from that. So that's the only thing I wanted to add. Basically as Elmondo said, the more we sell the legacy ancillary products from Astro, the higher this number is going to go towards 50.
where we expect to see more material revenues from that. So that's the only thing I wanted to add. Basically, as Elmoza said, the more we sell the legacy ancillary products from Astro, the higher this number is going to go towards 50. That's the name of the game.
Okay, thank you. And then on the expense side, you mentioned in the press release that by the second quarter of 23, the MAESTRO acquisition will be accretive.
which is pretty bad. Yeah, we set it on a monthly basis. Yes, we set it on a monthly basis. So when we look at our monthly results, and we looked at where we were in terms of EBITDA pre.
pre-deal, pre-Meinstro. We expect to be by the middle of the year back to a situation where we're doing better than we did then. So to me that would be when they become accretive. Hopefully it might not be until the fourth quarter or third quarter.
but on a monthly basis it will happen around the middle of the year. We expect to see it. And again, it's primarily through our costs, right? This is primarily by us saying we're cutting costs. It's not based on assumptions of high revenue growth. Okay, gotcha.
Thank you. So that's not really factoring in the.
anything on the selling the new products or partnership revenues it's really gone not substantial
selling the new products or partnership revenues, it's really on the extension. Not substantial, no. Not substantial, no.
Remember that even though we're very hard at work in cross-selling these, our assumption, I think a conservative assumption is that the real uptake on everything is really at open enrollment, at the natural renewals or enrollment, right? So again, a three-year contract that may not renew, they still do have an event at the end of the year, right?
So the improvements that I talked about during my remarks are really cost driven.
For the
For the partnerships that you can add to Legacy, Marpe customers, can that happen throughout the year, or does that happen just at the enrollment time? No, so for the vendor ecosystem, we are...
adding these as we go and we actually have members already on these programs. So again, all of these things including the MAESTRO Legacy programs.
can be added at any time. There is no rule that says you need to wait until open enrollment and renewal. I think for conservatism we have said, look, yes, although we are adding it now, even if we have a sale, we expect the actual movement and uptick.
to happen really only on renewal. So our plan here for the year is conservative but also one that focuses on cost. We obviously think there's a huge uptick opportunity.
for in selling you know these ancillary products and the ecosystem But we're really focused on you know eliminating the duplicative positions Taking out as much cost as we can from the business obviously
and that ancillary revenue will certainly materialize. I think we're being a little conservative on that. That's great. If you were to look at three to five years and.
and if we assume that you've been successful in consolidating, rolling up some TPAs and the number of lives and the products you're offering, how do you think about the profitability structure that your business has the potential of? For sure, we will have...
That's the mixing Maestro at 50 and the Marpe in the low 30s. So we're on that journey. Crossing that one definitely would expect a nicely profitable company driven from a few items. Quality here is driven by minus causes.
efficiencies in processes, which obviously with more scale, even now, we're able to mine. Now, that's all great, but again, most of that is related to the 20-some dollars of admin fees that are, frankly, low margin.
And that price is set by the market, right? That's kind of a, let's call that a commodity price. Now everything else, that difference between say $22 and $50, that is most certainly not a commodity and most certainly not low margin, right? So...
The more we can, the more lives we acquire, the more higher margin ancillary products can be sold. The hook here in all of this is obviously paying claims and doing that very well, which we do. But the profitability really comes from all of the ancillary services. For more information, visit www.fema.gov
if you would um...
kind of look three years into the future, I'm obviously expecting hundreds of thousands of lives on our platform. Lives that we're managing, essentially the health plan, meaning it's not just paying claims, but we're really following through on our mission, which is...
Remember that the $50 per employee per month that we're charging, right, and including the ancillary services, that may be about 5% of overall healthcare costs, right? And there's a lot of discussion in the industry about this 5%, but that's really the tail wagging the dog. The other thing we should be talking about is the 95%, meaning the expenditures on medical claims, on drug claims, right, on getting those populations healthier, because that
is huge, not to mention of course the other piece that makes up the cost is the cost of re-insurance or stop loss insurance, right? But that's all connected to the core driver, which is how much did the actual healthcare cost, not the administration, we're a very small part of this overall pool, but how much did actual healthcare cost.
One last question. It's maybe early to be asking this, but how do you think about just the potential...
pipeline or opportunities of M&A that might be out there. I will just leave it at that.
Thank you for that. So everyone should know that this market of third party administrators is fragmented. There is still a lot of market space to consolidate especially in smaller.
Smaller TPAs, I'm talking with 3,000 to say 15,000 lives. We are looking, we continue to look. We're obviously very focused on integrating this very kind of transformative deal with Maestro.
but most certainly we will be active there. The beauty of this...
whole strategy I guess in rolling this up really comes from the fact that we have a lot more to sell. So one of our key items here is whether can we acquire let's say
10,000 brand new employee lives at a fair price but based on revenue that is say $25 because that's what TPAs charge, right? That's their admin fees. Can we do this? Absolutely we can. But the second question is really can we take that base...
to $50 because we have so much more product, right? That's where the added value comes in. Now obviously we're not paying for that block as if it's $50 because that difference is ours, right? That's what we bring to the table.
But that's really the trade here, Alan, and I think that's what's super exciting.
definitely with everything we're building, with the stabilization of operations, again, this was not a normal acquisition, this obviously needed a lot of work, which we're doing, it also came with a lot of cash, which is obviously very positive.
This was definitely a one-off and very special opportunity, but I do expect other books of business here to be rolled up in the coming quarters and years, for sure. Maybe just one other follow-up on that. I don't know how much...
Data points are publicly available, but just is there kind of a rule of thumb of multiples of revenue that TPAs get acquired for?
data points are publicly available, but just is there kind of a rule of thumb of multiples of revenue that TPAs get acquired for?
You know, it's a little bit all over the place and most of these transactions have been in the...
So it's a little bit all over the place and most of these transactions have been in the private markets.
I will share with you that once from the data that we know without naming names here, once you are profitable we've seen transactions.
even in the 15 to 17 times EBITDA in the private markets. So we do believe our TPA business, obviously that's why we're rushing towards profitability even though we're not a normal TPA, meaning we're providing so many.
other services and so much more, there's so much more margin potential because of all the ancillary services. But regardless, we want to make sure we are profitable in 2024. We break that line and become profitable. We certainly can. And we think obviously, this may be obvious.
But we think there's a huge disconnect even now between what a PE would pay for an asset like ours and what the public market is thinking. That's our view.
That's great. Well I admire everything you guys are doing. Very forward-looking. Thank you so much. Thank you, Alan.
Are there any other questions? There are no other questions at this time. I would like
Oh, thank you so much, operator. I would like to thank everyone for participating. Thank you so much for taking the time. And please do follow us on LinkedIn and obviously I hope we're on your trading screen as well. Thank you so much.
I would like to thank everyone for participating. Thank you so much for taking the time and please do follow us on LinkedIn and obviously I hope we're on your trading screen as well. Thank you so much.