Q3 2024 AdaptHealth Corp Earnings Call
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Speaker Change: Good day everyone and welcome to today's ADAPT Health third quarter 2024 earnings release. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question and answer session. You may do so by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad.
Speaker Change: Today's speakers will be Suzanne Foster, Chief Executive Officer of AdoptHealth, and Jason Clemens, Chief Financial Officer of AdoptHealth.
Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that statements included in this conference call and in the press release issued today may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Private Securities Litigation Reform Act.
Speaker Change: These statements include, but are not limited to, comments regarding financial results for 2024 and beyond.
Actual results could differ materially from those projected in forward-looking statements because of a number of risk factors and uncertainties which are discussed at length in the company's annual and quarterly SEC filings.
ADAPT Health Corp has no obligation to update the information provided on this call to reflect such subsequent events.
Speaker Change: Additionally, on this morning's call, the company will reference certain financial measures such as EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, and free cash flow, all of which are non-GAAP financial measures.
Speaker Change: You can find more information about these non-GAP measures in the presentation materials accompanying today's call, which are posted on the company's website. This morning's call is being recorded and a replay of the call will be available later today. I am now pleased to introduce the Chief Executive Officer of AdoptHealth, Suzanne Foster.
Suzanne Foster: Thank you and good morning everyone. Thank you for attending our third quarter earnings call. Before we start, I want to acknowledge the extraordinary efforts our team displayed during the recent weather events in the southeast.
Prior to the storms, we contacted more than 40,000 patients from the impacted areas to confirm they had the medical equipment they needed before the severe weather moved in.
Speaker Change: In advance of the storm, we made sure to deliver oxygen where needed. As a result, there were no material service interruptions. I want to thank the team again for their exceptional performance.
Speaker Change: Now turning to Q3 results, we are pleased to report another consistent quarter with results in line with our expectations for revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and free cash flow.
Speaker Change: Compared to the previous year, revenue was flat with our two larger products, sleep and respiratory, delivering growth that offset a decline in diabetes.
Speaker Change: sleep increased 3.5 percent, respiratory was strong increasing 8.6 percent, while diabetes decreased 11.8 percent.
Speaker Change: Rounding out the numbers, which Jason will cover more in depth, we delivered an improvement in adjusted EBITDA margin and had a positive quarter for free cash flow.
Speaker Change: We completed the non-core asset sale we announced last quarter, refinanced our senior secured credit facility, and paid down another $50 million of debt.
Speaker Change: As a result, we are now committing to de-levering further, with a new multi-year target set at 2.5 times net leverage.
Speaker Change: Over the past quarter, our focus has been on establishing a one-adapt approach to operating this business.
Speaker Change: which means rolling out standard work, new operating structures, and identifying growth opportunities.
Speaker Change: Let's start with sleep.
Speaker Change: According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, there are approximately 30 million adults in the U.S. living with obstructive sleep apnea, but only 20% have been diagnosed.
Speaker Change: This market is large and it is growing rapidly, partly because of increased awareness of OSA and the negative health implications by going untreated.
Speaker Change: As detection technology evolves, we believe more people will be prompted to seek treatment for OSA, with many of those patients seeking CPAP therapy.
Speaker Change: There are reasons ADAPT Health is the number one market leader in sleep. It's because our respiratory therapists and sleep coaches provide best-in-class adherence programs.
Speaker Change: And our resupply team delivers a highly reliable and convenient experience to more than 1.6 million patients.
Speaker Change: The opportunity for growth in sleep is to increase new patient conversion rates.
Speaker Change: Right now, approximately 75% of the referrals we receive are fulfilled.
Speaker Change: We are working on opportunities to improve this conversion rate by introducing a new self-scheduling feature in MyApp, thereby eliminating the need to reach the patient by phone.
Speaker Change: and standardizing workflow processes to eliminate the back and forth of getting services for new patients approved.
Speaker Change: Turning to respiratory, based on data from the American Lung Association, we know that more than 35 million people in the U.S. are living with chronic lung disease like asthma and COPD.
Speaker Change: Supporting these patients requires a commitment to excellence, which we have.
Speaker Change: Our clinical coordination team is unique in the market in that we have multiple levels of respiratory therapist care.
Speaker Change: As a result, we deliver strong clinical outcomes designed to help lower hospital readmission rates.
Speaker Change: It is this level of clinical support that differentiates us and results in growth.
Speaker Change: To maintain our position as the number one market leader in this area, we are focused on optimizing our workflows and exploring opportunities to expand our product portfolio to better help patients living at home with respiratory conditions.
Speaker Change: We must, however, fix our performance and execution issues that we have in diabetes, which currently represents 17% of revenue.
Speaker Change: Following last quarter's results, I turned my attention to our diabetes product line and found the outlook was much worse than I thought after my first two months.
Speaker Change: The reality is the market is growing, our competitors are growing, and we are not.
Speaker Change: We acted immediately by dismissing several members of the diabetes leadership team and through a series of diagnostic reviews, we uncovered systemic operational issues that we need to fix.
Speaker Change: We have taken swift actions to turn this around.
Speaker Change: First, we appointed a new leadership team. One, a former CEO of an ADAPT Health Acquisition with a background in delivering exceptional service in sleep and home medical supplies.
Speaker Change: and we brought in a seasoned sales leader with experience in diabetes.
Speaker Change: Second, we integrated the resupply of our diabetes products into our Sleep Resupply Center of Excellence to leverage its leadership, replicate processes, and increase performance.
Speaker Change: Third, we know that acquiring new CGM patients and being able to timely service them is the single most important thing we need to do.
Speaker Change: Notwithstanding a dynamic market environment, executing here is within our control, and we are taking the necessary actions to improve across the board.
Speaker Change: Our diabetes improvement efforts are now underway, yet we expect that it will take us a few quarters to demonstrate results.
Speaker Change: Therefore, we are guiding the balance of the year down based on what we learned and to provide an appropriate amount of time for our actions to have an impact.
Speaker Change: Unlocking growth in diabetes is an imperative. The American Diabetes Association reports that more than 38 million Americans have diabetes with almost a hundred million being pre-diabetic.
Speaker Change: If we put all these numbers in perspective, there are more than 100 million potential patients for ADAPT Health to serve in the United States. Today, we proudly serve 4.2 million patients a year.
Speaker Change: In simplest terms, growth is about providing exceptional service to the increasing number of patients that need our support.
Speaker Change: Another topic I would like to update you on is the progress we are making on the technology front.
Speaker Change: Last quarter I mentioned that we were doing a few low-cost experiments with AI and automation.
Speaker Change: I am happy to report that this is moving quickly, and we have moved from inception to production.
Speaker Change: The mission was to use AI to deal with the massive amount of incoming unstructured data we receive, which is an ongoing healthcare challenge.
Speaker Change: With the way things are done, we receive more than 5 million pages of faxes every month, and we rely on a combination of people and technology to get the information in those faxes into the correct workflow.
Speaker Change: In a matter of weeks, we successfully automated parts of the workflow, and our new automated process enabled by AI has proven to be 99.6% accurate compared to 89% with our legacy process.
Speaker Change: This was the first step to prove we can do so with accuracy.
Speaker Change: We are optimistic about our ability to rapidly deploy this technology across our workflows in a way that is responsible. We see AI as a viable option for us to improve our performance, reliability, and efficiency.
Speaker Change: I think it's good to note that due to improved operational rigor and successful cost management initiatives this past quarter, we were able to invest in people and technology while delivering improved bottom line results.
Speaker Change: In addition, this is the last quarter we will report results as a single segment.
Speaker Change: We are moving to a four-segment reporting structure that consists of sleep health, respiratory health, diabetes health, and wellness at home.
Speaker Change: This shift to segment reporting will allow for increased transparency and insight into our performance.
Speaker Change: Most importantly, it will enable us to focus our resources and architect our growth in each segment.
Speaker Change: I continue to be optimistic about the road ahead. We have identified growth opportunities, we are assembling a high-performing team, and investing in areas that allow us to serve even more patients in their homes.
Speaker Change: Our focus is on execution and continuously improving every day.
Speaker Change: And with that, I will turn it over to Jason.
Jason Clemens: Thanks, Suzanne, and thanks to all for joining our call today.
Jason Clemens: For the third quarter of 2024, we delivered against our expectations for revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and free cash flow.
Jason Clemens: We also made considerable progress in strengthening our financial position.
Jason Clemens: disposing of non-core assets, refinancing our senior credit facility, and paying down debt.
Jason Clemens: During the quarter, we completed the previously announced transaction to sell certain custom rehab assets to a third party.
Jason Clemens: As a reminder, the annual revenue for these assets was about $30 million. So that comes out of our HME revenue run rate going forward.
Jason Clemens: We continue to consider alternatives for a couple of similarly sized product categories that do not fit strategically into our core businesses.
Jason Clemens: In aggregate, they represent less than $100 million of annual revenue, and we will provide updates as we make progress with those initiatives.
Jason Clemens: Leap revenue of $326.4 million increased 3.5% over the prior year in line with our expectations as we faced a very high comparable in 2023 due to record starts from fulfilling the backlog following a manufacturer recall.
Jason Clemens: For perspective, over the past two years, fleet revenue grew $55.8 million against $270.6 million in the third quarter of 2022, representing 9.8% of compounded annual growth.
Jason Clemens: Although CPAP starts experienced the typical sequential deceleration from Q2, as July and August vacation schedules impact sleep testing and referral activity, we were pleased to once again surpass 120,000 starts.
Jason Clemens: Sleep Resupply Census now stands over 1.63 million patients, up another 29,000 from the previous quarter.
Jason Clemens: Our CPAP survey indicated 15% of respondents were using GLP-1s to manage diabetes or weight loss.
Jason Clemens: up from 12% last quarter.
Jason Clemens: Now a year into our surveys, we are detecting a very slight uptick in CPAP adherence versus patients not indicating GLP-1 usage.
Jason Clemens: So far, there's an immaterial difference in resupply ordering patterns.
Jason Clemens: We will continue to monitor and report these trends as time goes on.
Jason Clemens: Diabetes revenue of $141.1 million decreased 11.8% compared to the third quarter of 2023, driven by lower CGM revenue.
Jason Clemens: Before we get into those details, we were encouraged to see stabilization regarding insulin pumps and related supplies, representing $28.4 million of revenue for the corridor, about flat against the prior year.
Jason Clemens: For CGMs, we've previously discussed reimbursement channel pressure as some payers shifted reimbursement policy to 100% pharmacy in 2024.
Jason Clemens: That landscape has remained steady over the year, but as we lost access to members in a handful of markets in early 2024, we failed to overcome that headwind with new sales orders.
Jason Clemens: We also shipped fewer recur orders than expected, impacted by the operational challenges Suzanne discussed.
Jason Clemens: Respiratory revenue of $164 million increased 8.6 percent compared to the third quarter of 2023, led by oxygen, exceeding our expectations.
Jason Clemens: For the first time in our history, our oxygen census surpassed 325,000 patients actively on service.
Jason Clemens: Most patients on oxygen need to order tank refills periodically. And until recently, that has been a time-consuming process.
Jason Clemens: During the quarter, 7.5% of our O2 patients ordered tank refills without having to interact with an ADAPT customer service representative.
Jason Clemens: via new technology just launched in my app, as well as chatbot technology recently launched in our interactive voice response telephone systems.
Jason Clemens: This tech was launched in the second quarter with only 1.5% of O2 patients ordering through these platforms 90 days ago, so we are making progress quickly.
Jason Clemens: Revenue from all other product categories of 174.3 million decreased 1.9% over the prior year, aligned with our expectations, driven by revenue loss from the sale of certain custom rehab assets.
Jason Clemens: Turning to profitability, third quarter adjusted EBITDA of $164.3 million reflects an adjusted EBITDA margin of 20.4%, a slight improvement over the same period last year.
Jason Clemens: This margin expansion was driven by revenue mix, meaning that higher margin products like sleep and respiratory outgrew lower margin products like diabetes.
Jason Clemens: We were pleased to maintain labor expense year-over-year as we installed enough efficiencies to pay for merit-based salary raises and other labor inflation.
Jason Clemens: Operating expenses and G&A were in line with our expectations.
Jason Clemens: [inaudible]
Jason Clemens: Cash flow from operations was $144.4 million.
Jason Clemens: Today's sales outstanding for Q3 was 47.9, down from 48.9 in the previous quarter, as accounts receivable continued to normalize following the changed healthcare situation earlier this year.
Jason Clemens: CapEx of $59.6 million represented 7.4% of revenue, down against 9.6% of revenue in the third quarter of 2023.
Jason Clemens: Free cash flow of $84.8 million outperformed our target of $30 million.
Jason Clemens: That $30 million estimate assumed that we would pay off the $40.7 million loan offered as part of Optum's Temporary Funding Assistance Program related to the change health care outage earlier this year.
Jason Clemens: However, that payoff did not occur until mid-November, excuse me, mid-October.
Jason Clemens: After adjusting for the timing of that cash outflow, we still produce strong cash flows for the quarter, so we are again raising full year guidance.
Jason Clemens: During the third quarter, we amended our debt agreement to lock a $950 million senior secured credit facility, consisting of a fully funded $650 million term loan aid and a $300 million revolving line of credit.
Jason Clemens: Proceeds from the new 650 million dollar term loan were used to fully repay without penalty the company's existing term loan due to reach final maturity in January of 2026.
Jason Clemens: The new $300 million revolver replaces the company's existing $450 million revolving credit facility, which had no balance drawn at the end of the third quarter.
Jason Clemens: The reduced revolver size decreases undrawn commitment fees.
Jason Clemens: The interest rate pricing for the new Senior Secure Credit Facility decreased from the interest rate pricing in Adapt Health's existing bank credit facility, and the new maturity is extended up to September 13, 2029.
Jason Clemens: We are very pleased to have achieved our net leverage target of three times ahead of schedule and we remain focused on paying down debt.
Jason Clemens: So much so that we are introducing a new multi-year net leverage target for the company at 2.5 times net leverage as defined in our covenants.
Jason Clemens: We expect to acquire home medical equipment providers in the future as access and scale are important to us, but for the next few quarters we expect acquisition activity to be limited.
Jason Clemens: When and where it makes sense, we will acquire, but will otherwise remain focused on paying down debt and increasing our free cash flow conversion.
Jason Clemens: For the balance of 2024, we are adjusting our revenue midpoint down $45 million and are adjusting even a midpoint down $15 million, responding to recent trends in diabetes.
Jason Clemens: Our updated full-year guidance is net revenue to be in the range of $3.22 to $3.26 billion, adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $655 to $675 million,
Jason Clemens: And even with these updates, given the continued positive trends in working capital, we expect free cash flow to be in the range of $175 to $195 million. With that, we'll open the call up for questions. Operator?
Speaker Change: Thank you. And at this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press the star and 1 on your telephone keypad. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing star 2. And we will pause for a moment to allow questions to queue.
Speaker Change: And we will take our first question from Kevin Caliendo with UBS. Please go ahead.
Speaker Change: Please go ahead, Kevin Caliendo, your line is open.
Kevin Caliendo: Sorry, I was on mute. I apologize. Thanks for taking my question.
Kevin Caliendo: Thank you.
Kevin Caliendo: I just want to go through the diabetes issues a little bit more in depth. How much of this is related to issues with manufacturers? Does it require more collaboration? Is it more of a market, you know, where the end market, what's happening there in terms of moving pharmacy versus DME, like any help around what's really happening in the end markets and what's happening with their clients would be great.
Speaker Change: Yeah, Kevin, a couple of comments. No, we have not identified the compression in revenue to any specific issues with manufacturers. In fact,
Kevin Caliendo: you know, the CGM manufacturers, as well as all the pump manufacturers.
Kevin Caliendo: have been very good parties to work with and good partners over the years. I mean, they have supported various integrations.
Jason Clemens: of data and technology coming from their devices.
Jason Clemens: inside of our four walls. If you've done that kind of work before, you know that that takes, frankly, a tremendous amount of collaboration working across different companies.
Jason Clemens: you know we we certainly are continuing to face pressure from the pharmacy channel reimbursement changes.
Jason Clemens: So we referenced that in our prepared remarks.
Jason Clemens: We have not seen, this quarter, really any shift in major payer activities against what we saw in the second quarter or against what we saw in the first quarter.
Jason Clemens: And so, even though we do have some pressure to overcome from the prior year, that environment has remained relatively steady.
Jason Clemens: What we are saying is that the new starts that we had expected...
Jason Clemens: from adding sales folks. We are not pulling through frankly anywhere near our expectations and the growth that we believe is there in the market.
Jason Clemens: And then on the recurse side, we do have some operational challenges.
Jason Clemens: that have been unpacked and we are deploying our sleep resupply operation towards improving. I mean, just a minor tick or two in recurse since it represents such an overwhelming part of revenue.
Jason Clemens: If you do great performance, it can have a big impact, and that's what we're absorbing here in the third quarter.
Speaker Change: I'll just double down on that to say I think that our partnerships with the manufacturers are strong and continuing to get stronger. We're meeting regularly and I'm happy to see that that partnership is
Speaker Change: taking on a whole new life, so I think that's positive.
Speaker Change: The reimbursement shift obviously has been a headwind, but what the message today is we should be able to grow through that, given what we know about the end markets. And we're not growing through it as a result of our own operational issues internally that I believe we can fix over the next couple quarters.
Speaker Change: That's helpful. If I can ask a quick follow-up then, I think a logical one, is how much would you think this will impact 25? If we think about the bar for 25, the revenue growth is around 5%. I'm not asking for guidance, but does the issue with diabetes that you're having now, does that spill over into 25 and could that be an incremental headwind as we think about that?
Speaker Change: Well, Kevin, I think I'd say that, you know, we plan to guide 25 at the, you know, near the end of February when we'll report the fourth quarter. When we think about the fourth quarter, I mean, we took down top line by 45 million dollars.
Speaker Change: I mean, there are ins and outs to that, but essentially what we're saying is we delivered $140 million of revenue.
Speaker Change: here in the third quarter. We're not committing to more than that in the fourth quarter. I mean, we have guided down, which creates a $45 million compression against the fourth quarter of last year, because we don't want to overcommit. We do have, we believe, the right people in the right seats.
Speaker Change: with the right organizational changes, most specifically reorganizing all resupply operations out of our resupply center in Nashville that has produced incredible performance in our sleep business for many, many years.
Speaker Change: And so we are focusing on that, but we're just not going to commit to
Speaker Change: to any more growth, even sequentially, until we know that...
Speaker Change: We're confident in doing so. So how that impacts 25, I mean, I think it goes without saying.
Speaker Change: As we stand here today, we anticipate some pressures in 25, but we've got another 90 days ahead of us, and we're going to do our work, and we'll come back with updated guidance at that time.
Speaker Change: Thank you and we will take our next question from Matthew Blackman with Stiefel. Please go ahead.
Matthew Blackman: Oh great, good morning everybody. Thank you for taking my questions. I'm also going to touch on diabetes here and maybe sort of frame it this way. It does sound like you're still bullish on the long-term prospects of this business.
Speaker Change: I think in the recent past you've talked about diabetes maybe growing higher single digits. Is that still in play? Perhaps, of course, over a longer time frame and then maybe the follow-up question.
Speaker Change: I was just hoping to understand how you better get after new patients in the CGM franchise. Obviously there's been a Salesforce expansion, but just practically speaking, how do you execute on getting new patients into the business? I would be interested in hearing your thoughts there. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Okay, I'll start with the second part of the question and Jason go back to the numbers. So the third point of the plan around, you know, obviously increasing CGM, new starts.
Speaker Change: is the number one thing we need to do, literally across the business. And the plan there is, you cannot, in my opinion, just go continue to put out more and more salespeople and expect a different result.
Speaker Change: they can only sell as good as we are on the operational side. And so what I've uncovered this quarter is that we have to beef up or improve the timeliness
Speaker Change: and ease in which you can order a CGM for us, how we bring that new patient in. And so we're pushing on two fronts.
Speaker Change: One is our operations team is looking at how do we streamline the processes, make it easier so that when our salespeople go out to a referring provider, we can promise service levels that are more in line with the market.
Speaker Change: and unfortunately over the last couple quarters we have been lagging behind in the timeliness of delivering on that promise.
Speaker Change: and so we're stabilizing the sales force, making sure we're going out and having a high-touch white glove experience with our referring providers and at the same time our operators are charged with streamlining the workflows and their performance so that we can deliver with speed and quality.
Speaker Change: I think, Matt, in regard to the question about the end market and the growth, you know, we'd offer two different ways to look at that. Firstly, I think if we consider the Q3 comments from the CGM manufacturers,
Speaker Change: I think one reporting very low single digits and the other reporting mid-20% growth. They're not 50-50 in the marketplace necessarily, but when accounting for that, I mean, you're going to be in a...
Speaker Change: you know, whether it's 10%, 12%, 9%, somewhere in that ballpark. You know, the second data point is that, look, some of our public competitors have recently reported
Speaker Change: you know, what we believe to be upper single-digit growth for the quarter. I mean, you know, as a segment...
Speaker Change: producing five to six percent growth and when asked, you know, diabetes is leading the way, implying they're growing faster than that.
Speaker Change: You know, those two data points alone, we do believe that the market is growing upper single digit, perhaps lower double digit, and in fact, you know, we compressed, you know, almost 12% this quarter. So, like Suzanne said in her prepared remarks,
Speaker Change: The market is growing. Our competitors are growing. We are not. And so that's the work that we're putting in to fix these operational challenges.
Speaker Change: Got it. And if I could just squeeze one follow-up, maybe...
Speaker Change: and organic growth, I think, in particular.
Speaker Change: you've sort of identified, you said, opportunities.
Speaker Change: for Organic Growth. I think in the past I've heard you talk about things like national accounts and contracting. Can you maybe just give us a sense of some of the other opportunities or if you want to talk a little about national accounts and what kind of opportunity that could be for ADAPT as we think about the organic profile of the company over the next several years would be interested in hearing that. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Appreciate that question. Yes, so as I said at the end, we were able to, you know, continue to improve bottom line even though we made technology and people investments. Those people investments this last quarter did come from beefing up our national accounts or what we're calling enterprise sales team.
Speaker Change: The reason for that is I believe there's two additional organic growth drivers here. One is in larger health systems. We do a very, very nice job in certain geographies.
Speaker Change: around partnering with large health systems to have a seamless experience when patients are discharged from the health systems, but we have not nationalized that program. And we are now in the process of doing that, which I'm optimistic about. I think we have an incredible value proposition on that front, so we're investing in that area.
Speaker Change: And then the other area that we're highly focused on is increasing the total covered lives. So our managed care team and how do we make sure that we have the...
Speaker Change: our fair share of covered lives so that when our sales force goes in we can basically be a one-stop shop for any referral source that says we can take almost any payor and we offer the total portfolio of products you know if you send it to us we promise we can deliver well for your patient
Speaker Change: Thank you.
Speaker Change: Thank you. And we will take our next question from Eric Coldwell with Baird. Please go ahead.
Eric Coldwell: Okay, it very well could be redundant and obvious, but last year in diabetes, you did 185 million in sales in the fourth quarter. This quarter, you're only committing to 40, 140. So that's.
Speaker Change: That's the equivalent of the 45 million midpoint revenue guidance cut. I just want to confirm that the only adjustment to revenue guidance is this diabetes change. And then secondarily, you missed diabetes a little bit here this quarter, a handful of millions of dollars. Margin was good, but this is a much bigger step down. So what is the margin impact?
Speaker Change: whether it's fourth quarter or going into 25 from the significantly reduced diabetes revenue outlook. Thank you very much.
Speaker Change: Sure. Yeah, we'll confirm that the guide down is diabetes. I mean, we are guiding down due to the recent CGM performance.
Speaker Change: When we think about what we were aiming at internally, Q3, we were down about $10 million.
Speaker Change: top line for diabetes and so that's that's a little bit of this we've rolled that we've rolled that ahead.
Speaker Change: but the rest of it is, you know, just not...
Speaker Change: just not committing to any sequential growth in the quarter. Now, it's pretty typical to get a bump up as deductibles have reset and there's a big push in the fourth quarter. But again, until we resolve these operational issues, we just aren't ready to commit to higher growth. But it is all diabetes impacted.
Speaker Change: You can think of the EBITDA the same way, I mean we took about a third of that.
Speaker Change: you know, top line of the 45 and we passed through $15 million.
Speaker Change: flow through to the bottom line. Again, we wanted to put out numbers that we feel very good about hitting for the fourth quarter.
Speaker Change: And as we think about 25, as referenced earlier, I mean, we'll come forth with that guidance at the end of February.
Speaker Change: And so, Jason, for both the Revenue and the EBITDA, all of the change was diabetes specific.
Jason Clemens: Yes, correct.
Speaker Change: Okay, so you fixed that problem. You're back on track. There's nothing else here.
Speaker Change: Yeah, that's right. I mean, when we look at the other product lines, you know, we expect, you know, we expect a solid fourth quarter.
Speaker Change: out of sleep, you know, as we've demonstrated, I think, frankly, year over year.
Speaker Change: you know, respiratory, we believe, will continue to compound slowly. You know, we add...
Speaker Change: a couple million a quarter consistently, and that's what we're expecting out of that product line. And then all other categories, which will get reported in the future as wellness at home.
Speaker Change: you know we're expecting generally flat performance. I mean we're going to take out
Speaker Change: you know, about seven to $8 million from the custom rehab asset.
Speaker Change: disposition. You know, we accounted for that in the last guidance update when we report in Q2. So yes, I think that, you know, if we're able to do better in diabetes, that'll mean we'll do better as a portfolio, but the rest of the product lines are performing as expected.
Speaker Change: Thank you. And we will take our next question from Brian Tanquillet with Jeffreys. Please go ahead.
Brian Tanquillet: Hey, good morning. Jason, you know, in the preparatory remarks you guys talked about the app and the quick progress that you're seeing there, so just curious how you're thinking about the savings opportunity from reducing call center operations or call center interactions with patients over the next year, next 18 months?
Jason Clemens: Yeah, good question, Brian. I may answer that with some nuance. You know, the intent of...
Jason Clemens: You know, assembling the company going forward against these, these, you know, large patient
Speaker Change: chronic disease states, respiratory being one of them.
Speaker Change: you know the intent is really to focus our resources and our people.
Speaker Change: against getting after that TAM. And in each of these categories, it's...
Speaker Change: It's large TAM, it's growing rapidly, particularly in Sleep Restaurant, I mean, we're market leaders. And so, the intent here is to assemble our resources and people around taking more than our fair share of really growing that top line.
Speaker Change: As well, the intent is to improve the patient experience.
Speaker Change: drive better patient outcomes.
Speaker Change: figure out how that converts to potentially rate increases or more volumes.
Speaker Change: Right? So we really want people and resources, you know, waking up, you know, every day and focused all day on You know those on those goals
Speaker Change: And so, yes, there's been, you know, great tech already installed here with respiratory. We think with dedicated leadership.
Speaker Change: those conversions will go faster, we'll learn more, we're capturing a tremendous amount of data from these interactions through this new tech that's been rolled out. And these people are gonna be focused on capitalizing on that growth going forward.
Speaker Change: Got it, maybe just as a... Go ahead, you've got the sound.
Speaker Change: Can I just add one thing on that? I just want to say, I know it's early days for us in terms of the automation and the AI and our launch of MyApp, but I have been incredibly encouraged by
Speaker Change: our ability to move quickly. As I said, you know, it was a matter of weeks that we put something into production. That is because our existing tech architecture and infrastructure
Speaker Change: was already prepared to take on this more advanced technology.
Speaker Change: And so our partner that we work with on this front said most companies do not have the infrastructure that's already ready to go.
Speaker Change: And so we have this diamond in the rough, if you will, of a strong technology infrastructure that we're going to be able to rapidly deploy responsibly.
Speaker Change: the My App features and increased automation and AI. So more to come early days as I suggested, but I do think it's a strength of Adapt Health.
Speaker Change: I appreciate that. And then maybe, Jason, my follow-up, just as I think about Medicare rates for calendar 2025, do you have visibility yet into what that rate adjustment looks like?
Speaker Change: Well, we don't have visibility, we don't want to speculate, but we will offer some data. You know, we would fully expect the Demi-Post Fee Schedule, it's typically published December 6th, 7th, kind of in that ballpark. You know, that is our expectation based on what we're hearing out of Washington.
Speaker Change: You know, for those that may not follow that fee schedule, you know, how it's constructed very closely, I mean, it is an inflation-based measure.
Speaker Change: it compares the CPIU through June of the prior year. They take those rolling 12 months of the prior year. You know, so we know that number already. That's about 3% or so.
Speaker Change: Historically, there has been a labor productivity factor applied against that inflation measure that brings the rates down. It depends on the year. It could be half a point, could be a point.
Speaker Change: So, you know, somewhere in that ballpark is generally what we are thinking. But again, we don't want to speculate on any of this until things are formally published, but hopefully that provides some perspective.
Speaker Change: I understand. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Thank you. And we will take our next question from Whit Mayo with Lee Rink Partners. Please go ahead.
Whit Mayo: Thanks, good morning. I got just one quick one. Just on the Humana contract, how that's tracking versus internal expectations, what you're excited about, not excited about, and just any other conversations with other payers, is this something that you still want to expand? Just any additional thoughts would be helpful, thanks.
Speaker Change: I would I'll say that
Speaker Change: Humana is doing incredible, you know, right spot-on, very good. We want more of this business. If you link back to my comments around
Speaker Change: putting more investment in people into the business on enterprise national accounts and managed care engagement. They are tasked with are there more opportunities like Humana. We are exploring those and you know that's the type of business I think is very good for us. So Humana has worked out very good, good partnership there and and hopefully we'll have more of those to share soon.
Speaker Change: Great, thanks.
Speaker Change: Thank you. And we will take our next question from Richard Close with Canaccord. Please go ahead.
Richard Close: Yeah, just two questions. Suzanne, can you talk a little bit about the more the investments in the team, the changes that have been made?
Richard Close: I guess specifically on diabetes as well. And then the potential divestiture of these other businesses that Jason highlighted.
Suzanne Foster: Okay, I'll let Jason address the divestitures and let me talk about the team.
Suzanne Foster: The way we were organized is we had a president of diabetes, a COO, a sales leader, and diabetes was somewhat standalone, if you will, and then we had the remainder of the business.
Suzanne Foster: So, in these changes, what we did is we tapped a very experienced, as I said, former CEO of one of our larger acquisitions, his name is Gary Sheehan, to be general manager. So, we've abandoned the president role. The general manager is going to report into our new chief operating officer, Scott Barnhardt, who I've mentioned in the past.
Richard Close: The reason for that change in reporting is because so much of what we need to do is to leverage our strengths on the sleep and respiratory side, the remainder of the business, for the diabetes business where it makes sense.
Richard Close: And so having the GM sit underneath the Chief Operating Officer that can leverage the entire ADAPT business where it makes sense was an important first step.
Richard Close: Given that Gary has a long history in leading sleep HME business, in his words, he'll say diabetes is essentially the same business without the big CPAP machine, the timeliness of service, the catering to the patient, the experience.
Richard Close: So I'm very optimistic about his experience in leading a business, but also the mindset and how he's going to think about leveraging the broader AdaptHealth business to improve our diabetes business.
Richard Close: Second to that, we appointed a new sales leader for the diabetes business, someone with med device background. His name is Graham Ward. He's been a top season sales leader at the likes of Medtronic.
Richard Close: had spent time at Cardinal and then most recently came over from Google, where he was in a national accounts role. Graham has joined us and brings that very deep sales experience.
Richard Close: that he's getting his arms around the sales force that we have, understanding why that expansion didn't perform like it should have, putting in quotas, territory management, but more importantly, doing exactly as Gary's doing, where he's looking at the 700 salespeople we have out there on the HME side and saying, how do we work together to not only use our 78 today's diabetes salespeople, but how do we bring our army of 700 to help support the cause? Because everyone across ADAPT Health knows that turning around diabetes is the most important thing we need to do.
Richard Close: In addition to that, we talked about moving the resupply business.
Richard Close: It became obvious that we have a diabetes resupply business And then we have this crown jewel at Adapt Health of our sleep resupply center of excellence out of Nashville That leadership team is solid. They have clear standard work processes
Richard Close: proven excellence and so we shifted our resupply business to that team and that organization and so through that infrastructure we believe we'll be able to deliver a better resupply experience to the patient and so I'm excited about that work.
Richard Close: Those are the bigger changes, so from the top we have the new chief operating officer who's driving timely quality service.
Richard Close: We have a new general manager that's paying attention to the manufacturing relationships, how do we integrate and use the best of the best across AdaptHealth, a new sales leader, and then a gentleman named Matt Cox who runs our sleep resupply that will be taking on the diabetes resupply for us.
Richard Close: and then switching gears, Richard, to, you know, potential disposition of assets.
Richard Close: You know we're really talking about some of the subcategories in what we in the future will be calling wellness at home.
Richard Close: And so there's different products inside of Wellness at Home. Some include the classic bent metal, beds, wheelchairs, walkers.
Richard Close: Now we like that business a lot, you know, it's very important particularly in securing
Richard Close: you know, hospital relationships where you're able to be the easy button for those referring providers that are discharging patients.
Richard Close: and as you deliver excellent service, you earn more referrals in our other core areas, most notably respiratory and sleep. And so, you know, those products are ancillary, if you will, into the core, into those three core products that we intend to segment around.
Richard Close: There's other lines of business inside of Wellness to Home. Home Infusion is one that comes to mind. I mean, much like Custom Rehab, you know, we've built up somewhat of a collection of assets over the years that are pieces and parts of other acquisitions.
Richard Close: when you do this long enough and some of these can get you know pretty pretty large.
Richard Close: you know, so does, we're asking ourselves questions like, well does that product line deliver ancillary business into the core?
Richard Close: And so we're in process of answering those questions and making those determinations. I mean, there are other examples, but I won't get into those today. But that's really where our focus is, is to take areas where we just haven't paid enough attention these assets would be better owned by someone else.
Richard Close: They're pretty low growth for us, should improve margin, frankly, if and when we decide to dispose of them. And we'll continue to provide updates going forward.
Richard Close: www.cdc.gov.au
Speaker Change: Okay, thank you.
Speaker Change: Thank you and as a reminder if you would like to ask a question please press star 1 on your telephone keypad now and we will take our next question from Peto Chickering with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Peto Chickering: Hey guys, thanks for taking my questions. Can we talk a little back to the CGM reordering issues they talked about on the call? You have such a good model for DME
Speaker Change: are reordering for your whole business. So can you quantify how big those CGM delays were in the reordering, why those are delayed, and how you can fix it, and if those delays were in both Pharmacy and DME?
Speaker Change: Operations Center. I mean, we've got hundreds and hundreds of people working out of that center. The tech that is used there that sits on top.
Speaker Change: of Brightree. Some of that core design was frankly developed by AdaptHealth and employees at AdaptHealth.
Speaker Change: and it's so ingrained into our workflow so it operates with the precision of knowing, you know, exactly what the patient qualifies for, you know, we know the benefits of proper resupply following following proper cadence.
Speaker Change: And, you know, that team works to advise patients, work with patients on things that aren't, you know, their adherence, like things aren't fitting properly or they might have a different model that they want to explore. And so, you know, those teams are just so highly skilled at that.
Speaker Change: Historically, we had not yet integrated our diabetes resupply operation into Nashville, frankly because we had integration work to do on the eight different diabetes companies that we bought.
Speaker Change: and so there was a couple of years of work that went into consolidating all those patients onto single platforms, single databases.
Speaker Change: And that work has been completed. And so, you know, a very quick move that, you know, Suzanne has directed and the team is carrying out is to now take advantage of all the capability and the infrastructure that we've got out of Nashville and bring diabetes into that.
Speaker Change: You know, in terms of quantifying, I mean, the overarching...
Speaker Change: over the prior year. I mean, think of it in three buckets, fairly equal buckets, the first being real reimbursement change, pressure from specific payers that we've named in previous calls that shifted to 100% pharmacy.
Speaker Change: And, you know, that was ground that we had to make up. And so, you know, we're continuing to...
Speaker Change: absorb that and we will as well in the fourth quarter until we until we lap those changes next year.
Speaker Change: You know, the second is the new starts. I mean, we were a little short in Q2, but...
Speaker Change: It was too early to call revenue down as a lot of these sales folks are still new.
Speaker Change: As Suzanne said, there's a lot to be done to optimize their workflows, and we think that Gary, Graham, and others are going to do a great job with that. But just that miss in Q2 and then in Q3, the in-quarter miss against New Starts, that had an impact.
Speaker Change: and have it carry forward into Q4 that we made an adjustment for. And then finally, Zola Reker. Frankly, just dropping the ball in.
Speaker Change: who is eligible, when, and making sure that we've got timely order confirmation and delivery of products. So those are the three buckets and those are the three areas that Suzanne brought forth a plan that we're going to run against here over the next 90 days.
Speaker Change: Okay, great. And then a follow-up question here, just looking at the overall market growth, you know, between the two channels, Pharmacy Channel and DME, I guess, what do you think that those two channels are growing?
Speaker Change: in 2024, and as you think about sort of growth in the years, kind of where do you guys think that you guys can grow within both channels? Thanks.
Speaker Change: Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, again, too early for us to comment on 25 or even beyond. We do know that right now there are competitors in the space with, you know, same or similar capabilities that we have that are growing quite nicely. And so, you know, our job is to first stabilize and prevent compression and then get back to growth mode. And that's what we're focused on.
Speaker Change: Great, thanks so much.
Speaker Change: Thank you. And we will take our next question from Ben Hendricks with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Ben Hendricks: Hey, guys. Thanks for squeezing me in here. Just a quick question, and apologies if I missed this, but I think last quarter you talked about some of that channel shift, maybe some reabsorption or transition back among some carriers to the DME channel. I just wanted to see if there was any – you've kind of outlined your expectations for 4Q, but is there any indication to how that could look into next year? Is there any transition back incremental that you're seeing, or any indication of how that balance will kind of even out long-term? Thanks.
Speaker Change: Hey Ben, it's Jason. You know, not since last quarter. I mean, we did call out reference to two southeast states regarding Medicaid where, you know, they laid in new policy that was somewhat advantageous, you know, and so we're doing our work there to, you know, start earning some business.
Speaker Change: But it's nothing material that's impacting the top line. You know, regarding...
Speaker Change: Any future shifts or changes one way or the other? I think we'll reserve those comments until, you know, open enrollment season.
Speaker Change: Wraps up and payers publish new policy as we're getting into January and we'll have something to talk about when we report at the end of February
Speaker Change: Great, thanks guys.
Speaker Change: Thank you. And it appears that we have no further questions at this time. I will now turn the program back to Suzanne Foster.
Suzanne Foster: Well, once again, everyone, I just want to thank you for tuning in this morning. I mean the takeaway Hopefully you got the gist of it is that kind of the 80-20 role
Speaker Change: is with diabetes being 17% of our revenue, we definitely have an opportunity there and we are incredibly focused on improving in that area. And the guide that we issued today is really to de-risk that and give the team time to perform. But 80% of our business continues to perform solid. There's obviously an opportunity for continuous improvement, but we are working on that as well with the addition of a lot of technology and my app and people in org structure will continue that work, but very optimistic about the core of our business and our future. So hope to see you all out there on the road and thanks again.
Speaker Change: Thank you. This does conclude today's presentation. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time.
Speaker Change: Me-e-e-e-e-e-e