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HeartBeam, Inc. (BEAT)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Tue, Nov 10, 2015

$0.88

-0.07%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us for the BioTelemetry' Third Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. Certain statements during the conference call and question-and-answer period to follow may relate to future events and expectations and as such constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities and Litigation Act of 1995. Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the company in the future to be materially different from the statements that the company’s executives may make today. These risks are described in detail in our public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our latest periodic report on Form 10-K or 10-Q. We assume no duty to update these statements. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Mr. Joseph Capper. Sir, you may begin.

Joe Capper

Analyst

Thank you, Operator and good afternoon everyone. I'm Joe Capper, President and CEO of BioTelemetry also with me on call today is our Chief Financial Officer, Heather Getz. I'll start with an overview of over third quarter performance, Heather will take you through a more detailed review of our operating results and we'll then open up the call to your questions. So let's get started. I'm extremely pleased to report that we recorded our 13th consecutive growth quarter, improved margins, exceeded our EBITDA expectations and recorded positive GAAP quarterly and year-to-date EPS for the second consecutive quarter. As a reminder last quarter was the first time we had a positive GAAP EPS in six years. Additionally we were excited to see CMS affirm 8% rate increase for MCOT with the publication of the final 2016 physician fee schedule last week. This rate increase coupled with recent legislative developments in the field of Telehealth has largely removed any cloud of reimbursement uncertainty and points to a far more stable future for our business. At the outset of 2015 we have established financial guidance that represented a significant increase over an extremely successful 2014 calling for a 50% increase in EBITDA. Later in the year we increased that guidance a bit further targeting a 60% increase over 2014. In order to achieve this objective we needed to grow healthcare services faster than the industry, deliver solid results from research services and continue to control expenses. I'm pleased to report that is exactly what we did in the third quarter and we remain one pace to reach a higher. EBITDA estimate of $32 million. As I reiterated on several previous calls in order to achieve these outstanding results we have to execute both financially and operationally. We accomplished that by adhering to the…

Heather Getz

Analyst

Thank you, Joe. Good afternoon everyone. As Joe discussed our Q3 revenue came in slightly below our expectations at $43.5 million the health care and research revenue were about as expected with an increase of $1.7 million or 5% growth over the prior year while our technology revenue was lower than expected with the decline of 1.3 million. This resulted from certain customers postponing orders in Q3 in anticipation of us launching upgraded version of the product. Conversely our research segment posted a 15% increase in revenue resulting from a higher number of active studies in the quarter. While our health care revenue was higher year-over-year as we mentioned on our Q2 call we did expect slower patients volume in the quarter due to the summer season which is typical. We saw a more pronounced slowdown of patients volumes in the early months of the quarter with a significant pickup in the month of September. This trend is consistent with IMS doctor visit data which showed cardiology visits down here year-over-year in July and August and up slightly in September. This volume pickup continued into October which was our biggest revenue month ever for the healthcare. Moving to gross profit, our margin was 60.6% which was 430 basis points higher than the prior year quarter. This marks the fifth consecutive quarter of gross profit improvement post acquisitions and the Medicare reduction in early '14. This margin improvement comes from favorable pricing dynamics in the health care segment as well as operationally efficiencies and wireless device communication savings. While we will see some origin improvement in 2016 due to the Medicare rate increase and our next generation MCOT, we expect gross margin return to generally remain around Q3 levels for the remainder of 2015. As we have seen throughout the year…

Joe Capper

Analyst

Thanks, Heather. As you’ve just heard we had a highly successful third quarter. In addition to achieving excellent results and improving margins we move CardioKey further into its launch base, continued to see progress in our research and INR [ph] businesses and received outstanding news from CMS regarding 2016 final rates for MCOT. All of this gives us greater confidence in our outlook for the future. As mentioned we’re referring full year EBITDA guidance of over $32 million representing 6% growth year over year. We expect a strong finish to the year with a focused on driving growth in the health care division by executing our comprehensive strategy and leveraging the advantage of the CardioKey to grab more share. Preparing for the launch of our next generation MCT product in a patch format, expanding the research services business by growing and converting backlog, exploiting new revenue opportunities whether our INR and other potential initiatives and continuing to drive efficiencies throughout the organization to maximize margin opportunity. Given all of the positive momentum in the business and the improved reimbursement environment we have set expectations for next year at low double digit revenue growth with a remarkable. 20% EBITDA return. To put this in perspective five years ago this was a single product company but a 2% EBITDA return a negative earnings. Although we have made tremendous progress our best days lie ahead. Before I close I would again like to thank those at the company who helped deliver our 13th consecutive growth quarter. You should be very proud that your hard work positively impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who depend on our products. With that we will now pause and open the call to questions. Operator, we are ready for our first question.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. Our first question is from Bruce Jackson of Lake Street Capital. Your line is open.

Bruce Jackson

Analyst

First if we could talk a little bit more about the gross margin next year, so you've dialed in the MCOT reimbursement increase from CMS. What were some of the other puts and takes? So is there like any for example any advantage to launching CardioKey or any other cost savings that you're anticipating? And are there any like offsetting expenses that are in there?

Heather Getz

Analyst

So for 2016 Bruce?

Bruce Jackson

Analyst

For 2016, right.

Heather Getz

Analyst

So the Medicare increase is included in that 20% EBITDA return and then while we may see some additionally efficiencies we may take the opportunity to invest some money back into the business to help us accelerate the top line. So we've incorporated all those factors into that 20% EBITDA return.

Bruce Jackson

Analyst

And then a couple housekeeping questions on the revenue side, what was the total number of patients service during the quarter and then was the MCOT percent of revenue?

Heather Getz

Analyst

So the MCOT percent of revenue was about 56%.

Bruce Jackson

Analyst

And then have you provided a total number of patient service in the quarter?

Heather Getz

Analyst

No we don't typically provide the actual numbers, Bruce.

Bruce Jackson

Analyst

Do you’ve a growth rate?

Heather Getz

Analyst

The overall growth rate quarter over quarter was about 3%.

Bruce Jackson

Analyst

Okay. And then final housekeeping question, what's your assumed tax rate for 2016?

Heather Getz

Analyst

For 2016 we expect that the NOLs that we have will cover any federal or state income taxes that we have, we're actually in the process of doing that analysis now but the initial read is that will have enough to cover any anticipated tax.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Jan Wald with Benchmark Company. Your line is open.

Jan Wald

Analyst

So I question I have is if I look at what consensus was in terms of where you least consensus such would be was about 46.1 million for the quarter and if I look at what happened in the technology group which I think is [indiscernible] and the 1 million added to patients services. It still doesn't quite get me to where I think the patients where people expect the patient services to be and it didn't get to where we expected patients services to be. So is there anything else going on in patient services that we ought to know about?

Joe Capper

Analyst

I think that you went through that, right Heather, you pulled -- patient services was pretty much where we expected it to be. We had a couple million dollars shortfall in the product division, or technology division and products sales.

Heather Getz

Analyst

So when you look at product Jan, our technology it was down 1.3 million year over year but we actually expected sequentially an increase so the actual difference to what we guided to was higher than that 1.3. So it's closer to the $2 million. So the rest of it is just slightly lower between research and product not anything significant.

Joe Capper

Analyst

And Jan, I think it's important to remember we talked about this in the past. It's a division that we break out because we have to break it out and it does contribute to the company but it's a lesser strategic business if you will, it's one that we don't allocate marking resources to. So when we talk about the growth in the company we consistently talk about in terms of health care services growth and resource services growth both of those businesses are moving in the direction we want to be moving. This was a case where several customers delayed product purchases waiting for upgrades to next generation systems, migrating from 2G to 3G and things like that. So it's a strategic concern for us and I think it was reflected in the margins of the business, margins were better than we thought.

Jan Wald

Analyst

Yes I guess. I understand that about technology I was just wondering if -- it sounds like you're happy with the way that patients services business grew but it grew slightly less than we had anticipated to work. So I was just wondering if there was anything there that we should take note of, also notice that research services grew faster than we had expected so and you still came in a little bit late according to us. So I was just wondering if something else was going on but--

Joe Capper

Analyst

No, not really and you know for us we want to grow faster than the market. We said that several times and you know we don't necessarily get a good market share data in this space so good proxy for it is the IMS data around [indiscernible] you heard us talk about it both overall office business and cardiology -- some specialties drop in the summer month. So if we take that drop into account and we stayed even with the market theoretically we should have dropped. So we actually had to grab share right. So we actually grew the patient services business in spite of a drop in volume per se as related to doctor office visits. So we're pretty pleased with it and then the momentum we had coming out of the quarter and into the fourth quarter looks pretty solid.

Jan Wald

Analyst

And on the research services side, it sounds like the pipeline is improving, could you talk a little bit about the pipeline and what your expectations for the rest of this year and if you’re willing and going into next?

Heather Getz

Analyst

Yes. I mean we don't typically break it down into that much detail, the way I look at it Jan is that sequentially you'll see an improvement again in research versus Q3 and Q4 and then looking into 2016. We guided to that double digit revenue growth, our expectation would be if you look at three segments that the research would be growing faster than the average and so you can kind of bake that into your numbers with research growing a little bit faster, health care growing at about an average and the technology segment being below the average that we would grow.

Jan Wald

Analyst

Okay. I guess what I was looking for was in the past you have said early on you were catching Phase 2 trials, you’re working towards getting larger trials under your belt. Are you seeing that trend continue and grow?

Heather Getz

Analyst

We’re Jan, we’re actually seeing a couple of things we're seeing an increase in the total number of studies that we have going on and we're seeing higher dollar, longer studies in the later phases.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. Our next question is from Marco Rodriguez with Stonegate Capital Market. Your line is open.

Marco Rodriguez

Analyst

I just want to get a little bit of clarification on the gross margin for fiscal '16 just kind of following up on earlier question. You mentioned that you're going to be looking to add back some of the cost efficiencies you'll be saving to accelerate topline growth. So are we talking that gross margin should probably be relatively flat this quarter 60% area in fiscal '16 or is that extra investment going to a different line item?

Heather Getz

Analyst

Yes so your gross margin will go up a little bit in '16 because of the Medicare rate I think that's about 100 basis points and then you may see a little bit of additional efficiency but that may be offset with some investments down in G&A.

Marco Rodriguez

Analyst

And then in terms of the overall revenue guidance for fiscal '16, just trying to get a little bit of a better sense of far as how you might see that flowing through on a quarterly basis not looking for specific numbers but with the patch launching in late Q1, just trying to get a better feel for how you expect that to flow through?

Heather Getz

Analyst

Yes. Marco, it's probably a little bit too soon for us to provide that. We're still planning from a sequential and quarterly basis. We just felt that we were in a good enough spot to give that high level of general guidance based on what we've seen. So we'll be able to give you more detail looking at the end of the year.

Marco Rodriguez

Analyst

Okay. And then one another quick kind of a question here in terms of fiscal '16. Can you provide any sort of color or guidance in regard to what your CapEx spend might be and then also what you expect your D&A to be?

Heather Getz

Analyst

Again probably a little soon. I wouldn't expect it to be significantly greater than this year, we made some investments in our CardioKey this year, next year we'll probably see some additional spend on the patch with a little bit lower spending on software next year. So it's probably going to be about where we're looking at this year on the CapEx line. D&A, we will probably be a little bit higher than this year given that we're going to put into place a new front end system that will start depreciating in probably Q1. So you're going to see a little bit of a higher D&A expense.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And that concludes our Q&A session for today. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Joseph Capper for any further remarks.

Joe Capper

Analyst

Thanks, Operator and thanks again everyone for your continued support and interest in the company. We will speak to you all next quarter and operator that concludes today's call.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. If you joined the conference later today you may listen to the conference via digital replay which will be available through investor information section of the BioTelemetry website at www.gobio.com until Friday November 20, 2015. Thank you and have a great day.