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eHealth, Inc. (EHTH)

Q4 2008 Earnings Call· Fri, Feb 13, 2009

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2008 eHealth earnings conference call. My name is Kamisha and I will be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. We will conduct a question-and-answer session towards the end of this conference. (Operator instructions) I would now like to turn the call over to your host for today's call, Ms. Kate Sidorovich, Company's Director of Investor Relations. Please proceed, ma'am.

Kate Sidorovich

Management

Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us today either by phone or by webcast for a discussion about eHealth Inc.’s fourth quarter and fiscal year 2008 financial results. On the call this afternoon, we will have Gary Lauer, eHealth’s President and Chief Executive Officer, and Stuart Huizinga, eHealth’s Chief Financial Officer. After management completes its remarks, we will open the line for questions. As a reminder, today’s conference call is being recorded and webcast from the Investor Relations section of our website. A replay of the call will be available from the Investor Relations section of our website following the call. We will make forward-looking statements on this call. All statements other than statements of historical facts are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements made on this call will include statements regarding future growth, the introduction of particular products in traditional market, the addition of more carrier partners to Ubao, the significance of our business opportunity, future healthcare reform, healthcare reform increasing the market's redress, the stimulus bill creating additional interest in COBRA options, future revenue growth, future non-GAAP operating margins, generation of operating cash, our future investment of cash and marketable securities, product's retention, future interest income, expected GAAP and cash tax rates, use of net operating losses and realization of cash flow benefit from net operating losses, guidance for 2009 revenues and revenue growth, stock-based compensation and earnings per share, 2009 marketing and advertising expense as the percentage of revenue, future benefits of skill and operating expenses, 2009 target operating margins and the impact of expected 2009 interest income and stock-based compensation expense on 2009 GAAP earnings per share. Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and assessments made by the Company’s management, based on factors they believe to be appropriate. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, developments, and business decisions to differ materially from those contemplated by these statements. We describe these and other risks and uncertainties in our annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which you may access through the SEC website or from the Investor Relations section of our website. Forward-looking statements made on this call represent the Company’s views as of today. You should not rely on these statements as representing our views in the future. We undertake no duty to update or revise any forward-looking statements made during this call, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. We will be presenting certain financial measures on this call that will be considered non-GAAP under SEC Regulation G. For reconciliation of each non-GAAP financial measure to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure, please refer to the information included in our press release and in our SEC filings, which can be found on our corporate website under the heading Investor Relations. And at this point I will turn the call over to Gary Lauer. Gary?

Gary Lauer

Management

Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today. I would like to begin by commenting on some of our financial results for the fourth quarter. Revenue of $29.5 million grew 22% over the fourth quarter a year ago. Individual and family plan application growth was 18%, marketing and advertising expense as a percentage of revenue improved to 39% compared to 40% in the third quarter of 2008. Earnings per share were $0.14 and non-GAAP operating margin, excluding the effects of stock-based compensation, was 22% up from 23% a year ago. We generated $7.4 million on operating cash flow during the quarter and over $30 million for the entire year bringing our overall cash and marketable securities balance to $150 million with no debt on our balance sheet as of the end of the year. As our financial results illustrate, we continue to execute on our operating plans and grow our business in the midst of an extraordinary macroeconomic environment. As we all know, the economy continue to deteriorate in the fourth quarter of 2008 with unemployment reaching 7.2% in December, up from 6% in the third quarter, consumer confidence dropping to an all time low and December retail sales declining almost 11% year-over-year. Initial estimates indicate that fourth quarter ecommerce sales were down year-over-over for the first time since the US Department of Commerce started to track the sector in 2000 and we are unfortunately seeing many businesses and industries in various states have declined. Against this backdrop, we are very focused on operating efficiency and aggressive marketing to keep growing eHealth at high rates relative to many other companies, and most importantly to help people find quality health insurance options. We would like to grow even faster and think we can in the long run. Like everyone else,…

Stuart Huizinga

Management

Thanks, Gary and good afternoon, everyone. I will now review our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2008. As Gary mentioned, we generated solid fourth quarter performance in a challenging environment and grew revenues at a healthy pace. We also increased our operating margins, both sequentially and year-over-year. Starting at the top line, our revenue for the fourth quarter was $29.5 million, an increase of 22% over the fourth quarter a year ago. For the full year, our revenue was $111.7 million, a 27% increase over 2007. Commission revenue for the fourth quarter was $26.2 million, an increase of 19% over Q4 2007. Our year-over-year commission revenue growth came mainly from growth in our membership base. Sponsorship, EOD and other revenue was $3.3 million or 11% of total revenues in the fourth quarter of 2008, a 48% increase over $2.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2007. The year-over-year growth in our individual and family major medical plan submitted applications was 18% in the fourth quarter. For the quarter, we had 131,200 new approved members. Our total estimated membership at the end of the year was over 621,000 members, which represents 20% growth over estimated membership reported at the end of the fourth quarter of 2007. I would like to comment on number retention, but before I do, I would like to remind you that when we estimate retention using trailing historical data. And so our fourth quarter view of retention is based on data from the second quarter of 2008. Based on this information, our estimated member retention rate remained within our historical range, and improved as compared to the estimated retention rate we discussed on our last earnings call. We see this as a positive result given that the economy started to deteriorate sharply…

Operator

Operator

(Operator instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Youssef Squali - Jefferies & Co. Youssef Squali - Jefferies & Co.: Couple of questions; first, Gary, if I look at the applications growth of 18% that is still somewhat shy of your goal of the 20%+ that you have been talking about off late. Yet if we look at the acquisition cost of roughly $64 that was relatively flat sequentially, obviously albeit a big jump from year ago. So, the question is, did you decide not to pursue or not to push for applications really this quarter for whatever reason to protect the margins or what happened because certainly the assumption out of your last call was that maybe you will going to continue to let your acquisition cost go up a little more in order to drive further growth? And the other question, Stuart, maybe can you comment in the close ratio? This is the second quarter in a row where we are seeing a sequential decline. I think it touched the 59%, Q3 I think it was around 57%. It is 55% right now.

Gary Lauer

Management

Youssef, it is Gary. I will start. Yes, on the application growth, frankly as we get into the fourth quarter, we saw the economy and the environment continue to deteriorate fast and as we look at that and we saw that frankly, we just decided to get judicious, I guess is one word a way to describe it about how we were spending money where we spending it. At the same time, we saw our direct content starting to frankly strengthen which we were pleased about and so, yes. We made a conscious decision that we want to keep the spending in check. We certainly could not spend quite a bit more but last quarter at 40% is I think you remember, we commented or I commented, were at the higher end of where we want to be or outside the range of guidance that we have given for the year as well although when we gave that guidance, no one anticipated an economic environment like it is today or like it was in the fourth quarter. But we thought that at that spend level, getting that kind of application growth that that was a roughly good balance and frankly, relative to everything else that we are learning now about how other companies have faired in this environment, what we seeing in terms of ecommerce momentum and growth and so on, carriers in this market place and on and on, we feel good about the decisions we made and we feel really good about the growth. It is a relative world and that world out there right now is really tough and the fact that we are able to grow 18% and spent what we did, we are very satisfied with that.

Stuart Huizinga

Management

And then on the close rate area, you are right that it has come down a little bit from where it was last quarter. We do continue to see a tight underwriting cycle that we have been talking about over the past several quarters. It is not down as much as that would appear when you take our metrics and try to back into that. As I have talked about in the past, there is some lag effect to when we get a submitted application and when that gets reported to us. So our internal numbers based on partial data for Q4, it is not fully lagged yet, we would feel a small decline in the conversion rate there. One other comment that I would make is that we are starting to see a little bit more in recent periods of family policies as a mix of our business and those seem to close at a little bit lower rate than individual policies. So, it is a little bit of mix as well. Youssef Squali - Jefferies & Co.: Okay, that is helpful but just kind of a follow up to your answer, Gary. What is baked into your guidance in terms of application growth? Do you think or does your guidance in that would return back to the 20%+ type of range or are you still going to be pretty frugal with, or how would you guys be frugal with the marketing spent?

Gary Lauer

Management

Yes, Youssef, we really based our guidance on what we experienced in the second half of the year and certainly the fourth quarter of the year as well. So, if you assume within that guidance range that we are working kind of off growth rates in metrics similar to what you saw in the third and the fourth quarter, you could probably have an assumption area that is around where we are looking at. We think that there is as unemployment is fast and increasing, it is interesting, two or three quarters ago as the economy was continuing to deteriorate, we were not seeing accompanying unemployment increases at kind of the rates that people thought the economy was declining, but now we are seeing that and we are seeing it very significantly and unfortunately for a lot of people out of work, that may have some positive impact on our business which certainly could change some of the assumptions or at least added the assumptions that we had going into this but let me point out again that we have come into this year assuming that the economy at best case is equivalent to the later half of what we saw last year. The deteriorates, we think we got a lot of programs and things in place but that keep referring at the kind of rates we have been running at. If it gets better or if we get some pick up from unemployment and so on then obviously that has a countering effect there.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of George Sutton - Craig-Hallum Capital.

George Sutton - Craig-Hallum Capital

Analyst

With respect to the COBRA element that you mentioned from stimulus plan, how did you factor that into your guidance given that it was fairly late in the process?

Gary Lauer

Management

George, this is Gary. Only in that we think, I will make several comments on the stimulus plan. First of all, I think it is unfortunate that the subsidy is only for people who were looking at COBRA because there are a tremendous number of people losing jobs and they do not have COBRA as an option. For example, most people do not know this but federal precludes businesses with 20 employees or less for example. Businesses that go bankrupt no longer have the health insurance offering or COBRA as well plus the vast number of businesses that had no health insurance to begin with and then you add to that the fact that even at the 65% subsidy and the subsidy is in some place between 60% and 65%, I do not know at this moment where it has landed. But in either case, for many people, it is still pretty heavily expensive and many, many of the products that we market are less expensive even in the 40% or 35% contribution you have to make out of pocket. So, we actually think that there maybe some uplift from all of that. We assumed coming into this that, because we saw this that there would be some, it could be some COBRA helping working the stimulus package. So that is certainly reflected in our guidance and in fact, I really do believe that the stimulus package and what is in there with COBRA probably brings more visibility to this market place that forces people to go look at options and helps our business.

George Sutton - Craig-Hallum Capital

Analyst

There were two deals that you mentioned that I wanted to just make sure we get a little more detail about big brand names; J.P. Morgan, the referral deal sounds interesting if you could just give a little bit more clarity there and then also AARP, what would you hope to accomplish with these two programs?

Gary Lauer

Management

Well, with J.P. Morgan Chase, it is just a great name and being able to introduce them into the HSA world with their banking, with the chase banking, is really good. Every time we bring a brand name into our market place, it seems to attract consumers whether it is Aetna or Cigna or J.P. Morgan Chase, we believe. So we think that is going to be good and they have got a very, very large customer base as you know and they are marketing us into that customer base as well. So, it is really up that we are enthused about that. The American Association of Retired People, AARP, we are very enthused about. I mean that is a well known, well-respected brand name. We have launched the first product with them only in Pennsylvania but our hope and plans are to expand that and once again having a name like that in our market place, we think just is further legitimizes what we do and brings more people too. Additionally, they are focused on people 50 years of age and older which is a fast growing internet centric as well. There are more baby boomers aging into that so there are a lot of demographics that we think having our peer with us, help us to get to and expose us too as well. So, AARP, I am particularly excited about. The third brand name you did not mentioned that I would like to emphasize as well is Cigna. Cigna is well respected, well known name in the insurance world and the health insurance world as well. They historically have only been supporting large employers. We have now got them in three states, growing from one just a few short months ago and the plan and the hope is to go to more and if there is experiences anything like Aetna, once again, consumers will grab a take toward that brand name and we think that is good as well.

George Sutton - Craig-Hallum Capital

Analyst

Okay lastly, with respect to the share repurchase. It sounds like you began that late in December. Can you just give us a sense within the constraints of the 10b5-1 plan and what your plans would be there given the low rate of interest you are getting on your cash?

Gary Lauer

Management

Yes, we got a 10b5-1 in place and it is as you know as 10b5-1s are constructed, typically they got different bonds and so on at different price points and different bonds. We are buying back shares and we have been active in the market.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Neil Gagnon - Gagnon Securities.

Neil Gagnon - Gagnon Securities

Analyst

Really I have two questions for Stuart. On the interest, on the discussions ago, it looks to me like that is about, what, $0.04 or $0.05 lower in 2009 than 2008, is that correct?

Stuart Huizinga

Management

That is correct, about $0.04.

Neil Gagnon - Gagnon Securities

Analyst

Okay. On the amount of money that goes to share options, I think you said $5 million to $6 million. So, after tax, that is roughly $3 million plus so that is $0.10 or $0.11?

Stuart Huizinga

Management

No, it is $0.03 to $0.05 after taxes are applied.

Neil Gagnon - Gagnon Securities

Analyst

No, I am sorry. Let us do that again, $5 million to $6 million that is your pretax option to the P&L, correct?

Stuart Huizinga

Management

Correct.

Neil Gagnon - Gagnon Securities

Analyst

Okay, if you tax it then 60% of it after tax would be $3 million or more. I do not understand why that is not $0.11. I do not get the $0.04.

Stuart Huizinga

Management

The $0.04 is the delta between what we had last year and what it is this year.

Neil Gagnon - Gagnon Securities

Analyst

Okay. That I understand there, but the absolute expense if we go from your, according to estimate you gave as GAAP, we have to add roughly $0.11 to that.

Stuart Huizinga

Management

No, what I am strictly looking at is the delta between what we have last

Neil Gagnon - Gagnon Securities

Analyst

I understand it, yes. Stuart, I understand it but please just stay with me. You have to add your $0.51 to $0.61 or whatever that number is roughly $0.11 to get to non-GAAP earnings per share.

Stuart Huizinga

Management

I am sorry, I am blanking on this. I do not follow that.

Neil Gagnon - Gagnon Securities

Analyst

Okay, I will repeat one more time. Your stock option in expense is $5 million to $6 million, I think it is $5.5 million. I taxed it 40% so that is $3.3 million or $3.2 million. That is $0.11 a share. That is what has to be added back to your GAAP earnings per share number if I want to get to a non-GAAP number.

Stuart Huizinga

Management

Yes.

Neil Gagnon - Gagnon Securities

Analyst

Good.

Stuart Huizinga

Management

That is correct.

Neil Gagnon - Gagnon Securities

Analyst

That is just what I want to understand. Thanks.

Stuart Huizinga

Management

Oh, I am sorry.

Gary Lauer

Management

Operator, next question?

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Richard Fetyko - Merriman Curhan Ford & Co. Richard Fetyko - Merriman Curhan Ford & Co.: Just a quick question, with respect to seeing the impact from unemployment on your applications growth, is it fair to say that if we look at your direct traffic channel and direct channel for applications' acquisitions, which was up or actually accelerated in terms of a year-over-year growth rate, is that perhaps an indication of that increased interest?

Gary Lauer

Management

Well, Richard, this is Gary. It maybe, we did quite a bit of public relations work in the quarter almost all focused on the unemployed, the state of the economy and apply it to people with no health insurance. As I noted, our search ranking for what we do in COBRA and our COBRA outreach and so on, the COBRA Learning Center increased significantly as well. So, we definitely saw some strong pick up and I noted our year-over-year direct was 26% growth. So although I cannot tell you specifically that every single person that came to us direct, what their origin is because we do not know by definition, I think it is fair to assume that there is some influence there from the people recently unemployed and from the unemployment ranks growing. If you look at that fourth quarter unemployment just on that quarter alone, it went from 6% in the third quarter to 7.2% in the fourth, so we are kind of operating on the assumption that there is definitely some content there of people unemployed looking for options to COBRA or simply looking for health insurance because they do not have a COBRA option. Richard Fetyko - Merriman Curhan Ford & Co.: And then follow up, you mentioned Cigna and we have heard Cigna talked about how they went on to be more aggressive in individual market to offset their sort of membership losses. On the corporate accounts, that have kind of picked up that kind of tone from the others but are you seeing the other insurance carriers follow through with also product launches and new region launches as well or is it more of a just kind of talk and discussion as oppose to actual actions and seeing some new product launches from these carriers?

Gary Lauer

Management

Oh, no. We are definitely seeing a lot of activity. We saw more sponsorship in the fourth quarter for example as they are actually spending more in this market. We are certainly seeing more plan designs in this market. We are seeing more carriers come to the market. Cigna is the most notable right now. We are seeing other carriers looking to expand to the other market so there is a lot of activity and we have been noted as well that in several of the large health insurance carriers earnings reviews recently, there have been comments about the individual market and growth there as well, as well as comments about healthcare reform probably having some positive platform in this market place also. Richard Fetyko - Merriman Curhan Ford & Co.: Okay, thanks and then if I may one more, with respect to your cash, is there a sort of active look or search for acquisitions as well as part of the strategy and I mean, how far along are you at reviewing some ideas out there?

Gary Lauer

Management

Well, we continue to be interested in ways to grow our business other that just organic growth. I have said this before, if we did anything we would like it to be strategic and accretive. It has got to be health related. Most likely it is going to have a strong online part or element to it. Bruce Telkamp, who is really focused on and this is part of his responsibility, he is spending a fair amount of time there as well. As you might imagine in this environment, we are seeing more and more private companies looking for capital because they cannot get it from the sources they used to which makes them more affordable, not necessarily more attractive but more affordable but we are looking at all kinds of things but I can assure you that anything we do would be really thoughtful and careful about and as you know to this point, we have not done anything very significant on the acquisition or merger side of our business but we certainly got the ability to do that, somewhat with our stock currency and certainly with our cash as well. But we would really want something that would help us to either grow the business as we continue to move in and around the market place or be a parallel business that is very closely aligned with our core business today.

Kate Sidorovich

Management

Next question, please.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jim Friedland - Cowen & Company. Jim Friedland - Cowen & Company: First just a quick one on guidance, is the buyback or is any portion of the buyback assumed in terms of making the EPS guidance and second on marketing, in terms of the range you are giving this year, it is really tighter and a little higher than it was in the past, at what point do you say, "Okay, well, we have been growing the marketing faster than revenues for a while," and you stop increasing that as the percentage of total because obviously there will be a lot of leverage when that does occur or is it just, as long as we are in this current difficult environment that you are likely to push marketing a little bit more aggressively?

Stuart Huizinga

Management

Jim, this is Stuart. On that question on the guidance, we did not assume a material amount from the stock buyback. As you can see, we did not do much last year and that program went into effect right at the end of the year so we come into the year with very little adding to the or taking away from our weighted shares. And then the stock price has increased fairly significantly since the time that we put that in place and so it is hard to say where the price goes from here but we have assumed at least for guidance purposes very little in the way of stock buyback.

Gary Lauer

Management

And on the marketing and advertising at 38% to 40%, we just took a look at where we have operated over the past six months as we said, I think and Youssef's comment where do we predicate a lot of this on, we predicated on off a lot of our guidance after what we have experienced in the fourth quarter and what we expect to see going forward even with a more challenging environment and we think 38% to 40% is a good area to operate and we think we can grow at a very nice rate. In fact, we think we can grow faster than almost any other company we are aware of in this really tough environment. But there is a point at which we will stop spending and you can see it is probably around that upper limit but as Stuart said, there maybe some quarters we spend more than others. So you might find a bit of fluctuation this year but we know with these numbers we could highly profitable and we also feel optimistic that we can grow it a very good rate as well. Jim Friedland - Cowen & Company: And one quick follow up on the sponsorship and the EOD, the other line item. That is growing in a much faster rate in the commission business and you are signing up a lot of partners. How well penetrated are you as a percentage of the total and on the sponsorship side and the EOD side, do you think you are 25%, 50%? So, just trying to get a sense of how that could grow going forward?

Gary Lauer

Management

Well in sponsorship, we are probably more penetrated, in fact probably we are more penetrated than we are at the EOD business simply because we only led out so much real estate that will sell in the different markets that we are in and we are in the majority of states right now with sponsorship although as time goes on, we will start to break it down in the metropolitan areas and zip code by zip code. So, there is certainly opportunity for us to market more sponsorship there and that is more to us than anything else as we continue to expand that business and how we want to expand it. On the EOD business, I feel like we are just scratching the surface. We are in as I said 43 states and I think we have 31 carriers currently today. As you know there is over 180 carriers that market and sell on the eHealth platform today. They are all certainly potential partners for us here plus those that we are doing business with today. We got to expand into other markets that they maybe in and yet there is the whole broker/agent community which we had just really started to focus on and started to talk about as well. The strategy here quite frankly is that every time there is a health insurance transaction that occurs online, it is on the eHealth platform whether it is directly through us or with the hands of an agent or the computer of an agent or a broker or directly through a carrier as well but we have the opportunity to monetize it no matter where it happens and I can tell you, I am personally very enthused about this EOD business specially the momentum we have been gaining and where we see this going.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of William Morrison - ThinkEquity, LLC.

William Morrison - ThinkEquity, LLC

Analyst

I jumped on the call in the Q&A so I apologize if you already talked about this Gary but I am just wondering if you could talk just kind of broadly about the regulatory environment, what the departure of Daschle from the nomination to EHTH mean in your view and what your government relation folks are hearing from the hill. And then secondly, I was just wondering if you could comment on any impact or not from the SCHIP legislation passing.

Gary Lauer

Management

Yes, Bill this is Gary. Yes, I made some comments in my script and a few others after but I was actually in DC a week ago with John Desser, he was our government relations executive and we have many meetings with members of the senate and the House as well, individual meetings. There is certainly desire on the part of the, by the way, we met almost exclusive with democrats, there is certainly desire among all of them to do some things in terms of healthcare reform. There is not a lot of specificity I might add. I think that the clearly the stimulus, it seems clear to us. So we are hearing this from the hill as well that the difficulty in getting the stimulus package through and agreed to has certainly may portend things for other legislative activities. There is the question of affordability which everyone that we met with a week ago acknowledged and talked about and then I think Daschle now not being, no longer being the nominee for health and human services does not speed things up. It slows things down. He had a real passion for this. We have a relationship with him and think a lot of him and I thin he was taking that position because he really cared about getting healthcare reform done and in place. That leadership is gone from the administration and from the cabinet. I do not know who is going to take that position but that certainly slows things down as well. We had heard Max Baucus last week who is the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee who has been talking a lot about health that say it is probably not going to happen this year. We have heard that from Steny Hoyer in the House and others as well. So, your guess maybe is as good as mine but although I think that there was probably more anticipation several weeks ago. My gut is that people are getting to be a bit more pragmatic about this and it is slowing down. I have heard some people say that if it does not happen this year, it probably does not happen at all in this administration. I am the last person to know whether that is the case or not, but it certainly does not feel that it is moving at a speed that it was previously and it is expensive. The other concern I heard last week is that more money maybe required for stimulus than in whatever bill gets passed and that would probably take precedence over healthcare or anything else.

William Morrison - ThinkEquity, LLC

Analyst

And SCHIP?

Gary Lauer

Management

Oh, sorry Bill. Yes, I wrote that down. SCHIP, yes, the present sign to SCHIP legislation last week which extends SCHIP which is by the way for everyone is the State Children's Health Insurance Program. It is federal funding for children to get health insurance. It is administered through the states, not by the federal government. A child who is a member of a family that is at 300% of the national poverty level or below and that is about $66,000, I am not sure, about $64,000 of family income would qualify. It is estimated that there is about 11 million people today who are ultimately free their Medicaid or SCHIP are not enrolled in the ranks of the uninsured. Look, we felt the last president should have signed this legislation. We just think it is the right thing to do and it is good stuff. It has probably, it has no negative impact on our business that we can see except that maybe it reduces the ranks of the insured a bit but kind of by definition, these are group of people who will not going to be coming to us anyway and in some ways could help the business because it brings more visibility to health insurance and may get their parents thinking about it, and who knows, there maybe some families out there that once the children are covered, it is more affordable for the parents now to buy themselves some health insurance because the government is paying for the children. But we do not see any material impact to our business one way or another right now from SCHIP.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Justin Post - Merrill Lynch.

Justin Post - Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Gary, you talked about the economy affecting the buy rate and some of the activity for you as well as everyone else. Why do you think that is? Are people just generally going without insurance right now? Do you think that is just what people are forced to do in the environment?

Gary Lauer

Management

Yes, here is what I think Justin, I think every time you turn on the television, you hear about how bad the economy is and people are economizing and so on. I think that influences consumer behavior and in my one personal opinion in mind, I know it is influencing my house and my family members. I think there are people who looked at health insurance as something they wanted to buy but did not have it and they have decided to put it off longer for various reasons. I think there are others who are just feeling that although it maybe not to discretionary they are trading. It is being discretionary. As you know this economic situation seems to be impacting everything everywhere and unfortunately health insurance is part of that. Intellectually, it seems like health insurance should be a nondiscretionary item for everyone but we would have so many people uninsured who have incomes in excess of $75,000 for example who we think could afford it but do not if everyone did believe it is discretionary. So there is no doubt in my mind that there has been for several quarters for us some downward pressure from this economic environment. But I want to add that we may see some counter, we could see some counterbalance to that as the ranks of the unemployed appear to be continuing to increase.

Justin Post - Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Okay and in our numbers, we do calculate a conversion rate and I think the assumption maybe 12 months ago was that some of the electronic processing would help kind of drive that up but it looks like it was down a little bit and I think you mentioned that in your prepared remarks. What are some of the maybe one or two big initiatives this year that either help stabilize that or can you get that to start go in the right direction again?

Stuart Huizinga

Management

Well, we are constantly working in our customer care center on ways to improve that ratio and underneath that all, we have been able to move the needle in a positive direction. In that regard, in this past year we have added call center software to make it more efficient, make everyone's effort more efficient and we believe that that will help boost things going forward. We are just in a cycle that we have seen before, it is longer that it has been in the past but there is a piece of it that we cannot do anything about and that is with the carrier's control.

Justin Post - Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Okay and any timeframe on when you think this could kind of little easier and make it loosen the standards, any thoughts on timing on that?

Stuart Huizinga

Management

It seems to have somewhat coincided with the economic downturn and so I think the hope would be that when the economy turns around, maybe we will see something change there.

Justin Post - Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Okay and then the last thing, any changes in the quality or type of person applying for health insurance? Is it waiting more towards people in the small businesses or more towards unemployed and any changes in the demographics of your membership base, anything you can report there?

Gary Lauer

Management

Justin, there is nothing to report at the moment. As Stuart commented, we are seeing more families applying. Whether you conclude from that that is because of the rising unemployment, I do not know. We have not been able to tie that yet. We are doing a lot of survey work right now for people who come to us. We do not have anything of substance there yet but we are drilling some interesting trends that I do not want to comment on until I feel more confident that they are accurate. As you heard in our prepared remarks, I think we said several times everyday, we feel that we are seeing more people coming to us who are recently unemployed so it should not be a surprise to see that trend specially given what is happening with unemployment and so on. But we do not see anything from a product mix standpoint as well as the demographic of the customer standpoint that stands out right now that says if there is any kind of an important shift one way or another.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Carl McDonald - Oppenheimer & Co. Carl McDonald - Oppenheimer & Co.: I am just wondering if you could give any studies or have any internal projections on what you saw on the take up rate of COBRA would be with the subsidy as oppose to where it was before.

Gary Lauer

Management

Yes, Carl. This is Gary. It is a really good question. I met with some policy people in DC a week ago and we had that discussion. They are thinking at some place in kind of the 20% to 30% range. I will tell you what the concern with that is and it is a very real one. In fact, this recently came from a compensation firm, [Buck Consulting] who look at these things and their concern is that what you are going to have with this subsidy is people who have got preexisting conditions or have got health issues today who are not healthy are going to be those who are going to take advantage of this and what that is going to do is it is going to imbalance the pools that businesses have and over time increase the premium cost quite significantly. Those who are healthy either are not going to take the COBRA or going to go into the individual market. That is the prediction. There is nothing to substantiate that from a historical standpoint so we will see but it is an interesting one and it does make some sense. But we think, Carl that if you have a take rate of 25% or 30% of people who are unemployed, who did not take COBRA which is by the way, is much higher than the take rate today. I am talking about with the subsidy. We think that that has got really good impact for us because that is going to get a lot of these people thinking about options and so on before they go to spend that 35% or 40% of whatever the premium value is out of their pocket. We did an interesting study here on our Company by the way. We…

Gary Lauer

Management

Well, as you probably would note, the economy has been a decline in all of 2007 and 2008 as well and if you look at the growth rates that we have, they are pretty much in line with the kinds of things that we have seen over the past several quarters.

Stuart Huizinga

Management

Yes and I think if you would also look at our overall top line growth rate of 17% to 22%, fairly strong growth rate there, all things in equal. Carl McDonald - Oppenheimer & Co.: Okay and final question just on the licensing, the $3.3 million in the fourth quarter, is that a good run rate or is there anything in there that we are not going to see recur in 2009?

Stuart Huizinga

Management

That is recurring revenue.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Peter Costa - FTN Equity Capital Markets.

Peter Costa - FTN Equity Capital Markets

Analyst

Is there anything in your guidance for pressure on commissions going forward or if you assumed very similar commissions to what you had the past year?

Stuart Huizinga

Management

Yes, there is not anything in there in terms of commission rates changing in any way. It is all based on our current structure and it is really constructive more around application volumes and the potential of retention rates changing. But we have not seen anything that would cause us to want to change the commission rate assumption.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Randy Katz - JMP Securities.

Randy Katz - JMP Securities

Analyst

Just one question for you. Considering the deteriorating environment, it was nice to see churn come down in the quarter. Is there anything that you can point to that drive down to these levels? And as it relates to guidance for 2009, churns bounce around quite a bit from the first quarter through the fourth quarter so, how do you think about churn going in 2009 and how does that play in the guidance?

Stuart Huizinga

Management

Yes, I think about churn in terms of what we have seen over the last several quarters. It is somewhat seasonal. It is typically a little bit better in the fourth quarter. So we looked over several quarters and I have always said in the past, never take a single quarter and draw a straight line off of that and so I just really need to look at kind of a rolling kind of outlook on that.

Operator

Operator

And there are no more questions in queue. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Gary Lauer for closing remark.

Gary Lauer

Management

Okay. I just like to thank everybody for your participation this afternoon and we look forward to speaking with you in the near future. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you for your participation in today’s conference. This concludes your presentation. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful day.