Earnings Labs

eHealth, Inc. (EHTH)

Q1 2017 Earnings Call· Thu, Apr 27, 2017

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the eHealth’s First Quarter 2017 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Kate Sidorovich, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Kate Sidorovich

Analyst

Good afternoon and thank you all for joining us today either by phone or by webcast for a discussion about eHealth Inc's first quarter 2017 financial results. On the call this afternoon, we will have Scott Flanders, eHealth's Chief Executive Officer and Dave Francis, eHealth's Chief Financial Officer. After management completes its remarks, we will open the lines for questions. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded and webcast from the IR section of our website. A replay of the call will be available on our website following the call. We will be making forward-looking statements on this call that includes statements regarding future events, beliefs, and expectations, including statements regarding the impact of the CMS marketing guidelines, our increased focus on the profitability of our Medicare business, shift in our Medicare marketing strategy, and our focus on direct and strategic partner channels, some slowdown in submitted Medicare application growth, our intend to aggressively pursue the Medicare supplemental market, expected submitted applications growth for all Medicare products, our work with partners in the labor union and military personnel markets, progress on establishing a more effective connection to the federal exchange, excepted benefits from our new online enrollment platform for small businesses with our largest carrier partners, our value proposition and investment in the small business insurance markets, revenue and earnings generation potentials of our Medicare and individual and family plan businesses, operating and financial leverage inherent in our individual and family plan business, profitability of the individual and family plan business, excepted loss in the Medicare segment for the full-year 2017 and our guidance for the full-year 2017, including revenue adjusted EBITDA, earnings per share and segment revenue and profitability. Forward-looking statements on this call represent eHealth's views as of today. You should not rely on the statements as representing our views in the future. We undertake no obligation or duty to update information contained in this forward-looking statements, whether as a result of the new information, future events or otherwise. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in our forward-looking statement. We describe these and other risks and uncertainties in our Annual Reports 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 IR section of our website. 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 in the About Us section of our corporate website under the heading, Investor Relations. And at this point, I will turn the call over to Scott Flanders.

Scott Flanders

Analyst

Thank you, Kate, and welcome everyone. Our first quarter revenue was $78.9 million representing 7% annual growth and our adjusted EBITDA was $35 million or 31% annual growth. Non-GAAP net income per diluted share was $1.93. Cash flow from operations was positive $8.4 million, bringing our cash balance as of March 31 to $68.2 million. We are very pleased with our first quarter financial results. The performance of our Medicare business allowed us to post meaningful year-over-year growth in overall first quarter earnings, despite the decline in our individual and family membership and the investment we are making in the small business market. As a reminder, during the first quarter in addition to commission revenues from new Medicare enrollment, we recognized substantially all of our annual renewal commissions from our existing Medicare Advantage members. Given that the vast majority of Medicare renewal revenue falls to the bottom line that had a meaningful positive impact on our first quarter earnings. Our total estimated Medicare membership at the end of the quarter was 29% greater than our estimated membership at the end of the first quarter a year-ago. Medicare renewal revenues further benefited from better than expected commissions per member that we observed on our Medicare Advantage book of business. First quarter 2017 Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D renewal commissions of $41.3 million grew 43% year-over-year, outpacing the growth in our estimated Medicare membership. Total Medicare revenue for the quarter was $58 million, representing 33% annual growth. First quarter submitted applications for all Medicare products grew 1% year-over-year. Our application activity during the quarter reflected the lingering impact of the CMS marketing guideline introduced last year, which we will anniversary at the end of the second quarter and also increased focus on the profitability of new Medicare Advantage members. As we…

David Francis

Analyst

Thanks Scott. Good afternoon, everyone. Our first quarter results reflect solid revenue and earnings growth in our Medicare business and continuing profitability of our individual and family plan business, which we currently operate with emphasis on earnings and cash flow generation while maintaining the flexibility to focus additional resources on the business should the regulatory environment become more favorable. Our first quarter 2017 revenue was $78.9 million an increase of 7% compared to $73.8 million in the first quarter of 2016. Commission revenue for the first quarter was $76.2 million, an increase of 10% compared with $69.4 million in the first quarter a year-ago. First quarter Medicare revenue grew by $14.5 million, a 33% increase compared to the first quarter a year ago. This increase was primarily driven by better than expected commissions per member that we experienced within our Medicare Advantage membership who renewed in the first quarter. As Scott mentioned, during the first quarter we recognized the vast majority of renewal revenues on our existing Medicare Advantage book of business making it the largest Medicare revenue quarter for the year. We are pleased with our Medicare renewal performance this season and will discuss the impact of these renewal revenues on our 2017 financial guidance at the end of our prepared remarks. The estimated number of revenue generating Medicare members was approximately 285,000 at the end of the first quarter up from approximately 220,000 at the end of the first quarter of 2016 and increase of 29%. Medicare membership declined slightly on a sequential basis compared to the fourth quarter of 2016, which is a reflection of a typical seasonality of our Medicare business where a large number of new members are added during the fourth quarter annual enrollment period in contrast much of the member attrition associated with…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of George Sutton from Craig Hallum. Your line is open.

George Sutton

Analyst

Thank you and congrats on the Medicare result. So you announced a couple of very interesting new partnerships Union Plus in USAA and Medicare. And I wondered if you could go into a little bit more specificity relative to what are those opportunities look like to you? These are very big names, I'm curious if this is the tip of an iceberg relative to other opportunities out there or could you just kind of compartmentalize it for us?

Scott Flanders

Analyst

Right, thanks George. I appreciate the acknowledgement. Yes, we were just thrilled with the Union Plus RFP win against a very substantial publicly traded brokers whose names you know as well as other competitors and highly competitive at attracted deal for us. I think that we can be looking at a launch in early Q3 for both USAA and for Union Plus. is :

George Sutton

Analyst

Absolutely, are you also mentioned relative to Medicare, the commissions came in better than expected? Can you give us a sense of what you mean by that specifically?

David Francis

Analyst

Hey, George, it’s Dave. Essentially the renewal revenues or the renewal numbers that we were anticipating coming through in the quarter were largely in line with our expectations. We took what we believe to be a conservative approach relative to budgeting for what the commission rates were going to be attached to those renewal members and the renewal rates came in from certain payers at a higher level than we had been anticipating, so all around a positive result for us for this renewal period. Also I just want to tack on to the Scott’s comment too about the Union Plus in the USAA deals that we view these as significant points of validation relative to our value proposition in the marketplace and is emblematic of what we are some of the changes that we've been talking about making relative to our go-to-market strategy and trying to identify higher quality lower cost sources of customers in the Medicare business. So again it's going to take a little bit of time for these things to impact the P&L. But are very good early indicators of the strength of our value proposition as we continue to go-to-market in this regard.

George Sutton

Analyst

That's awesome. And one other thing if I could for Scott, the MacArthur amendment that has been proposed, can you just give us your thoughts on what that would mean for your business if it went through as drafted?

Scott Flanders

Analyst

Yes. George, we are actually holding this call in D.C., where I was attending TechNet, which was founded by John Doerr and John Chambers from Kleiner Perkins and Cisco respectfully. And I've been making the rounds here in D.C., with John Desser, who was our SVP of Government Affairs and I actually asked him to sit in anticipating such a question. I’m going to let him answer it.

John Desser

Analyst

Hi, George. Yes, we're still going through the amendment, but our General Counsel as well, but as has been reported in the press, it seems to give states the options of opting out of essential health benefits and potentially having different rating ratio than as outlined in the Affordable Care Act. Generally, I think Scott's view about this as we've been talking about it is that it will provide the consumer more flexibility and more potential options in the States for the type of coverage they could buy because it could allow the insurance companies to offer new products. And so I think our opinion is that this is good for the consumer and usually what's good for the consumer seems to be good for us.

Scott Flanders

Analyst

And George just let me add on to that. We run monthly surveys of our customer base and one of the reasons that we get audiences at all levels of members of the House Senate as well as the administration is that we represent the voice of the consumers and truly many of our customers have been buffeted by ACA and the middle class, working class their early retirees and these stories really resonate. And what they say is that even more than price they want more choice and more selection. So in this regard, I regard MacArthur and will be highly constructive if it could survive the House Senate reconciliation process will be signed in the legislation.

George Sutton

Analyst

All right. Great detail. Thanks guys.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And next question comes from the line of Tobey Sommer from SunTrust. Your line is open.

Tobey Sommer

Analyst

Thank you. I was wondering if you could explain the rational for the kind of the new shared services reporting line items, just curious that you are hoping to achieve with that. Thanks.

Scott Flanders

Analyst

Hey, Tobey. So this is consistent with the greater level of transparency that we began providing with our Q4 print in terms of breaking out segmentation of the P&L and giving – trying to give everyone a better sense as to what's going on in the different parts of the business. Well, I'll be the first to acknowledge to you that the corporate bucket is one that that is a fairly large one, it encapsulates all of the parts of the business on the support side that can't be adequately allocated between the two parts of the business at this point in time and serve evenly both parts. So it's meant to give the entire move toward transparency is meant to give you in the rest of the investing public aid, a better look as to the dynamics of the business and a relative look at the different profit levers within each understanding that there's a significant cost basis to support those as well. So again trying to give you as much transparency as we can.

Kate Sidorovich

Analyst

Okay. Operator, I think we can close the call with – ask them for closing remarks. End of Q&A

Operator

Operator

At this time, I'm showing no further questions. I would now like to turn the call back over to Scott Flanders for closing remarks.

Scott Flanders

Analyst

Thank you, everyone for participating in the call and we look forward to having individual conversations with those of you who want a more detailed updates.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone have a great day.