Gerry Hayden
Analyst · Needham. Your line is open. Please go ahead
Thank you, Bobby and good morning, everyone. I'll provide some color to our financial results including certain items then impacted the quarter. Few highlights first for the quarter; consolidated revenues were up 15% to $54.1 million as Bobby just mentioned. Operating income was down 48% to $2.5 million. Net income was down 45% to $1.5 million and earnings per share was $0.05 compared to $0.10 in the first quarter of 2015. Adjusted EBITDA was down 4% to $8.1 million from $8.4 in last year’s first quarter. Let's look at four areas of the income statement, revenue, gross margin, operating expenses and operating income. As we view these results we'll play sufficient context on the impact of the ICD-10 revenue declines. First revenues. As we just mentioned, consolidated revenues were up 15% in the first quarter with strong contributions from our workforce solutions and provider solutions business segments. We achieved this 15% revenue growth while overcoming the $3.2 million decline in ICD-10 readiness revenues from last year's first quarter. If we exclude ICD-10 revenues from the first quarters of both 2015 and 2016, our consolidated pro forma revenue growth rate is 25%. The Workforce Solutions segment performed well again in the first quarter of 2016. This business segment is comprised of applications and content solutions which are primarily SaaS subscription based and are targeted at improving the healthcare workforce. This is also the segment in which ICD-10 revenues are reported. Revenues from our Workforce Solutions segment increased $3.7 million or 10% when compared to the first quarter of 2015. The ARIS grew in the first quarter of 2016 to $36.67 through $34.63 in the first quarter of 2015, reflecting expansion in both subscriber counts and revenues from our customer base. On a sequential basis, this metric declined about 2% from the fourth quarter's $36.96. As of the end of the first quarter of 2016, approximately 578,000 subscribers completed their ICD readiness commitments. Of these 578,000 subscribers, 200,000 were ICD-only subscribers, while the remaining 378,000 remained in the subscriber count with no corresponding ICD readiness revenues. At approximately $18 per subscriber per year or $4.50 per quarter, resulted the $2.6 million sequential decline in the ICD readiness revenues category. Growth in other revenue categories, sorry other than ICD-10 readiness was strong enough to maintain the ARIS. HealthStream’s Patient Experience Solutions provide valuable insight to healthcare providers to meet CAHPS requirements, improve the patient experience, engage their workforce, and enhance physician alignment. Our Patient Experience Solutions segment revenues were even between the first quarter 2016 and the first quarter of 2015. Revenues from Patient Insights Surveys, a survey research product that generates recurring revenues, increased 4% over the first quarter of 2015 with that growth partially offset by lower growth in our employee survey business, which is conducted on either annual or bi-annual cycles. The Provider Solution segment, operating as Echo, a HealthStream company, continues to perform to our expectations. By providing the software that is used to validate the professional credentials of potential employees, Echo products serve as the gatekeeper for workforce quality and healthcare. In the first quarter of 2016, revenues from our Provider Solution segment increased by approximately $3.2 million, with the HealthLine Systems acquisition accounting for the majority of that increase. The $3.2 million HealthLine increase was net of approximately $955,000 deferred revenue write-down, which is the accounting convention requiring us to write-down the beginning balances to fair value as defined in GAAP and as you'll recall, we closed the HealthLine Systems transaction in mid March of 2015. Now our gross margins, the gross margins have been stable in the 57% range for the past year, and increased slightly to 57.7% in the first quarter of 2015 versus 57.2% in the first quarter of 2015. A combination of factors that include lower ICD-10 revenues and growth in revenues from Proprietary Solutions with higher gross margins were key contributors to this trend. Now some words on operating expenses. This quarter's results reflect our ongoing plans to invest in product development to foster our long-term growth and strengthen our competitive position. Product development cost as a percent of revenue in the first quarter 2016 were 13% of revenues versus 10% in last year's first quarter. This increase represents investments in all of our segments Workforce Solutions, Patient Experience and also Echo. G&A expenses in the first quarter of 2016 were 14% of revenues, which is the same level as last year's first quarter. Several factors influence the G&A expenses such as the rollover of our new financial platform, NetSuite and a full quarter of HealthLine Systems results compared to a partial quarter of results in the first quarter of 2015. Operating income, our operating income was down $2.5 million as I mentioned a few minutes ago in the first quarter. It was adversely impacted by the $955,000 of deferred revenue write-down relating to our HealthLine acquisition, as well as lower contribution from ICD-10 revenue streams. Now a quick look at our balance sheet, as Bob mentioned a few minutes ago, our cash position and overall balance sheet remains strong and reinforced by a positive cash flow from operations as evidenced by our $8.1 million adjusted EBITDA for this quarter. Once again it’s important to know that adjusted EBITDA also reflects the impact of lower contributions for the ICD-10 readiness revenues. Our cash balances at March 31 was a positive $150 million. We have no outstanding debt and our full $50 million line of credit is available to us. We believe our overall capital position is likely to support our organic and inorganic growth opportunities and support other capital structure optimization and general value of maximization strategies as maybe appropriate. And we continue to review and evaluate a variety of potential acquisition and business development opportunities, in terms of strategic fit and valuation but while also evaluating additional avenues for creating shareholder value as I just mentioned. Yesterday’s earnings release contains guidance for 2016 full-year, which guidance remains unchanged from our announcements in February a little while ago. We anticipate that consolidated revenues will grow between 8% and 12% as compared to 2015 and the growth in our three operating segments will be as follows. Workforce Solutions between 2% and 6%, Patient Experience 8% to 12%, Provider Solutions 80% to 84%. Revenues from ICD’s and readiness training, which were approximately $26.8 million in 2015 are expected to decline by approximately $19 million in 2016 and are reflected in the guidance ranges for Workforce Solutions. For the full year of 2016 then, we anticipate revenues from ICD-10 Readiness training to be approximately $8 million with respect will comprise of approximately the $3.9 million results from the first quarter, $1.9 million in the second quarter of this year, $1 million in the third quarter and $1.1 million in the fourth quarter. We anticipate that our full year operating income will increase between 10% to 14% over 2015. We anticipate that our capital expenditures will be between $14 million and $16 million and our effective tax rate will be between 39% and 41% for the full year 2016. We also look forward to our Annual Client Summit in October of this year meaning that the estimated net expenses of approximately $0.75 million for summit full recorded largely in the fourth quarter of 2016. And finally this guidance does not include the impact of any another acquisitions that we may complete during 2016. So thank for you time. I’ll turn the call back to Bobby.