Bruce D. Broussard
Analyst · JPMorgan
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. This morning, we reported third quarter earnings per share of $2.31. I reiterated our full year 2013 earnings guidance of $8.65 to $8.75 per share. These solid results demonstrate the strength of our operations, even after consideration of the preliminary investment and start-up costs for our state-based contracts including dual-eligibles and the health care exchange business as we referenced in last quarter's call. We believe our base business is sound and we're positioned moving forward, in large part, the results of the progress in our clinical programs over the last 12 months. All eyes are on the future, so that is where my comments will focus this morning. We have some distinct challenges ahead. Funding and regulatory pressures, in particular, are significant. That said, we believe our strategic focus on our integrated care delivery model and operational excellence, as well as our expansions into state-based contracts and individual health care exchange businesses position us well for the growth and long-term sustainability. Our strategic intent is to continue to ensure affordability of health care by improving health outcomes. We believe our integrated delivery model strategy does just that. To remind you, seamless integration of care delivery, the consumer experience and advanced data analytics comprise the key elements of our model. Let's begin this morning's discussion with our Medicare business. The Medicare annual election period for 2014 has begun. And we are generally pleased with the affordability of our plans for beneficiaries, as well as our plans' competitive position across the country. Because of our tremendous cross-functional effort focused primarily on clinical programs, Stars quality improvement and operating cost efficiencies, we've been able to minimize the benefit and premium changes our Medicare Advantage members will experience for 2014, ensuring the program remains affordable. All of this despite next year's funding challenges, which include only a portion of the ACA-related payment cuts. We now expect our combined individual and group Medicare Advantage businesses to grow in the range of 260,000 to 305,000 net members during 2014. This projection includes approximately 25,000 individual dual-eligible members from contracts with various states, most of which we expect to be assigned in the second half of next year. Make no mistake, addressing the 2014 Medicare Advantage funding shortfall, including the impact of the industry fee, is no easy task. The clinical investments we've made over the last several years and a rigorous focus on operational excellence have enabled us to be in this position for 2014. As we look out further into 2015, we see many of the same headwinds we faced in 2014 compounded by the effect of the lower Star quality bonus payment associated with the sunset of the CMS demonstration despite our higher quality ratings. Clearly, the nearly 15 million Medicare beneficiaries who have chosen Medicare Advantage need stability and rationality in the Medicare Advantage payment process. It seems counterintuitive to continue such a volatile payment environment for the Medicare Advantage program when it is the only solution that effectively demonstrates a proactive approach to both improving outcomes for Medicare consumers and controlling health care costs for the benefit of the Medicare trust fund. Our data show that for diabetes, congestive heart failure and a range of other conditions, we achieved better results than the Medicare original fee-for-service. That is why the continued success of our integrated care delivery model is so critical. Our integrated care delivery model continues to deliver the results that provide positive health outcomes for our members on a number of fronts. For example, our transition program designed to facilitate a smooth acute care to post-acute or home care experience has resulted in a 30-day readmission rate, only 9% -- approximately half of what beneficiaries in the original fee-for-service Medicare experienced. Enrollment of new members in our Humana chronic care program is up fivefold to date over last year. As of the end of the September, we have had nearly 250,000 members in the chronic care program and expect to reach 275,000 by the end of this year. Much of this increased enrollment comes from our advanced data capabilities, enabling the implementation of predictive models, which identify the individuals who most benefit from these programs. Another measure of success of our integrated care delivery model is the progress we continue to make with our Star ratings. Our bonus year 2015 ratings now have us at an average Star quality rating of 4.0, up from 3.82 for the bonus year 2014. We have 18 plans or approximately 60% of our membership with ratings at least 4 stars, including 9 plans that have ratings of 4.5 stars. These measures reflect our strong focus on proactive care for our members and are expected to provide Humana a solid competitive advantage across much of the country in 2015. We believe that the strength of our strategic focus on integrated care delivery will help us not only in the near term but also position us for further success as we leverage our integrated care delivery infrastructure across state-based contracts and health care exchange businesses. This slide sizes the sector-wide potential associated with the growth businesses for Medicare, Medicaid and the health care exchange businesses. As a reminder, there are approximately 9 million dual-eligibles today, with 7 million of those having full Medicaid benefits. Furthermore, CBO has estimated that health care exchanges will ultimately serve approximately 24 million consumers across America. As you can see, these are growth opportunities that are difficult to ignore, particularly given the assets we bring to the table through our investments we've made in our integrated care delivery model and the robust growth anticipated for these 2 populations. You'll note that as I talk through the next 2 slides that there is considerable geographic overlap between our state-based contracts and our health care exchange presence. That is by design and further builds upon the strong Medicare advantage and individual commercial presence we have in many of these locations today. We believe this will further enhance our relationship across the spectrum of health care consumers. As a reminder, our state-based contracts include 3 subsets. First, beneficiaries associated with the dual-eligible demonstration projects. We currently serve nearly 300,000 dual-eligible beneficiaries who choose our Medicare Advantage plans in the open market over the past several years. Consequently, we have significant experience in serving dual-eligible members. Second, Medicaid Services for the under 65, or TANF population. We generally fulfill these contracts through partnering arrangements with risks ceded to other parties. The third component of our state-based contracts is Medicaid long-term care support service, which is a newer business for us. We believe the acquisition of American Eldercare, together with partnering arrangements, position us to successfully serve these populations given the strength of our integrated care delivery model today. We've experienced gratifying level of success with recent RFP awards for each of these types of services and have targeted our pricing to achieve modest underwriting gains. However, it is important to realize with the number of rewards -- awards that we've secured comes the need for increasing investment in the related infrastructure. These investments will generally precede their contract -- the related contract revenues. Turning next to our individual health care exchange offerings, we also priced this business targeting a modest underwriting gains. We believe long term, the potential size of exchanges is significant opportunity for Humana, as it is aligned with our core capabilities in chronic care management, including accurate clinical documentation, effective networks and retail individual sales. In addition, it allows us to establish a relationship with Medicare agents offering the opportunity for easier transition to Medicare Advantage and improved health before becoming Medicare eligible. The long-term exchange opportunity is currently being overshadowed by the issues with the federal enrollment process. These issues could potentially alter some of the assumptions around risk mix that we made as we priced our products, so our ultimate health care exchange membership have a higher severity mix than we previously priced. Our integrated care delivery model focused on serving members with chronic conditions, together with effective network design and the backup protection of the 3 Rs will help mitigate a portion of our claims' exposure. Assuming a speedy repair of the enrollment process and that's a diverse mix of enrollees for 2014, we anticipate that our investments in the health care exchanges will abate in 2015 and at which time, returns on our 2014 investment will begin to be realized. Both the state-based contracts and health care exchange business require initial investments that are not insignificant. However, we believe such investment spending is targeted on businesses with growth and earnings potential, which lever our -- leverage our core -- our proven clinical capabilities, as well as being the most capital-efficient way to enter these markets. Our discipline and commitment around return on invested capital will continue to drive the choices we make to provide long-term value for both our members and our shareholder value -- shareholders. To summarize, this dynamic environment requires scale, clinical depth and engaging member relationships. In that context, industry pressures will only reward industry leaders like Humana while increasing the difficulty for less capable organizations. Our industry-leading capabilities are demonstrated through our forecasted 2014 core performance. Our GAAP earnings per share estimate for 2014 of $7.25 to $7.75 reflects that much has yet to play out for the state-based contracts and health care exchange businesses and incorporates related investment spending and startup costs of between $0.50 per share and $0.90 per share. Jim will discuss this more fully in his remarks. We continue to advocate for stable and rationality in the Medicare payment process. We believe our strategy is sound and our associates are highly engaged. We're resolved to deliver an experience for the consumers we serve that positively affects health outcomes, enabling a healthier life for our members and growth for Humana. Before turning the call over to Jim, I do want to comment briefly on our CFO transition plan. Today, we announced that Steve McCulley will serve as our interim CFO beginning on January 1. Steve will serve in this capacity as we continue the search to replace Jim, who retires as CFO on December 31. Steve's experience, credibility as a trusted advisor and knowledge of our business will ensure confidence with our internal and external stakeholders during the transition and over the long term for our ongoing success. Jim has agreed to remain on as advisor to the office of the CFO and work closely along Steve during his transition. Please join me in thanking Jim for his 13 years of extraordinary contribution and Steve for his continued leadership. With that, I'll turn it over to Jim to review our financial results and capital positioning.