Earnings Labs

InfuSystem Holdings, Inc. (INFU)

Q4 2016 Earnings Call· Wed, Mar 22, 2017

$10.18

-4.50%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+0.00%

1 Week

+7.14%

1 Month

+4.76%

vs S&P

+3.53%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to InfuSystem Holdings Fourth Quarter 2016 Conference Call. This is your operator, Christine. Let me first give you to Christopher Downs, Interim Chief Financial Officer.

Christopher Downs

Management

Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining the InfuSystem Holdings, Inc. earning call for the fourth quarter of 2016. Joining me today are Eric Steen, President and CEO; Janet Skonieczny, Chief Operating Officer, Mike McReynolds, Chief Information Officer, and Trent Smith, Chief Accounting Officer. The first administrative matters. The Company issued a press release this morning. The release is available on most financial websites. Additionally, a web replay of this call will be available on the Company’s website for 30 days. The press release and associated Form 8-K as well as the Company’s Form 10-K for Fiscal Year 2016 was also filed with the SEC this morning. Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters discussed on the conference call are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Such risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from those predicted by such forward-looking statements. The words believe, expect, anticipate, and estimate or other similar statements or expectations identify forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include general economic conditions, as well as other risks detailed from time-to-time in InfuSystem’s publicly filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Specifically, information about risks and uncertainties that could cause the Company’s actual results and financial conditions to differ from those predicted by forward-looking statements are disclosed in the Company’s year-end report on Form 10-k for the year ended December 31, 2016 under the heading risk factors and elsewhere in the report and another filings made by the Company from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Forward-looking statements reflect management’s analysis only as of today. The Company has no obligations to update the forward-looking information contained in this conference call. While discussing the Company’s performance, the Company will refer to…

Eric Steen

Management

Good morning everyone. 2016 was an eventful time in InfuSystems, to recap we started the year with the continued roll-out of our express computer system that provides real time information to our clients, our customer service and our sales reps to collect our insurance billings. In late April with SE1609 CMS announced that ambulatory infusion pumps would no longer be reimbursed for Medicare patients leaving an outpatient clinic or physician office. We quickly pivoted to educate the market on this sudden reimbursement change and we took over 1700 outpatient infusion clinic customers to a newly developed direct pay method for service that includes software, pumps, supplies and nursing. We accomplished all this while rolling out the new system to our customers in place. The end of the year found us as we stated our financials due to a formula error in our net revenue recognition estimation process. Now 2017 finds us with the largest market share the company has ever had, no longer subject to Medicare pricing risk and having recently completed a real engineering and streamlining that has reduced our annual payroll by over $1 million. We are well positioned in the marketplace aided by a suite of electronic connections solutions that make life easier and paperfree for our customers and our internal operations as well. As we look at the fourth quarter numbers we can see the impact of several different events, the biggest impact is the transition from billing the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to billing the outpatient infusion clinic providers directly. In Q3 we still had some of the CMS insurance pricing in our revenue mix even though we started billing all clinics direct for Medicare patients effective July 1, we were still processing and collecting on pre-July 1st treatments in Q3. In Q4…

Christopher Downs

Management

Thank you, Eric. One more imp update for everyone is to announce that this morning after the Form 10-K was filed the company executed documents to effect a second amendment to the credit agreement with JPMorgan Chase. This amendment will be filed on Form-8K in the next several days. It provides for improved required maximum leverage covenant levels under the original agreement the leverage covenant maximum level which is calculated as total indebtedness over trailing 12 months adjusted EBITDA was scheduled to step down from 2.7 times to 2.5 times at the end of March, at the end of this first quarter. This step down has now been pushed back to March 31, 2018 a year from now. With all subsequent step down also delayed by 12 months. It also eliminates prepayments from the definition of fixed charges which is the denominator in the fixed charge coverage covenant. This allows us to prepay our term loans at a faster rate than we would otherwise be able to. As any such prepayments of debt would previously have counted against us in the fixed charge coverage ratio and ultimately would have been limited by this covenant. To be clear the revised language still includes scheduled repayment of debt but now excludes prepayments of debt, our friends at Chase have remained very supportive of the company and management and will be handling of a very challenging Medicare billing transition. This amendment gives the company the room to continue adapting and responding to this new reality of lower reimbursement on Medicare patients. I would like to thank them on behalf of the company and also personal way for their continued support.

Eric Steen

Management

Thank you, Chris. And now I'd like to open up the phone line for any questions that you may have.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from Andrew Walker from Rangeley Capital. Please go ahead.

Andrew Walker

Analyst

So just starting off, it was really helpful to get all the commentary on the free cash flow and kind of the pace of earnings looking at 2010 but I guess you know the first thing that pops into mind is last quarter on the call you guys I think there was guidance that was you know single digit growth for 2017 and you know kind of jumps out that there's no guidance in this press release in this call. I think you guys have pretty traditionally given guidance. So are you kind of backing away from the single digit growth guidance?

Christopher Downs

Management

I have not given a lot of guidance just because with a small company like look at the impact of the Medicare pricing from this year that things happened I guess I don’t have to worry about that more though. So we're still working through what we can do, how much we can harvest with our new systems, you know total impact I have not given guidance yet for 2017. I probably would like see another quarter come in before I really provide improved direction for everyone.

Andrew Walker

Analyst

And then again last quarter you guys mentioned there were some cost increases with five payers, I think was it was 5% to 20% and that you're working on some more. Can you kind of give some commentary on how your negotiations with commercial payers are going?

Christopher Downs

Management

Yes, all those ones I talked about last quarter happened and we continue to add our commercial payers and work through filling the value of our system for commercial payers and trying to take price increases where it make sense. Now there is not -- yet some point here those things we're working on. I think we've got 50 targeted for new increases for next year -- for 50 new contracts but at some point were certain that such a large all the major groups contracted -- we will eventually reach a diminishing value of return of these new contracts as we just start working smaller and smaller down the list but also with potential changes in healthcare going forward there's probably going to be all the new types of payers that emerge, that will continue to have contracting with. But as you know we do a 24 month work that look at our collections of these increases that we've got and we're really started focusing on this over the last year plus will start to become a bigger percentage of our lookback and should help our net revenue recognition rates going forward. And some of them decrease by the way that we have competitive Medicare will eventually work its way out of the revenue recognition rate.

Andrew Walker

Analyst

And then just kind of looking to the expense side, I think if I look at 2016 full year G&A is about 25 million, the press release mentioned you're cutting payroll by a million I think you guys have said that IT system upgrades kind of kick in this year and that's an extra 1 million in amortization but you get kind of double that in cost savings. So if I'm looking at full year kind of cash SG&A are we looking down 3 million to 4 million is that kind of the right number?

Christopher Downs

Management

I think I have specifically given the statements I made about the cost savings and the enhancement through the new system, the 2 million with the million little salary cuts over half of that I said we had over 1 million in salary reductions and then the IT amortization does kick in this year and so those savings more than offset the IT amortization I think that's what I've said publically so far.

Andrew Walker

Analyst

Okay. I might follow up on that with you guys and then you know I guess just turning to obviously you guys have been stressing capital allocation, debt reductions. I understand that you guys have -- there are covenants on the debt and it was helpful to get the information on the extension everything but if I look at the business you guys are forecasting 7 million to 8 million free cash flow this year you had $3 million in excess cash on the balance sheet I'm sure you're going to put that towards debt repayment and your debts kind of 3.75% interest rates right now. Does it really make the most sense to be putting all this debt towards interest paid down when your stocks kind of six to seven times EBITDA right now, like you would have to go get an amendment and maybe pay a higher interest rate but is this really optimal capital allocation?

Eric Steen

Management

It's a great question and there's a lot where everybody's got an opinion on it. I think for me being in the trenches every day when I first got here I think the company was in the high 50 million or something like it and it was so small, let's get out there and be somebody and gain share and dominate this market and expand in new market which we have done. The pain business I'm very excited about people say why you talk about this small thing because there is an opioid crisis in America today and if we can catch this thing the right way and become part of somebody's value based purchasing program because we can have a big impact on their total cost and I think it's a thing that can be well positioned for growth. So we know that's why I will continue to focus on the new things we are going to do to continue to expand and we have invested a lot in IT and lot of pumps and then we got hit this last year with an unexpected and I was in the middle of [indiscernible] CMS trying to get them to reimburse for pain pumps coming out of clinics right when this happened. So I had a front row seat of it and didn't see it coming and that's a big change and so I think it makes sense you know that small company, not that big of a managed team doing asset acquisition purchasers, buying pumps [ph] taking market share, getting a new business growing disposables, launching all these different software platforms for a small company, and integration [indiscernible] dashboard express, [indiscernible] dashboard, all the different programs we launched its time to just sort of take a breath, let's make sure we're really using the pumps we have and what you find is I have spent practically zero and Chris can give you the actual number its nothing on pumps, so far this year and what you find at all the model on the shelf the sales force didn’t thing was respectable, you squeeze it down a little bit and you start getting better utilization, it's a good time to do that and also maybe reshape our fleet a little bit, get rid of some older models, get into different things, kind of reshape things reposition and you know at some point when the timing is right, the best to settle we can go out and down more aggressive with capital again but I just think with the change we have had it would make sense to kind of take a breath and make sure we maximize what we have already invested in.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Doug Weiss from DSW Investment. Please go ahead.

Doug Weiss

Analyst

So a couple of financial questions, on [indiscernible] accounts or the allowances you have a $600,000 accrual and I take that it’s a one-time true up that's not really a recurring, its more of a kind of conservative what's the other model change as opposed to what we're really experiencing.

Eric Steen

Management

This is just real direct business, so this is -- there's no collection of insurance, this is just send an invoice and it's this much for treatment and but it's direct with all these clinics that we didn't have a relationship with before and so our 1700 locations I always talk about could be everything from a physician's office in a small rural town to the largest healthcare center in America and all points in between because we have such a big share of patients going home on especially chemotherapy directly from the clinic. So I think we're going to collect that money we've collected a lot of it and so just went back to July 1st, we started going direct 1700 clinics and I have to -- first over half pay, then over 2/3rds in pay and then the next thing I will give an update and 80% of pay or whatever it's going to be and we will collect it but the problem is we have no contracts and no POs and we have no relationship in that integrated health network with anybody who has the authority and new contracts on their behalf, we have relationships with outpatient clinics where we put our equipment on site at no charge to build insurance companies, so it was tremendous change, it was very confusing. When Medicare made the announcement most people didn't realize it and I decided that we needed to need to point of the spirit of this thing and go out and educate the market and be one of the first companies that took a compliant stance of no longer billing Medicare anything for these patients that come on out and doing it all is a direct to provider agreement. So the accrual you get a lot of…

Doug Weiss

Analyst

So is the issue that well what percent of these accounts in question are contracted as of today you know approximately?

Eric Steen

Management

I would say as of today non-contracted would be 20%.

Doug Weiss

Analyst

Okay. So you've covered a lot of ground there.

Eric Steen

Management

Covered a ton of ground, a small department that never done lot of with all these big institutions and they have all got their own agreements and their own clauses and it’s a lot of work for our contract department to keep our people organized and of the 20% that are non-contracted some of our biggest customers -- its an 80:20 rule for some of our biggest customers where you've to get the money from them even though we've gone through and done a contract and gotten the purchase order. So the only reason I mentioned because it made the quarter look worse and I think everybody was concerned about saying you don't know -- worst case we never want to start 2017 a fresh year and have to go back and say, hey when we strip everybody directly in July, 20% of the market place didn’t get the word and we have got left holding the bag. I think that has happened but the professionals who have seen a lot of situations recommend this, we saw this felt compelled to give my editorial comment that I think that's very conservative and that people working through contracts and we will get that done.

Doug Weiss

Analyst

So because I guess the challenge for investors is what's the number going to be next year or 2017 because it's kind of been all over for us this year and maybe that’s just a wait and see or I don't know I mean how would you think about the provision for 2017 for the whole year.

Eric Steen

Management

I believe that our bad debt for our Medicare treatment program will be as good if not better as a bad debt of our direct pay business because its both direct pay with I would say even more conservative, more big hospital customers, we have always pay their bills when they do service with somebody. Chris, would you remind -- FBI -- collection rate?

Christopher Downs

Management

Collection rate is around 99%.

Eric Steen

Management

Okay, so 99% in our FBI business which is a direct pay business with home infusion, I believe our collection rate will be close to that number. It has to be again it would -- really a compliance, a federal CMS compliance violation, its not, so it's got to be 99% or 100%. I just think that people who know how hard it is to contract with these complex integrated health networks where people they have no idea who InfuSystem, InfuSystem is a little niche player helping oncology clinics and doctors officers be super-efficient to send these patients home and they all had to educated, it just takes a lot time, so I think there is its especially bad, so there was $670,000 accrual.

Doug Weiss

Analyst

Just to nail it down a little further, is that going to improve sequential then so in other words it would look better. And I guess its going to be tough to see in the first quarter -- typically the first quarter is a bad quarter for doubtful accounts anyway, so I guess that just -- how much visibility -- we're basically at the end of the first quarter do you have fairly good visibility on the first quarter and can you talk to how it looks this quarter?

Eric Steen

Management

I don’t want to get in. I just want to put a wrap on 2016 and it was a lot of moving parts, the -- all the new customers and contracts in collecting that during the computer system, I really need to and then it’s a business, well it’s a quarterly business anyway, we get all these billings come in at the end of the quarter, it’s a tough thing to estimate. So I want to see how that’s going and we're -- I'm very confident. We took all these customers and people said no one will ever pay for this service. We could evaluate program together, custom contracts with all these integrated health networks. Year ago we couldn’t have gotten contracts with hospitals of this and the CMS change gave us a chance to do it and we're working through this complicated process which is going to be a great strategic advantage for us to now use these direct contracts as a distribution channel to do other things and so I would say I know that we were to very conservative on that accrual and on a one-time event and I think--

Doug Weiss

Analyst

Yes, I understand what you're saying, I mean you're basically saying the customers are good, their credit worthy -- there is just a timing lag in terms of those collections because you have to get everyone contracted, if I'm hearing you correctly.

Eric Steen

Management

Exactly. So we do have those part of the market that's not contracted. We still haven't collected on our July Medicare patient treatments and so people look at that and say that is -- you have got that debt that's been months, you got to collect that and each month more contracts go through the hopper, invoices coming in, the bar graph goes up as people pay now not only July but July and August and the other months usually when someone pays they are catching up over several months and so we continue to make good progress on it. Our sales reps are doing other things thankfully and just trying to collect payments but that's part of their life and internally for our legal and contracts group there's a lot of work back and forth every day working through the completion the compliance and legal perspectives of some of the health care systems in America.

Doug Weiss

Analyst

So I think if I could just sort of encapsulate of what I understand you to be saying is that it could be elevated for another quarter or two but as you get all these things in place it should -- your percent of revenue doubtful accounts as a percent of revenue should trend back towards those 2015 levels which if I'm correct we're in the mid-8s.

Eric Steen

Management

Yes, I would say this when you look back to 2015 30% of that Medicare business doubtful accounts are going to go from whatever they were before to over 99% collection rates.

Doug Weiss

Analyst

It's going to get better in other words?

Eric Steen

Management

Yes it's going to be better and we're going to and some of the rules of you know using one pump per patient and the information we have to collect in verifying beyond filing limits or [indiscernible] receive in CMS all that is the rare mirror and so when you look at it, I mean we did take a $5 million price decrease but now we're going to get our money more consistently quicker with less effort and part of our streamlining have been able to reduce annual salaries by over a $1 million, part of it was IT and part of it Medicare is easier to collect. So you got to reshape as the business changes.

Doug Weiss

Analyst

And so you've highlighted those payroll reductions, let me ask specifically, on G&A, so G&A had a large sequential bump rate, you were at 5.3 million last quarter and you are at 6.3 million this quarter. Now the 5.3 million was a lot better than the quarter before, so was that just an anomaly that the third quarter was so low or is there something that happened this quarter -- which is the outlier, is it the third quarter or is it this quarter? Do you know what I'm saying generally on administrative expense?

Eric Steen

Management

Third quarter is the outlier.

Doug Weiss

Analyst

The third quarter was unusually low.

Eric Steen

Management

Yes.

Doug Weiss

Analyst

Okay. Can you give any sort of full of -- any additional color on what's going on there?

Eric Steen

Management

There was a change in accrual and compensation program realizing what the tough things we had for the year, compensation levels, bonuses, commissions, those types of things realizing there were going to be some misses, a reverse accrual in the third quarter and made a one-time unusual decrease in HR compensation.

Doug Weiss

Analyst

So this quarter is more of realistic run rate on G&A, so then I guess the next question is there's some opportunity to cut on payroll and it looks like some of that’s already showing up this quarter. Are there other opportunities to cut next year either in or somewhere in that SG&A line.

Eric Steen

Management

Yes we will definitely looking at areas to spend less in 2017 and continue to gain leverage investments that we've made. We've done some things in marketing or promotion that maybe we can scale back on, its usually people and so we're going to press forward see take a good look at our first quarter results and we think we would be able to do more with less as a result of our IT systems and part of its going to be the rate that we're able to grow making best use of the people, software and pump fleet that we own and do that as efficiently as possible.

Doug Weiss

Analyst

And so I'm pleased to hear on the CapEx, the 4 million. Do you think that’s a sustainable long term number inclusive of IT spending?

Eric Steen

Management

It depends on how you want to run the business. You know there is strategically some things that you could do and way it operates, if your goal is to keep CapEx down and we're doing those things right now and I don't want to share all of them but you know there's ways to maximize your pump fleet and your flow and take advantage, you always have to take advantage of the profitable opportunities the marketplace offers you or you are going to let somebody else exploit that opportunity and it's going to hurt you long term. So there is ways to do it and if you want to be aggressive and go faster there is ways to pump money in it and right now there's been some big reimbursement changes in home infusion, I think it's a good time to have all the [indiscernible] we have built, with the investment we have made and then re-evaluate. I've got a lot of expectations for our IT systems allowing us to process new treatments and really harvest the most from our -- now we've got a payer contracts and we've got the clinics and we have got a software to harvest the billings that those relationships provide us and that’s what we're going to do for short term.

Doug Weiss

Analyst

And by the way I sort of agree with you on that but I think that is crept up and EBITDA has come down and your leverage ratios have crept up and I definitely support the direction you're going there. So I guess directly related to that if you look at the cash flow the last couple of years, both this year and last year you had --- it had pretty large pay downs of accounts payable, is that going to -- no longer going to be a drag on cash for 2017?

Christopher Downs

Management

As what you see on the balance as of the end of the year it's probably a good go forward number which is down from previous periods primarily because we're not spending so much on pumps so we don’t have these large pump purchases sitting at the end of the quarter.

Doug Weiss

Analyst

Can I ask one more question which is -- you made a passing comment or a comment regarding EBITDA and I heard where you said EBITDA will sequentially improve through the year but what was the first thing you said about EBITDA, was it in relation to the bad debt or what was the initial comment there?

Eric Steen

Management

Progressive sequential throughout the year, that's what I remember saying. I'm just looking at my note here, increase throughout the year and get progressively better each quarter.

Doug Weiss

Analyst

Okay. But you didn’t give any sort of -- all right so that was kind of it, you didn’t sort of give any guidance in terms of relative to 2017 or--

Eric Steen

Management

Yes I said 2017, kind of back into it, I said 7 to 8 minimum of free cash, because I said that publically I feel that’s sort of the worst case where you can kind of back into it from them. I remember, I've said this before as soon as I -- I am glad our investors feel comfortable calling me and asking questions to clarify things and I know one thing I've said on some of these calls is I remember when I trying to get to 5 million EBITDA a quarter, and we got to 5 million a quarter but then since then you say well you've the impact of the price cut, 5 million a year so that’s 1 million to 2 million a quarter, we have got some restatement things in there. You know still I think and when you look at this quarter and then dong -- we have 400,000 in June for restatement so add that back in you know and then when I think we're going to be able to -- our market share numbers are going well and I do feel we're going to get better with this express system and be able to get more treatments and squeeze some more out of that and I think having to do the computer rollout while we were doing all this contracting it was a lot for our sales team and I think that's going to get better and I think we're going to see more -- and when we go beyond filing on this treatment, you have all the cost to the pumping, you're using the supplies and so you can capture those things and just give up rights to the bottom one. So I'm looking forward to seeing in the New Year and what our investments will bring us.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. We have no further questions at this time.

Eric Steen

Management

Okay. Thank you very much.