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Inogen, Inc. (INGN)

Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Tue, May 12, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Inogen 2015 First Quarter Financial Results 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 be given at that time. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, today's program is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today’s program, Lynn Pieper, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Lynn Pieper

Analyst

Thanks Jonathan and thank you for participating in today’s call. Joining me from Inogen is President and CEO, Ray Huggenberger; and CFO and Founder, Ali Bauerlein. Earlier today, Inogen released its results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2015. Inogen’s earnings release and a corporate presentation are currently available in the Investor Relations section of the company’s website. Before we begin, I want to remind you that our comments today will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements include among others statements regarding our expectations, goals or intentions, including but not limited to our current views with respect to 2015 full year revenue, cash flow, net income and adjusted EBITDA guidance as well as our estimate of our 2015 effective tax rate, current estimates of the Audit Committee investigation cost, our expectations regarding the classification timing and the launch of our the Inogen One G3 product upgrade, our assessment of the impact of the strengthening U.S. dollar, our assessment of the timing and size of international sales, and our views regarding our private label relationship with Applied Home Healthcare. The forward-looking statements are based on management’s current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and events to differ materially from those stated in the forward-looking statements. Our businesses and any financial projections provided today are subject to numerous and continually changing risks and uncertainties, including the possibility that Inogen will not realize anticipated revenue, the impact of reduced reimbursement rates in connection with the implementation of the competitive bidding under new CMS rules, the possible loss of key employees, customers or suppliers, intellectual property risks if Inogen is unable to secure and maintain patent or other intellectual property protection for the intellectual property used…

Ray Huggenberger

Analyst · William Blair. Your question please

Thank you, Lynn. Good afternoon everyone and thanks for joining our first quarter 2015 conference call. Recognizing it has only been a few weeks since our last conference call; my remarks will be brief and cover the following agenda. First, I would like to highlight our recent business and operational accomplishments and we will then review the financials and 2015 guidance and at that point we will open the call up for questions. We are off to a very strong start in 2015. We achieved record revenue of $33.8 million in the first quarter of 2015, representing 42.8% growth from the same period last year and strong performance in each of our business segments, especially on seasonably strong business-to-business demand in both our international and domestic markets. Our positive results also included improving adjusted EBITDA and net income results, while at the same time maintaining a high sales growth rate. Adjusted EBITDA was $6.4 million in the first quarter of 2015, representing 46.7% growth over the same period in 2014 and then 18.9% return on revenue. This included the increased investment we made in sales as well as the majority of the one-time costs associated with the audit committee investigation. Net income in the first quarter was $1.6 million, representing a return on revenue of 4.7%. We continued to see stronger than anticipated growth in our domestic and international business-to-business sales channels as well as growing patient demand and brand awareness in our direct-to-consumer channel. International business-to-business, which grew nearly 89% over the same period in the prior year was our fastest growing segment and has substantially exceeded our expectations, particularly in light of the less favorably currency exchange rates. We currently sell our products in 44 countries outside the United States including Germany and France, where the impact of…

Ali Bauerlein

Analyst · William Blair. Your question please

Okay, thanks Ray and good afternoon everyone. During my prepared remarks, I will review the details of our first quarter financial performance and then I will provide our current guidance for full year 2015. Revenue for the first quarter of 2015 was $33.8 million, representing 42.8% growth over the first quarter of 2014. Once again, we saw continued strong performance on the top line and year-over-year growth in all revenue streams. Looking at each of our revenue stream, sales revenue was $23 million reflecting 55.1% growth over the same quarter of the prior year. Total units sold increased to approximately 11,000 in the first quarter of 2015, up 74.6% from the first quarter of 2014. Revenue from rentals in the first quarter was $10.7 million, representing 22% growth over the same period in the prior year. Direct-to-consumer sales for the first quarter of 2015 were $8.8 million, representing 25.9% growth over the first quarter of 2014. Sales were higher both sequentially and over the same period in the prior year despite the anticipated seasonal impact of reduced buying patterns in the fourth and first quarters of the year. The increase was driven largely by the additional headcount brought on board in the fourth quarter of 2014, improved productivity at the sales force and growing brand awareness as a result of our marketing campaign. Direct-to-consumer rental revenue was our largest individual revenue stream at $10.7 million, a 22% increase over the first quarter of 2014. Rental revenue represented 31.7% of total revenue in the quarter. Rental revenue was slightly lower than the fourth quarter of 2014 due to a higher return rate of patients on service experienced in the first quarter of 2015. While our total patient population increased by 1,600 net patients in the first quarter of 2015 compared to…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Margaret Kaczor from William Blair. Your question please.

Margaret Kaczor

Analyst · William Blair. Your question please

Good afternoon everyone, few questions for us. First, at your Analyst Day at the end of the year, you guys have given some additional details on the components of guidance by line item. How much of that has changed at all particularly given the strength international and the conservative guidance at the time? And I hear you guys now assuming quarters were flat to down internationally for the rest of the year if it’s unchanged?

Ray Huggenberger

Analyst · William Blair. Your question please

Well, Margaret, if you recall the kind of expectations we had around direct-to-consumer sales were in the – around 30%, we expect the rental to be around 20%, we expect the domestic business-to-business to be around 30% and we had intentionally kind of been very careful with international given the unpredictability of what the dollar exchange rates and everything was going to due to our international business. We have then three weeks ago brought up the guidance based on what we have been seen especially in the business-to-business both internationally and domestically that came in significantly better than what we had expected. It’s a little too early to basically say, well, we had 70%, 80% growth in those two segments, the rest was about where it’s supposed to be. And so, now let’s extrapolate that form throughout the year where we’re only one quarter into the year. So, we brought up the guidance moderately to bring up our expectations on both domestic business-to-business and international business-to-business, but with a lot of caution because again it’s been one quarter. We have not yet – the full impact of what currency translation is going to do to the international business we have not yet seen whether or not that’s going to dampen sales, it may not because we have adjusted our pricing. We have adjusted selling in euros and then international sales by definition are lumpy. So before we go and bring the expectations for the years, if up any further we would like to see the second quarter coming in ahead of expectations as well before we conclude that we were indeed too conservative.

Margaret Kaczor

Analyst · William Blair. Your question please

Okay, that’s helpful. And just go into maybe a little bit more detail on the OxyGo partnership and it seems as though AHH is getting traction appeal although you did say the revenues have been immaterial this quarter. Can you maybe give us any color on what the sequential increases were either throughout the quarter or what you’ve seen early in Q2? And just broadly what the color has been in terms of feedback from your customers and their willingness to purchase the OxyGo?

Ray Huggenberger

Analyst · William Blair. Your question please

Well – obviously, I can’t talk about Q2 and unfortunately there are not a lot of data points in Q1 because the partnership didn’t hit the market until very late in the quarter, effectively we had six weeks or so. So, it’s – there’s just not enough data points to conclude anything. We’re going to keep watching this. We saw some early interest. We’ve got some orders in. If you look at the scope of the quarter, it’s not really moving the needle one way or the other. But if that continues to build and extrapolates, it should be – it could contribute. But we have – we’re going to have to wait another one or two quarters before we conclude and actually talk about that as a separate line item or a contributor in its own right.

Ali Bauerlein

Analyst · William Blair. Your question please

Yes, just to expand a bit on that. I mean, obviously we saw over 70% growth in that domestic category. And we did purposefully say that the growth was – what we saw from the AHH really was immaterial to the quarter in the dollar contributing standpoint. Certainly, we’ve seen positive indication, but this is something that we said also just a few weeks ago that it will take many quarters to build out this relationship and for them to build their pipeline of approved interest in OxyGo product. And while we’ve certainly seen positive indications to start, it is truly a material contribution to the first quarter success.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mike Weinstein from JPMorgan. Your question please.

Mike Weinstein

Analyst · Mike Weinstein from JPMorgan. Your question please

Hi, good afternoon guys.

Ray Huggenberger

Analyst · Mike Weinstein from JPMorgan. Your question please

Hi, Mike.

Mike Weinstein

Analyst · Mike Weinstein from JPMorgan. Your question please

So, let me start on FX and [indiscernible] answer this, but with the FX impact on the top line and its not just the translation, it’s the re-pricing of your OUS business. G2 will impact that had on gross margin in the quarter and do you have any commentary just on how it models out for you guys over the balance of the year?

Ali Bauerlein

Analyst · Mike Weinstein from JPMorgan. Your question please

Yes, we didn’t break that out specifically on the gross margin impact, but it was not as large of an impact as the mix shift towards the overall business-to-business category. So when you look at gross margin and you see even – going from 40 – 45.4% in the first quarter of 2015 versus 49.2% in the first quarter of 2014, most of that’s associated with the mix shift towards business-to-business. The secondary factor there and the much smaller factor is associated with the – either as the changing in pricing associated with selling in dollars or the lower euro pricing.

Mike Weinstein

Analyst · Mike Weinstein from JPMorgan. Your question please

Great, I understood. Okay, so the B-to-B business obviously is coming in so far well ahead of your original expectations. The D-to-C sounds like it was owed to really at the start of the year, but picked up over the course of the quarter. So is that right characterization of it that the revenues came in a little – maybe a little bit light or so in that better than people expecting because the new patient adds really didn’t kick in until later in the quarter?

Ali Bauerlein

Analyst · Mike Weinstein from JPMorgan. Your question please

Yes, so, direct-to-consumer was pretty much in line with our expectations internally. On the direct-to-consumer sales side, obviously what – when we look seasonality, you see the seasonality starting to pickup in March. So that’s typically where we see the churns starting and happening and it was another strong March for us. So that’s certainly is good on the rental side of the business because of the churn that we saw, we just saw lower actual amounts build per patient in the quarter. So it really is an indicative of the overall demand with that patient population still growing 30% year-on-year, but the revenue was impacted associated with when the patients were added in the quarter and how much revenue we could per patient because of – and primarily associated with a higher death rate that we saw in the quarter.

Mike Weinstein

Analyst · Mike Weinstein from JPMorgan. Your question please

Understood…

Ray Huggenberger

Analyst · Mike Weinstein from JPMorgan. Your question please

Yes, the other thing that Mike you might want to keep in mind is that the expansion of our sales force in 2014 happened pretty much towards the end of the year. So the ramp – I mean 20% or 25% or some number like that of our sales force was still in the middle of the learning curve throughout the first quarter. So just – have we been more successful in hiring earlier we might have seen a little bit more impact from those additional sales people than we did in the first quarter, but it came in right around where we expected it to be.

Mike Weinstein

Analyst · Mike Weinstein from JPMorgan. Your question please

Okay. And so, Ray is it safe to assume given all that commentary that you expect the D-t-C side of the business to pick up over the balance of the year?

Ray Huggenberger

Analyst · Mike Weinstein from JPMorgan. Your question please

Relative to the first quarter, absolutely.

Mike Weinstein

Analyst · Mike Weinstein from JPMorgan. Your question please

Okay. I mean obviously the part that’s just harder to forecast is the B-to-B side of the business?

Ray Huggenberger

Analyst · Mike Weinstein from JPMorgan. Your question please

Right, right.

Mike Weinstein

Analyst · Mike Weinstein from JPMorgan. Your question please

Okay. And so if that does play out well, we’ll see what happens to B-to-B, but if does play out that would obviously be beneficial sequentially at least to your margins. And if it does as well it would seem to imply that the implied guidance for the balance of the year on the top line would be conservative. Is that fair?

Ray Huggenberger

Analyst · Mike Weinstein from JPMorgan. Your question please

Yes that is fair.

Ali Bauerlein

Analyst · Mike Weinstein from JPMorgan. Your question please

Mike, if business-to-business continues to come in as strong as it has that would be accretive to our guidance, but I do want to caution everybody that there – when you look at business-to-business and you look at what happened last year in business-to-business, the third quarter and the fourth quarter, we really started seeing ramp-up in both the international business and the domestic business-to-business. And so, the comps – yes, the comps are going to get much harder for us as we go further into the year compared to the first quarter, which was relatively light on the business-to-business side last year. So, well, the numbers are great and it’s a great year-over-year growth rate. I just want to caution people that those comps do get harder as we go further into the year.

Mike Weinstein

Analyst · Mike Weinstein from JPMorgan. Your question please

Okay, perfect. I will let somebody to jump in. Thank you guys.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Danielle Antalffy from Leerink Partners. Your question please?

Danielle Antalffy

Analyst · Danielle Antalffy from Leerink Partners. Your question please

Hi, good afternoon guys. Thanks so much for taking the question and congrats again on yet another great quarter. Ray, I was looking in for comment on obviously this winter was not as bad as last winter, but I have heard some of the smaller med-tech companies callout a weather impact. I am wondering if you could comment on that at all.

Ali Bauerlein

Analyst · Danielle Antalffy from Leerink Partners. Your question please

Yes, I mean, we certainly see a weather impact that impacts patient’s death rate. So that’s certainly is something that impacts our business. And as patients get sicker, when it is colder outside, we do unfortunately see patients pass away at a higher rate in our...

Ray Huggenberger

Analyst · Danielle Antalffy from Leerink Partners. Your question please

Yes, which is one other contributor to a higher return rate in the first quarter. The other thing, we did have a couple of operational challenges to overcome with ice storms in Texas and the logistics being very challenging with actually being able to have product picked up and delivered. And then we were able to make up for that by expedite shipments after the weather had cleared. We saw some cost increases on the logistic sides that is part of our cost of goods. So it was a challenging week or ten days or so in the middle of the quarter where we basically couldn’t get product out the door for one or two days. And hence we have higher logistics costs, which also didn’t help the gross margin, but overall that’s a very, very small contributor and we were able to catch that backup within days.

Danielle Antalffy

Analyst · Danielle Antalffy from Leerink Partners. Your question please

Got it, okay. So minimal impact you say to the top line may be contributed to higher OpEx overall?

Ray Huggenberger

Analyst · Danielle Antalffy from Leerink Partners. Your question please

Yes, I think the top line net contributed it all.

Danielle Antalffy

Analyst · Danielle Antalffy from Leerink Partners. Your question please

Okay, that’s helpful. And then my next question is on the direct-to-consumer segment. You know as we think about that piece of the business getting bigger, how – how sensitive are ASPs in this business? And sort of what’s the trend that you’ve been seeing I mean we obviously guesstimate in our model. So I am just curious if you can give us any color on a) what you’ve been seeing and b) what do you think, you will see potentially as some competitors get more active if they do on the GME side of things? And as your business-to-business – domestic business gets larger too in a sense that’s somewhat competitive to your direct-to-consumer business. So I am just curious how to…

Ray Huggenberger

Analyst · Danielle Antalffy from Leerink Partners. Your question please

Yes, there is really – I mean there are two factors that impact on the consumer side that impact the ASP, right. One is what are your competitors doing and that’s relatively easy to determine because you just go and look at their published retail prices. The other one is what’s the price elasticity and that changes over time that is a little harder because it’s not a number you can look-up on the internet. And that’s why we did a price elasticity study last year we’re most likely going to do an another one this year to kind of determine where these inflection points are at which volume would go up if prices come down. Interestingly enough, last year, we determined that it wasn’t necessary to bring – to bring pricing down because the volume uptake [indiscernible] been accretive to profits. And we’re constantly monitoring our competitions to see it, but it’s been pretty stable for the last nine months or so.

Ali Bauerlein

Analyst · Danielle Antalffy from Leerink Partners. Your question please

Yes. And just to expand a bit on the relationship with the B-to-B side, well, yes, our business-to-business side has been growing and that’s primarily on the domestic side associated with that referral business. We worked with those partners to have consistent advertised pricing strategies. So we are not bidding against each other for customers. We have consistent prices that are released to the market through us and our partners.

Danielle Antalffy

Analyst · Danielle Antalffy from Leerink Partners. Your question please

Okay, that’s helpful. Thanks so many guys.

Ali Bauerlein

Analyst · Danielle Antalffy from Leerink Partners. Your question please

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mike Matson from Needham and Company. Your question please.

Mike Matson

Analyst · Mike Matson from Needham and Company. Your question please

Hi, thanks. I guess I wanted to follow-up on Daniel’s question on pricing, just asked a similar question about the B-to-B side of the business because you did call out price declines, I understand the currency effect in Europe. But I guess I am more interested in what sort of pricing declines you’re seeing in the U.S.?

Ali Bauerlein

Analyst · Mike Matson from Needham and Company. Your question please

Yes.

Ray Huggenberger

Analyst · Mike Matson from Needham and Company. Your question please

Yes, I mean, that’s largely driven by the volume uptick. So we’re basically with our business-to-business customers we have pricing structures that in the nutshell say you get price A if you buy one unit, if you buy five you get price B, you buy 10 you get price C, you buy 25 you get this 50 or 100. And – since they have – they are facing bigger demand, they place larger orders that in itself without us really changing the pricing, but it drives the average selling price down because they order in 25s and 50s instead of 1s and 5s.

Ali Bauerlein

Analyst · Mike Matson from Needham and Company. Your question please

Yes, and just to clarify I mean we don’t breakout our selling prices by each of the revenue streams, but clearly our ASP has trended down with revenues, sales revenue growing 55% and units growing almost 75%. So, certainly, we’ve seen an impact there. It primarily nicks, as Ray said, associated with those business-to-business accounts, buying more. It really isn’t on the direct-to-consumer side. There are small variations around what types of units people buy, but truly the real change in – those ASP is associated with the business-to-business side. And I want to also clarify that when we look at the business and make decisions of what prices we want to sell at and why. We’re not looking to maximize gross profit percentage, we’re looking at how we can maximize operating margin. And so that is very important to us to look at the whole cost bottom line not just focus on margin and while business-to-business has reduced our gross profit percentage, it has been accretive on an operating margin side. And that to us is way more important than whether gross profit is 50% or 47.5%.

Mike Matson

Analyst · Mike Matson from Needham and Company. Your question please

Okay. But just back to the volume price breaks, I mean I guess in – part of the reason that companies do that is because you’re getting a leverage effect as well and your margin…

Ali Bauerlein

Analyst · Mike Matson from Needham and Company. Your question please

Correct.

Mike Matson

Analyst · Mike Matson from Needham and Company. Your question please

The more you produce. So I mean is that I would assume that’s offsetting as your volumes go up, you’re offsetting some of that price decline at…

Ali Bauerlein

Analyst · Mike Matson from Needham and Company. Your question please

Yes, we have seen our prices, our cost of goods reduced over time, so that’s certainly…

Ray Huggenberger

Analyst · Mike Matson from Needham and Company. Your question please

On a per unit basis...

Ali Bauerlein

Analyst · Mike Matson from Needham and Company. Your question please

On a per unit basis has reduced. So that has offset a portion of ASP decline, but the bigger impact has been the operating expense leverage that we’ve received because the business-to-business side of the business has very minimal operating expenses associated with it. So those gross margin dollars fall through to the bottom line almost on a dollar for dollar basis.

Mike Matson

Analyst · Mike Matson from Needham and Company. Your question please

Okay, thanks. And then the returns in the D-t-C business deaths – I mean you mentioned patient death is that’s really what’s driving that or these – or there patients that are buying the units and then returning them for some reasons – other reason…

Ali Bauerlein

Analyst · Mike Matson from Needham and Company. Your question please

No.

Ray Huggenberger

Analyst · Mike Matson from Needham and Company. Your question please

It’s by far, death is by far the biggest individual contributor to returns. You also have a phenomenon always in the first quarter when people change [indiscernible] insurance plans, all right. They go from straight forward medicare PPO to managed care. And as such they may go from 20% co-pay to an out of network benefit, the co-pay goes up and then they return. I mean there is a lot of things that that happen every year, especially in January, February when people enroll in new plans. That kind of tape us off after the first quarter, but we’ve seen that time and again in the first quarter that we have lower gross margin than in the rest of the year and lower sales per patient simply because of deals announced in the first quarter.

Ali Bauerlein

Analyst · Mike Matson from Needham and Company. Your question please

And just to clarify that really only impacts the rental business, so while we may see a similar death rate on our cash sales. Those units are not returned to us, so there is no churn associated with the cash sales. The phenomena really only impacts our rental revenues.

Ray Huggenberger

Analyst · Mike Matson from Needham and Company. Your question please

Yes.

Mike Matson

Analyst · Mike Matson from Needham and Company. Your question please

Okay. And then finally just on the domestic B-to-B business, you mentioned resellers but I am just wondering does that mean other – is it still mainly the internet, retailers or is it the conventional HMEs that are [indiscernible] the product?

Ray Huggenberger

Analyst · Mike Matson from Needham and Company. Your question please

And it’s still first and foremost the cash resellers, the internet retailers.

Mike Matson

Analyst · Mike Matson from Needham and Company. Your question please

Okay. That’s all I have. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This does conclude the question-and-answer session of today’s program. I’d like to hand the program back to Ray Huggenberger.

Ray Huggenberger

Analyst · William Blair. Your question please

All right, thanks for your questions and for making time for us this afternoon. We look forward to seeing some of you on our upcoming investor marketing trips and conferences. We’re going to New York, Boston, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal and Kansas City in the next couple of months and I look forward to catch it up. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen for your participation in today’s conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Good day.