Ray Huggenberger
Analyst · William Blair. Your line is open
It's a good question. Margaret, it's one that in one form or another we've actually fielded throughout the last year or so, because we've continued to see growth in the B2B channel. As I've said in the past, this is a process, not an event, for the DME industry to change their business model and I think it will continue to be that way. There continues to be barriers that prohibit people from just turning their business over to a new model overnight. So, that is going to, I believe, prevent what a lot of folks would like to see in a hockey stick effect. This is going to be a transition that goes on for several years. We do seem to see momentum, we've seen it in our own business-to-business sales, a we hear the same buzz that you are hearing, so we're bullish on that, but we're also cautious that we don't get expectations ahead of what the market can actually bear. All of the traditional barriers for conversion are still there. The smaller DMEs tend to be undercapitalized, so they can turn their business overnight. The larger DMEs, while they tend have more access to capital, they've got a bigger restructure challenge, so it's just not that simple. We've talked in the past about people trialing the product and I've said at various conferences and I think on this quarterly call, that one man's trial can migrate into a slow conversion. We haven't seen anybody trialing product and backing off or anybody walking away and saying, well, I tried it and it was a failure and I'm going to go back to focusing on more efficient tank delivery. We've never seen that. We've just seen people continue, if they, say they're in a trial phase, they've continued to repeat their purchases. They may be expanding their trials, expanding into different regions. And again, I think that flurries into a market conversion, but that conversion is going to take several years. If you listen to Ali's comments on guidance, we tend to be a little more bullish in the area where we have more control which is direct-to-patient, that's also the core part of our strategy and some of direct-to-patient also drives B2B sales, just from a cultural effect. But we have been a little more bullish in our expectations for the 2017 plan with regard to B2b than we have in the past and I think that's a signal that we think the market is going to continue to build in that area, but I will continue to caution that it's not going to be a short term event, it is going to be a long term process.