Earnings Labs

iRhythm Technologies, Inc. (IRTC)

Q3 2017 Earnings Call· Wed, Nov 1, 2017

$125.08

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day ladies and gentlemen and welcome to iRhythm Technologies Inc. Q3 2017 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will have a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today’s conference, Leigh Salvo of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Leigh Salvo

Analyst

Thank you, Nova, and thank you all for participating in today’s call. Joining me are Kevin King, President and CEO; and Matt Garrett, CFO. Earlier today, iRhythm released financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2017. A copy of the press release is available on the company's website. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that management will make statements during this call that include forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws, which are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements contained in this call that are not statements of historical fact should be deemed to be forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements, including without limitation, our examination of operating trends and our future financial expectations, which includes expectations for hiring, growth in our organization and reimbursement, guidance for revenue, gross margins and operating expenses in 2017 are based upon our current estimates and various assumptions. These statements involve material risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to materially differ from those anticipated or implied by these forward-looking statements. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on these statements. For a list and description of the risks and uncertainties associated with our business, please refer to the risks factor section of our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q with the Securities and Exchange Commission. iRhythm disclaims any intention or obligation, except as required by law, to update or revise any financial projections or forward-looking statements whether because of new information, future events or otherwise. This conference call contains time-sensitive information and is accurate only as of the live broadcast today, November 1, 2017. And with that, I like to turn the call over to Kevin.

Kevin King

Analyst

Thanks Lynn, good afternoon and thanks everyone for joining us today. Third quarter and year-to-date results strongly support the progress we’re making and establishing our Zio Service as the new standard for care in ambulatory cardiac monitoring. Revenues for the quarter were $25 million, reflecting growth of 49% over the prior year. We had strong growth in both existing and new accounts and made further progress in our in-network payer contracting during the quarter. We believe the hurricanes that struck Houston, Puerto Rico and the Southeast states had a non-material impact on revenue. However, the widespread devastation from these events, as well as the fires in Northern California impacted the lives of many of our employees and our hearts and thoughts continue to go out to each of them. We’re so proud of their continued commitments to our company during this period of time and despite their personal hardships, we did not see any significant disruption to our internal operations. We are raising our 2017 revenue guidance to a range of $96 million to $97 million, representing a year-over-year growth in the range of 50%. Matt will go into more details on weather-related impacts, our Q3 financials, and our 2017 annual guidance in his section. Let me begin - at the beginning of this year, we highlighted the importance of two growth initiatives, expanding our sales channel to meet the growing demand for our Zio Service and increasing our in-network health plan contracting. I’d like to take a few minutes to provide an update on the notable progress in each of these strategic areas starting with our sales organization. The consistent growth and demand of our service has enabled us to confidently pursue a path of sales force and infrastructure expansion throughout the year. And during the first half of…

Matt Garrett

Analyst

Thank you, Kevin. Despite both traditional summer seasonality in our business and weather-related challenges, we were very pleased with our overall financial results for the third quarter 2017 and remain encouraged with our Zio XT and Zio AT contracting efforts and expanding sales force footprint exiting September. Highlights for the third quarter include revenue growth of 49%, with sequential growth of 5%, gross margins of 72.4%, a better-than-expected start to our AT contracting efforts and being on track to exit the year with 81 to 86 sales reps. Taking a more detailed look at the third quarter results, we achieved strong revenue growth despite the traditional impact of December seasonality and with the occurrences of the hurricanes. As it relates to the storms, while we did see some registration pullback in the affected states, we have estimated the impact to be immaterial to the overall business. And in addition, we have seen a full recovery and do not believe there will be any material carryforward impact into Q4. Revenue growth remains predominantly volume driven as a result of the growth in both new and existing accounts and continued success in our in-network contracting efforts. Given the traditionally slow summer season, we were very pleased with several large institutional accounts coming online in the third quarter that demonstrated rapid adoption of the Zio service. We can in-part attribute these successes to our improving on boarding capabilities, registration workflow improvements, and continued reduction in patient friction as we establish contracts with previously non-contracted payers. Revenue trends also remain encouraging with volume growth coming from all key sectors and an only slight increase in our same-store versus new store sales during the period attributable to summer seasonality. Moving forward, we would continue to guide investors towards an even split of new store same-store…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of David Lewis of Morgan Stanley.

Kevin King

Analyst

Hi David, we are unable to hear you.

Operator

Operator

David your line is open.

Kevin King

Analyst

Maybe we could go to the second call and we could put David back in queue there.

Operator

Operator

Yes sir. Our next question comes from the line of Jason Mills of Canaccord.

Jason Mills

Analyst

Kevin can you hear me?

Kevin King

Analyst

Yes, I can. Hi Jason.

Jason Mills

Analyst

Good afternoon guys. Congratulations on another great quarter. So, I guess just to start Kevin, another quarter of 50% topline growth that’s obviously among the best in Med-Tech, could you talk about the single greatest or maybe couple of things that are allowing you to continue to drive that kind of robust expansion, adoption really converting accounts from Holter to Zio, I presume one is the sales force because you are investing so much in it and perhaps you can give us an idea - if you could reiterate your guidance with respect to adding sales reps in the near-term, maybe update us on where do you think that sales force can go over the medium term, and whether or not there is a possibility that you would expedite hiring even a little faster than you have guided in the near term?

Kevin King

Analyst

Sure. Maybe two-part question. I think one is, what are the drivers for that we observed in Q3 and then how do we feel about hiring of the people and where are we. So, I would say Jason, the points that Matt made relative to his prepared remarks, certainly sales force hiring, certainly the contribution of increased payer contracting our primary drivers here. And then just we have gotten a whole lot better over time with driving, what we call, account onboarding, bringing on new prescribers to the service, bringing on new accounts, the rate at which we do that, now that we have a broader infrastructure of customer service revenue cycle management and other folks to help the sales team all of those things, I think are net contributors to the strength that we’re seeing as it relates to the 50% growth number. Relative to the sales headcount, we are extremely confident and achieving the year-end targets, the 81 to 86, we made substantial progress in the third quarter, we didn’t give a number, but you can probably think about it as splitting the goal post if you will, between where we fed and where we are going to, pretty much in-line with what we spoke about in the past. And then in our recent, as far as looking forward in a recent conference where I spoke at, we spoke about our view that this adding of roughly 10 a quarter going into next year feels about right for us in terms of numbers. And so that’s kind of an estimate of where we are, I’m not so sure that we will call that guidance at this point, but adding about 10 per quarter feels pretty good to us.

Jason Mills

Analyst

Okay that's helpful and then…

Matt Garrett

Analyst

We're trying to build towards about 120 to 125 plus type sales organization here to cover the country.

Jason Mills

Analyst

Okay. That's very helpful. That is helpful. So as a follow-up, Matt, you gave us some good guidance with respect to the growth mix and 80/20 mix between volume and price. I guess, may be a two-part question on that as you look forward. I understand you haven't given 2018 guidance yet, but as we think about AT becoming at least part of the mix at some level and obviously seemingly at a higher price, how do you see that 80/20 mix changing, if at all, over the next say 18 to 24 months? And then something - a third one I'll get back in queue, maybe for Derrick on mSToPS, I want to make sure I understand what we are going to see at AHA relative to what we're going to see next year, early next year may be at ACC, and whether or not there is, it sounded like perhaps things might have been expedite in terms of data release, but I want to make sure I was reading in something into it that isn’t there? Thanks guys.

Matt Garrett

Analyst

Sure. Good to hear from you Jason, this is Matt, I’ll answer your question first. Look, as it relates to the overall - the indicators that we provided to you, I think we feel pretty good for, I said the foreseeable future so that would mean the next say 4 to 5 quarters through 2018 that we would continue that 50/50 new store, same-store split. We feel pretty good about that. As it relates to the 80/20 volume prize, we are maintaining that sort of guidance to the end of next year as well at this point. It could be a little higher, it could be a little lower, but it is just, it is way too early days to understand the potential impact that AT might have to change that mix significantly. So, for the time being we’re pretty comfortable stating that to 80/20 will continue through the next four to give quarters as well. I’ll turn it over to Derrick for the second question.

Derrick Sung

Analyst

Sure. Thanks Jason. So, on mSToPS, there is going to be a poster that’s being presented, it will be presented on Tuesday, November 14 at a poster session at 1:30 and our understanding is that at this poster session, preliminary results from the study will be presented. Now the protocol for the study kind of has two parts to it. So, there is a randomized component in which about 2,000 patients are randomized to either a delayed or immediate monitoring with our Zio Service and our understanding is that the preliminary results from this randomized component are what’s going to be presented at the poster session at AHA. We continue to expect that the full results, which also include comparison of the Zio monitored patients to an observational cohort of additional 4,000 patients to look at long-term clinical and health economic endpoints. We expect that those four results will still be presented sometime in the first half of next year as we’ve been discussing.

Jason Mills

Analyst

Okay. That's super helpful. Derrick, before I get back in the queue, could you remind us as we go to that poster and look at the data, sort of how should we think about the data relative to the pilot study, maybe you could remind us those on the call about the pilot study and just, sort of what would be viewed as a positive result, just sort of at high-levels? Thank you and I will promise to get back in queue this time.

Derrick Sung

Analyst

Sure. So, the feasibility study was the study that we published back in May of 2015 in the Journal of clinical cardiology and that was a smaller study in a similar subset of high-risk patients in which we found about 5% previously undetected Atrial Fibrillation and that compares to 1% to 2% AFS sound in kind of the general population, and I think the way to think about what is the successful result and how we would think about it is, at the end of the day our objectives around the market development for silent AF - and the initial objective is around establishing kind of payer coverage and demonstrating the cost-effectiveness if you will of screening for AF in this high-risk population. And we know that there is - we know that the cost of stroke is about $140,000 per patient, the medical cost to treat stroke in these types so in patients. So, you can kind of do the math yourself, but I think if you - I think in the range of our feasibility study results would, in our view provide a cost-effective argument to capture these patients. So, I think that’s kind of how we would think about the results. If that’s helpful.

Jason Mills

Analyst

Very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of David Lewis from Morgan Stanley.

David Lewis

Analyst

Good afternoon guys. Sorry about that [indiscernible] on this evening. Matt, just a couple of questions on 2018, I’ll be brief. Just thinking about the two specific things, gross margin expansion has been much better than we expected this year, a lot of the drivers that are driving that this year should be present next year. So, is it safe to assume we should expect continued progression on gross margins in the next year and then similar question OpEx, this year is an interesting year, as you have taken up revenue, you’ve always taken up your spending, so you’re basically growing OpEx in-line with spending, our sense is next year you would start to get some leverage on your incremental revenue dollars, that being said, you are also going to expand the sales force next year more dramatically in 2018 and 2017. So, just trying to get a sense of GM and OpEx for 2018?

Matt Garrett

Analyst

Yes, David, look, you know as we have said in the past it is a little bit tricky and that we haven't given guidance out for 2018, but I can try to give a couple of high-level things. Frist up on gross margins, yes, we have done a little better than even our own internal expectations I think related to the three variables that I’ve mentioned in the past. There is no reason to think that they won't continue, but we do have a little bit of headwind related to AT launch. I won’t go into specific quantitative numbers, but I will qualitatively walk you through two items. One, with our initial launch, or pilot if you will in initial commercial ramp, we’ve used some boards that are being amortized over a much shorter period of time, and that is something that could have a near-term drag and we're going to see how that impacts us. So, we would caution on that point and the other is, we’re turning on a clinical operation center that’s working 24-hours a day, seven days a week on unit number one. So, you can imagine that there will be some absorption issues as we begin that more broader launch, which in effect over time will lower our cost per unit's, but on the smaller number of units to come out of the gate it will be impactful. So, I’m not saying that in a way that we would - in any way lower guidance, but I'm just saying we want to be cautious at this point about any dramatic increase in guidance for next year, and of course we will be able to give you much more detail on that on the call more likely in early February.

Kevin King

Analyst

And then that just… I’m sorry go ahead.

David Lewis

Analyst

I was going to say the long-term range that you have provided to David and others for gross margins, does that still hold?

Matt Garrett

Analyst

Yes, absolutely, the 75% to 80% absolutely still holds.

David Lewis

Analyst

Okay.

Matt Garrett

Analyst

David, I think you had a second question on spend. Yes, I think you are kind of sport on with the fact that we are aggressively hiring in our own internal estimates related to the sales force expansion getting people on board in some situations two to three quarters earlier and in previous guidance, you know saying that we would be hiring throughout the year and instead may be pulling some of those headcount in. We’re not giving specific guidance at this point, but again if we exit the year and 80 - somewhere between 81 and 86 and we stay on Kevin's 10 to 15 sort of range for at least the first couple of quarters, you could imagine that we will have some expense expansion as it relates to that activity.

David Lewis

Analyst

Okay, sure you're going to see some leveraged next year, but you may not be seeing kind of the numbers that maybe some of the [indiscernible] imply, so we will take a look at that. And Matt I think I may have missed this question, you kind of went there, but is there anything from a payer mix perspective as we look into 2018 that we should be thinking about or any other headwinds or tailwinds are from a qualitative perspective we should be thinking about for 2018 guidance?

Matt Garrett

Analyst

I don't think so David. I mean, our belief internally is that we will continue to drive down that noncontracted portion of our business into the lower single digits from the high single digits where we currently are. There could be a little bit as again as it relates to as we launch AT. We were going to have to get our variance in terms of what the mix will be between the various revenue streams that might have a little bit of an up or down balance, but again it is a little bit of early days there. Nothing that we think is going to materially impact the way we think about the business at this point.

David Lewis

Analyst

Great, thanks so much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Michael Weinstein of JPMorgan.

Allen Gong

Analyst

Hi guys. This is actually Allen on for Mike. Just wanted to say congratulations on the first quarter, and a great quarter to start. But first question, just really related to kind of Zio AT launch, I know it's still kind of early days yet, but just in terms of the kind of adoption. I know you said, it's very positive right now, but just in terms of training physicians’ kind of getting them up to speed, is it all still kind of on track? And what kind of ramp should we expect to see, like, going into 2018 when you really kind of get your feet under you?

Kevin King

Analyst

It’s very early days Allen forward Zio AT. That said all indicators relative to product performance, relative to the quality of the service offering being on par with what we do with Zio XT turnaround times, patient satisfaction and others are all pointing in the right direction. The most difficult challenge in this particular market segment is on the payor side. And in the prepared remarks, I was alluding to this where many health plans have no coverage policy or have strong restrictions and that’s something that needs to be, you know the technology - this space has been around for 10 years, so a lot of people know about this, but it’s very different from the XT space where we have near universal coverage policies. And so, physicians are not necessarily thinking, is this a cover technology or not. They have to think more about it with Zio AT as they do with any other MCOT. And that’s the area that we’re really being thoughtful about, particularly when it comes to our existing base of customers, as well as those new customers that we’re interacting with where we haven't had prior relationships. So, we’re just continuing to tread lightly there till we gain more experience.

Allen Gong

Analyst

Okay. So, I guess, with that in mind, obviously, you have the mSToPS data coming out at the end of this year and you're also going to be looking for other indication expansions into kind of these actionable event markets. Are you kind of expecting to have this kind of reimbursement challenge like pass you by the time you pursue more reimbursement challenges, or do you think this will be kind of like a longer battle?

Kevin King

Analyst

On the AT side, we’ve message that this is more like a 3 to 4 quarter ramp. I think the question came on our last call, was this like a 2 to 4 or was this an 8 to 10 ramp, month ramp or quarter ramp and we guided kind of more towards the lower end of the 3 to 4 quarters in order to get full AT contracts. And as Matt indicated, we came out of the box pretty strong here in and so we're feeling good about the status or the position that we are up right now.

Matt Garrett

Analyst

And Alan I would add on the mSToPS front. That is an effort in terms of some screening for silent AF. That’s an effort in its early days, right. So, I think you should think about the data coming out from mSToPS, which, some will - some will come out obviously next month, some early in the first half of next year and there is also longer-term kind of three-year end points on clinical and health economic outcomes that are being tracked as well. That’s kind of the first step in the process of establishing reimbursement for that used case. So, even there, I think it’s much earlier days and it will take some time.

Allen Gong

Analyst

Got it, thanks.

Operator

Operator

And I’m showing no further questions in the queue at this time. I’d like to turn the call back to Kevin King CEO for closing remarks.

Kevin King

Analyst

Thank you, operator. This concludes our call for today. We thank you very much for your attention and interest in iRhythm and look forward to talking to you next quarter.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's call. This does conclude the conference. You may now disconnect. Everyone have a wonderful day.