Peter Holt
Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Your line is open
Thank you, Kirsten, and thank you for all joining the call today. Our business is alleviating pain and moving our patients toward a healthier lifestyle. The sweet spot of growing health and wellness industry and our 2017 achievements highlight our significant progress. We delivered eight consecutive quarters of financial improvements, we continue to experience strong same-store sales and we’re building our regional developer network, essentially a coil spring for future development. In the nearly 24 months that benefit Joint, we’ve rebuilt the management team with a franchise centric focus. Together, we’ve addressed the financing concerns, managed the necessary clinic transition in Chicago, implemented standard operating procedures to improve efficiencies both corporate and for franchise clinics, bettered our relationships with our franchisees and reinvigorated the regional developer program. In 2017, we opened 41 new franchise clinics, bringing the year in total of 399 clinics. We partnered with 10 regional developers more than doubling the regional developer territories to 18. We achieved a positive adjusted EBITDA for two consecutive quarters. We established $5 million non-dilutive line of credit to support our working capital and implemented procedures that improve the time to breakeven for newly opening clinics. Turning to slide four. When I joined The Joint, my one major concern with our business model was the time that our clinics were taking to reach breakeven. And you can see here that the 2016 class, following our historical ramp, took an average of 18 months to achieve profitability, which increased the risk of franchisees running out of cash. To our efforts and recommended centralization, the 2017 class of those 41 newly franchised clinics reached our estimated breakeven on average in nine months, which of course means some did it faster. Thus, we improved the time to profitability for our franchisees, which had positive implications for corporate greenfield clinic as well. Simply put, during 2017, we’ve moved beyond stabilizing the business. We positioned the business so that we can accelerate growth in 2018 and beyond. Turning to slide five, I’d like to quickly review some important metrics for 2017 compared to 2016. System-wide sales grew 29%, delivering a 77% eight-year compounded annual growth. System-wide comp sales or retail sales of the same clinics that have been open for at least 13 months increased 21%, demonstrating the continued validation of our business model. Our revenue grew 23%, our net loss improved $11.9 million and adjusted EBITDA improved $7.6 million over the last year. Combined with positive results for the third and fourth quarters, we’re demonstrating that the drive toward sustainable profitability has taken hold. Further, at December 31, 2017, cash and cash equivalents reached $4.2 million, up from $3 million compared to December 31, 2016. The increase includes the $1 million from our new line of credit, but more importantly over $200,000 of cash was generated over the year. These are all driven by strong operational metrics. We increased our unique patients serve to nearly 1.4 million by the end of 2017. We performed nearly 5 million adjustments with 22% of our patients new to chiropractic care and adding the strength of the business model 76% of our system-wide gross sales were generated from monthly membership. Turning to slide six. As our performance continues to drive interest from new investors, I’d like to take a moment and provide an overview of our business. The Joint Corp’s purpose is to improve quality of life for patients we serve by providing quality and affordable chiropractic care. Our doctors focus on patient care on pain release and ongoing wellness to promote a healthy lifestyle. We do this in a convenient retail setting that uses no appointment, walking only, no insurance, membership based services. Our network of clinics is comprised of franchise and company-owned and managed clinics. This hybrid model enables us to expand on a capitalized fashion, which in turn is quite powerful in helping to build the brand awareness and name recognition establish and predictable revenue stream and increased scale at an accelerating pace. We’re excited that we’ve achieved that significant milestone of opening of our 400 clinics this past January. During 2017, The Joint clinics were serviced by over 1,000 fully licensed chiropractic doctors who performed those nearly 5 million chiropractic adjustments. We have a broad patient base and demographic profile that when extrapolated creates a significant basis for growth. And turning to slide seven, we serve a dynamic yet fragmented market influenced by several drivers. First, the market is estimated to include 39,000 independent practitioners. Chiropractic care itself continues to move to the mainstream population, 62 million Americans saw a chiropractor in the last five years, 35.5 million in the last 12 months and millennials who are looking for more non-invasive natural holistic alternative are the largest segment leading that pack. Today, pain costs destination more than $650 billion annually, $90 billion is spent on back pain alone and $15 billion is spent in chiropractic care. People are actively looking for better solutions for pain. This is tragically reflected on the statistics that more than 64,000 people died of an opioid overdose in 2016 or seven people an hour. According to the Gallup Poll recently conducted by Palmer College of Chiropractic, nearly 80% of the public surveys want a non-pharmacological approach to physical pain. The traditional medical community is also increasingly acknowledging that prescription drugs are not necessarily the most effective solution for back pain management. The study title’s association between utilization of chiropractic services and the use to prescription opioids among patients with low back pain, found a 55% reduction in the likelihood of people filling prescription for opioid, but those who received chiropractic care compared to those who did not. Turning to slide eight. During the fourth quarter, franchise openings increased 12 units, up from six in the third quarter. We closed two franchise clinics in the quarter. During the year, we opened 41 clinics bringing the December 31, 2017 total of franchise clinics to 352 or 88% of our portfolio of 399 clinics. And as noted earlier, in January 2018, we passed out 400 clinic mark. This is important as study show that thousand franchise units tend to be a tipping for national recognition that can further drive accelerated growth. Our growth indicators remain strong as we sold 37 franchise licenses in 2017, 68% more than we did in 2016. This increase bodes well for our 2018 growth. Turning to slide nine. During the fourth quarter, we continued to expand our regional developer program. As a reminder, we sell regional developers the rights to open a minimum number of clinics in a defined territory. They in turn help us identify and qualify new potential franchisees in that territory and assist us in providing field training, clinic opening, and ongoing support. And for that assistance, we share part of the initial franchise fee collected and part the ongoing royalties. Now this program have been deemphasized prior to my tenure. And I truly believe and steady supports that our regional developers when effectively managed accelerate the ramp to scale. I’m excited to report that during the quarter, we signed two additional resource developer territory agreements, bringing the total to 18 territories, which is more than double our regional developer count compared to the end of 2016. Both of our new regional developer territories are with existing successful franchisees who wanted to expand their reach. The first regional developer license paired a successful multi-clinic franchisee in North Carolina with an existing regional developer to purchase the RD rights for the State of Tennessee. The second developer license saw the balance of the RD rights to Texas and State of Oklahoma. With these additions, we ended the year with a combined development schedule of these 10 new regional developers requiring them to open and operate a minimum of 259 clinics over the 10 years of their regional developer terms. Collectively, the territory is encompassed Chicago, Minneapolis St. Paul, Philadelphia, Central Florida, Maryland and DC, Northern New Jersey, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma and Washington State. Turning to slide 10, franchising at its core is an exercise and brand building. And in 2018, we’re focused on elevating our brand awareness and name recognition to drive long-term growth using three revenue acceleration strategies. First, we’ll continue to accelerate franchise sales. We’ve made great progress in 2017 with our new VP of franchise sales Eric Simon who has nearly 20 years experience in franchise development. Earlier this year, we were delighted to welcome Jason Greenwood as our new VP of Marketing. Jason also has nearly 20 years of franchise marketing experience. Next, we’ll continue to build on our regional developer strategy. We added 10 new RDs in 2017 and today roughly one-third of the country is covered under RD agreement and we’ll continue to expand that in 2018. Finally, as our transformation efforts achieved a positive adjusted EBITDA in our corporate clinic segment, we will return to expanding this portfolio. Initially, we’ll look at strategically acquiring buyback clinic and secondarily, building greenfield. The target price will be in clustered location in which we already operate company-owned or managed clinics, leveraging the market and operational infrastructure support of existing corporate clinic already in place. And with that, I’d like to turn the call over to John to review our financial results.