Richard Montoni
Management
Frank, this is Rich. I think that’s a great question. When we think about [indiscernible] and we think about the pipeline, it’s related but the pipeline discussion is shorter term in nature, and I’m going to talk about the longer term thought process we have as it relates to growth. I think this is most apropos for Maximus’ model, and when we think about long-term growth, we’ve always said that there will be years where we have super growth and we’ll have years where there is less than average growth. In recent years, as you know, we’ve had very, very favorable legislation, reform efforts, new programs in the U.S. and other countries which in the long term, it’s really--those are short-term variables that tend to fluctuate year to year, and I think that’s sort of where we are, and I’m going to come back to that as it relates to pipeline. But when we consider long-term growth, we go back to the long-term growth drivers, and you know them well - it’s the demographics and the intersection with government fiscal situations. We think those are inevitable, irreplaceable drivers that are going to be here for a very, very long time. How it plays out in the pipeline, which is a shorter term look at things, when we look at the pipe, we look at the aggregate amount of the pipe, and $4.3 billion going to $4 billion sequentially, while it’s down, we do have some wins that naturally that’s a good reason why pipeline goes down. We did have some losses, and losses occur in the normal course, and I do think we had roughly $250 million of impacts where things went out of the pipeline, moved to the right. I expect that they will come back. So I think the pipeline is steady state for the most part. Naturally, management will continue to refresh the pipeline with best efforts. I think ultimately how much of that translates into revenue depends upon four things: it depends upon our win rate, it depends upon the timing of awards and naturally how they ramp, and in addition the rate of recurring revenue. If we’ve got some revenue that is not recurring, such as this VA contract, it has a bit of an impact into how much of the pipeline translates into organic growth. So when I think about it, I think the pipeline is at a good level. I think it positions us to do well as we move forward. It’s not a foregone conclusion, because we do have to focus on winning our fair share and then ramping those projects up. I hope you find that helpful, Frank.