Operator
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Molina Healthcare First Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded Thursday, April 28, 2016. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Juan José Orellana, Senior Vice President of Investors Relations. Please go ahead, sir. Juan José Orellana - Senior Vice President of Investor Relations & Marketing: Thank you, Pascal. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us. The purpose of this call is to discuss Molina Healthcare's financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2016. The company issued its earnings release reporting these results today after the market closed, and this release is now posted for viewing on our company website. On the call with me today are Dr. Mario Molina, our Chief Executive Officer; John Molina, our Chief Financial Officer; and Terry Bayer, our Chief Operating Officer; Joseph White, our Chief Accounting Officer. After the completion of our prepared remarks, we will open the call to take your questions. If you have multiple questions, we ask that you get back in the queue so that others can have an opportunity to ask their questions. Our comments today will contain forward-looking statements under the Safe Harbor Provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. All of our forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations and assumptions which are subject to numerous risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially. A description of such risk factors can be found in our earnings release, and in our reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Form 10-K annual report, our Form 10-Q quarterly reports, and our Form 8-K current reports. These reports can be accessed under the Investor Relations tab of our company's website or on the SEC's website. All forward-looking statements made during today's call represent our judgment as of April 28, 2016, and we disclaim any obligation to update such statements except as required by securities laws. This call is being recorded and a 30-day replay of the conference call will be available at our company's website, molinahealthcare.com. I would now like to turn the call over to Dr. Mario Molina. Joseph Mario Molina - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you, Juan José, and thanks to everyone for joining us. As we announced today, Molina Healthcare reported adjusted net income of $29 million or $0.51 per diluted share. Coming off a very strong performance during 2015, we encountered a few challenges that contributed to a disappointing first quarter, and that have caused us to reassess our outlook for the year. We have identified those factors that affected our results. We are working diligently to address them, and we remain confident that we will reach our goal of 1.5% to 2% after-tax margin by the fourth quarter of 2017. John will be discussing our financials for the quarter in greater detail during his remarks. In the meantime, it is important to interpret these results within the context of our current business environment and not to lose sight of our long-term growth and margin goals. With that margin goal in mind, let's review the quarter. Enrollment and revenue growth continue to exceed expectations. Enrollment grew to 4.2 million members for this quarter. That is an increase of about 1.3 million members from the first quarter of last year. Over half of that increase, nearly 700,000 members, occurred in the first quarter of 2016 alone. This is the largest membership gain that we have experienced during sequential quarters in the 35 year history of our company. Our strong revenue growth is the result of a strategy that was well conceived and well executed. But I must acknowledge that two years of hyper growth across multiple geographies and multiple programs has created a bit of a strain this quarter. I'll speak more about that in a minute. Despite that strain due to growth, I am pleased to report that we were successful in decreasing our year-over-year medical costs on a per member per month basis by about 5%, from $306 per member per month to $291 per member per month. Lowering medical costs is what we're supposed to do. In fact, the only way to sustain the increases in health insurance coverage that we as a nation currently enjoy is to lower the cost of medical care. While we were pleased with these improvements, they simply did not offset reductions in per member per month revenue. During that same period, revenue per member per month actually decreased from $345 to $324 per member per month. Lower premium revenue per member per month resulted from much lower Medicaid expansion rates, updated risk adjustment estimates on marketplace and the general failure of Medicaid rates to keep pace with the growing medical care costs. Others in our space have also commented on these headwinds in recent reports. In the end, the decline in per member per month premium revenue outpaced the decline in per member per month medical costs, exerting pressure on our profit margins this quarter. So here is where we stand today. First, we believe that we've achieved the top line growth necessary to reach our 2017 net margin target. We've achieved this top line growth even more quickly than we anticipated. Second, the improvements in our care management systems and practices that are needed to support our future profitability, although not complete, are well underway. Next, we continue to develop new capabilities, while integrating acquired ones like Pathways into our organization. Nevertheless, we are experiencing some of the pains that often come with rapid growth and some symptoms that have to be addressed have emerged. For example, medical costs at our Ohio and Texas health plans were higher than we anticipated. And increased pharmacy costs across the business, but particularly in Puerto Rico, resulted in additional margin pressure. Let me take a minute to talk about each one of these issues. As I mentioned a few minutes ago, we anticipated enrollment growth, but our results exceeded even our own projections. Assimilating this membership stretched our operational resources. Accordingly, we've redoubled our efforts around member and provider services, care and utilization management, provider payment and information technology – all areas that felt the strain of rapid growth. When we remember that quality of care and compliance can't be compromised, it becomes clear that some short-term profitability may have to suffer. At our Ohio and Texas health plans, higher than anticipated costs were largely the result of utilization issues that we expect to resolve through a number of ongoing care management initiatives. We've spoken about these initiatives before, but I think it's worth our time to review them again today. In broad terms, these care management initiatives are comprised of a number of areas: First, the application of updated authorization standards and criteria. Second, a greater focus on the management of transitions of care. Third, the use of hospitalists to achieve cost-effective outcomes. Fourth, the use of interdisciplinary care teams to help those with combined physical, behavioral, and social challenges. And fifth, the early identification and effective treatment of those who require or may require complex and expensive care over long periods of time. Our performance in the first quarter requires that we revisit the timing and pace of these initiatives and that we adjust the focus of our efforts towards Ohio and Texas. The other area of concern is pharmacy costs. So far this year, pharmacy costs are above our expectations and rate increases do not seem to be offsetting the full impact. The effect on our business of high-cost specialty drugs is something that we have been combating for the past two years and this cost is still not fully recognized by the government's actuaries. Having addressed the cost drivers in the first quarter results, let me now turn to the future. What do all of the headlines about other insurers exiting the marketplace mean to Molina Healthcare? What is our strategy for the marketplace? Our plan is to stay the course. That is because our strategy and our goals for this product are different from those of many other insurers. Our objective is to provide an accessible extension of our Medicaid product to individuals whose eligibility for Medicaid fluctuates, and we believe that we are successfully doing so. As a reminder, the segment most likely to purchase an exchange project from Molina healthcare are individuals under 250% of the federal poverty level who receive significant government subsidies. Approximately 90% of our marketplace members receive a government subsidy for co-pays and premiums. We have never expected our marketplace product to perform better than our Medicaid business, nor operate at significantly better margins over the long term. After a period extremely rapid growth over the past two years, we expect the remainder of 2016 to be more stable. It should give us a chance to catch our breath as an organization while we continue to build on our current infrastructure. You may recall that back in 2013, in preparation for the anticipated growth in Medicaid expansion, the dual demonstration programs and marketplace we invested in operations and systems. Well, the growth exceeded even our optimistic expectations and we need to once again think about administrative capacity. There are a number of things that we need to do this year in preparation for 2017 and to help us achieve our long-term profit targets. First, we need to continue to supplement our management bench strength with additional talent. Our business continues to evolve by growing larger in scale, introducing new demands and becoming more complex as we add new products and services. Second, we need to continue to refine our expertise in medical management. We must continue to make progress in our provider contracts so that both providers and payers are working together to provide the best possible care for each member. This includes working with hospitals to actively reduce readmissions, while promoting patient safety and quality of care. It will also require us to choose our partners carefully and redefined the traditional relationships between health plans and hospitals. Third, we continue to manage our growth and integrate our newly acquired businesses. We completed a number of in-state acquisitions in 2015 that are being integrated in 2016. While the integration of these new members is relatively simple from an operations standpoint, because we have existing health plans in those states, addressing the financial impacts may not be so simple. For example, many of our new members, including those in marketplace, are coming to us from a fee-for-service environment. Short-term pent-up demand, new care management models and different methods of accessing healthcare services can result in higher costs in the short run. With that said, we believe these integration characteristics are transitory, and as a result, we remain optimistic when it comes to growing our business. We were very pleased to announce last week's acquisition of Total Care, a Medicaid health plan in the Syracuse area. Once approved, this transaction will mark our initial entry into the State of New York. Total Care serves approximately 39,000 members. The acquisition provides us with an established platform for future growth similar to what we experienced in states like Florida, Illinois and Michigan. Now, in light of some of the growing pains we've experienced this quarter, it is important to note that we expect this transition to close in the latter half of this year. By that time, we should have worked through the assimilation of our new members from other acquisitions. We plan to continue to respond to RFPs, as we have previously discussed, primarily to enter new states, especially as they relate to Medicaid long-term services and supports, or MLTSS. Now, let me switch topics and talk about a new healthcare threat in the United States, Zika. I use the term "new" with a touch of irony. Zika was first identified 70 years ago in Africa, and initially it was thought that it did not cause illness in humans. We have certainly learned otherwise as it is spread from Africa to South America and the Caribbean. It definitely causes a rare birth defect, called microcephaly that is associated with small head and abnormal brain development. While very few of the expectant mothers among our membership have contracted the virus, the full financial effects of Zika will not likely be known for several months. We continue to monitor the situation closely. Striving to deliver quality care for our members is our company's DNA. So I want to congratulate our 11 health plans that were awarded the Multicultural Health Care Distinction from the National Committee for Quality Assurance for Medicaid. The Multicultural Health Care Program evaluates how well an organization complies with standards in the following areas – collection of race and ethnicity and language data, provision of language assistance, cultural responsiveness, provision of culturally and linguistically appropriate services and the reduction of healthcare disparities. In keeping with our commitment to quality, all nine of our health plans that offer marketplace products also received the award. I want to personally thank each employee who made this award possible. Finally, neither our first quarter results nor anything else that has happened since we issued our 2016 outlook in February constitute a fundamental change to our business or to our long-term outlook. Enrollment growth this year is trending toward the high end of expectations. The care management and quality of care initiatives we discussed in February continue as planned, and appear to be having an impact as evidenced by the decrease in per member per month medical costs. Our diversification efforts, think of our recent New York acquisition, remain on track. As a result, we remain confident that we will reach our stated goal of an after-tax margin of 1.5% to 2% by the fourth quarter of 2017. I would now like to turn the call over to John. John C. Molina, JD - Chief Financial Officer & Director: Thank you, Mario. Today, we reported adjusted net income per diluted share of $0.51 for the first quarter of 2016 compared to $0.62 per diluted share on an adjusted basis for the same period last year. While we recognize that these results are disappointing, I want to reiterate what Mario just said, these results give us no reason to doubt our ability to reach our goal of a 1.5% to 2% after-tax margin by the end of 2017. We have executed very well on our initiatives to grow the business. Total revenue increased to $4.3 billion this quarter, an increase of more than $1 billion and more than 30% when compared to the first quarter of 2015. This increase was driven by the nearly 700,000 new members we added, a combination of closed transactions from 2015, and better-than-expected growth in our Marketplace product. Top line revenue growth has also had a positive impact on our administrative cost ratio. Our general and administrative ratio decreased by 30 basis points to 7.8% from both the first quarter of 2015 and the end of last year. We have now closed on all nine acquisitions that we announced during 2015. The last five transactions added more than 250,000 members, or more than $600 million in annualized revenues. That is all well and good, but we know that we need increased profits in addition to increased revenue. So, what made this quarter more challenging than expected? First, fee-for-service costs in Ohio and Texas were higher than we expected. For the most part, this is the result of higher-than-expected utilization. Mario has already outlined the care management initiatives that we expect will resolve this challenge. And second, we continued to see cost pressures relative to the level of our premium rates. Looking at the enterprise as a whole, these cost pressures are particularly acute for the pharmacy benefit. Margin pressure across our states as pharmacy costs have continued to increase this year. Despite high generic utilization, we are seeing pressure from new high cost specialty drugs. A good example of this is what we are experiencing at our Puerto Rico health plan. In Puerto Rico, we had a formulary change that added additional branded drugs to the Medicaid preferred drug list over the course of our contract, which resulted in increased costs and were not anticipated when we negotiated our rates back in the spring of 2015. To help mitigate these changes, we are actively engaged on this issue with the Medicaid agency as part of our annual rate discussions, and we continue to work with providers and make the case for actuarially sound rates to ensure the program remain sustainable. Looking at our operating results today when compared to the outlook we provided back in February, you can see that our consolidated medical care ratio of 89.8% was, for the most of our lines of business, in line and tracking along with that guidance. Our TANF and ABD lines of business are the exceptions. These two areas largely contributed to the sequential medical care ratio increase we saw between this quarter and the fourth quarter of 2015. We continue to believe that while our medical cost assumptions have changed, our revenue and administrative assumptions are in line with previous expectations. And as we look out over our mitigation efforts, we see short, medium, and long-term solutions. Weighing all of these factors, we think it is appropriate to reduce our 2016 earnings outlook. We now expect income before tax to be in the range of $350 million on the low-end to $400 million on the high end compared to our initial guidance of $460 million. Accordingly, we are reducing our 2016 outlook for adjusted earnings per share to $2.50 to $2.95 down from $3.86. Despite this revision to our 2016 outlook, I want to emphasize that we expect to exit 2016 with the trajectory that maintains the progress towards our stated goal of 1.5% to 2% after-tax margin by the fourth quarter of 2017. For the interim, so that you can better model and follow our progress, we anticipate slow progress through the second quarter, with increasing performance in the second half of the year, as the efforts we have outlined bear fruit. We estimate that approximately two-thirds of our earnings will be achieved during the second half of 2016. The key takeaways that despite the challenges we faced during the quarter, we have taken action to minimize the impact on our operations going forward, and we did not lose sight of our longer-term objectives, growth, and margin improvement. We have always maintained that one quarter does not define us. We are focused on the long-term. This concludes our prepared remarks. We are now ready to take questions.