Paul R. Gudonis
Analyst · Craig-Hallum
Thanks, Tirth. Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us today. As you've seen in our press release issued earlier today, our second quarter revenues were slightly ahead of our expectations, while several operating metrics were below our plans, and those metrics and trends will impact our near-term performance. We've made a number of adjustments in marketing and operations, and we're already seeing initial signs of success. But before we review our quarterly results, I'd like to briefly address some understandable shareholder concerns. We recognize that our recent stock price performance has been disappointing, and we appreciate your candid feedback. Myomo remains committed to market leadership with our proven MyoPro product line, adjusting our plans to grow the business and managing our financials to sustainable cash flow positive operations. On today's call, we'll dive into this with a transparent discussion of the challenges we faced, highlight tangible progress we're making and outline our plan forward to the -- achieve these goals of sustainable growth and profitability. We appreciate your continued trust and look forward to demonstrating meaningful results. Let me begin with an overview of the dynamics of generating leads and converting qualified leads into our pipeline. Recall that in the first quarter, Meta changed its Facebook algorithm in response to privacy concerns around using someone's health information or browsing history as a means to target advertising. As I discussed during our last call, despite stepping up our advertising spend, the number of new leads did not increase in January and February. So we engaged a new digital ad agency to help us with the workaround and lead flow started increasing significantly in March and April. We are pleased with those results and knowing we need to rapidly add more pipeline a$, we allocated more dollars to digital media in the second quarter, and it worked. We hit a record level of leads in June with 4x as many leads generated as in January earlier this year. And in addition to generating a higher number of leads, our cost per lead returned to historical levels. Consistent with generating a record number of new leads, we expected an even greater number of pipeline adds. To add a prospective patient to our pipeline means we've engaged with the lead on the phone, reviewed their health insurance status and completed a telehealth screening or in-person evaluation to verify that they're medically qualified candidate for the MyoPro. There are 3 factors that prevented a record number of leads generated in the second quarter from turning into pipeline adds at the historical rates or levels. The first is that the lead quality, particularly the Facebook leads were not as good as what we've seen in the past. The reasons for that vary, but the fact is the leads were just the poor quality. Second, as we analyze past data about our pipeline adds, we discovered that there is a cycle time effect. More specifically, about half of our pipeline adds come from leads generated within the past 30 days, while most of the rest come from patients who contacted us 6 or 12 months ago, even longer. At our recent Investor Day, we reviewed the patient decision-making process during which stroke survivors will want to get more information, talk to family members and clinicians and even go back for more rehab therapy before committing themselves to obtaining a MyoPro. Last year, there was a large number of Medicare Part B patients who have been interested in a MyoPro, and they were able to access the device beginning in April 2024 when Medicare coverage began. Currently, we have a large cohort of Part B leads that have expressed interest since the beginning of the year. And based on history, many of them are expected to take the next steps somewhere over the next 6 to 12 months. The third factor impacting pipeline adds is the patient's clinical presentation. To qualify for our pipeline, a patient must meet our inclusion and exclusion criteria during a telehealth screening or an in-person evaluation by one of our clinicians. We typically exclude over half of the patients that approach us. This year, we've seen that percentage increase somewhat. Proper patient selection is necessary to improve long-term clinical outcomes, which is critical for maintaining reimbursement. But going forward, our assumption is that, that percentage of patients we exclude will stabilize, and I'll discuss how we plan to offset this in a bit. The result of these factors and despite achieving a record 816 pipeline additions in the second quarter, cost per pipeline add increased to approximately $2,900. And although this is up from about $1,500 in recent quarters, it's down from nearly $5,000 of pipeline add after Apple's privacy changes a few years ago. To improve our top of the funnel metrics and generate more qualified leads, we redirected advertising dollars from social media to television. Our experience shows that a higher proportion of leads generated by the TV ads engage with us right away to pass the telehealth screening and move forward into the pipeline. Our cost per lead in the third quarter is expected to increase with a higher mix of television advertising, but we expect that the cost per pipeline ad will decrease. Early indications so far indicate that this shift has increased pipeline adds, reflecting better patient engagement. Since we increased our ad spend, we reduced costs elsewhere in the organization. In July, we undertook a headcount reduction that impacted about 8% of our U.S. workforce. We also cut back on outside services spending and are limiting new hires until we see a significant uptick in our revenue growth. These actions are expected to save us at least $2 million in operating expenses and capital expenditures over the next 12 months. And we will continue to be disciplined in our spending, emphasizing those areas that produce revenue and increase our competitive position. In addition to the challenges in converting leads to pipeline adds, we've been experiencing a lower conversion rate from pipeline adds to authorizations, which is impacting backlog growth. To address this, we're expanding our clinical referral program by increasing education activity at rehab hospitals with our field clinical staff. Expansion of this program is expected to result in more high-quality patients entering our pipeline. To date, we've trained over 1,500 occupational therapists on the MyoPro all across the country. And now that Medicare and collagen in place is in place, we believe that they will be referring more patients to us and to our O&P channel partners. The number of qualified patients from clinical referrals doubled over the last year, and we are organizing screening days at facilities to accelerate this momentum. We're creating what amounts to a new sourcing channel for our direct provider business and O&P partners to participate with us in these clinical events. For example, I recently attended a patient evaluation training day at one of our O&P partners in Virginia that is becoming Myomo certified. After our training, these clinicians have now fit their first patient with the MyoPro, and we're eager to introduce the MyoPro to rehab hospitals in the area where they have strong working relationships, which our clinical team participated in just this past week. We're actively certifying O&P clinics by having them evaluate and fit several patients until they meet our standards and are self-sufficient to provide the devices to their clients. We're seeing a growing pipeline of O&P patients in the reimbursement process. In fact, the number of O&P orders doubled from Q1 to Q2 of this year, and we're expecting continued order growth from this channel going forward. Another factor impacting the conversion from pipeline adds to authorizations is the behavior of the Medicare Advantage plans. Since just over half of seniors are covered by Medicare Advantage plans, we are taking steps to increase the number of authorizations from these payers. We're appealing more denials and taking more appeals all the way to an administrative law judge or ALJ hearing, and I'm pleased to report that we're winning a larger percentage of appeals, reflecting the standards we set for patient inclusion and the strength of our legal position. As discussed during our June Investor Day event, we plan to double the number of ALJ hearings in the second half of the year in order to generate more authorizations and put more pressure on these plans. In this environment, the only way to grow Medicare Advantage revenue is to put more shots on goal. Since these patients are being unfairly denied access to MyoPro in violation of the code of federal regulations, we intend to escalate our concerns through formal appeals and direct engagement with plan administrators and regulators, reinforcing that Medicare Advantage plans are obligated to follow national Medicare policy. As I mentioned a moment ago, Medicare Part B patients are critical to our growth plans, and we'd like to see more of them in our funnel. While we don't control the insurance coverage of prospective patients, we proactively engage with those covered by Medicare Part B and their health care providers to accelerate the path to MyoPro. And roughly half of our fill units in the second quarter represented Medicare Part B patients. We're also starting to see more authorizations for patients covered by the contracts we entered into over the past year, and we have additional negotiations underway to increase patient access to the MyoPro. We've expanded our contracting to now cover 35 million lives with signed or pending agreements. So in summary, we're moving as quickly as possible to improve our results in the direct billing channel. Our international and O&P channels also continue to grow, complementing our direct billing channel and diversifying our revenue streams. Our strategy for expanding access, improving conversion and efficiency and managing costs positions us well for the second half of 2025 and beyond. While we expect 2025 to be another year of revenue growth, reflecting the number of leads, pipeline adds and insurance authorizations year-to-date in the direct billing channel, we are updating our expectations for revenue growth to 23% to 29% in 2025, as Dave will discuss. For all those who have followed Myomo over the past several years, you've seen us pivot strategically when necessary, develop new opportunities such as Medicare coverage and adjust our operations to support our 10-plus year track record of volume and revenue growth. With that overview of our performance and actions, I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Dave Henry, to provide more of the financial details.