David Schlanger
Analyst · Piper Sandler. Please go ahead
Thank you, Jamie and thank you everyone for joining us this afternoon. We hope that each of you your families and your loved ones continue to be healthy and safe. I'm pleased to open today's call by reporting that everyone at Progyny is doing well. COVID-19 has had an unprecedented impact around the world. As the pandemic began to unfold, we made the decision to work from home starting in mid-March. As people described later, we were well prepared to make this shift to a virtual work environment and we are extremely proud of how our team has managed this transition. They have not only continued to provide the same high quality service that our clients and members expect, but also maintain their motivation and commitment to Progyny’s mission. On this call, our focus will be to help you understand the specific impacts that COVID has had on the facility industry and our business, including our members and clients, as well as how we have responded in managing the business and the return to normalcy that we are beginning to see. When we last spoke with you on March 5 and issued financial guidance, the pandemic was still in its earliest stage in the U.S. and our clinics weren't seeing any meaningful impacts to their patient volumes. Over the course of the subsequent two weeks, COVID was declared a pandemic, state and local authorities began issuing stay-at-home orders, and then on March 17 the American Society for Reproductive Medicine issued guidelines recommending that fertility clinics should cease initiating new fertility treatments. The significant majority of the clinics in our network chose to adhere to ASRMs guidelines, and our volume of fertility treatments and dispensing of the related medications declined significantly over the latter part of the quarter. Given all of the uncertainties created by the pandemic, its duration, its geographic reach and our member’s access to treatments, we withdrew our financial guidance shortly thereafter. Although many clinics remained open on a limited basis for emergent needs and to perform initial consultations, often via telemedicine, most patients weren't able to progress to actual treatment, and that drop in patient activity negatively impacted our first quarter results. Through the end of March and into the first half of April, we saw significant reductions in the utilization of the benefit by our members down to as low as 15%, when compared to the early part of Q1 were 15% of what we consider to be normal levels. Despite this, we are reporting a 72% increase in revenue over the first quarter of 2019, as well as significant growth is Adjusted EBITDA and net income and more than $12 million of positive operating cash flow this quarter. These results were due to the strong start we had to the year prior to the impacts from COVID-19. In April, the New York Department of Health declared that fertility is an essential health service and stated that clinics have the authority to treat their patients and perform procedures during the pandemic. Then on April 24, ASRM updated its guidelines which were reaffirmed on May 11, advising that practices could reopen for all procedures so long as it could be done in a measured way that is safe for patients and staff. Fortunately, many clinics had already begun preparing new protocols to address patient and staff safety, such as reducing the number of people in the clinic at any one time, screening patient’s before each appointment, and requiring that patients wear mask and the PPE be used by clinical staff. Most clinics have published their safety protocols on their websites for patient’s convenience. These preparations have put fertility clinics in a stronger position to open sooner rather than later with all their services. Over the last few weeks, we are already seeing week-to-week acceleration in the volume of patient appointments and medication dispensing. This acceleration of member activity demonstrates that members are anxious to return to treatment and is evidence that the pause in treatment they endured hasn't been their desire to achieve their family building goals. By the end of June, we expect to see all of our network clinics open and providing their full range of services, and patient volumes should continue to ramp up as members feel more and more comfortable with the safety protocols established by their clinic of choice, though it is still too early at this point to know when member utilization will return to normal levels. Our members waiting for treatment has added a significant amount of stress to a journey that is already enormously challenging for many people and Progeny has been there to help support them. Our patient care advocates have been in frequent contact with their members and have been providing emotional support and guidance, including around the issues of how COVID could impact their unique treatment journeys. We've held webinars on mental health and wellness and are helping members understand how to effectively use telemedicine to start a fertility journey. These events have had very strong turnouts, which is another positive indicator of how eager our members are to resume their treatment journeys. We've been able to provide this high level support because despite the drop in volumes in revenue, we made the decision to keep the full Progyny team intact. We did this with the belief that the disruption to our industry will be shorter than it will be for many other industries, and because we felt it was important to preserve the talented organization and unique culture we have built and to continue to be there for our members doing what we knew would be an especially trying period. Our member satisfaction scores that continue to trend at or above the levels they were prior to the pandemic, showing that our members have been appreciative of our efforts. We've also been there for our providers. We've been in frequent contact with our network physicians through both direct and conversations, as well as through surveys. We've been sharing the survey results with our network to help our physicians understand how their peers have been impacted, and how they are approaching COVID related issues and challenges. We know that clinics are reopening or actively preparing to reopen, and we believe that our network is well-positioned to effectively manage the backlog of [Progeny member volume] we expect to see. Practitioners are telling us that they are adapting to safely accommodate the expected patient backlog. For example, many will be practicing with AB teams extending hours, both during the week and on weekends as necessary in order to manage the volume. In addition, many are leveraging telemedicine and in some cases, condensing the typical multiple office visits for consultations into a single office visit. In addition, for some of the largest clinics on the East Coast and West Coast, medical tourism has been a meaningful portion of their practice volume, specifically from patients traveling from Europe or Asia. As travel restrictions remain in effect and medical tourism remains curtailed. This will create additional capacity at these clinics to manage their backlog of us patient. As we are beginning to see clinics reopen and members reengage, we believe fertility will be on the leading edge of the recovery relative to other areas of the economy. As it relates to the overall economy, I'd like to spend a moment discussing how COVID has impacted Progyny and player points. We have all seen the unprecedented job losses, unemployment claims reported in the news. On some level, all companies have been meaningfully impacted by COVID. Fortunately, however, taken as a whole, Progyny’s customer base has avoided the worst of these impacts. As of March 31, we had 2.1 million members. We are pleased to report that as of today, there has not been a reduction to our 2.1 million members and we believe there will not be a debt reduction in members as a result of COVID. We are basing this on a review we performed on each of our clients, taking into account our normal conversations with them, as well as what they have said publicly anything about the impacts of COVID to their workforce. There were two important conclusions from this review. First, the clients that represent the significant majority of those are revenues and membership, haven't announced any workforce reductions or meaningful furloughs. In fact, several of our largest customers have publicly said, they're hiring or committed to make no workforce reductions in 2020. Second, for those industries that have been most impacted by COVID-19 to this point, specifically hospitality, travel, restaurants, retail clothing publishers we believe that the impacts of Progyny’s revenues from any announced layoffs or furloughs at clients in these industries will be de minimis. In addition, many of these companies are continuing to provide full medical benefits to any affected employees for an extended period of time further reducing the potential impact of Progyny. Obviously, the broader economic situation is still evolving, and we will need to continue monitoring what's happening with our clients. Turning now to the impacts of COVID-19 to our 2020 selling season. At this point in the year, we are actively selling as we would be in any year, both pitching new clients, as well as re engaging with prospects, who previously gave us a not now during the prior selling season. Consistent with how it typically happens, we continue to expect that the majority of client decisions will be made at the end of summer or early fall. Although much of what we are doing up to now is fairly consistent with prior sales seasons, we have had to make certain adjustments to our selling process itself. For example, we aren't attending conferences and have shifted from meetings that would normally be in person to virtual and telephonic meetings, but despite these challenges, our sales team is out there engaging with prospects, and our sales executives have been successful in getting meetings with potential clients. Despite the fact that the pandemic has created a certain level of distraction for many HR teams, we believe that the level of sales activity we are seeing in this environment is positive and encouraging and is comparable to what we saw last year at this time. We have however, adjusted the focus of our go to market efforts by more narrowly prioritizing our sales activities and being sensitive to those companies we approach. We aren't pitching to airline or hospitality companies, for example. Instead, we are focusing on industries that are better positioned in this environment, and where we've done well historically, such as technology, consumer packaged goods, pharmaceuticals, software and financial services. We are also focused on targeting a higher percentage of our companies who are currently offering fertility coverage, leveraging the strength of the cost savings within our value proposition. Our program offers significant savings compared to a carrier program, which is always important, but those savings become even more relevant in an uncertain economic climate. Historically, two thirds of our clients have some level of fertility coverage prior to adopting Progyny and in nearly all those cases, the programs were through their carrier, so we clearly understand how to successfully market ourselves to that audience. Last year, early in the selling season, we received a handful of commitments from clients who had previously told us not now in a prior sales season. We are experiencing a similar level of early commitments for 2021 that we experienced as of this time last year. And in just the last few weeks, we were awarded business for 2021 by two of these companies. A handful of early client commitments doesn't make an entire sales season, but these early commitments, and in particular, the two we recently received are a good indicator that there are companies out there who are willing and able to make a decision even in this difficult environment. It's impossible to know what the world will look like in late summer and early fall when our new client prospects will be making their benefits decisions for 2021, but with what we can control right now, we are seeing good activity, including the handful of early commitments already received, the receipt of new RFPs, and the prospects we're moving through the sales stages of the pipeline. Another area we can control is by continuing our emphasis on up-selling to existing customers, by adding Progyny RX for example, or by convincing them to cover more cycles. With Progyny RX, our program provides hard dollar savings when compared to a traditional PBM, and we believe that this is particularly compelling message in this economic environment, as companies are looking for ways to be more thoughtful with what they spend. We are collectively going through unprecedented times. However, some things don't change. One of them is desire to have children and start a family. In addition, all of the macro trends that have helped contribute to our growth remain intact. The high and growing rates of infertility, the lack of adequate coverage in the U.S. with this highly prevalent medical need, the need for inclusiveness and equality in the workplace, and the need for employers to get the most from their health care dollars. We believe that as we collectively emerge in this crisis, Progyny’s mission and how we accomplish it cost effectively for our clients becomes even more important. As we look back across other times of national crises we see that people tend to use these periods to think about what is really important to them. In these moments, family and family building become even more relevant to people than it was before. We believe employers will embrace the societal trends that result from the COVID-19 pandemic, and that family building benefits could take on even more significance. Finally, we have 135 clients today with the thousands of companies covering facility through their carriers; we can demonstrate tangible financial benefits to the Progyny program, which is why we continue to believe that we’ve got meaningful opportunities going forward. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Pete to walk you through the financials in greater detail.