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Voya Financial, Inc. (VOYA)

Q1 2019 Earnings Call· Wed, May 1, 2019

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Benefitfocus First Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I now like to turn the conference over to your host Michael Bauer, Senior Director of Finance and Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Michael Bauer

Analyst

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and welcome to Benefitfocus's first quarter 2019 earnings call. We will be discussing the operating results announced in our press release issued after the close of market today. Joining me today are Ray August, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Jonathon Dussault, our Chief Financial Officer. Ray and Jonathon will offer some prepared remarks, and then we will open the call up for a Q&A session. Before we begin, let me remind you that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements, such as second quarter and full year 2019 guidance and other predictions, expectations and information that might be considered forward-looking under Federal Securities Laws, including statements about our positioning for the future. These statements reflect our views as of today only and should not be considered as representing our views of any subsequent date. These statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, including our continuing losses and need to achieve GAAP profitability, the fluctuation of our financial market results, the immature and volatile market for our products and services, recruitment and retention of key personnel, risks associated with acquisitions, the need to innovate and provide useful products and services, our ability to compete effectively, cybersecurity risk and a changing regulatory environment that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. For a further discussion of the material risks and other important factors that could affect our actual results, please refer to our Annual Report on Form 10-K and other SEC filings. During the course of today's call, we will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. You can find important disclosures about those measures in our earnings press release. I'll now turn the call over to Ray.

Ray August

Analyst

Thank you, Mike. Good afternoon, everyone. There are three key points to take away from today's call. First, for the sixth consecutive quarter, we are delivering on our commitments. For the quarter, total revenue was at the high-end of our guidance and we exceeded our profitability guidance. We are well positioned for accelerated growth in the second half of 2019. Second, we have grown the number of lives on our platform with more than 25 million consumers now connecting through the Benefitfocus platform. Our pipeline for lives growth is stronger than ever, our key metric of net benefit eligible lives increased from 11.8 million at the end of the prior year to 15.5 million lives at the end of Q1. And, third, we expect the average revenue per user, or ARPU, to expand throughout 2019. Expanding ARPU is one of our top strategic objectives and we are delivering on this in multiple ways by adding new product offerings on the platform, by improving interactions with consumers in the moments that matter, and by expanding BenefitsPlace access through our medical carrier customers. We are set up very well for growth in the back half of the year. All of these factors move us towards our goal of being the benefits platform that connects buyers and sellers. Our strategy is resonating, our ecosystem is flourishing and our market position is strengthening. We have three strategic priorities; growing our platform, advancing our market leadership, and strengthening the core of our business. Let's start with how we're growing our platform. We continue investing in our sales engine by executing on our diversified growth strategy, by driving high-quality pipeline expansion and future lives growth, by improving our go-to-market capabilities, and by expanding our broker presence. We ended Q1 with over 300 premier brokers, up from…

Jonathon Dussault

Analyst

Thank you, Ray. My decision to leave Benefitfocus was not easy. I want to thank Ray personally for his partnership and also express my appreciation to the entire Benefitfocus team. I'm proud of the accomplishments of the finance team and I'm confident that Benefitfocus is poised to continue the successes that I've been a part of over the last couple of years. I'll now review the details of our first quarter financial results and then provide guidance for Q2 and fiscal 2019. Turning to Q1, it was a solid quarter for Benefitfocus. Our teams executed well and our results met or exceeded our targets. Total revenue for the quarter was $68.3 million, an increase of 10% compared to the first quarter of 2018. This was at the high-end of our prior guidance range and was driven by software subscriptions and the BenefitsPlace revenue. As indicated at our Investor Day, to better map our financial reporting with our platform strategy and how we manage the business, in 2019, we will no longer provide revenue by employer and carrier segments, we will continue to provide updates on our financial performance by revenue types. Total software services revenue was $53 million, an increase of 10% compared to the prior year period and reflects contributions from both subscription and the BenefitsPlace. Total professional services revenue was $15.3 million, an increase of 8% over Q1 2018. GAAP results for the quarter include gross profit of $35.4 million, representing a margin of 52%; software gross profit of $36.4 million, representing a margin of 69%; and an operating loss of $9.1 million, contributing to a net loss per share of $0.44. This reflects an increase in G&A expense resulting from deal costs associated with the secondary offering of shares that were owned by Goldman Sachs and Mercer,…

Operator

Operator

Great, thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Brian Peterson from Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Brian Peterson

Analyst

Good evening, gentlemen, and thanks for taking my question. So wanted to start on the 2019 outlook. You're reiterating that it looks like that implies a second half ramp in revenue growth, can you help us understand what gives you the confidence in that ramp?

Ray August

Analyst

Yes. Thanks, Brian. We're actually really proud of our results so far. As an overall business, we're executing exactly what we said we're going to do. We've had sixth consecutive quarters of meeting or exceeding all of our targets. And as a company, we're much stronger today than we ever have been before. If you look at our overall cash position, our accelerating revenue growth, the fact that we have 70% software gross margins this quarter, our growing EBITDA, from a financial standpoint we feel very, very good. If you take a click down and look at our overall business fundamentals and the way we model our businesses, the number of lives times ARPU, we've grown a number of lives by 31% and our organic lives are also accelerating compared to the year ago period, 14% versus 13%. So we're seeing really strong growth in our lives, both organic and inorganic. And what's most important is every one of those lives represents the BenefitsPlace opportunity for us to add more value to consumer and monetize the opportunity. The really cool thing about our model now is, we now have leveraged on both ends of the model where the compounding effect comes in and we have both the lives and average revenue per unit. From an ARPU perspective, we have more products than ever before. We have a really good sense on what's going on with the consumer experience of a whole range of products as we look at that. So we feel very, very good, well positioned for the back half of the year, and we're exactly where we thought we would be. As we look at the second half of the year, there's three main things that we look at to give us confidence in the back half. The…

Brian Peterson

Analyst

Got it. Thanks, Ray. And just for a follow-up. Jonathon, it's been a pleasure working with you. I'm a little surprised by the news, I don't know if there's anything more you can share? And, Ray, any timeline on when you think about naming a permanent replacement? Thanks, guys.

Ray August

Analyst

Yes. I'm really sorry to see Jonathon go. We really enjoyed working together. He accomplished a lot in our two years together, consistent performance, we have transformed this company, so it's a new place in terms of our overall strategy and financial performance. One of the things we really proud about Jonathon is, he's leaving our finance function much better off than when he joined it. We have strong leaders in place, we have a strong finance team. And as we go forward, we will be able to build on that foundation and add a new CFO to the overall mix. At some level, as the CEO, I'm excited about hiring my first CFO to work closely with that individual and I'm sure that individual will have the kind of impact that Jonathon had on our business. but we're going to miss Jonathon and...

Jonathon Dussault

Analyst

Thanks, Ray, I appreciate that. And, Brian thanks for the commentary. As you guys can imagine, decisions like this are not easy to come to. But with that said, I'm very committed to ensuring that there is a very seamless and successful transition in the short term with Lou Anne, beginning on June 1. As Ray mentioned, our partnership between Ray and I has been very strong, and it will continue to be that way, but very importantly, as I look ahead for the company, I'm very confident that strength of the finance team, the strength of the fundamentals of the business and, importantly, the strength of the strategy. I believe in the strategy and look forward to seeing the continued success of the company.

Brian Peterson

Analyst

Thanks, guys.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Ross MacMillan from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Ross MacMillan

Analyst

Thanks so much. I just wanted to touch on the organic net lives. I think those were about $200,000 this quarter, which I think would be down even excluding UTS deal in the comp, so if we kick it out of last year, it'd still be down. And I think this the second quarter in a row that we've been down in year-over-year and I know that Q4 and Q1 are not key to the selling season, but I wondered if you could just talk to your conviction on live data as we go into the key season? And then also any color on how we should think about – what is the plan on that total net benefit eligible lives exiting this year? Do you have a, kind of, number or range that you could share with us in terms of where you hope to end up for the year? Thanks.

Ray August

Analyst

Yes, Ross. Just to paint the picture. If you look at our full year, we have four seasons in which we operate our business. In the first quarter, our typical focus is bringing new products onto our platform for our consumers to purchase and also releasing new enhancements, which allows us to improve the experience in the upcoming OE season. Q2 is really focused on selling, adding lives to our platform and that continues into the beginning of Q3. At the end of Q3, we then begin the Open Enrollment process and Q4 is when we do the vast majority of our Open Enrollment, which drives our BenefitsPlace revenue. If you look at Q1, Q1 is typically a very slow period for lives growth in our industry. If I compare our results, we added 2.2 million lives on our platform, over 25 million lives now are part of Benefitfocus family, over 15 million net benefit eligible lives. That's an increase of 31%. Everyone of those lives, regardless where they come from, is an opportunity for us to expand ARPU and offer BenefitsPlace products. Like click down on that, there is 2 million lives that brought to us through the Connecture acquisition, which will be monetizing throughout the end of 2019 and into 2020, but there's 200,000 net benefit eligible lives that we added in Q1. If you compare that growth, a year ago, we added 13% net benefit eligible lives. This year we added 14% year-over-year, so our net benefit eligible continue to grow and that's even when you take into account UTS, which has over 200,000 net benefit eligible lives. So we feel very good about our lives growth and especially when you take it out – when you take UTS out over the previous period, we're really excited about all the lives that we're getting from the Connecture acquisition too, because we believe that produce value for the consumers and everybody on the platform. As we look at going into Q2, the busiest part of our selling season, one of the things that gives us a lot of optimism and focus is the fact that we're now partnering with 300 different premier brokers. A year ago, we are just getting started with our brokers and the fact we've tripled the number of brokers that we're working with just from our last earnings call. So working together with these brokers, we believe that will be a catalyst to lives growth both in Q2 and Q3 as we go forward.

Ross MacMillan

Analyst

That's helpful. To that trend line of teens growth that you said, I think, 14%, that could be the way to think about maybe a baseline for the lives growth?

Ray August

Analyst

Yes. Because of the trending in our seasons, we know it's always important for us to look year-over-year, because there's such a vast difference in what happens in season. And so, that's how we look at it.

Jonathon Dussault

Analyst

And, Ross, one thing I'd add there too, if you think about the model and our focus and emphasis on adding lives and driving ARPU and taking the two into account, the lives are an important part of driving that engines, but as we drive the ARPU expansion through BenefitsPlace, you can see how the buildup can occur get to our long-term targets of 20% plus sustainable growth.

Ross MacMillan

Analyst

Yes. Okay. Thank you. Maybe one to follow-up. Just on Mercer, just so we understand that, in terms of the seasonality you mentioned, Jonathon, that some going to come out of 2Q, I wondered if you could just maybe – the specific alternative waiting of how that Mercer revenue comes out the model this year? Thank you.

Jonathon Dussault

Analyst

Yes. So there's a couple of things going on in Q2 from a revenue perspective. We mentioned the headwinds of Mercer, there's also just some intra-year timing of professional services between the quarters, some of which is going to land later in the year than in Q2. And, of course, we've talked in the past about the larger enterprise deals like UTS with a longer implementation processes than a typical smaller direct-to-employer deal. All of that plays into Q2 and then the second half of the year. But specific to Mercer, clearly we have the terms of the new commercial arrangement with – which we've talked about in prior discussions that we're feeling that in Q2 the headwind that we're making that strategic investments there for the long-term benefits of increasing [ph] that we strongly believe will occur. There's also some variable accounting noise in Q2. You may recall, last year Q2, we had some incremental revenue come in with our variable accounting associated with Mercer creates a tough compare this year, year-over-year. And that's another reference point as we think about the Mercer impact in the quarter.

Ross MacMillan

Analyst

Okay. In Q2, the quarter on a year-over-year basis, we have the biggest headwinds from the Mercer changes and take us to some of the components? Okay.

Jonathon Dussault

Analyst

Yeah.

Ross MacMillan

Analyst

Okay. That's super helpful. Okay, thank you. And, Jonathon, it's been great working with you. I know we'll probably see before you depart, but thanks so much for all the help.

Jonathon Dussault

Analyst

Thank you, Ross. I appreciate that comment. Likewise too, by the way.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Jamie Stockton from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Jamie Stockton

Analyst

Hi. Good evening. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess, maybe to start with, if we could talk about the sales leadership change given Jonathon leaving, I'm sure that people are going to kind of focus on both these to some extent. I guess, I would ask if you could give us some color on kind of how deep the bench is within kind of the sales management. I mean, I know you guys have named Peter Allen has, kind of, a new Head of Sales. But underneath him – can you give us any color for what the team looks like there? How stable it's been? How good you feel about the ability to execute on the selling season with the kind of leadership changes there? That'd be great.

Ray August

Analyst

Yeah. Thanks for that. As we look at Rob transitioning out of our company. Very sad to see Rob go, really enjoyed working with him as part of our overall transition and he was a great asset to our company. And if I look at what Rob did, he went for a much bigger job, he became the CRO of a publicly traded company, which is about $2 billion of revenue, several thousand salespeople with a global footprint in over 40 different countries. And that was what Rob aspire to, is to work for a large global organization, so wish him very well, he'll do a terrific job for them. As a company, one of the things that we're really proud of is, the number of executives that we're tracking to our company, lots of people, a material number of Vice Presidents and Directors have joined our company since last year that really speaks to the attractiveness to Benefitfocus and the attractiveness to our strategy and our financial position. Having strong leaders in place to join our company enables us to be well-positioned for any management changes. So in Rob's case, within – very quickly, within days we appointed Peter, who have joined our company and Peter is an extremely strong individual. Peter has led a very, very significant sales organization, been the CEO of a publicly traded company and has a vast, deep knowledge and understanding on how to drive a significant sales force at scale. So, what Peter is done is, he's inherited a very strong organization from Rob. One of the great things Rob did was, he created this multi-dimensional sales model to deliver on our strategy and in every single part of the business we have a very strong sales leader in place. Peter has come in and immediately taken that to the next level, working with those teams, prosecuting the deals that we have out there and is just moving in with a high rate of momentum and really excited about the work he is doing and given the fact that I have worked with Peter in the past that I have the utmost confidence in his ability and I'm seeing his knowledge and his skill really have a strong impact already in just a few weeks he's been in that role.

Jamie Stockton

Analyst

Okay. And then maybe just one other question. On the Connecture business, I think you guys kind of implied that it would contribute mid-single-digit growth this year, so maybe $12 million or $13 million. From a revenue standpoint, I guess, is that still – now that you kind of have ownership of that business, you probably have a little more time to grind on the numbers, do you feel like that's still a solid assumption, maybe can you talk about the cadence of that? I mean, are we basically not getting a lot in Q2, because of purchase accounting adjustments or something like that? Or you're having to stomach the brunt of the expenses anyway, just anything on that would be great?

Ray August

Analyst

Yes. We're really excited about what we're seeing with the Connecture assets that we acquired. As we've talked about, we're adding 2 million lives through our platform and we see those to be highly synergistic where every one of those lives is the heartbeat or an individual that we can improve their lives by offering to them BenefitsPlace products. Overall, the amount of software assets that we also acquired and the deep customer relationships are going to prove beneficial for us. One of the great assets that Connecture has is, their core technology will be part of the marketplace that we will have for individuals, typically going to focus as group marketplaces for both carriers and employers and individual marketplace. And a good example of that is our partnership with USAA, where USAA uses our individual marketplace to provide benefits to the association members for USAA. We see that as a real strategic and an important launch point for us, where we can monetize individuals on our platform as well as the groups that we're providing. Just to give you an example, on our platform today are 25 million plus odd consumers on our platform, traditionally about 3 million of those individuals terminate from their place of employment in a given year. In the past, those 3 million lives they would go off and they would leave the Benefitfocus family and if we are lucky, they will come back to Benefitfocus employer. With the individual marketplace that we'll be rolling out and leveraging the Connecture technology, we'll be able to capture all those 3 million lives, put them into an individual marketplace and whether they're being part of the key economy, retiring, or going onto their next endeavor, it will allow us the opportunity to provide products to them, to improve the lives of those individuals wherever they are in the overall lifecycle. Another great advantage of Connecture is, when we combine our assets and the Connecture assets, we serve 75% of the Blues plans in the U.S., the Blues plans, as you know, insure about one-third of the medical population in our country. And having those deeper and richer relationships with the Blues will only drive improved performance for us and improved revenue opportunities for us, and improved value for those companies. So we really see the benefits of Connecture to be synergistic, where we'll be able to provide BenefitsPlace products, we'll be able to stand up for our individual marketplace, and we'll also be able to get closer to the Blues plan. So it's been a very positive acquisition.

Jamie Stockton

Analyst

Is there any commentary on the actual revenue contribution this year?

Jonathon Dussault

Analyst

Yes. So our expectations are consistent with our points when we had our Q4 call. We'll be supplementing Q1. Obviously, we have one month's worth of contribution consistent with expectations and we are still feeling comfortable with what we discussed previously.

Jamie Stockton

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Jonathon Dussault

Analyst

Thanks, Jamie.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Nandan Amladi from Guggenheim Partners. Please go ahead.

Nandan Amladi

Analyst

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. So as you grow out your broker network, how dependent are you on for the growth in the lives metric, on brokers versus your on-direct sales efforts to both carriers and enterprises?

Ray August

Analyst

Yes. The way we look at brokers on our network is, not either/or. If you look at the value stream and what's happening in the Benefit's world today, brokers are the primary seller solutions to the ultimate employers, they provide guidance, they provide wisdom, they provide recommendations on platform and the data that we've seen is in north of 80% of the time that broker recommends the ultimate platform. In the past, when our company was not working closely with brokers, they still are part of the equation and it became a headwind for us in the past years, so we really can't look at it as with brokers and without brokers, we reorientated our entire sales force to – on every single deal where there is a broker involved, we work with that broker to prosecute the opportunity, make sure the employer has the benefit of all the knowledge of us and that broker to provide the best solution for their company. So we really see it as the exponential increase of our ability to drive lives and our ability to drive the overall solution. And if you think about it, we have 300 premier brokers that we're working with today. Every one of those people is out on the street everyday working with their prospects for their customers. So it really provides a tremendous amount of leverage for us. We're really focused on making sure that we give the brokers exactly what they need to be successful. The way we look at it, the brokers, we need to make sure that their customers are highly satisfied, but we also have solutions to serve the brokers. We work closely with them. We plan with them and next week in Chicago we're having our first ever Broker Place, where brokers from around the country are coming together with us with the leadership of Benefitfocus and we'll be talking about how do we plan for this selling season, how do we work together to drive more products into their customers to make sure that they successful going forward. So, they're part of the family and they are essential to what we do.

Nandan Amladi

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Chris Merwin from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Kevin Kumar

Analyst

Hi. This is Kevin Kumar on for Chris. Thanks for taking my question. How should we think about the magnitude of increases in the participation rate for BenefitsPlace in 2019 versus last year's just given the introduction of lot of newer products and broadening of the platform?

Ray August

Analyst

Yes. As we look at BenefitsPlace participation, from our perspective, there's a couple of different ways to look at it. So this year, in the same period, we had nine different BenefitsPlace products that we've offered, nine different companies that offer BenefitsPlace products to our consumers. Today, we have 43, a 11 BenefitsPlace on a carriers and that's a who's who list of companies that really proud to be associated with. So we have a tremendous amount of more products that we offer to the market. The other thing that we look at is based on our one-year dataset we have now. So for the past year, we've been doing this. We went through the Q4 selling season as we have a very accurate and specific analytics on buying behaviors of individuals, what they buy, what they don't buy, what the trades of the cohorts are and we've actually built an entire suite of something we call BenefitsPlace Insights, which is part of our BenefitSAIGE, our artificial intelligence suite. And that gives us information on what people need, what they typically buy and as part of BenefitSAIGE we have something called Smart Moments, in which it allows us to reach out to our consumer what we call a moment that matter. So if a child is 26 years old, we have a notification and an email sent to that individual to remind them that you're aging out of your parents' insurance policy and you better go select another medical product, or somebody who is beginning to drive or somebody who just had a baby, all those moments that matter is a point of interaction for us and point of differentiation where we could contact that individual and really drive participation. So if we look at more products, more lives, Insights and consumer buying that we really focused on and when you add that to One Place, we rolled out an entire suite of products where we're investing in the consumer experience, whether it's the next generation mobile app, we take all those things together and we feel very good and very confident about the activity that we're going to see the back half of this year and we believe we'll see growth not only in placement products with our customers, more products, but also increase in participation rate. And I would – It's also important to have that, if you look at the participation rates on our platform that were two to four times the industry average. So even before we did all the stuff we're seeing a whole lot of increased in participation versus what others are saying.

Kevin Kumar

Analyst

Great. That was helpful. And then a follow-up, regarding the profitability beat, you noted timing of certain investments drove the portion of that beat, can you talk a bit about what investments got pushed out?

Ray August

Analyst

Yes. There's a slew of things across the organization that really are just between Q1 and Q2. Some of it just ramped up with some staffing investments that we're making across the organization, and you'll see that, Kevin, coming in Q2 where our guidance on EBITDA is a – probably likely a little bit lower than expectations and some of that has to do with the timing of those investments coming into Q2.

Kevin Kumar

Analyst

Great. Thank you.

Ray August

Analyst

You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question here is from Steve Halper from Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead.

Steve Halper

Analyst

Yes. Hi. Just a quick balance sheet question. What was the reason for the sequential decrease in the property and equipment line from the December quarter, about – from $70 million down to $27 million. Is it something to do with your right-of-use assets?

Ray August

Analyst

Yes. I think if you factor in a combination of Connecture and the adoption of lease accounting, we had a fair amount of activity in our balance sheet here in Q1, and so the combination of those factors is going to contribute to really all of the variances that you see in the balance sheet.

Steve Halper

Analyst

Yes, thank you.

Ray August

Analyst

You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Dan Ives from Wedbush Securities. Please go ahead.

Dan Ives

Analyst

Yes, it's more a strategic question. I mean, you said some of them even more directly. What do you think, if we go through the next six to nine months, is maybe the biggest challenge, but there on the other side maybe the biggest opportunity, maybe you could just hit both of those? Thanks.

Ray August

Analyst

Yes, and thanks for that. We see it – as all as opportunity and making sure that we're focused on the opportunity and mitigating any risks that we have. But – and we're really excited about this 25 million consumers on our platform and our opportunity to help provide them and improve their lives, providing products for their family and driving increased activity with every single life on our platform. One of the things we've talked about in the prepared comments is, if you look at BenefitsPlace, last year in BenefitsPlace we only targeted BenefitsPlace's opportunities to our employers. This year, we're also going to work with medical carriers and offer BenefitsPlace products to them. And as we've talked about in the past, there's actually more net benefit eligible lives with the medical carriers than there is in the large employer marketplace. So we had a very transformative deal this quarter in Q1, which we are working with a Blues plan and the Blues plan is now offering BenefitsPlace products to all their members. This kind of opportunity, which doesn't impact net benefit eligible lives at all in the short-term, what it does is it creates an ARPU catalyst where we expand the revenue for this carrier and their customers for the carrier, it's a situation where they win, they are now offering a robust set of benefits to everybody in their company and we see that there is something that we're going to expand and we're working with many of those plans around the U.S. with opportunities. So we're really excited about expanding ARPU opportunities and product opportunities to all these Blue plans that we work with and with 75% market share of the Blues plans we have deep richer relationships with many of them. So, we see that as just great opportunity.

Dan Ives

Analyst

Okay. Insightful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Nina Deka from Piper Jaffray. Please go ahead.

Nina Deka

Analyst

Hi. Can you describe your go-to-market strategy and your plan to expand further into medical carriers such as Blue Cross that you just mentioned? Do you need more of that people or will you get to leverage existing teams?

Ray August

Analyst

Yes. No – thanks, Nina. As we look across our platform strategy, we are very focused in every role in the entire benefits value chain, whether it's to our associates, whether it's consumers, whether it's employers, medical carriers, brokers, specialty providers and other sellers, and one of the great things that we're seeing is with the strong leadership that we have in our sales organization, we have a team focused on working with these medical carriers to expand this opportunity. We actually added to that talent pool with the Connecture – with the Connecture asset where we brought over many people who know the medical carrier segment. So that gave us capability both in sales, service, and development. One of the really exciting things is happening, however, is a network effect of our offering. So by virtue of the fact that people are hearing about BenefitsPlace is creating opportunities for brokers, brokers are then going back to their medical carriers and voluntary providers and say, hey, you have to be part of BenefitsPlace. We're actually seeing RFPs coming out from employers, asking about BenefitsPlace products. And when we take that with the 300 plus brokers, this network effect is in some ways, in addition to our expanded sales force that we have serving the medical carriers with the addition of the Connecture team, we have broker selling for us, employers selling for us, and so the medical carriers see that and want to be part of the Benefitfocus family. So, the network effect is in full speed and it's helping our sellers solutions.

Nina Deka

Analyst

Great. Thank you for that. And also I have – I just wanted to wish the best of luck to Jonathon, it's been really fun working with you and congrats to you on a good quarter.

Jonathon Dussault

Analyst

Thanks, Nina.

Operator

Operator

This concludes the question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back to Mr. Ray August for any closing comments.

Ray August

Analyst

Yes. Thank you, and thank everybody for joining our Q1 earnings call. In summary, we have demonstrated sixth consecutive quarters of strong performance. We've grown significantly the number of net benefit eligible eyes on our platform by 31%. We're well positioned for future accelerated revenue growth and ARPU expansion in the second half of the year. We're really pleased with our solid start to 2019 and as we enter our selling season, we have a very strong foundation for future growth. So this concludes our call.

Operator

Operator

This concludes the teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you again for your participation.