Q4 2024 Multiplan Corp Earnings Call

In This Article:

Participants

Shawna Gasik; IR Contact Officer; Multiplan Corp

Travis Dalton; President, Chief Executive Officer, Director; Multiplan Corp

Doug Harris; Chief Financial Officer; Multiplan Corp

Joshua Raskin; Analyst; Nefron Research

Daniel Grislight; Analyst; Citigroup

Jessica Tasson; Analyst; Pipe Assembler

Presentation

Operator

Hello all and welcome to today's Clarative Corporation fourth quarter 2024 earnings call. My name is Drew and I will be the operator on today's call. after today's prepared remarks, we will have a Q&A session. To register a question, [Operator Instructions] Shauna Gassick, Assistant Vice President, Investor Relations. thank you. Please go ahead.

Shawna Gasik

Thank you, Drew. Good morning and welcome to Clarative fourth quarter 2024 earnings costs. Joining me today is Travis Dalton, Chief Executive Officer, and Doug Gerris, Chief Financial Officer. The call is being webcast and can be accessed through the investor relations section of our website at clarative.com. during the call, we were referred to the supplemental fly deck that is available on the investor relations portion of our website, along with the fourth quarter 2024 earnings press release issued earlier this morning.
Before we begin, a couple of reminders. our remarks and responses to questions today may include forward-looking statements. these forward-looking statements represent management's beliefs and expectations only as of the date of this call. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements due to a number of risks.
A summary of these risks can be found on the second page of the supplemental fly deck in a more complete description on our annual report on Form 10k and other documents we file with the SEC. we will also be referring to several non-gap measures which we believe provide investors with a more complete understanding of clarative underlying operating results.
An explanation of these non-gap measures and reconciliation to their most comparable GAAP measure can be found in the earnings press release and in the supplemental slide deck. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Travis.

Travis Dalton

Thank you, Shawna. Good morning to all of you on the call. Welcome to our first call as Clarative. I've told the team repeatedly that we would not chase a rebrand as a shiny lure. We needed to earn the right to brand as a health technology company. I believe we've done just that, and we will explain why today.
I'm nearing my first year anniversary with the company, and it's been exciting and eventful. I came here believing we had great clients, products that serve healthcare, incredible associates, and deep core values of character and integrity. I was right. I also believe we could transform the company, building on those core assets to better serve our long-term clients and create new innovative products that serve a broader set of constituents across the healthcare continuum.
I've never been more excited or committed in my career. We have an incredible opportunity here to serve the mutual interest of affordability, transparency for all, and quality care across a broad set of the continuum. I'm gratified and humbled by the talented and experienced leadership team that we have assembled here in the way the company has rallied around Clarative in our collective 2030 vision. I'm also very pleased by our progress, which is marked by real milestones. I'm even more excited and optimistic for what's to come. to set the context for my optimism about Clarative's future.
I will begin by sharing our view of the state of healthcare and how Clarative's vision and mission address what we believe are some of the most important issues confronting healthcare. i will then talk about specific actions we have taken and successes we have achieved.
We have been busy. We are operating with urgency, and we are getting things done. I will then summarize our financial outlook before turning it over to Doug for a detailed discussion on our transformation program. 2024 financial results and 2025 guidance.
Healthcare remains a highly competitive environment with escalating costs and demand for critically needed services. Never has there been more data at our disposal. Yet challenges related to affordability, cost, and quality persist. The last decade was focused on interoperability, and I think the next will be focused on transparency, technology, and insights, essential to addressing healthcare affordability, costs, and quality.
Data is abundant and problem admiration is rampant. Clear and actionable insights are needed to make a real impact. That is what we bring in clarative, and our vision will allow us to create even more value for our clients in the future.
I've said this many times and seen it in action. I think a mutual interest between providers, payers, employers, and patients exists in healthcare. Providers want to provide access to care, serve patients, generate quality outcomes, and receive fair payment. Payers want to manage risk, provide access to networks, serve employers, and achieve fair pricing. employers want to manage and lower costs while increasing benefits for their employees.
At the intersection of that mutual interest are insights from data and full transparency. Our rebrand and investments now and in the future will position us at this center. better information will yield better decisions, reduce costs, and more efficient markets. We will continue to provide solutions that focus on that access to care, fair affordability, platform-based transparency, service quality, and health plan cost optimization.
As we continue this transformation transformational journey, you'll hear me talk about the foundation, the vision, the turn, the proof, and the way up and forward. 2024 was largely about laying the foundation for the company so we can better serve our clients, position for what is to come in 2025, and achieve our vision in 2030. We have a laser focused on creating clarative of purpose, alignment of talent, and focus on clear measures of success.
That along with our process and fit for Growth initiatives have helped us make real and meaningful progress towards this transformation. during 2024, we have clarified our purpose and launched it 2030. We're a technology, data, and insights company focused on affordability, transparency, and quality. We're making major investments in our technology to support our vision, which we will discuss.
We have re-energized and invigorated our associates and management team. We also welcomed just this week our very first Chief AI Officer, noting our commitment to talent and technology. The team is operating at a high level with more urgency and impact.
We've improved our forecasting, operating, and finance processes with clear KPIs to ensure we are on target and course correct where appropriate. all of this will yield better insights to the business and allow us to provide more predictable results in reliable communications going forward.
We've added a world-class corporate affairs team, welcomed the Chief Growth Officer, and completely reset and refocused our market segment leaders to aggressively grow in existing markets, market segments, and launch the full breadth of our solutions in new market segments which will significantly expand our total addressable market. this foundation has this this transformation has created a foundation that is now fit for sustainable growth.
In line with all of this, 2024 was also about deep reflection and recasting the brand vision of Clarative going forward. we're proud of the 40 plus year history of the company, but now is the time to expand our impact in healthcare market and build upon that success.
Having now earned the right to rebrand the company, we are better able to reflect the value that Clarative provides the healthcare ecosystem. To enable this, we have committed to modernizing our technology platform.
As evidenced by our Oracle partnership to ensure we have a robust and scalable technology infrastructure, cloud enablement, and the best development tools, we are working on our data architecture to ensure we can efficiently serve our existing clients with more value adding product enhancements and use the most cutting edge capabilities like AI to launch innovative products aimed at transparency and quality.
We will also API enable our platform to serve healthcare more holistically and rapidly bring new applications to market to serve the evolving needs of healthcare. we have improved our affordability offerings, launched our Complete view platform for the provider segment, and have made great traction with health plan optimization capabilities via Insights and the employer and broker segment.
All of this will allow us to bring more value to more segments, like payers, providers, employers, government, brokers, consultants, and strategic partners. i coin 2025 as the term for clarative. We will start to see demonstrable improvement in value created from the foundation as we proceed. We have an underlying business process for success, and we are operating with rigor and discipline, which drives consistency of results and predictability in how we call and deliver a number. We have increased our number of addressable markets and aligned internal governance structures to support growth within these new market segments.
To fill these markets, we will have a product pipeline with thoughtful go to market plans. We have the necessary corporate affairs and government relations team to make sure we educate stakeholders and our roles in the ecosystem are well understood.
In addition to Clarative long successful history of combating waste, fraud, and abuse, our transformation will help us accelerate our mission to improve affordability, transparency, and quality. we have laid the foundation, reset the vision, and started the term. Let's talk about the proof on the way up and forward.
We successfully addressed our capital structure. In December 2024, we announced the exchange offers to refinance our entire debt structure and extend maturities by approximately three years to align with Vision 2030. this transaction closed in January 2025 with a 99.75% participation outcome.
We were able to do this at an attractive cost of capital. More importantly, it was a demonstration of our commitment to our longtime investors and a testament to our credit investors' belief in our vision and its probability of success. with this important initiative complete, my leadership team and I can now devote 100% of our time to running the business.
We continue to add value to our favorite clients and core product set. We successfully renewed one of our largest clients for an additional three years at current value. and we are working more closely with our other top tier clients to reframe relationships and better explain the value we bring.
We also continue to make great progress with wins for our value-driven health plan and our HST products, ending the year with an 8% increase in covered lives resulting in $16 million of annual contract value. We're revitalizing focus on the network business. Enhancing payment integrity to tackle waste, fraud, and abuse, with NSA continuing to be a key focal area going forward as well.
Finally, our Plan optics payer product recorded four new client wins in 2024 and one already in 2025 with a total ACV of $1.1 million. We are building momentum and now have 37 opportunities in the sales pipeline with an additional $14 million ACV potential.
I noted earlier that we completed a multi-year contract with Oracle for our digital transformation. Not only will that improve our technology infrastructure while providing better operating efficiency, but it will also allow us to more easily participate in the Oracle cloud marketplace with innovative products like Benin sights.
This means our products can be sold through the Oracle sales channel. This opens the potential for thousands of relationships, clients, and opportunities for not only our stand-alone products but also native integration of our strategic products within multiple Oracle product sets over time.
In Q4, we closed one of our largest ever single-contract bookings of $34 million total contract value, encompassing the full scope of what we offer for a new client acquisition. We did so with a new innovative business and revenue model that will allow us that will allow for predictable revenue stream with built-in price escalation features while providing scale value to our client.
We now have over 12 similar enterprise sale opportunities in the pipeline. I believe we can add value with business model transformation and change how the market buys. we also penetrated new market frontiers with important early wins and a new product launch. In evaluating our provider go to market offering fit, we have identified upwards of $250 million in serviceable, obtainable market over a multi-year period, and we are just getting started.
Earlier in 2024, we notched our first provider-client win with a sale of our predictive risk modeling solution to tailorCare to improve their member engagement and cost efficiency. In December we announced our new complete view transparency analytics product and obtained our first four pilot clients with 10 additional in our growing pipeline.
We're also making real progress with our BenInsight suite of products. We closed our first direct employer opportunity and have 39 opportunities across all segments in our pipeline for 2025. Furthermore, we are pursuing multiple federal government payment and revenue integrity opportunities and two specialty network solution opportunities.
Partners continue to recognize what we do and want to work with us. We had some innovative successes with with the announced J2 partnership this January. We also expect to announce a revenue collaboration in the pet wellness space in early Q2. we increased our competitiveness with 24 new or reactivated logos in 24, including taking back four clients from competitors. We're being more aggressive in the market and competing to win.
Finally, we continue to serve and deliver on our promises, as demonstrated by plus 73 on our net promoter score and continued acknowledgement and featured success in Forbes's list of best places to work in healthcare. we have been busy. We are operating at real pace with real urgency, and we are getting things done.
As we proceed on the way up and forward, we are realistic and optimistic. We still have challenges to overcome. We continue working through a single client impact that we believe will stabilize in 2025. We operate in a highly competitive marketplace. we have the overhang from exogenous events that don't reflect who we are or the value we bring.
Finally, we have continued work to do on driving sales execution on our new and existing products. I am pleased with how we are managing the challenges of the now, but also executing in the moment and planning for the next. We aren't afraid to do the hard work, take the long road, and take this on. as I said, we are realistic and optimistic and emboldened by the rapid progress we have made in certain key areas against our vision.
We will find our footing with a return to long-term sustainable growth, as you have heard. proof points, we will be product led with new and enhanced solutions that address client interest. we will be partner enabled, developing long-term relationships that are focused, targeted, and meaningful, and we will be technology driven with thoughtful long-term investments to develop new innovative products.
Nobody in our space is taking on this kind of technology advancement to include best in class infrastructure in AI. We will take advantage of our unique market position to serve the entire ecosystem, which leads us to the way up in 2026.
I am excited to share the good things to come at Clarative. We are moving fast, and I continue to be relentless with my teams and our associates about the need to go faster. There's more to come, and we will be much more active in the marketplace and ecosystem. We have several key milestones to be announced soon. For example, to celebrate the rebranding. We will also be changing our stock ticker to CTEV on February 28th and ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange on that day.
Other announcements forthcoming include additional key strategic partnerships, launching a health-focused foundation, a PGA player sponsorship, and showing up big at key industry events with more proactive media outreach. what we do is good for healthcare, and we can and will do more.
Before I turn the call over to Doug, I would like to make sure we set expectations for our financial outlook this year. We're providing guidance with a down the middle plan that I strongly believe our team can deliver. We implemented and executed very thoughtful and professional processes to plan and run our business in 25 and beyond.
I expect our team to execute on this plan. This year we'll be critically focused on preserving the strength in our core business while we relentlessly pursue developing and winning in our growth markets. We expect revenue to be slightly down to flat, and we are internally planning for roughly flat IEA as we complete the turn. We are organized, focused, we'll deliver our plan, and I am very optimistic based on the proof to date for our future. With that, let me turn it over to Doug to cover 2024 and our 2025 guide.