Accolade, Inc. (NASDAQ:ACCD) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Ryan MacDonald: Hi, Raj and Steve. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on the preliminary good news with T-5. My two questions really are just focused on that. First off, with Humana and TriWest winning the two regions, does that still place you in a position to win both opportunities if they go through appeal and sort of stick with those two carriers. And then second, as we look into fiscal ’24, in the preliminary guidance you’ve placed in there today, on the adjusted EBITDA side, are you already contemplating incremental investments that you’ll need to make to start to scale up the staff for launching TRICARE in preparation for a 2025 launch? Thanks.

Rajeev Singh: Thanks for the question, Ryan. Let me hit both of those and then Steve, if you want to jump in if I’ve missed something. So first, the first part of your question as it relates to do we have an opportunity in both regions if the regions remain awarded as they are? The answer to that question is absolutely yes. I think what we’ve talked about and we’re only able to publicly disclose that we’ve signed teaming agreements with two of the partners, we’ve got a really — excuse me, with two of the parties that bid the agreement, we have a really strong relationship with the other. We believe there’s opportunities to team across both of those regions, regardless who ended up winning, even after the appeals process. But that’s part one of the answer.

Part two of the answer then is and I agree with you, we’re really optimistic about the future of our capacity to grow the business in that category. We’ll — have we already factored in investments. Well, I think that here’s the really great news there. We’ve already built a service infrastructure to serve the government. We’ve done that in our Autism Care Demonstration. We’ve done that with our TRICARE select navigator program. Oftentimes building out a new service and a new service offering the most expensive part of that story is the initial build up and phase in of the offering. We’ve already done that work. So our capacity to grow from here really is leveraged off of variable costs associated with the growth of population. That’s a business we’re very familiar with and we’re quite comfortable that we’ve modeled well.

Steve Barnes: Yes, the only — hey, Ryan, this is Steve. The only thing I’d add to that is when you see the preliminary guide there to the top line in the 5% to 7%. On the bottom line, what you’re hearing from us is any variability in there will be about investment into fiscal ’25 and the same committed to the breakeven and other free cash flow in fiscal ’25. But giving some room there, pending some opportunities is on growth.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for next question. Our next question comes from the line of Jessica Tassan from Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

Jessica Tassan: Hi, thank you guys for taking the question and congratulations again on the quarter. So I was just hoping for some detail about the size and the duration of the Autism Cares Demonstration. Can you remind us what services you’re offering and how you were kind of able to transform the Accolade Navigation offering to specifically suit that population? And then maybe if you could remind us how much is that contract contributing to the P&L? And is the renewal tied to the T-5 contract at all? Thank you.

Rajeev Singh: Fantastic. Thanks, Jessica, for the question. Autism Care is a unique program. It’s a clinical pilot program being run in a core set of regions to actually deliver an extraordinary amount of clinical value for families who are wrestling with the challenge of managing children who are on the spectrum, Dr. Nundy is here in case we need any more details on the program itself. But the nature of the agreement is to actually deliver as a — as an increment to or a standalone from the T-5 arrangement. But that demonstration has actually been renewed. And like all government contracts, it’s a year-over-year renewal process. The agreements are one year in nature, it’s been renewed. And we are seeing extraordinary value and we believe there’s an opportunity to grow from its current region into new regions moving forward.

And it does, in fact, do so as we’ve talked about in the previous answer to the previous question that would represent outside to the model and the way we’re thinking about it. Steve, or Shantanu, I think you asked for that.

Steve Barnes: I think the only thing I would add it from a clinical perspective, and your question around what did it take to be able to adapt the model? I mean, I think what we’re finding again, is that our model, very extensible, right. I mean, I think if you think about what we’re doing on the commercial side, we’re oftentimes dealing with people with really complex medical needs for addressing them in a full person way. We’re doing care coordination for those families. And so whether that transplant, whether that’s oncology, or in this case, whether it’s around autism, it’s a very similar set of foundational capabilities we need are mostly incremental investment was around some of the specific requirements that the government has around data. But we found that the model we have is was very accessible to the population. We’ve been very happy with the outcomes we’re getting.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for next question. Our next question comes from the line of Stephanie Davis from SVB Securities. Your line is open.