Bright Horizons Family Solutions Inc. (NYSE:BFAM) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Elizabeth Boland: Not significantly no. I think the back-up, just to start there we had just over 30% operative margin this quarter, that’s similar to what we would expect from Q4. The full-service and the low-single digits in Q4 are so similar. And that’s again I’ll just note that that’s improvement that’s performance against a quarter that won’t have ARPA funding coming through. And then the advising business is again still in the 25 to 30% range. So I would say consistent.

Manav Patnaik: Okay. And then Stephen just in terms of your comment around just looking at the portfolio just curious on ed advisory things like that been decelerating, it’s been missing expectations you’ve lowered the expectation of growth there for quite some time. Just your thoughts on whether that strategically important or not.

Stephen Kramer: Thank you, Manav. Look advisory business, we believe is strategic to the overall enterprise relationships that we enjoy with our clients. We have about 300 clients in that area who depend upon us to either support their employees dependence to the education advisory and/or employees going back to school themselves which obviously in the current environment and the environments coming forward is really critical from an upscaling and rescaling perspective. In terms of thinking about the growth, we said and shared in the last quarter that we absolutely are in a time where we are continuing to reposition that service, again the needs of our core clients and respective core clients and that is underway. We have new leadership in that business and really believe going forward, but there is a large opportunity for us to continue to lean in with the clients and new clients.

So overall, yes, we believe it’s strategic and we believe that we are advantaged in the market and just need to get the cadence growth both from an employer perspective as well as from a participant perspective going into next year.

Manav Patnaik: Okay. Thank you.

Stephen Kramer: Thanks.

Operator: Our next question comes from Josh Chan of UBS. Please go ahead.

Josh Chan: Good afternoon, Stephen and Elizabeth. Thanks for taking my question. So for my first question on Back-up Care, could you just kind of talk about what is driving the consumer behavior to use much more benefit now than before? I know that you always try to market your benefits and get the users to use it more. But why is it that this year and last year, especially that the users are accelerating the use, it seems like?

Elizabeth Boland: No, I can start off and Stephen can add color. I think the interesting thing or the notable thing about Back-up Care to consider that is different from full service care is that it is a benefit that is paid for mainly by the client. So the employees co-payment, their participation in the cost is much lower. It’s intended to be filling in when another care source breaks down and/or a need is there. And so from an employee standpoint, it’s an opportunity to lean into a benefit that is provided by their employer. And now with the additional care types that we have across virtual learning solutions across pet care, school-aged children as well as younger children in centers and in home. I think it’s able to touch a wider array of employees at our client partners that have this sponsored as a benefit.

So there’s that element, and it’s flexible in terms of how it’s delivered across the Bright Horizons network of centers, across an in-home solution and what have you. So I think there’s — the opportunity is very broad with the employment base and the cost to that consumer is very modest, relatively speaking. Full-service job here is — it is also subsidized by the employers through their facilities and often through tuition discounts, but the parent still has a meaningful out-of-pocket cost for it. And it’s a more concentrated benefit for a more concentrated number of employees. So I don’t know if you have other thoughts on the consumer behavior some?