Centene Corporation (NYSE:CNC) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 9 of 9

Operator: And our next question today comes from Steven Valiquette with Barclays.

Steven Valiquette : Maybe just to shift gears on the Medicare side for a moment, and your comments around the cost trends were definitely helpful. There’s still a lot of different theories out there as to why Medicare is seeing elevated cost trend in ’23 specifically, particularly in outpatient, while Medicaid and commercial are not really seeing the same elevated trends. So I was just curious to get your thoughts and any additional color on why you think this is happening in Medicare specifically this year?

Drew Asher: Yes, I mean it’s tough to speculate here and don’t plan on it, but you could probably think about the composition of our members. 49% of our members in Medicaid are under 19 years old. So there’s probably not a lot of cardiac, or ortho, or cataract, which is what we’re seeing on the Medicare side. Other than that, I can’t really explain other than saying what we’re seeing in Medicaid and Marketplace is pretty stable relative to the pop we saw in May, which is not alarming, but figured it would be a helpful commentary for you guys, given some of the noise around the industry and the fact that our Medicare HBR was a little bit higher than we expected in the second quarter.

Operator: And our next question today comes from Nathan Rich at Goldman Sachs.

Nathan Rich : Just a couple of clarifications. Maybe just sticking on that last question. Drew, I’d be curious if you could maybe frame the magnitude of this kind of step down that you saw in June when you’re thinking about kind of monthly cadence? And how you’re expecting that to play out over the back half of the year? And then a quick follow-up on the Marketplace margins and expectations for next year. Given both the growth you’re seeing, the SEP enrollment, as well as kind of pricing plans for ’24, what type of margin improvement you’d expect to see in the commercial business next year just as we think about progression into ’24?

Drew Asher: Well, we definitely have priced for and expect margin progression as we get into 2024. We’ll have to give you more of an update as we get towards the end of the year at Investor Day for more specific ’24 guidance elements that detailed. And then on your ’23 question related to trend, as Sarah said in her script, we’ve got accommodation in our at least $6.45 adjusted EPS guidance for some continuation of this. Although to your point, we did see a step down, not all the way back to April, but a step down in June and sort of that holding in July with respect to the relativity from what we saw with May incurred through their second month of development.

Operator: And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question-and-answer session. I’d like to turn the conference back over to Sarah London for any closing remarks.

Sarah London : Thanks, Rocco, and thanks, everyone. We appreciate the interest and all the great questions. We look forward to providing additional updates on our progress as we move through the back half of ’23. I hope you all have a great day.

Operator: Thank you. This concludes today’s conference call. We thank you all for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect your lines, and have a wonderful day.

Follow Centene Corp (NYSE:CNC)

Page 9 of 9