Lucid Diagnostics Inc. (NASDAQ:LUCD) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

So most of the claims are — have either been paid or more likely the vast majority of them are still working their way through the process.

Kyle Mikson: Okay. That was really helpful guys and it sounds promising, too. Maybe just sticking on a similar kind of subject, really good to see the kind of projection for the first quarter, test performed here, like 1,500. Looks like — I believe that 36% growth sequentially, so that’s awesome. Any reason why that type of sequential growth can continue going forward to potentially accelerate from there? And is there anything about maybe seasonality or other dynamics that could maybe inflate that 1Q number? I mean it sounds very reasonable, but just trying to think about how that progresses throughout 2023.

Dr. Lishan Aklog: Yeah. No. I think if you look at that slide, there’s a bit of seasonality you saw in the fourth quarter, and that’s common, as you know, Kyle, from other companies. We also in the fourth quarter had to work through some compliance structure, establishing some compliance structure in a couple of our larger states as it relates to how to do the satellite Lucid Test Centers. So there’s some pent-up demand in both Florida and California there that we’re addressing. But if you kind of look at the overall trend in the line, is that 36%, something like that quarter-on-quarter, about 200% or so compounded growth rate, I think, is sustainable for some period of time, and obviously, the goal is to continue to grow that.

I think, you know as we’ve said in the past, we’re not on full throttle, right? We’ve decided to plateau our sales team and that sales expense that did a show. We expect that to be flat for this year. And we think our current team can continue to drive test volume growth as we start getting more predictable payment and improve on our contracting, and we think these initiatives, such as the high-volume testing events, as well as Direct Contracting with ASO type entities, we’ll be — we’ll play an important role in that growth over time.

Kyle Mikson: Okay. All right. That was great. And similarly, just thinking about test order per ordering position, I guess, and I know your test center strategy is not on hold, but you’re just sort of investing in your current number, I guess, of the centers. And the MultiPlan you got some providers there as well and so some visions will get on board and I suppose to start ordering one more. So I mean that denominator number is sort of is still pretty healthy. I’m just wondering if test per doc is increasing. How that’s progressed through the — like since the launch in 2021? Is there a plateauing, like just any kind of trends? Yeah.

Dr. Lishan Aklog: Yeah. I mean what we’re focused on. I don’t have a sort of a single number to give you to capture that. What we’re focusing on, we have a good number of providers. We have, as you mentioned, threat geographically now and the fact that we can do satellite Lucid Test Centers have given us, again, we’re not — just to be clear, we’re not putting the physical locations. They still more remain an important anchor and are key in areas where we — as sort of the headquarters for our clinical team, our nurse practitioner team, but the fact that they can branch out both within their local geography and literally got on a plane to go to San Antonio and do 400 test in the week. All of that is enhancing our geographic reach and the number of providers.