Molina Healthcare, Inc. (NYSE:MOH) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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George Hill: Okay. Thank you, guys. Joe, and I think you kind of just touched on this in the last answer, but my question was around the $0.65 in implementation costs in 2023. I guess could you kind of break out the buckets that they’re typically going to fall into. And again, this was just commented on, but I assume no part of that repeats in ’24 that all goes away and there’s no part of that cost structure that’s durable.

Joe Zubretsky: I’ll answer the last part of your question first. On the cost for — obviously for Iowa, California and Nebraska, yes, those once spent should not repeat themselves. But as I said many times, and not tongue in cheek, I hope in the future, we continue to have one-time implementation costs on new contract wins can have a better spend than that. There are technology implementations, which are fixed in nature. And then, of course, you need to hire the people that are going to service these businesses in advance of the revenue stream, which is a major part of the $0.65 implementation cost. Mark?

Mark Keim: Right. I’ll just build on that. So if you think about the $0.65, the way I think about it, about a third of it is IT, sort of a fixed component and about two-thirds of it is staffing, mostly highly variable, right? We have to staff up ahead of day one membership. So that’s the way to think about it. It obviously, it comes to us ahead of when we start booking revenue. So I wouldn’t say that it goes away specifically. What it does is it goes into the anticipated margin once we run these businesses. We’ve talked about $3.50 of same-store — of new store embedded earnings here. That $3.50 is, of course, after operating costs. The reason we have $0.65 is we’re not booking revenue yet. So $0.65, one-third, fixed; two-thirds variable, that’s the right way to think about it.

Joe Zubretsky: Yeah. It goes away as a one-time item, but it becomes consumed into the run rate of the new contracts is the way to think about it.

George Hill: That’s helpful. Thank you.

Operator: Our last question comes from David Windley with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

David Windley: Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I hope you can hear me. I have a few small ones. In your discussion around, the state’s willingness to revisit these rates, as redetermination progresses. Do you have a sense of the urgency around that? Meaning, will they do that on a relatively short notice or will they want to have that discussion in the next rate cycle or after the majority of the redetermination in their state has played out.

Joe Zubretsky: We don’t know that specifically. All we know is that they’re aware of the theoretical possibility that there’s an acuity shift in the book, likely, could result in prospective rate changes, but also retrospective rate changes. And it all has to be data driven. So to the point on timing, the data has to mature. The claims have to complete, the data has to be analyzed and then reasonable people will get in a room and figure out whether a rate change is necessary. So I would look at it, I don’t know whether they’re going to wait until the entire redetermination process is complete. But it’s got to be data driven. So the data has to complete, and it has to be verifiable and actionable.

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