Natera, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTRA) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

David Westenberg: Hi. I got two questions. I’ll just ask them both up front. In terms of your progress in carrier, has it been renegotiation of expanded carrier or has it been a little bit more conversion of carrier to maybe the more basic panel? And then just on my – actually I’ll pause and I’ll ask the second one.

Steve Chapman: Yes. So I would say, initially what happened when one of our competitors, I think closed up shop we saw big influx of very low margin business coming in. And we kind of swallowed that in Q4 and then in Q1. And what’s happened since then is that we – there’s been a – there’s been some payers that have revised their policies and started paying in addition to I think us improving the sort of operations and appeals with some of the other payers that maybe already had a policy in place or that would consider paying on a case-by-case basis. So we have seen, I think we’re at the very early stages of kind of turning the ship here and obviously getting a new guideline in place from ACOG I think is going to help.

The existing policy from ACOG is helpful and that’s why we have seen payers change guidelines. But if something more definitive came out, obviously that would kind of be the tipping point. There are some customers as well where we’ve kind of said, hey, look, certain payers may not cover this test, and then we kind of reeducate them on what might be covered. And in some cases they make a decision that they want to order a smaller panel.

David Westenberg: Got it. Very appreciated. One last question here. I didn’t see where you recognize the 19 million legal payment in the quarter. So I was just wondering if is that going to show up when you publish cash flow statement where it shows up? And congrats on a great quarter. Thank you.

Michael Brophy: Yes, it’s not going to show up yet. It’s not a cash payment. It’s a judgment. And so there’s a few more steps to go there as Steve described. So right now it’s a judgment, but it’s not something that is accrued for in the financial statements.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today’s call. Thank you all for joining and you may now disconnect.