Phreesia, Inc. (NYSE:PHR) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Chaim Indig: Yes. First off, obviously, there’s been more people in the seats for longer and that’s frankly just good for us. We’ve obviously ramped up a ton of people over the last couple of years. And now a lot of those folks are in their seats a lot longer, and obviously, they’re doing a lot better. But to clarify, the people that upsell and expand are a very different team. And frankly, my heart goes out to that team because they’re amazing, and they keep getting — just crushing it on the provider side. And then, our net new team is different and they’re also, obviously, based on the number, doing phenomenal. So those are 2 separate teams and they’re frankly doing really well. And I think all of us have high expectations with that team to just keep doing well.

Jack Wallace: Got it. That’s helpful. And then moving to the expense side, I was wondering if there are any investments or projects to call out that could be either lumpy in nature or hitting in certain parts of the year. And then on a related note, if there’s any opportunistic hiring going on given the state of the technology market. I’m thinking specifically within R&D. Thank you.

Chaim Indig: Look, I think we’re always thoughtful about how we hire, but I think we have communicated that we expect headcount to remain up or down around these levels, about 10%. So I don’t think we’re surely not crazy on this, on hiring. We’re being thoughtful about it. But look, I think there’s always been a lot of talent. But it doesn’t matter the economic cycle, having done this for 18 years. Like, good people are just hard to find in good times or bad. Like, you hold on to your great talent with like every bit you can even when times are tough, right? So I don’t know that it’s any easier hiring people now than it used to be. I think what we see is, we’re not getting poached as much as we used to with promises of grandeur. How’s that? I think people feel pretty good about the place they are at Phreesia.

Jack Wallace: Yes, that’s really helpful, about the retention comment. I appreciate it. Thanks again. And congrats on a great quarter and a great outlook.

Operator: Our next question will be from Robert Simmons with D.A. Davidson.

Robert Simmons: Hey. Thanks for taking our questions. And let me add my congratulations to Balaji. Good to see doing well. So on the payments business, the gross margin there has been pressured for about a year, year plus. What are your expectations there? Do you expect it to stabilize around current levels, or do you think it’s going to start getting back to the previous gross margin level you used to see?

Balaji Gandhi: Yes. I mean it’s headed back there. I think we’ve been talking about this sort of on this journey. I think I just want to be a little bit careful because there’s different ways of calculating that number. But I think if you just step back, no matter how you calculate it in terms of looking at interchange, looking at subscription and network solutions versus payments, et cetera, it was sort of a 500-plus basis point headwind through that period we’re investing. And we’ve been steadily working our way back. So I think the gross margins will be a few hundred basis points higher when we are at breakeven on an adjusted EBITDA basis. I think as we talked about earlier, mix sort of matters in terms of how it improves between now and then.

But just to remember one thing is that when the company — before the company went through this investment cycle, so think like fiscal ’20, I don’t think you should expect the gross margin levels there because we just really weren’t scaled for 3,000-plus clients that we have today but within a few hundred basis points of that.

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