Rick Wise: And maybe just last and related to that, maybe you all can help us think about the cadence of the quarters. I mean 25% of — I think if I remember, if I did this right, the midpoint of your guidance, it sort of implies that the first quarter is like 25% of full year sales or something, sort of unusually high as a percent relative to years past. Help us think through the cadence and like in the second quarter, how do we think about second quarter relative to obviously an unusually strong first quarter?
Chas McKhann: No, we’re pleased with the first quarter and in terms of how we performed. I mean, Lucas can tell you from experience that often Q2 and Q4 are both seasonally some of the best quarters. In the past, the company has kind of grown through seasonality in Q3. Last year, there was a little bit of a dip, right? So we’re kind of looking at that and learning, especially in the kind of changes in the environment, to understand exactly how it’s going to play out, but — which is in part why I just wanted to give a little bit more runway here this year to sort of do a full year look and then provide an update on the full year look after the Q2 call.
Operator: One moment for our next question, please. And it comes from the line of Frank Takkinen with Lake Street Capital Markets.
Frank Takkinen: Congrats on a solid quarter. I wanted to start with one on the NCD change. I think there was likely some theorizing around if it were to provide a tailwind to transfemoral stenting, it would take a six to 12 month lag, just given the train up time. So we’re kind of getting close to that time frame now. I know that you’ve had in six to 12 months since that NCD was put in place. Any change in market dynamics you’re seeing anecdotally from a shift to the more transfemoral stenters getting trained up?
Lucas Buchanan: Let me start actually with very sort of distinct positives we’re seeing, and I’ll absolutely answer your question around the transdermal side as well. I mean we’ve mentioned that there are real positive dynamics from the NCD for us, partly just more awareness around treatment of carotid disease. I mentioned the survey results that we just recently received. We also have been, I think, pleasantly surprised by the number of new account opportunities coming out of accounts that previously didn’t want to participate in the VQI registry that was required for reimbursement. And I’ll give you an example. Actually, last week, I was traveling on the East Coast and went out and it was kind of more regional satellite hospital, but from one of the large systems on the East Coast.
And for years, they’d wanted to do TCAR, but just the paperwork and getting through it in bureaucracy, right, you see in hospitals. But they got going in the fall and we’ve got now an experienced surgeon who had already had an established practice doing CEA and now two junior physicians, recent fellow graduates that are all doing TCAR. And I think this week, they’re doing their 50th procedure. So that’s a very tangible example of sort of opportunities that are right in front of us, and we got to keep capitalizing on them and keep going. We do continue to believe that there will be some changes over time in carotid stenting. Up until this point, I think what we’ve largely seen as I would characterize as kind of pockets of, and by the way, of established existing people who have been doing transdermal already, because as you mentioned, there’s — the training is hard.
The learning curve we’ve talked about before is really long. And we’re not seeing nor hearing about kind of a big wave of new training that’s happening. It doesn’t mean it couldn’t over time. Again, it’s still early. But it’s more like I said, we characterize as kind of pockets of influence. And we’re really mostly focused still on — by far, the largest part of the market is still carotid endarterectomy and the opportunity to continue to grow into that with primarily the vascular surgeon customer base is still our primary focus.
Frank Takkinen: Maybe moving over to the sales force a little bit. I know you’ve touched on it a couple of times throughout the call briefly, but just wanted to get an update on — I think last call, you — last quarter, you called out a third of the sales force being younger than a year. Maybe an update around that figure as we’re maturing the sales force and just overall — just an overall update on how that training is going for the younger reps?
Chas McKhann: No, I don’t have a specific update on the metric except to say that people are progressing well, right? We’ve got a really good organization and the team is doing really well. We had our sales meeting in Q1 and the energy level is fantastic. We’ve got — we hired well. We’ve got a good partnership across the experienced reps helping the new reps. And look, as an organization, especially when you have something like a CEO transition, you always wonder how the organization is going to be doing sort of through that transition. And I’ll share some recent data we just collected because we do a survey, it’s called great places to Work. We just did it just completed it on the average — an average company, 57% of their people rank it as a great place to work.
Our employees ranked us in the mid-90s and this again, even after the changes. And so — and more importantly that then translates from a retention standpoint, both in the field and in-house, our employee retention is as good as it’s been really ever. And so we’re not going to take any of that for granted. We’re going to keep working as a leadership team to make sure we have policies in place and the culture in place to maintain that. But I feel really good about where people are. And then from a training and development standpoint, it takes time, right? In the field, you’ve got to first really develop the clinical acumen and confidence that comes with the role. We ask a lot of our sales team. But then as they do that, they also are really building the relationships and kind of earning the right to push harder on TCAR adoption.
