If we think about from a growth standpoint, we’re going to have more reps at the end of the year presumably hitting their stride on productivity, both in lymphedema and the airway clearance side. We should have an optimized home demo assignment, so continuing to expand the productivity of applying those to the right people on the team. Some of the tech deployed EMR medical record exchanges that we’re investing in this year should be more operational at the beginning of 2025, some of the new products that I alluded to, I think the head and neck results that we’ll be able to socialize through 2025, and then just some of the normalized Afflo growth that we’re not going to have to confront in the first half of this year, next year. I think we’ll be certainly entering the on-ramp of 2025 with some good momentum at our backs, and those are the targets that we’re still pursuing for sure.
Adam Maeder: Thanks for the color, Dan.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ryan Zimmerman with BTIG. Please proceed with your question.
Izzy: Hey, good morning Dan and Elaine, this is Izzy on for Ryan. Thanks for taking the questions. Just first, to start off on guidance, I heard your comments on expecting the first quarter to be flat to up low single digits, but I was wondering if you could provide a little bit of color on what’s driving that expectation and how you’re thinking about the cadence or pacing for both revenue and margins for the balance of the year.
Daniel Reuvers: Yes, I’ll start and then if Elaine has anything she wants to add. I think as we thought about, Izzy, in the first quarter, we know Afflo is going to be a bit of a headwind, as we’d called out earlier, so that’s one we have to offset for. We had somewhat modest lymphedema guidance in the first quarter, in part because we probably don’t benefit quite as much from the demo assignments in the first quarter. That’s a quarter we have the highest copays, since patient copays reset, so our sales force, I would say is a bit more protective of allocating some of those in the first quarter. We added headcount, started in December and will continue to add some more heads in the first half of this year, but as we know, those heads historically won’t be really productive until the second half.
Then I think if you look at it from a historical standpoint, it’s a step down sequentially of somewhere in the mid-20% from Q4, which is pretty typical if you looked over the last three or four years. I think history would show that that’s pretty much in the normal range. I think the last one is it is the quarter where we’re going to have the toughest comp. It’s a little bit of an inverted scenario from last year, where we had the easiest comps at the beginning of the year and they progressively got more difficult. We kind of turned it upside down, so getting past Q1, I think those are some of the assumptions that we had applied in.
Izzy: Great, that’s really helpful. Thank you. Then just a follow-up for me, what are you guys thinking about, or how are you thinking about the impact from faster Medicare collections in terms of cash flow and your subsequent use of cash?
Elaine Birkemeyer: Yes, so I think as I alluded to a little earlier, we do think there’s still opportunity for us to continue to work on improving our cash collections and improving working capital. That being said, we made a lot of traction last year, and so to expect to repeat that, we don’t think is realistic, but we do think there is still some runway ahead for the year. As far as kind of use of cash, I think one thing we did do at the end of the year was retire our line of credit. We also completed our AffloVest earn-out. As we look forward, we still have more debt that we have to continue to service, and we are making investments in technology and headcount that Dan alluded to, but clearly the stronger balance sheet position that we are proud to now have does offer us some good optionality as we think about continuing to grow the business in the future.
Izzy: Great, thanks for taking the questions.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Margaret Andrew with William Blair. Please proceed with your question.
Margaret Andrew: Hey, good morning guys. Thanks for taking the questions. There’s a couple things I wanted to follow up on. First, I wanted to talk a little bit about first quarter guidance. Dan, I know you just said that maybe it’s typical historical sequential pattern if I look at, like, ’18 and ’19, it’s typically maybe in the mid-20s, maybe even in the 23%, down 24%. This seems like it’s maybe a little bit worse, and I guess I’m asking because Q4 obviously was also a little bit lighter relative to typical seasonal patterns for Q4. Is there anything else underlying–you know, maybe you didn’t quite have the numbers of sales reps or so on, and so that starts to change trajectory throughout 2024? Just wanted to push on that seasonality pattern, especially if it implies for Q1 and pushes more of that pressures into the second half of the year for growth.
