The Joint Corp. (NASDAQ:JYNT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Really where you’re going to see a big year over year step up for us is in that corporate unallocated bucket. And so that again, is an investment in the people here at our corporate office tight labor market, continued wage pressure on that side as well. And then again, our continued investment in the IT space that’s a critical component of our growth and that’s where a lot of our IT costs eventually flow through is in that corporate un unallocated bucket. And so I think all of those things combined, I think you’ll see the, the uptick in the GNA line item probably more heavily weighted towards that corporate unallocated for the ’23 period.

Jeremy Hamblin: Got it. That’s helpful. And then, if I could ask also about like your segment results, you had actually pretty nice improvement both in, in revenue growth in 22 but also your, your segment level, franchise operations saw profitability growth, but you, you saw a pretty big step back almost like about a five and a half million dollar decline in profitability to a loss for the year at your corporate clinics. So, leaving the allocated corporate to the side, can you just help me understand a little bit of why your, looks like your franchisees are in a solid position, but the corporate clinics definitely took a step back on profitability. Is that, is that more related to the newer clinics or is it some of the acquired clinics that are not maybe as profitable as legacy corporate clinics?

Jake Singleton: Yeah, the way I would break down the, the corporate clinic performance year over year, I think it has three driving factors. The first is you mentioned is just the greenfield clinics relatively staying on plan, again, higher, higher wage costs without the full benefit of the price increase. But for the most part, that was a planned investing cycle, and you’re going to feel that compression and the overall segment margin related to those green fields. The second piece of that is our continued investment in outside the four wall overhead. So again, increasing the, the infrastructure that we have in place to support a portfolio that really, increased by 30 plus units in a very rapid period of time, one year timeframe in over a two year timeframe, you’re almost doubling the size of that portfolio.

And so with that comes, some infrastructure investment and again, you know people are just more expensive these days. And so making headcount investment and seeing wage pressures, you’re going to see those costs flow through as additional outside the four wall overhead. And that’s traditionally for us about right now in 2022, about an 8% drag between our four wall margin and our overall segment margin in that space. And so again, that’s something that we, we know will lever with us over time as we embark in new markets. We don’t have the full density of units to fully lever the headcount that we’ve put in place. At a time when we only have two, three units in a particular market, we still have the full headcount sitting there. So all of those have been designed to lever with us over time, but in the ’22 period you’re just not feeling that, that level of leverage yet.

And then the third would just be some, some softness in what I’ll call the legacy performance. And that includes both, the, the clinics that we’ve built or bought the historical periods. We had some same store sales softness that we talked about and the continued wage pressure there. As across the board we’ve seen increases in both the doctor and the WC salaries. So I really think it’s those three things that have contributed to that impact. But we should, should see expansion in that corporate margin within the 23 period. As I look at, the overall expectation.

Peter Holt: And the last thing I’d add to that, Jake, is that of those 16 acquisitions in ’20 thing I’d add to that, Jake is that, of those 16 acquisitions in 2022, eight of them and they all happened in December and so it just, there’s obviously not a lot of time for that performance, but certainly they were accretive, so it’s time for, for that to perform as well.

Jeremy Hamblin: Got it. Last one for me, is really more of like a, a cash flow balance sheet management question. So the end of the year with about 10 million in cash usage last year was 11 million of provided by operating activities offset by about $21 million of investing activities inclusive of the, the acquisitions and CapEx. In terms of thinking about managing that, you noted you have, $20 million revolver, $2 million drawn on that. How does that potentially change or impact your investment opportunities for this year? Obviously you are going to have lower greenfield openings this year. Does it also impact just the thought of how many corporate clinic acquisitions that you might be willing to make because you want to not dip too far into that revolver?