Accolade, Inc. (NASDAQ:ACCD) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

So, the year-over-year comp there is driving some of the change, or actually most of the change, in the gross margin. And the full year outlook for gross margin, we remain consistent with, call it, high 40s expectations for the year.

Operator: And thank you. And one moment for our next question. And our next question comes from Michael Cherny from Bank of America. Your line is now open.

Unidentified Analyst: This is Alan in for Mike. Thanks for taking the questions. Raj, you mentioned, I guess, that investor, you talked a lot about the partnership strategy. And I think one of your partners, Virta, talked about how he was already driving some volume into their business. I guess, is there any way at this point in the year to quantify the referral momentum that you’re seeing, or maybe total partners, how that’s changed? And I guess, how important is the partnership strategy as you think about the 2025 selling season? Thanks.

Rajeev Singh: I appreciate the question, Alan. I think whether you’re talking about the 2024 selling season, the 2025 selling season, the partnership strategy is an essential part of the way we position our value to customers. Remember, if you were to step back, customers are looking to solve three core problems. The first, they want a better experience for their employees. They believe fundamentally that the existing healthcare ecosystem makes it difficult for people to understand and get the healthcare that they need. Second, as Ryan spoke about in his first question today, they’re looking at trend lines that is beginning to have a very negative impact on their business and off of big, big numbers. They want to be able to control that trend line.

And the third thing they’re wrestling with is an extraordinarily complicated healthcare ecosystem with a whole suite of carve-out solutions that offer extraordinary innovation to their members, but their members have a very difficult time finding and the benefits buyers have a very difficult time managing. That third value proposition is fundamentally addressed by our trusted partner ecosystem and our capacity to go to markets with a vetted set of partners where we build real product integration and we have an opportunity to help manage those partners on behalf of our customers. That’s been essential to the value proposition forever. And what we’ve seen now is that as the ecosystem has grown and the integrations have delivered more depth, we’re driving the kinds of results that, as you mentioned, Sami Inkinen spoke about at Investor Day, right, 2x utilization at Accolade customers versus non-Accolade customers.

That value proposition is so clean and so crisp for customers that it impacts buying behaviors. And so, in terms of quantification, I’d say, there’s a couple of ways to look at it today that we speak about. First is the breadth of the relationships. If you’re going to look across all the categories that our customers are looking at, I think you’ll find that our ecosystem is broader and has more depth in the categories that matter to those customers than any other ecosystem in the space. The second part of that story is customer uptake and we’ve been talking over the course of the last couple of years about the fact that we’re seeing an increasing majority of customers who have taken at least one trusted partner ecosystem relationship. Those two things should give you some sense, Alan, that this is right at the heart of the value proposition we deliver to our customers.

Operator: And thank you. And one moment for our next question. And our next question comes from Stephanie Davis from SVB Securities. Your line is now open.