Accolade, Inc. (NASDAQ:ACCD) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Rajeev Singh: Great. Thanks for the question, Ryan. You have a really important point. A couple things. We are seeing the utilization of the EMO offering be strong. In fact, this most recent quarter in Q3, we saw strength in that business on a sequential basis relative to Q2 and likely reflecting some of those utilization trends you’re alluding to in the hospital environment and so forth. One thing to remember about our EMO offering is most customers now are either on a case rate basis contract or are moving to one. That’s why when you see in our financials or in the disclosures in our 10-Q, you’ll see a continued growth in usage-based revenues or utilization-based revenues that’s across the business, but very much the EMO part is contributing there.

We think, as we look out the next year to your point, I think that 20% growth rate is very, very achievable from the standpoint of strengthened bookings for new customers and continuing strong utilization around that, both reflecting the current environment that you mentioned and also overall our ability to demonstrate the customers the value of the ROI on that service.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from Jailendra Singh from Truist. Your line is open.

Jailendra Singh: Thank you, and thanks for taking my question. I want to go back to the comments around bookings and selling season. You called out strength in new bookings. Were these opportunities which took a little longer to close last year, now you have clarity? Just wondering if you had any impact on the sales cycle last selling season because of GLP-1 taking a lot of mind share? And related to that, did you see a lot of not-now employer accounts last selling season, which might be giving you some increased confidence for the next selling season?

Rajeev Singh: Thanks for the question, Jailendra. In fact, what we talked about in our prepared remarks, Jailendra, was the fact that we had another very strong selling season. That selling season has — ahead of where we were last year and in a great position to drive 20-plus-percent growth from a bookings perspective year over year. The consistency of the sale cycle and the consistency of the delivery of those new bookings on a year-over-year basis as we continue to grow our business, we think is reflective of the strong demand in the environment, number one, and number two, the differentiation that I spoke to in my prepared remarks. Even better news, which I think is a little different than the way you characterized it, it’s not that we saw a number of field delay, but instead we’re beginning to see the first inklings of the pipeline for real evaluations happening in calendar ‘24 and we’re encouraged by the signs we see which is now that this would make it the third consecutive year that we’ve said those words that early results on the pipeline or the opportunities and evaluations that are developing here at the end of 2023, heading into 2024, give us continued visibility and bullishness on the demand for advocacy and navigation solutions, particularly those differentiated like Accolade’s, in an environment where corporations are concerned about healthcare costs and want to deliver better value for their employees.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from Stan Berenshteyn from Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Stan Berenshteyn: Hi, thanks for taking our questions. Maybe digging in on PlushCare a bit more, just if we think about the interplay here, or factors driving growth here, you have [obviously consumer channel] (ph), you’ve called out GLP-1s here, you’re getting incremental lift from enterprise. Can you just walk through the individual segments that I just discussed in terms of the expectations for growth as we think about next year? Thanks.

Rajeev Singh: Hey, Stan, thanks for the question. I’ll start the answer and then Steve can jump in. When you think about our primary care business, I think it’s imperative that you think about it in its components. We think about it that way because it’s really fundamentally structured off of the same tech platform, off the same platform of physicians, off the same delivery philosophy as it relates to quality care. And in turn, when you think about the business in those two vectors, first, let’s talk about the enterprise business. The enterprise business, we’ve seen extraordinary uptake of customers from the advocacy business taking advantage of our care service. In fact, we saw great adoption last year and even better adoption in fiscal ‘24, or calendar ‘23, fiscal ‘24.

That adoption is really driven off this concept that we’re embedding physicians into care teams. We’re solving a problem we call the physician gap, which is fundamentally built around this or is pointing to this problem that exists in the healthcare system where people can’t get to their primary care physicians even if they have one for nearly a month in real days. And because of that, we’ve got an audience where we can drive extraordinary utilization of our primary care service or of our care service within the advocacy business. That business continues to grow while at the same time our consumer business continues to grow. Both of them benefit from the fact that we’re a primary care practice that deals with multiple conditions, including weight loss or diabetes management which is tied to GLP-1.

We think of GLP-1 as yet another one of the factors driving the strength of that business and the consistent growth rate. Steve?