American Shared Hospital Services (AMEX:AMS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Could you talk to us, give us an intuition about where that comes from? Or what drives the increase in commercial payers versus Medicare?

Raymond Stachowiak: Okay. And that’s a very good question, Harry. And I will divert that question to our resonant expert, Craig Tagawa, who monitors that very closely. Craig, could you comment on that?

Craig Tagawa: Sure, Ray. There’s a couple of factors in that. One, it’s — it has to do with, obviously, the types of pairs that are the type of patients that are coming in the indications that they have. If there are more indications that are at an older population, where Medicare is the primary insurer you’re going to have, in general, a lower average reimbursement rate. Medicare pays primarily lower than our HMOs and PPOs. So it’s really partly the indication and partly just the type of patient that comes through. And it goes in cycles. It’s not predictable.

Unidentified Analyst: Understood. And I’m just guessing here again, total guess, but it seems like as they find more and more uses for proton beam therapy outside of oncology that almost, by definition, that, that’s drawing in demographically a younger patient or, just a guess?

Raymond Stachowiak: Thank you. I’m going to get back .

Operator: Thank you. And the next question comes from Anthony Marquez, a Private Investor.

Anthony Marquez: Hey, first of all, those were excellent. I have to tell you, those were excellent questions by the prior. A lot of my questions were answered from the prior individual and they were outstanding questions. Have you guys ever considered us buying the stock back at these levels, it would just seem to make — my first question is, yes, have you considered a share buyback at these levels? It just seems to me to be cheap. And so what if you’re taking stock out of the flow, why not accrue that to the benefit of current shareholders?

Raymond Stachowiak: Well, Tony, that’s a very good question. And I have to dodge it a bit in the forward-looking criteria, but I can assure our shareholders and investors here on this call that over the last 3 years, and my duration of CEO with American Shared, I brought that level of experience as a CEO to the company. I had 19 years prior experience as a CEO in the company I founded, and I can assure our shareholders and investors that many different strategic options for the future of our company have been debated and pursued. And we are where we are today, and we think we’re best positioned truly to benefit our shareholders. And if they stick with us, I think they’ll have a nice return on their investment. I’ve mentioned in prior calls and in Harry’s questions, I think we are an undervalued stock from any kind of metric.

You look at our P/E ratio and it seems like every quarter that goes by, our P/E ratio gets smaller. If you look at the EBITDA numbers, the growth in EBITDA from $7.2 million in 2021 to $8.2 million in 2022, without any really new revenue streams coming on board. And then you look at the resources we are pouring into our sales and marketing efforts, those resources are going to pay off in obtaining new agreements and new revenue streams. As everyone knows if they’re familiar with our company, we got long sales cycles in our company. It’s a complex sale, but we got really, really good resort to take on that challenge.