AMN Healthcare Services, Inc. (NYSE:AMN) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

A lot of our kind of more strategic and larger clients, they’re posting orders at what we would consider market rate. Those customers are experiencing high fill rates. They’re getting their jobs filled. So really, the reason for some of the softer volumes that we’re seeing going into Q3, it’s more of a demand story for us, just not being quite as robust as what we’d like to see. And then I guess the last thing that I’d mentioned is just applications. Our new application stats are still really, really strong, so there’s still a lot of interest in travel. They still remain much higher than what we ever saw pre-pandemic.

A.J. Rice: Okay. Thanks a lot.

Operator: Okay, one moment for our next question. Our next question is from Jeff Silber of BMO Capital Markets.

Jeff Silber: Thanks so much. Given the environment, I’m just curious what your company’s been doing with internal headcount. Has there been any changes and should we expect future changes?

Cary Grace: Yes, thanks for the question. As you know, one thing that AMN has done extremely well over its history is be able to flex up and flex down in different environments. And so, as we saw lower demand, really as you entered left last year and entered this year, we have managed our internal resources and headcount accordingly. So if you look from the beginning of the year until what we would expect in the third quarter, we will be down around 9% from a headcount standpoint. And we do that. We have programs that we put in place around managing that through normal attrition performance management. One thing I would note is, from a producer standpoint, we have intentionally kept our producers, because we expect demand to increase as we get into the fourth quarter and into next year. And we want to be ready for that.

Jeff Knudson: And Jeff, I would just add at the midpoint of the Q3 guide, although with revenue coming down as we’ve moved through the year. Adjusted SG&A as a percent of sales has increased, but the absolute dollars have come down sequentially every quarter since the first quarter. And we would expect that trend to continue into the fourth quarter.

Jeff Silber: Okay, that is very helpful. My next question may be long. I apologize about it, but I want to talk about labor disruption. So my first aspect, I don’t know if it had any impact on the second quarter, and if you’re expecting any impact in the third quarter. But more importantly, and this may be more anecdotal than anything else. I live in Central New Jersey, one of our large hospitals Robert Wood Johnson. I haven’t seen the news today, but the nurses were expected to go on strike tomorrow in one of the issues was that they wanted hospitals to reduce their contract labor spend. Obviously, it’s self-serving, but I don’t remember seeing that kind of pressure from the nurses themselves. Is this something that’s happening elsewhere? And does that produce another headwind for your business?

Jeff Knudson: Yes, I would say for us, we had about $5 million in labor disruption revenue in the second quarter, and there’s nothing that we’re servicing our clients on from a labor disruption front in the third quarter. So there’s zero in revenue embedded in the Q3 guide.

Cary Grace: And, Jeff, I would say overall, we haven’t heard that as a theme from clients.

Jeff Silber: Okay, maybe one-off here. Thank you so much.

Operator: Okay, one moment for our next question. Our next question is from Trevor Romeo of William Blair.