Health Catalyst, Inc. (NASDAQ:HCAT) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Dan Burton: Yes. Great questions, Daniel. Thank you. So as you referenced and as we referred to in our prepared remarks, we are seeing some improvement in our end market. Obviously, each health system is in their own journey towards improved operating margin and there still are meaningful financial pressures that health systems are experiencing. But we are seeing general improvement not quite to the pre-pandemic levels of operating margins in most cases with our clients. But generally speaking we are seeing some improvements. As it relates to the areas of our pipeline where we’re seeing the most traction, one of the dynamics for this year and from a bookings perspective that we do believe will influence next year has been more interest and more focus on those parts of our portfolio that do offer hard dollar savings and hard dollar ROI and financial return that includes our tech enabled managed services segment, for example, as well as some of our applications like the financial empowerments suit.

The proportion of our pipeline that is represented by those elements of our portfolio is larger this year than it has been, for example in prior years as a result of some of that financial pressure, that is one of the reasons why we do anticipate that the professional services segment will likely outpace the technology segment in terms of the growth rate in the near-term in 2024, you can see some of that real acceleration, which we’re encouraged by in professional services in Q3. So we do anticipate that given some of those financial pressures, those elements of our portfolio that do help address those issues and we do have TAMs offerings that do help as it relates to position, subsidy issues, inclusive of the work that we’re doing in ambulance where operations for example and we have seen growth in that part of our pipeline and some meaningful opportunities that we believe will expand.

The last thing that I’ll share is that depending on the year, over the last several years we’ve seen some years where our tech growth has been higher than our services growth. This year in 2023, our tech and services will grow about the same pace. Next year, we do anticipate based on our bookings performance thus far that, that for the reasons I mentioned just a minute ago, the services will likely outpace the tech growth. But long-term, we believe in that overall, we acceleration that we shared in our prepared remarks of those long-term growth targets of 20% plus. Long-term, we believe that both the tech components of our solution and the services components of our solution are each really important in delivering against our differentiated value to enable massive measurable data, implement improvement and as such we do expect long-term that both of those components of our solution will continue to reaccelerate back towards those long-term levels.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question will come from Elizabeth Anderson with Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

Samir Patel: Hi guys. Can you hear me?

Dan Burton: Yes.

Samir Patel: Hey, this is Samir on for Elizabeth Anderson. I just wanted to quickly ask just in terms of like the summit and related cost to that, is that part of what’s maybe driving some of the expense on OpEx for 4Q or is that mainly kind of isolated to 1Q next year?

Dan Burton: Yes, it’s a good question, Samir. It’s mainly isolated the first quarter of 2024 where the bulk of that cost will be incurred, but we are incurring some of that this year as well. There will be a portion that’s recognized in the Q4, but most of that will be timed into Q1.

Samir Patel: Got it. Thanks.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from David Larsen with BTIG. Your line is open.

Unidentified Analyst: Hi, this is Jennie Chan [ph] on for Dave Larsen. Congrats on the quarter and thanks for taking my question. So, I just wanted to get some more color on your enterprise DOS versus your modular DOS offering. I know that more customers are choosing the modular one in the current macro landscape, which makes sense. I am wondering if you are seeing a shift, a shift more towards the enterprise side now. And also, if you could just explain a bit more about the two and the price differences between them. Thanks.