NextGen Healthcare, Inc. (NASDAQ:NXGN) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

So it sets up some things for us that we think are helpful from that perspective. As well as just adding on to the last question a little bit, in the second half of this year you’ll see us start to ramp down that upgrade center of excellence. You’ll see improvements on the gross margin as those — really good people are redeployed to other parts of our business, hopefully, into more billable roles going forward, but that’ll gradually go down and we’re excited to keep all that great talent that we’ve built up here going forward.

Jack Wallace: Great. That’s helpful. And then could you just comment on how the M&A pipeline has changed last quarter and just your thoughts around your private market valuations?

David Sides: I think the private market valuations are continuing to improve, at least from a buyer perspective, from our perspective. Especially if the Fed continues to raise rates. I think one of the things that people haven’t factored in maybe to the rates that we thought about a lot are cost to healthcare coming through later this year in insurance premiums. I think they’re going to be high and it’ll set a higher floor. So, we’ll see how that feeds in through next year, but at the same time we’d be a beneficiary of that and that our providers to better from some of that higher payments coming through. So it’s an interesting market, and I feel that just to say, we meant this may not be the last rate increase if health care spend — if the increases come through at 8% or 10%.

And those increases are helping bring private market valuations closer to public. So we like those new prices. It also takes out some of the competition for the assets that we like from private equity because they’re not — they’re financing it with debt and we’re financing it with cash. So we have cash on the balance sheet to do what we want and are still seeing good opportunities out there and have a good team that’s working on M&A, focused on it. So like the pipeline that we see right now.

Jack Wallace: That that’s helpful. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question will come from Sean Dodge with RBC Capital Markets.

Sean Dodge: Yes. Thanks and good afternoon. Maybe just going back to the gross margins one more time. David, you said those should begin to moderate later in the year, spend on the upgrade center winds down. When we think about how much and how quick gross margin improve. I guess, do you see a pass back to the low fifties like we saw in years past, or was that just helped a lot by license sales and now to Jamie’s point, I think, around revenue mix just makes that a little bit tougher to achieve?

James Arnold: Yes, John, this is Jamie. I would say [indiscernible] 50 is a little longer. We do expect to see, as David said, we expect to see the margins start to increase in the back half of this year, but the payout to 50 is going to take a bit longer and particularly will be enhanced. When I think about the insights, the revenue that will be generated insights will be higher margin revenue and will help to lift the overall corporate margin. I think the NextGen enterprise is probably going to settle in in this kind of its current gross margin. It’ll pick up a little bit over time, but not dramatically. I think the bigger improvement comes as insights revenue starts to pick up and we identified that a year ago starting to produce meaningful contribution in 2025 and 2026.