The Ensign Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:ENSG) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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But we don’t anticipate anything unusual or abnormal. And nor do we feel like getting to pre-pandemic occupancy as some kind of artificial ceiling or target, our expectation is that we continue to grow and the trends that we’ve seen are great indications of that.

Suzanne Snapper: And I would add, Scott, that when you kind of look at the guide, really on the low end of the guide, we’ve factored in a higher level of seasonality and then kind of moving up the guide would be less seasonality, as Barry was talking about. And so as we continue to have the year play out, that seasonality aspect of historically having lower occupancy lower skilled mix in Q2, Q3 would really play into that lower end of the guide. If we end up experiencing better seasonality, less seasonality in other words, we would kind of guide to the high end of the guide with that. Right now, we feel pretty strong about where we’re at in the less seasonality than we’ve experience historically right now in the quarter.

Scott Fidel: Okay. Great. And then I’m going to just sneak one more question here, and that would be around — if you could update us on the visibility that you feel you have now into rates over the course of the full year? It seems like the rate backdrop has developed pretty favorably for ’24 when we think about the rebasing that have gone on in Medicaid in a number of key states and then we already do have visibility into the proposed FY25 rates for Medicare coming in a little bit over 4%. But maybe just sort of help us fill us in, in terms of the overall picture and any sort of emerging insight that you have into FY25 Medicaid rates. I know it’s early here, but just any visibility would be helpful. Thanks, and that’s it from me.

Suzanne Snapper: Thanks, Scott. So just one reminder, when you’re looking at the numbers in our rate tables. Remember that if you’re going to compare last year to this year, last year’s numbers would not include the FMAP dollars. And so you’re going to see some pretty big increases in those rate tables that might not look like they’re translating into the overall impact. But what we feel about the current year’s rates is that they’re very strong, very solid. As you mentioned, the Medicare rate came out. We’re very pleased with where that came out as a preview. I’m excited to have that come in. That doesn’t come in until the beginning of Q4, so October 1. Everything else is really panning out to be pretty nice overall, really having all of those states as we were talking about through all of 2023, really roll those FMAP dollars into the underlying rates.

States did in a very different way, some built it into the base rate, some put it into supplemental programs, including quality programs. But we’re very, very pleased with where everything landed. I mean, that’s why you see those large jumps when you look at our rate table is because now they’re included in base rate, which is way more stable for us and create long-term visibility for us to continue to be successful.

Operator: That concludes today’s Q&A session and today’s conference. You may now disconnect.

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