U.S. Physical Therapy, Inc. (NYSE:USPH) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Joanna Gajuk: That’s great. That’s helpful. Just to have a magnitude of things always good. And I guess your other segment, the industrial injury prevention revenue is up nicely and profits [Technical Difficulty]. So I just want to clarify, this is all organic. There’s not really — the deal that you announced that didn’t even close in the quarter.

Christopher Reading: That’s right.

Joanna Gajuk: And then what is really driving with your existing partners, you’re adding in new clients? Like, I guess, what’s driving that 10% revenue growth and obviously, now you translate into profit, but I guess it starts with top line.

Christopher Reading: Yes. Thank you. So Eric, if you can, you guys are both Eric and Graham doing a great job, working with these 2 partnerships. Our partnerships in fact, doing a very good job, and Briotix has come out really strong. So Eric, do you want to speak to that?

Eric Williams: Yes. And actually, it’s both of those. I mean, we are adding new clients. We’re adding new verticals. We’re heavy in distribution, retail, heavy and automotive, adding additional manufacturing and distribution clients as well. And then we’re expanding product lines within existing clients. So it’s a combination of both the business development pipeline for both of our injury prevention businesses, progressive and [indiscernible] are very, very deep right now. So terrific same-store growth, a terrific new client growth. We’re really bullish in terms of the direction we’re headed and really excited about the acquisition that we just announced here on April 1. So it continues to go really, really well, and we expect good things out of our injury prevention business as we move forward through the year.

Joanna Gajuk: It sounds like if that business staffing maybe is not a gating factor? Or would you say — is it that much better or maybe not that much better, but it sounds like maybe better.

Eric Williams: It’s different. So when you take a look at the big gating factor that we deal with in the physical therapy side here, we are predominantly higher in PTs and big shortages to those, and you really got to be good at recruiting your retention in order to make an impact on your business. And as Chris mentioned, we’re doing well on both fronts there with the best in a long, long time. When you look at the injury prevention side, we have the luxury and flexibility of going in a different direction from a staffing perspective. So you’re looking at [Technical Difficulty]. So it’s a slightly different hiring requirement. The challenge on the indie prevention side really — and we have them, it’s not — they’re not all full-time positions.

So a lot of the various accounts and clients that we staff for aren’t looking for 40 hours a week. They could be looking for 6 hours a week, 8 hours a week. So it’s a challenge for those injury prevention businesses to be able to bundle those positions to have an easier time finding someone because it’s always easier to find somebody full time this part time. So slightly different type of clinical need, which makes it a tad bit easier on the injury prevention businesses as opposed to PT.

Christopher Reading: I would say this, and Eric, I think Eric did a great job outlining that. Our turnover rate in injury prevention is really low [indiscernible] job, it’s lower even than at our facilities. And — and they’ve been very creative. And so I think that combination again, we have more demand at any given point in time, and this will always be the case then we can staff to there’s always a bit of a lag, but they’re doing a really good job right now, and I’m proud of that group.

Joanna Gajuk: Great. And talking about deals, just also clarification confirmation when it comes to what’s included in your guidance. So there was no change in there, right? You RECONNECT kind of the $2 million is the Medicare rate and $0.5 million, I guess, in Q1. I just want to make sure there’s nothing around — moving around the deals like I guess the deals are tracking in line with your initial expectations in terms of the contribution in the guidance?

Christopher Reading: Yes. I would say this, one of the deals that we had factored into our original guidance, it didn’t happen and isn’t going to happen but we’ve got other activity [indiscernible] so we had a little — and net-net, we’re comfortable where we are for the year at this point.

Operator: We’ll take our next question from Larry Solow with CJS Securities.

Larry Solow: Question, I guess, just on the good price momentum, it sounds like outside of Medicare. I know that the core contract consociated sound like they’re going even a little better than expected. And also — good to see workers’ comp picking up a little bit. That’s kind of lagged, I guess, even since COVID. So maybe a little more color on the workers’ comp side and then just overall the progression of your contracted [indiscernible].

Christopher Reading: Eric, why don’t you go ahead and then Carey if have something to add–

Eric Williams: Yes, sure. On the work comp side. So look, we talked about this on a number of quarterly color over the course of the past 1.5 years, there’s been a tremendous amount of effort to really drive both volume and rate and it’s not an overnight turn unfortunately. And we’re really starting to see the fruits of the efforts that we put in here over the course of that time frame. One of the really key drivers for us here is the fact that since second quarter of last year, we signed 10 new work comp payer contracts, 4 of which came online mid-Q1. So — and we have a number of additional contracts in process. Just as Carey has a number of different contracts that he’s looking to renegotiate rates on. So a lot of effort to beef up in this area, and we expect this trend to continue as we move forward through the year.

Carey Hendrickson: Yes. And Larry, I’d say this mix growing from 9.3% to 10% it’s both. It’s both volume and rate. So volume picked up, so it’s the volume outpaced the growth of the other categories so that it would increase as a percent of the mix. And then also net rate increase as well. So good on both fronts and that resulted in that overall mix of revenue increasing.

Larry Solow: Great. What about just — I know no 1 knows discern, but just Medicare outlook, obviously, that gave you a little bit of relief on the original cut from this year. I think physician fee schedule and all that balancing should be done by next year. Is that kind of the what industry partners kind of believe or again, not holding you to this, but what is sort of the current, I believe, going forward on that side of thing.