LifeStance Health Group, Inc.

Good day, and welcome to the Life Stands Health first quarter 2022 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star then 1 on your touchtone telephone. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and a follow-up. If anyone should require assistance during the call, please press star then 0 to reach an operator. As a reminder, this call may be recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Monica Prokowski, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin. Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to LifeStance Health's first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. I'm Monica Prokowski, Vice President of Investor Relations. Joining me today are Mike Lester, Chief Executive Officer, Mike Ruff, Chief Financial Officer, Adonis Qureshi, Chief Growth Officer. We issued the earnings release and presentation after the market closed today. Both are available on the investor relations section of our website, investor.license.com. In addition, a replay of those conference calls will be available following the call. Before turning the call over to management for their prepared remarks, please direct your attention to the disclaimers about forward-looking statements included in the earnings press release and SPC filing. Today's remarks contain forward-looking statements including statements about our financial performance outlook. Those statements involve risks, uncertainties, and other factors, including the possible future impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business that could cause actual results to differ materially. In addition, please note that we report results using non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe provide additional information for investors to help facilitate comparison of prior and past performance. A reconciliation to the most direct comparable gap measure is included in the earnings press release table and presentation appendix. Unless otherwise noted, all results are compared to the prior year comparative period. At this time, I'll turn the call over to Mike Lester, CEO of Lifespan. Mike?

Thank you, Monica, and thanks to all of you for joining us today. To begin, I would like to emphasize the importance of our mission of improving access to trusted, affordable, and personalized mental health care. As you may know, May is Mental Health Awareness Month, the time when we as a country raise the awareness about the importance of our society's mental health. Now and always, LifeStance is committed to helping people lead healthier or fulfilling lives as the country's largest outpatient provider of in-person and virtual mental health care. Turning to results, we are pleased with the team's disciplined execution of our strategy, which drove solid performance in the first quarter, even through the recent pandemic surge and ongoing labor market dynamics. We continue to see strong demand for our services and consistent execution by the team, which was reflected in our results. Revenue for the first quarter was $203 million, representing growth of 42%, and adjusted EBITDA was positive $12 million. As we've noted previously, revenue growth is primarily driven by our total clinician count. In the first quarter, we grew our net clinician base to 4,989, representing growth of 51% compared with the prior year and in line with our expectations. We believe there are first quarter performance positions as well for the balance of the year. As a result, we are reaffirming full year guidance for revenue in the range of $865 to $885 million, center margin of $240 million to $255 million, and positive adjusted EBITDA in the range of $63 million to $67 million. Mike Ross will provide additional details about our financial performance in his session of our prepared remarks. Before turning to execution, I would like to remind everyone about what differentiates Last Stance's business model from pure play telehealth companies in the market. Compared with virtual healthcare companies, our nearly 5,000 W-2 employed clinicians are able to deliver mental healthcare services in person or virtually, a source of sustainable competitive advantage for LifeStance and one of the key drivers of our momentum in the market. Independent third-party surveys continue to support LifeScanx's approach to care. For example, according to a recent Blue Cross Blue Shield survey, nearly 70% of patients want to see the same clinician both in person and via telehealth. It is clear that patients and clinicians want convenience, choice, and control over when and how to access or provide mental health services, and we are uniquely positioned to deliver on both patient and clinician preferences due to our flexible hybrid model. Furthermore, patient demand for our services has never been stronger. Not only are patients attracted to the hybrid model, but we also provide affordable access to care through coverage that is in network with commercial insurers, as opposed to cash pay or subscription-based online models. Additionally, because of our diverse mix of prescribers and therapists, patients can access personalized, comprehensive care to meet each individual's unique mental health care needs. And as we have noted previously, our patient acquisition costs remain very low, as the vast majority of our patients come directly from sticky primary care referrals, in-network payer relationships, and organic online self-referrals. We are not and never have been dependent on direct-to-consumer paid marketing. Turning to execution. In the first quarter, I'm pleased that we've been able to demonstrate consistent performance and are executing effectively on our profitable growth strategy. We are reimagining how patients receive easy access to affordable mental health care. To deliver on that goal, we continue to focus our growth strategy on three core pillars of expanding into new markets, building market density, and deploying our tech-enabled services. In terms of expanding into new markets, we entered into six new states in 2021 and are now deepening our presence in our existing 32 states, contributing to our mission of improving access. As for building market density, clinicians remain our primary growth driver, and in the first quarter, we grew our clinician base nationwide. We added 199 net clinicians in the first quarter, bringing our total to 4,989. an increase of over 50% year-over-year. This strong growth, especially in the current labor market environment, demonstrates that our value proposition is resonating as we continue steady net clinician growth each quarter. Our growth in our clinician population is also an indication of our operational capability to onboard and ramp new clinicians within our organization, one of the largest W2-employed groups of clinicians in the mental health care space. Our clinician growth was driven by our organic recruiting engine, as well as our practice acquisition engine. In the first quarter, we opened 41 de novo centers to bolster our physical presence, in addition to our virtual service offering, adding to our over 500 centers nationwide. Additionally, we completed 10 new acquisitions in the first quarter, bringing the total since inception to 79. Both acquisitions were tuck-ins to platforms in existing states in which we operate, Michigan and Massachusetts. Growing our clinician base supports our mission of improving access to affordable, high-quality mental health care. In terms of deploying our tech-enabled services, we believe that our opportunities to implement digital tools to support patients' ability to navigate their mental health care experience is a significant competitive advantage for LifeSense. As we previously announced, we are rolling out a new, improved online booking and intake experience, or OB for short, to better match our new patients with clinicians and to set them up for success in that first visit. We have continued to deploy OB across the country and are now live in seven states. In these states, we've seen a significant reduction in the number of online cancellations because of improvements in the intake and booking process and an increase in levels of patient satisfaction. This enhancement will continue to be rolled out state by state throughout 2022 and into early 2023, as well as receive additional product improvements over time as we continue to invest in innovation around the booking experience for our patients. I have great confidence in our ability to continue to execute our strategy and take advantage of the considerable market opportunities in front of us. Finally, in the first quarter, we released a state of youth mental health report, including the results of a survey of 2,000 American parents. We learned that 68% of parents have seen their children face significant mental and emotional challenges during the pandemic and are looking for solutions. To further improve access for youth and support the destigmatization of mental health, we awarded grants through the LifeStance Health Foundation to several nonprofits that directly serve youth and adolescent populations, including the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. We are committed to expanding access to mental health care among at-risk populations and directly addressing the alarming increase in young people struggling with their mental health. We're honored to partner with organizations that share our vision of a truly healthy society where mental and physical health care are unified to make lives better. In closing, we're starting 2022 with strong momentum for the first quarter of continued profitable growth as a public company. I'm confident in our future and our ability to help people on their path to better mental health. Now I'll turn it over to Mike Ruff, Chief Financial Officer, to provide more detail on our financial performance and outlook. Mike?