LifeStance Health Group, Inc.

Good day, everyone, and thank you for standing by. My name is Orgy, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to LifeStance Health first quarter 2025 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask questions during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Monica Prokoczki. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to LifeStance Health's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. I'm Monica Prokoczki, Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. Joining me today are Dave Borden, Chief Executive Officer, and Ryan McGrory, Chief Financial Officer. In addition, Ken Burdick, our Executive Chairman, is also with us. We issued the earnings release and presentation before the market opened this morning. Both are available on the Investor Relations section of our website, investor.lifesense.com. In addition, a replay of this conference call 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 SEC filings. Today's remarks contain forward-looking statements, including statements about our financial performance outlook, business model, and strategy. Those statements involve risks, uncertainties, and other factors, as noted in our periodic filings with the SEC, 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 current and past performance. A reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is included in the earnings press release tables and presentation appendix. Unless otherwise noted, All results are compared to the comparable period in the prior year. At this time, I'll turn the call over to Dave Borden, CEO of LifeGas. Dave?

Thanks, Monica, and thank you all for joining us today. I'm pleased to report a solid quarter to start the year. We exceeded each of our guided metrics and remain confident in delivering on the full-year guidance ranges that we previously provided. I'd also like to officially welcome our new Chief Financial Officer, Ryan McGroarty. He's been on board for two months and has hit the ground running. His deep financial and healthcare expertise will be invaluable as we continue to build on LifeStance's position as the leader in outpatient mental health care. I'd like to briefly address the macro environment in this time of uncertainty for the broader economy as it relates to tariffs and a potential recession. First, as a U.S.-based service business, we are not directly impacted by tariffs. Second, regarding the impact of a potential recession, we believe that our model is resilient to economic cycles. In fact, depending on what transpires, there are factors which can potentially mitigate headwinds in a challenging environment and could even be a benefit to lifestands. For example, In a period of economic uncertainty, when individuals experience greater stress and anxiety, they may benefit from mental health care, and this could result in increased demand for services. In addition, as consumers tighten up on spending, we believe the impact may be disproportionately felt by clinicians and practices that operate in a cash pay environment. Our commercially insured model provides greater stability for clinicians and greater affordability for patients, which could drive both clinician growth and patient demand for lifespans. In regard to our long-term view of the industry, we continue to expect increasing demand for mental health services as well as a migration from cash pay to utilizing insurance. LifeStance is well-positioned to benefit from both of these trends. Now turning to our quarterly results, we delivered solid performance on multiple fronts. First, double-digit adjusted EBITDA margins of 10.4% exceeded our expectations. Additionally, we achieved positive net income for the first quarter in LifeStance history as a public company, enhancing our confidence in achieving full-year positive net income in 2026. And we generated strong year-over-year improvement in free cash flow driven by stronger-than-expected earnings and the dedicated efforts of our collections team. Turning to operational execution, we continued to make progress in the first quarter towards streamlining and standardizing our operations and improving the underlying performance of the business. On the clinician front, our value proposition continues to resonate as our team grew by over 150 in the quarter to more than 7,500 clinicians. We continue to refine our value proposition to better align with clinician preferences and to create a sustainable economic model. we implemented a cash bonus incentive program for clinicians that's based on quality and productivity. This program, which became effective in May, is better aligned with the feedback from our clinicians and places greater emphasis on quality and access for our patients. In conjunction, we sunset our stock-based clinician incentive program. As for the patient experience, this is driven by the fantastic work of our clinicians who continue to demonstrate an unparalleled commitment to our patients. I'd like to briefly share an example of this. In the aftermath of the tragic wildfires in Los Angeles County, we saw increased demand for our services, and our clinicians ensured that patients were able to quickly access the compassionate, quality care for which LifeStance is known. Our LifeStance clinicians created a group therapy program for survivors of the fires and provided hybrid care to patients who had to relocate. The resilience and dedication of our LifeStance team during this crisis truly exemplifies our commitment to patients during the most challenging times in their lives. As for the operational and strategic initiatives, we made progress on several fronts. For example, we have now completed the rollout of our digital patient check-in tool, which is driving higher patient satisfaction, operational efficiencies, and significant improvements in patient collections. Additionally, we continue to advance our focus on clinical excellence. For example, we are working to increase access to additional services like TMS and Spravato for patients with treatment-resistant depression. In addition, to facilitate the comprehensive treatment of our patients, we have implemented an enhanced referral tool and process to improve access to these and other services. Finally, In 2023, we embarked on an EHR discovery process to evaluate options for enhancing our capabilities. We paused in 2024 to prioritize other initiatives like the digital patient check-in tool and are now picking the EHR initiative back up. We expect to complete our evaluation this year. In closing, Since stepping into the CEO role in March, I have been conducting listening sessions throughout the organization. One thing that has stood out in these sessions has been the immense passion and dedication the team has for our mission. Their tireless commitment, along with their incredible capabilities, make me more confident than ever that we have the right ingredients at LifeStance to continue expanding upon our existing leadership in delivering high-quality, affordable mental health services. With that, I'll turn it over to Ryan to provide additional commentary on our financial performance and outlook. Ryan.