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spk01: Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining OptimizeRx's third quarter fiscal 2022 earnings discussion. With us today is the Chief Executive Officer of OptimizeRx, Will Fevo. He is joined by Company Chief Financial and Operating Officer, Ed Stallmark, Chief Commercial Officer, Steve Silvestro, General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, Marion Odins Ford, and Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance, Andrew DaSilva. At the conclusion of today's earnings call, I will provide some important cautions regarding the forward-looking statements made by management during today's call. I would like to remind everyone that today's call is being recorded. and will be made available for replay via webcast. Instructions are included in today's press release and in the investors section of the company's website. Now with that, I'd like to turn the call over to OptimizeRx CEO, William Febo. Sir, please go ahead.
spk14: Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining our third quarter fiscal 2022 earnings call. Our third quarter results were in line with our expectations, and as a result, we are maintaining our guidance for the year. We are optimistic that the macro headwinds outlined on our last call will begin to subside in 2023 and are seeing several positive signs. For example, the bandwidth issues at the FDA, which impacted not all new drug approvals this year, appear to be improving with the majority of vacant positions having been backfilled and the FDA increasing the rate of approvals over the last two months. Furthermore, while the great resignation increased average employee turnover across the life science industry, which resulted in substantial changes with key decision makers, the rate of turnover appears to be slowing and should eventually return to normalized levels. Finally, we mentioned longer sales cycles tied to our shift toward participating in larger, more complex programs with our pharma clients. As a reminder, these AI-enabled real-world evidence deals represent multimillion-dollar per-brand opportunities and offer OPRX significant scalability. The closing of these deals naturally takes longer to complete given the increased number of stakeholders involved at the customer level. Despite these factors, we are seeing significant momentum off the mid-year trough that we believe should materially benefit the company in 2023. For example, we recently won two new real wood evidence contracts with top 20 pharma clients during the fourth quarter and have multimillion-dollar annual contract values. In addition, we renewed one of the first two RWE contracts we launched in 2021, and that client expanded its scope to an additional indication and is interested in further expanding across multiple oncology grants. We are in late-stage discussions to renew the second RWE contract from last year and also have numerous additional opportunities in our pipeline with multimillion-dollar ACVs. We are confident that we are gaining traction with this very important growth driver and believe it aligns extremely well with the digital trends across the life sciences industry. With pharma manufacturers moving a greater percentage of their commercial spend toward omni-channel digital solutions while looking for those solutions to deliver more impactful results. by not only identifying patients known to HCPs, but also pinpointing new patients for their therapies. We believe smarter solutions, such as OptimizeRx's RWE, will capture the lion's share of the pharma spend, particularly with legacy commercial dollars that are reallocated to digital. With that said, we expect we'll have at least six RWE deals running during the first half of 2023. with many more in the hopper and believe just executing on the RWE opportunity we have in front of us today would position us to grow our top line by over 20% in 2023. Meanwhile, on the product side, we continue to drive significant value creation on behalf of our customers. helping them increase the ROI seen by their commercial teams by providing unique physician and consumer platforms and strategies which help patients afford and adhere to their treatment regimens. We recently highlighted one of those implementations with a top 20 pharma customer. The analysis detailed the success of our real-world evidence solution in identifying HCPs with patients at risk of non-adherence due to an unexpected cost. Our RWE solution was a key in assisting doctors and patients navigating coverage gaps. Through the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence to real-world data, our RWE solution was able to accurately predict HTPs with at-risk patients in real time. And the results speak for themselves as the program drove more than 200% growth over the manufacturer's initial number of HCPs identified with at-risk patients, over 46,000 incremental scripts among HCPs receiving affordability information and financial resources for their patients, and more than 6 to 1 ROI on the manufacturer's investment in the program, while 27% of the HCPs identified and targeted for the affordability information program enrolled a patient for the first time. In a different case study for another top 20 manufacturer, which analyzed results over a 12-month period, we demonstrated the effectiveness of our RWE solution in identifying patients that required specialty therapy within a very narrow timeframe from diagnosis. With our proprietary technology, we are able to collect, sort, and make sense of information to directly identify providers who would likely have a patient suitable for this therapy and notify those providers of those patients in a timely and efficient way. We delivered extraordinary results for our manufacturing partner while reducing the complexity in the care delivery system for healthcare providers and their patients. Results included a 23% increase in patients commencing the therapy per healthcare provider, with 33% of the new patients from the targeted HCPs having been identified by the model. Meanwhile, we continue to strengthen our channel network and recently renewed our exclusive partnership with Nucro, which is now a subsidiary of Therapy Grants and a leading electronic prescribing service trusted by hundreds of EHRs nationwide. Nucrop offers HCPs a seamless e-prescribing experience within the EHR workflow. The expansion of this alliance showcases our leadership in contextual point-of-care HCP messaging as we consistently leverage an increasing number of touchpoints throughout the patient journey with our best-in-class platform. Finally, I would like to reiterate that we continue to be at the nexus of a significant systemic shift within the life science industry. where a substantial portion of pharma's existing commercial spend is expected to rapidly migrate to sophisticated, strong ROI solutions. And I believe our platform, technologies, and best-in-class team are poised to capture a significant market share in the coming years. That positions us for strong, profitable growth. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to our CFO and COO, Ed Selmack, who will walk us through the financial details for Q3. Ed?
spk12: Thanks, Will, and good afternoon, everyone. As with all our calls, the press release was issued with results of our third quarter and the September 30th, 2022. A copy is available for viewing and may be downloaded from the investor relations section of our website. Additional information can be obtained through our forthcoming 10Q, which will be filed in the coming days. Turning to our financial results for the third quarter of 2022, our reported revenue for the period was $15.1 million, a decrease of 6% over the $16.1 million from the same period in 2021. The decreased revenue was tied to the macro factors we'll discuss, which we continue to believe are temporary in nature. Gross margin for the quarter increased from 56.3% in the year-ago period to 62.4% in the quarter ending September 30th, 2022, due to a favorable solution and network partner mix. As we have highlighted in the previous earning calls, we have seen an increase in the percentage of activity flowing through channels with more favorable economics when compared to a year ago. Given our performance in the third quarter of 2022, we are reiterating our guidance, which calls for revenue to come in between $62 and $68 million for the year, and gross margin between 59% and 62%. Our operating expenses increased to approximately $13.2 million for the third quarter of 2022, as compared to approximately $9 million in the same year-ago period. The increase in expense is primarily due to the investment in and expansion of the OptimizeRx team to enable future growth, which also includes our April acquisition of EventsMed. Providing more cover around our year-over-year increase in APEX, nearly three-quarters of the $4.1 million total increase was tied to non-cash expenses, with the remaining amount being primarily related to the EventsMed acquisition. We expect our cash-based APEX run rate for the fourth quarter of the year to stay relatively consistent with Q3 2022. We had a gap net loss of $3.5 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2022 as compared to net income of $0.04 million during the same period in 2021. For further details, please refer to the MD&A section of our forthcoming 10Q. On a non-gap basis, the net income for the third quarter of 2022 was approximately $1.3 million or $0.07 per fully diluted share as compared to non-GAAP net income of approximately $1.6 million or $0.09 per fully diluted share in the same year-ago period. We also generated $7.9 million in cash flow from operations for the first nine months of 2022 and $3.5 million during the third quarter. Our balance sheet remains strong with cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments totaling $78.8 million as of September 30, 2022, as compared to $87.4 million as of June 30, 2022. The sequential decline in our cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments was tied to our buyback. As a reminder, we announced a $20 million share repurchase program during the second quarter, And during the third quarter, we have bought back 693,000 shares for $12.2 million at an average price of $17.66. In total, we have purchased 1.1 million shares year-to-date at an average price of $16.70 per share and have 1.5 million remaining for repurchase under the Buy Back program. This amounts to nearly 6% reduction in our shares outstanding, which now stands at 17.2 million, which we view as a positive outcome for shareholders. We believe our strong balance sheet and cash flow favorably position us to further expand our business solution offerings and drive profitable growth. We do not anticipate the need to raise additional capital in the short or long term for operating purposes, or to fund our organic growth plans. We are focused on growing our revenue and partner network. However, as a company in the market that is active with merger and acquisition activity, we may have opportunities such as for acquisitions or strategic partner relationships, which may require additional capital. We will assess these opportunities as they arise with the view of maximizing shareholder value. Now, I'd like to turn to the company's KPIs that we introduced this past February to provide transparency as well as quantifiable metrics that can be used to continue to communicate our story as our business grows and matures. Our average revenue per top 20 pharmaceutical manufacturer came in at 2.2 million at the end of the third quarter of 2022 versus 2.5 million in the year-ago period. This is largely due to the delay in the renewal of one of our initial RWE contracts that Will referenced in his prepared remarks, and the addition of one new top 20 manufacturer over the last 12 months, which is still very early in their life cycle with us. We continue to maintain a meaningful presence with 19 of the top 20 largest pharma companies, which represents the better part of the industry's commercial spend. Our third quarter of 2022 net revenue retention came in at 96%, a reduction versus the second quarter of 2022, driven by this year's slower revenue growth. Meanwhile, our operating model continues to demonstrate significant capability for leverageable growth with revenue per full-time employee at $619,000 for the third quarter of 2022. We continue to stay ahead of the technology industry PAC average of approximately 500,000 per FTE, further demonstrating the strength of our operating model. Our KPIs illustrate the state of our business in an effective and transparent fashion, and we plan on continuing to communicate them as a way of keeping our stakeholders informed and connected to the underlying trends and dynamics of our business. This wraps up the discussion of our financial results. And now I'd like to turn the call back over to Will. Will? Thank you, Ed.
spk14: Operator, now let's move to Q&A.
spk01: If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad now. You'll be placed into the queue in the order received. Please be prepared to ask your question when prompted. Once again, if you have a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad now. And our first question comes from Ryan Daniels. Your line is open.
spk09: Yeah. Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. This is Jared Hasson for Ryan. The first one from us, just curious if you could talk a little bit just how things are going with your channel partners. And I think you mentioned a little bit of this during the prepared remarks and potentially seeing that as kind of a driver of gross margin favorability. So just would love to hear Any updates there as it relates to some of the recent wins and then what that means for your overall opportunity and how we should think about that impact in the income statement?
spk14: Yeah. Hey, thanks. Good question. Yeah, channel is a big piece of our business. Obviously, we've done a lot of work on this over the years. And, you know, I think one of the things I always like to hear from our partners is we're an innovative partner with them. You know, we're not just commercial partner and I think if you put the two together you've got real staying power because we all know there's lots of friction and fragmentation in this market for our clients for doctors and patients so very focused really starting two years ago we're looking at the specialty therapeutic areas because the marketing spend is clearly shifting that way done a great job reaching the major pockets and We also realize that as pharma is looking for partners that are both technology and strategy, we also are looking outside the EHR and looking at what we're calling omni-channel. And you've seen recent announcements where we're reaching physicians within various touch points. And our end goal over the next few years is to be able to get the right information to physicians to help patients anywhere they are digitally. And that will positively impact the business. It'll help us grab more budget dollars. And we'll certainly continue to drive improvement in gross margin. In the short term, the mix has really been a combination of new partnerships as well as solution mix. And that's given a great result. But we've got a very solid team on this and directly correlated to our clients' needs. and just continually focused on innovating with the partners.
spk09: Okay, great. That's helpful color. And then I guess just a quick follow-up. I'm curious how you're thinking about sort of the visibility into the rest of the year. Obviously, maintain the guidance range. And so if I look at the midpoint of the guidance, it implies a a pretty decent sequential growth rate for fourth quarter. So just curious if you could talk about kind of your confidence in the remainder of the year and specifically what you're seeing in regards to, you know, the typical seasonality around Q4 buy-ups.
spk03: Yeah, Ed, do you want to take that? Yeah, sure. Hey, Jared, great question.
spk12: So I would say if you look at the full year guidance we gave, we're probably at about 95% confidence level of achieving the midpoint at this point. So we're not going to comment particularly on Q4, but as you know, Q4 does typically have a seasonal ramp up as compared to the previous quarters.
spk11: So this is pretty normal for our business. So roughly speaking, 95% confidence at this point.
spk14: We have seen, I'll just put a little more qualitative color on that, is the conversations are terrific. I think our differentiator inside of Q4, which sets us up really nice for 23, is this you know, RWE solution because it's something that has proven itself in terms of measurement in finding additional HTPs in patients. And so we had that. It was really early last year, and we hadn't measured it. So having that in the mix we're seeing is a great differentiator as we're, you know, finishing the quarter but also building up for 23.
spk03: Awesome. That's great to hear. I will go ahead and leave it there and hop back in the queue. Thanks. Thanks.
spk01: And our next question comes from Sean Dodge. Your line is open.
spk02: Yep, thanks, John. Good afternoon. Will, on the RWE offerings, you mentioned two deals signed already in Q4. It sounds like there's another two likely here in the near term. When we think about contribution from those, the original two you mentioned renewing now are They were very large dollar amounts. Are these incremental four similarly sized? Are they smaller, bigger? I guess just any help you can kind of provide there as we think about sizing those and contributions to 2023.
spk14: Yeah, sure. Yeah, there was. I think we said they're all multimillion dollar, and we view those in six-month increments. So, you know, multimillion times two. And the really encouraging thing there is the measurement came out really strong on both of the ones we won last year. Obviously, the headwinds got in our way a little bit this year on just keeping one of those flowing through the second half of the year, which obviously we're seeing in the revenue. But the good news is that kicks right back up in January. And they're all up in terms of size of revenues. And the new ones, while they're not quite as big as those others, they're still very significant. And when you put the two together, it certainly helps gross margin, given the architectural fees and such that are part of that solution. So not giving you a specific range, but they're all significant. And what really is helpful in our shift as a business away from completely tactical, which obviously gives you less sight, long-term site of revenue is it's just stickier and programmatic and it's really at a much higher level within the client base and so you put all that together and it's going to help us continually get more mature as as ed likes to say as a business when we're getting predictability revenue but also inside the relationship of the client it's really it's it's taken us up many notches
spk02: Okay. All right. That's great to hear. And then, um, you previously mentioned, uh, non scalable competition entering the market and slowing the sales process or those processes, any updated views you can share, you know, on, on that dynamic, how the industry is working through it.
spk14: Yeah. Let me, let me toss that over to Steve. He's in the front line there and then I can build in after.
spk16: Yeah. Thanks. Well, Hey Sean, thanks for the question. Yeah, I mean, really in the second half of the year we've seen, of last year, beginning of this year, we've seen several smaller kind of adjacent competitors coming in with small pieces of networks, really limited reach, but over-promising. What's encouraging is that we are now in the second half of this year, all of those impact analyses are coming due. And so we are seeing an influx of clients basically coming back saying, hey, we ran a program with fill in the blank. It did not deliver what we anticipated or what they promised us. We'd like to flip it back to you guys or flip it over to you guys and continue the program. So more activity around that, but basically all of those smaller, over-promising, under-delivering competitors that have claimed to have network access are now being somewhat outed in the market, which I think is good for us because we've got a really strong bedrock-based network with a decent moat around it, as you know. And we just continue to deliver, as Will has stated, and you heard him just say it again, really solid return on investment for our clients. And so feeling really confident in that in terms of competitive landscape.
spk03: Okay. That's encouraging to hear. Thanks again, and congrats on the good progress this quarter.
spk06: Thanks, Joe.
spk03: Thank you.
spk01: Our next question comes from David Grossman. Your line is open.
spk15: Thank you. Good afternoon. I wonder if I could just follow up on some of your comments about the RWE activity. It sounds like you expect to have six contracts in place in the beginning of next year, and that gives you confidence that you could – I want to make sure I understood your comments right. Does that mean that you – feel confident with that activity alone, you can grow 20%. And if I'm understanding that right, if you could maybe talk about just the mechanics and cadence of how those contracts work, because I know there's a front end, you know, kind of implementation phase, and then it goes into the, you know, kind of the more automated mode of, you know, kind of ARR type of revenue rack. So just if you could clarify those things, that'd be great.
spk14: Yeah. Hey, David. For sure. So, um, Our business, even next year, will still have a healthy degree of tactical and media purchasing. So it does not imply that that alone will drive growth. But the tactical part, we have a pretty good handle on. And again, we have a closed network, which no one else has. And it's proprietary, and the band's a really strong CPM group. And I will say we've taken the second half of this year to really reinvigorate our focus on the agencies as clients. They've been terrific partners, and while we certainly focus on the MSAs with Big Pharma, which we have, Pharma uses agencies, right? So there's a clear connection between the two. We view them all as clients, and we think that will secure and grow the tactical part And then the RWE on top of that is it's beefier, it's more consistent. And again, it's at a higher level than the organization. So it's just more predictable and the contracts are pretty solid. So we're still, we're still building, still developing there. It's not, you know, it's not mostly that yet, but just having it gives us a lot of confidence that, we'll get back to the growth that people expect from us and, frankly, that the white space in the market allows, as well as these headwinds getting out of our way.
spk15: And just in terms of cadence, Will, how do we think about that? You know, if you've got these new contracts we're out ramping, and many of them are new, that front-end piece, you know, does that skew revenue at all to, you know, the first half versus the second half or vice versa? Just how should we think about just the mechanics of the rev rec on those new deals that'll be ramping next year? Cause it sounds like you have several that you expect to be ramping in the first half of the year.
spk14: Yeah. So we expect some of the setup and architecture to actually be done in Q4. That's a positive. And to get the, and then the remaining in the, in the first quarter and, and then the distribution of those messages throughout the first half. So it's going to give us much better visibility on the first half with a type of revenue that just builds more confidence. And so when we report Q4, we'll be able to get into a little bit more specifics on that. David, at this stage, it's still relatively early in the quarter, in a quarter where every day is pretty active. So we can get more specific about that cadence on the next call.
spk15: And just one last one, just on the retention. So it sounds like in your prepared remarks that that's being negatively impacted by the renewal of that RWE. Is there a natural point in which we kind of, have we hit bottom for retention, do you think? Or is there a retention bottom in the fourth quarter and then start building from there, assuming a somewhat stable kind of macro environment, if you will?
spk14: Yeah, Ed, do you want to take that one?
spk12: Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, David, great question. I would say we're probably getting close to the bottom. I think the biggest variable here is, you know, how quick the recovery will come. Obviously, we've got four quarters looking back right now captured in that number, and that's really driving that number to where you're seeing now.
spk11: So my hope is, you know, if our projections come true, we should start to see that number recover sometime next year.
spk14: Yeah, thanks. I would just add to that, David, that I think we are going to see follow-on effect from the client base. I think this approach is going to really be differentiated, and the more and more we have conversations, you know, we mentioned two new clients getting in on this, pipeline's very healthy. So, yeah, but to your specific question, yeah, the bottom's up from here.
spk03: All right, great. Thanks again.
spk01: And our next question comes from Joy Zhang. Your line is open.
spk00: Hey, guys. Congrats on the quarter, and thanks for taking my question. My first question is a follow-up on Will's earlier comment about agency plans. Can you just talk to where you are right now with Directed Pharma versus working with agencies and also how that should evolve over time?
spk14: Sure. You might want to hit mute because I can hear you're on the floor. All our business is with pharma, 100% of it. Just so the investors are clear, you need MSAs to do that, but pharma relies heavily on agencies in three ways, media, content, and strategy. We have relationships with over 50 agencies. because ultimately once a client's decided to work with us, we then work directly with the agencies to make it all work, to make sure the content is compliant and works. The strategy when it comes to things like RWE and other areas of challenge for our clients, and then obviously media spend, which is more tactical and also plays really nicely into our omni-channel approach now. So They are a part of the universe and an essential almost like advisor to pharma. We don't really break out what percentage of revenue is from where because it could be as simple as they're just paying the bill. But ultimately, our sales force is directly focused on the clients and then working with those agencies that facilitate that relationship.
spk00: That's super helpful. Cool. And as a follow-up, any chance we can give a percentage of revenue for the RWE business? And maybe remind us on how the contract economics are structured. Specifically, you mentioned, you know, are happening in 4Q. So does that mean you can potentially benefit from buy-ups in 4Q specific in the RWE business or not?
spk14: Just taking the last one first, not really talking to buy-ups. We think it's just a little too early to get into that. However, it is a good time to get those newer clients set up for 23. So we will see some of that set up economics. We don't break out the percentage, but just as a range, they can be anywhere from half a million to a million five. In terms of the setup, we generally get that done over a three-month period of time. And then it moves to just distributions, which is like most of our business, but at a higher CPM. And then relative to the RWE pipeline, we don't break it out. We don't really talk about pipeline anymore. But I think we're leaning on it pretty heavy to make sure the message is out there that that will be a growth driver on top of the tactical work. Steve, you want to add anything to that?
spk16: No, I think you covered it. I mean, I think all your comments have covered it well. It will be more predictive revenue, you know, less transactional, and, you know, Q4 will reflect some of that.
spk03: So I think you covered it. Okay. Great. Thanks very much. Very helpful. Thank you.
spk01: And as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad now. And our next question comes from Eric Martinuzzi. Your line is open.
spk03: Yeah, I wanted to ask about the guidance for Q4.
spk07: It looks like a pretty wide range, 19 million to 25 million roughly, and just specifically curious to know you talked about 95 kind of kind of there already um is it is it just buy-ups that is causing the the wide band or is there uh is it rwe setups what's what's behind that wide band well i think hey eric how you doing it's will um we we feel that you know the headwinds we
spk14: expressed in Q2, Q3, we obviously were saying they're subsiding, but they're still around. So we don't want to get ahead of it. We'd rather be conservative on the approach towards the end of the year. And I think that range is smart for our size company. You know, it's really about managing expectations. And so we feel really good that we'll be able to do that range. As Ed said, we have 90% view today. and it's, you know, very early in November. So I think that should give people confidence that we should be able to do that and, you know, fully focused on it as a team.
spk08: If we hit the high end of it, it would be because of fill in the blank.
spk14: Yeah, it would be decisions by the clients moving a little faster, buy-ups coming in that we don't know about yet, that kind of thing.
spk07: Okay. And then you talked about the, you know, one of the bigger issues back 90 days ago on the reset for the year was the flow new drug approvals, as well as increased turnover rates at client companies. You talked about an increased rate of approvals over the past two months. What exactly do you mean by increased rate of approvals?
spk14: You're just seeing the FDA be more active and approving specialty medications. If you just look at the logs, you'll see that clearly they've staffed back and the backlog is getting worked through. And that's good for us, right? Let's just remind everyone that that means that those brands, which are probably in areas that we're focused in, will... get approved and have to go to market, and therefore we will kick into gear helping those clients. So it's all connected.
spk07: Yeah, what's the lag there? I mean, drug gets approved, then how many months before the spin fires off?
spk03: Once it's approved, they're building awareness immediately. Got it. Okay, thanks for taking my questions. Thanks, Eric.
spk01: And our last question comes from Mark Wiesenberger. Your line is open.
spk13: Thank you. Revenue from customers outside of the pharma's top 20 was the best level, it looks like, in at least the last seven quarters. Could you highlight some of the dynamics impacting some of your smaller customers relative to the larger pharma customers?
spk03: Anne, do you want to take that one?
spk10: Yeah, absolutely. So I think really what you're seeing is just a factor of the cadence that Will highlighted on the prepared remarks. So basically, one of our larger customers with the RWE renewal resulted in just the numbers kind of looking a little weird in the third quarter. So effectively, because they weren't there, from a percentage of revenue standpoint, makes some of the smaller customers seem higher. Um, and so that, that's really what's supporting that being a bigger percentage of the overall business.
spk03: Okay.
spk14: And then that's why we feel that's the, that's the, that's the, that's why we feel like it's the bottom, you know, and once those kick in, it should bring back, come back nicely.
spk13: Sure. Understood. And then you mentioned, um, smart digital technologies taking a lion's share of commercial dollars that had transitioned from legacy to digital solutions. I'm wondering if you could elaborate a little more on that.
spk14: Well, if you just think of the dollars that are out there for sales reps, conferences, speaking bureaus, all that good stuff, you know, pharma obviously pulled back through the pandemic. There's a lot. They still have reps. The size is smaller. There's enough out there to see that that is a shrinking community. But the needs are greater in terms of communication with doctors and patients on the pharma side. And frankly, things are more complex and more expensive. And so this is where we think this education of the market, this awareness that this resource is fully available for them and compliant and measurable, is starting to be seen. You know, we saw a little bit of noise with everyone rushing in to grab digital dollars. That really confused the market, and I think it's lifting now based on what Steve said around measurement and, you know, you've got to actually support what you said, and that's getting harder for smaller companies, whereas ROI year over year just goes up given the, you know, solutions that we have around helping patients start and stay on therapy. So, I think you're going to see that continue and the dollars are going to be efficiently spent and the ROI is going to be strong enough that I think the CAGR of spend will continue to be really attractive in this space, despite the economy and sort of some macro headwinds.
spk13: Got it. And then just a final one for me. In the release, you talked about the RWE could drive 20% growth next year. If you could parse that a little bit in terms, is that just kind of upsells to existing brands? Is that winning new brands? What type of conversion rate would that equate to? And then kind of how do you think about the growth rate in other parts of the business relative to you previously had talked about kind of 30% growth was achievable kind of at the end of last year, early this year. How would that all factor into potentially getting you back to those levels? Thank you.
spk14: Yeah, sure, Mark. Well, there's a lot of pieces to that question, but I think ultimately, as we said, tactical, we feel like we've set the wheels in motion to grab that business and grow it. RWE is going to be a very large growth compared to last year. And you put those two together and you're just more relevant to your clients, which means you will capture more shares because the budgets are all bigger on the digital side. So We feel like we've got all those lined up. We've got the team to execute, the network to reach, and the tech to be secure and compliant. So, yeah, we haven't given any clear direction on 23. We just referenced that we feel like we've got the pieces to get us back to that 20% growth.
spk01: And we have no further questions in queue at this time.
spk14: Thanks, operator. Once again, thank you, everyone, for joining us on our update call this afternoon. We continue to work through the opportunities before us with the expectation that more projects will come online in the coming quarters. We are maintaining our focus on product execution to continue to deliver superior ROIs on behalf of our customers, which has and will continue to pay dividends as we execute against the opportunity within the vast white space that we continue to sell into. Our core strategic comparatives and operating strategies have not changed, and we will expand upon our innovative solution set, which address the needs of our customers while improving care for HCPs and patients. We are fully confident in our best-in-class platform offerings, while our growing point-of-care network remains unrivaled, creating a significant competitive moat around our business. As a result, our domain expertise in bridging the digital communication gap in healthcare in order to improve medication awareness, access, adherence, and affordability remain unsurpassed. Finally, we built a business that is capable of thriving across various economic backdrops. We generate positive free cash flow and have a sizable war chest that positions us to be highly opportunistic on the strategic front. Meanwhile, large pharma, our largest customer base, did very well throughout the pandemic, and their balance sheets remain extremely healthy, and they're continuing to move more and more spend to digital solutions. So, outside the three factors that I highlighted earlier, we should be more insulated from broader macro factors than most industries, particularly as the FDA and pharma workforce turnover issues work themselves out. We want to lastly thank our employees, shareholders, customers, and partners alike as we continue to build out our solution on one unified omnichannel platform. We look forward to the next update call and fully expect to see positive momentum carry us into fiscal 2023. All the best.
spk01: Thank you, sir. Before we conclude today's call, I would like to provide the company's safe harbor statement that includes important cautions regarding forward-looking statements made during today's call. Statements made by management during today's call may contain forward-looking statements within the definition of Section 27A and the Securities Act of 1933 as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Act of 1934 as amended. These forward-looking statements should not be used to make investment decisions. The words anticipate, estimate, expect, possible, and seeking, and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. They may speak only to the date that such statements are made. Such forward-looking statements in this call include statements regarding estimation of total addressable market size, market penetration, revenue growth, gross margin, operating expenses, profitability, cash flow, technology, investments, growth opportunity, acquisitions, upcoming announcements and the need for raising additional capital. They also include the management's expectation for the rest of the year and adoption of the company's digital health platform. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events, or otherwise. Forward-looking statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties, some of which cannot be predicted or quantified. Future events and actual results could differ materially from those set forth in, contemplated by, or underlying these forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties to which forward-looking statements are subject to include but are not limited to The effects of government regulation, competition, and other material risks, risks, and uncertainties to which forward looking statements are subject to could affect business and financial results are included in the company's annual report on the form 10 K for the quarter ended December 31st, 2021. This form is available on the company's website and on the SEC website at sec.gov. Before we end today's conference, I would like to remind everyone that this call will be available for replay via webcast, only starting later this evening, running through for a year. please refer to today's press release for replay instructions available via the company's website at www.optimizerx.com. Thank you for joining us today. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect your lines.
spk03: The host has ended this call Goodbye
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