Paysign, Inc.

Good afternoon, my name is Kevin and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to PaySign, Inc.'s second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to be placed into question queue, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. The comments on today's call regarding PaySign's financial results will be on a gap basis unless otherwise noted. PaySign's earnings release was disseminated to the SEC earlier today and can be found on the investor relations section of our website, PaySign.com, which includes reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to GAAP reported amounts. Additionally, as set forth in more detail in our earnings release, I'd like to remind everyone that today's call will include forward-looking statements regarding PaySign's future performance. Actual performance could differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Information about the factors that could affect future performance is summarized at the end of Paysign's earnings release and in our recent SEC filings. Lastly, a replay of the call will be available until November 4, 2026. Please see Paysign's second quarter 2026 earnings call announcement for details on how to access the replay. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Mr. Mark Newcomer, President and CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Kevin, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for Paysign's second quarter 2026 earnings call. I'm Mark Newcomer, President and Chief Executive Officer, and I'm joined today by Jeff Baker, our Chief Financial Officer. Also with us are Matt Turner, our President of Patient Affordability, and Matt Lanford, our Chief Payments Officer, both of whom will be available for Q&A following our prepared remarks. Earlier today, we reported second quarter results setting new records for revenue, net income, and adjusted EBITDA. In fact, it was our second consecutive quarter of exceeding our quarterly guidance. As a result, we're raising our outlook for the full year today. The momentum we're seeing reflects the strategic decision we made a few years ago to invest in patient affordability as a business that could complement plasma and augment our overall growth trajectory. and this quarter is a good example of that work continuing to pay off. To put the quarter in perspective, revenue grew 48% year-over-year to $28.3 million. Net income came in at $6.8 million, or 11 cents per fully diluted share, a near five-fold increase year-over-year. Gross margin expanded 170 basis points to 63.3%. Jeff will walk you through all the financial results from the quarter, but these numbers clearly demonstrate the progress we are making in the business. Patient affordability delivered another exceptional quarter and remains the company's principal growth engine. Revenue rose 89% year-over-year to $14.6 million, and claim volume was approximately 54% higher than the second quarter of last year. Those results reflect the compounding effect of new program wins, deeper utilization across the existing clients, and the continued expansion of our largest pharmaceutical partnerships. We are scaling the business methodically, and the combination of strong growth margin expansion and positive contribution margin demonstrates that strategy is working. What's also encouraging is that plasma is now contributing to that same story. Both lines of business expanded margin this quarter. Patient affordability compounding as it matures and plasma moving past the headwinds that weighed on it for the better part of the last year and a half. That's the balance we've been working toward, a steady cash generative course supporting a faster growing high margin platform. Through the first half of 2026, the platform has channeled more than $900 million in financial assistance to patients. For context, we provided close to $1 billion over the whole of 2025, and we have already come within reach of that full-year figure in just six months. The PACE reflects both widening program base and increased utilization within programs that have now been live for a year or more, and it shows how central PACE-Hein has become to keeping high-cost therapies within patients' reach. Our dynamic business rules technology is a meaningful part of why pharmaceutical partners are consolidating more of their business with us. Over the first half of the year, it shielded clients from more than $300 million in costs that copay maximizers and accumulator programs would otherwise have diverted. To frame that, the full year 2025 total was roughly $325 million, so we have nearly matched an entire year of savings in six months. That reflects both the scale of the platform and the continued sharpening of our detection logic. We launched 13 new programs in the second quarter and exited the quarter with 148 active programs, up from 97 a year ago, in line with our expectations and demonstrating consistent and rapid growth. Launch activity tends to build as the year progresses, and the second quarter was a clear step up from the insurance plan year transitions and resets that make the first quarter our most constrained. The pipeline remains healthy through the balance of 2026 and well into 2027, and we expect to match or surpass the 55 net additions we recorded in 2025. Between the rising program count, growing utilization, and assistance dollars deployed, the read is consistent. The platform scales cleanly, and market demand for our patient affordability solutions continues to strengthen. Turning to our plasma donor compensation business, plasma contributed $13 million in revenue for the quarter, up 21.4% from $10.7 million a year ago. More telling was monthly revenue per center, which reached $7,699, the strongest reading since the third quarter of 2024. That measure reinforces our view that the recent center closures were strategic, with donors moving to nearby centers inside the same network rather than leaving the system altogether. We finished the quarter providing services to 561 centers, reflecting the 19 center closures that we flagged on last quarter's call, partially offset by seven new additions. The trend leaves us increasingly confident that the headwinds we faced are now largely behind us. Plasma also remains a dependable source of cash generation, and it gives us a natural entry point to broaden adoption of our donor management and engagement software among the collectors we serve. Our life sciences technology suite, which we bring to market under the Aetherion brand, continues to advance through the regulatory review process for our blood establishment computer software, or BACS, donor management system. And we look forward to sharing additional milestones as that work progresses. Interest in the Aetherion platform remains strong both domestically and internationally. To support that international demand, we've established DeFarian Technologies Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary domiciled in Ireland, which will anchor our sales, development, and client support as our European hub. With roughly a third of source plasma collected outside of the United States, much of it by companies that also run U.S. operations, we see substantial international runway for this business, and this step positions us to pursue it. In summary, the second quarter validated the strategy we have been building towards the past several years. Patient affordability is scaling, plasma is steady and cash generative, and our life science technology efforts are opening another meaningful avenue for growth. We head into the back half of the year with business accelerating, margins expanding, and a pipeline that reaches into 2027. This is a business that's ramping, not just beating a number, and we believe PaySign is well-positioned to continue delivering sustainable growth and long-term value for our shareholders, the clients who trust us, and the patients who ultimately benefit from what we build. With that, I'll turn it over to Jeff for additional details on our second quarter results. Thank you, Mark.

Good afternoon, everyone. We delivered another strong quarter. Results in both plasma and patient affordability show the momentum we have been building. We also drove year-over-year margin improvement across the entire income statement, even excluding a one-time non-cash benefit of $990,000 related to the carrying value of the gamma acquisition earn-out liability. Our first two quarters of 2026 make two things clear. Our patient affordability solutions are resonating with pharmaceutical companies, and our plasma business has recovered from the high inventory levels that weighed on results throughout 2025. For the second quarter, total revenues increased 48.1% year-over-year to $28.3 million. Pharma revenue led the way, increasing 88.9% year-over-year to $14.6 million. That growth was driven by continued program expansion, including 51 net pharma patient affordability programs launched over the last 12 months. We exited the quarter with 148 active programs and process claims increased approximately 54% compared to the second quarter of 2025. The revenue increase reflected higher monthly management fees, setup fees, claim processing fees, customer service contact center support, and other billable services such as dynamic business rules. Pharma revenue again surpassed plasma revenue this year, even with the normal seasonal pattern in which claims begin to decline and plasma donations tend to increase as we move through the year. Plasma revenue increased 21.4% year-over-year to $13 million. Average monthly revenue per center increased more than 5% to $7,699, up from $7,098 in the second quarter of 2025. And the average number of loads per center again increased year-over-year. The improvement was driven primarily by stronger utilization at existing centers rather than footprint expansion, which is an encouraging indicator of underlying donor activity. As Mark noted, we exited the quarter with 561 centers in line with the expectations we communicated on our first quarter earnings call. These trends support our view that the 2025 inventory overhang has largely normalized. Gross profit margin expanded to 63.3% from 61.6% a year ago, reflecting a greater mix of pharma revenue, which carries higher gross margins than our plasma business. Call center support, implementation, processing, and commission costs in the aggregate grew well below our 48.1% revenue growth, which is what produced the margin expansion and demonstrates the operating leverage inherent in our model. Total operating expenses were $10.9 million, an increase of 5.5% from $10.3 million in the second quarter of 2025. During the quarter, we recorded a non-recurring, non-cash benefit of $990,000 related to the carrying value of the gamma acquisition earn-out liability. Excluding this benefit, total operating expenses would have been $11.9 million, an increase of 15.1% over the prior year and well below our 48.1% revenue growth. Selling general and administrative expenses increased 4.3% to $8.5 million, including stock-based compensation of $1.3 million. Excluding the one-time benefit, selling general and administrative expenses would have increased 16.3% to $9.5 million. Operating leverage was one of the highlights of the quarter. Excluding the one-time gamma earn-out benefit, adjusted operating margin calculated as adjusted operating income divided by revenue expanded to 21.3% from 7.5% in the second quarter of 2025, an improvement of more than 1,300 basis points. Put another way, we converted roughly half of our incremental revenue into adjusted operating income, demonstrating the scalability of the platform as pharma mix increases and plasma normalizes. Depreciation and amortization increased $200,000 due primarily to the amortization of intangible assets from our gamma acquisition and the capitalization of new software development costs. Here are a few other important details for the second quarter. Income before taxes increased to $7.9 million from $2 million in the second quarter of 2025. The company reported an income tax provision of $1.1 million, resulting in an effective tax rate of 14.5% compared to 32.1% in the second quarter of 2025. The lower rate reflects discrete item adjustments primarily related to the increase in our stock price at June 30, 2026 compared to the same period last year, which increased the tax benefit from stock-based compensation relative to the prior year period. Gap net income for the quarter totaled $6.8 million or $0.11 per fully diluted share and increased from $1.4 million or $0.02 per fully diluted share in the second quarter of 2025. Adjusted EBITDA increased 113% to $9.6 million or $0.16 per fully diluted share compared to $4.5 million or $0.08 per fully diluted share in the second quarter of 2025. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded to 34% from 23.7% a year ago. We use adjusted EBITDA, which excludes stock-based compensation and one-time non-cash adjustments to evaluate core operating performance. The fully diluted share count used in calculating per share amounts was 62 million shares versus 57.9 million shares in the prior year period. We exited the quarter with $27.4 million in unrestricted cash and zero bank debt. Restricted cash increased $5.2 million from the year end December 31, 2025 to $149 million. The increase was driven primarily by customer program deposits for plasma and pharma programs, as well as higher funds on card, which represents balances loaded to cards but not yet spent by cardholders. Before turning to our outlook, I want to note that our second quarter results once again exceeded our guidance across every line of the income statement, primarily driven by strength in our patient affordability business. Revenue of $28.3 million exceeded the high end of our $26.2 million to $26.7 million guidance range. Gross margin of 63.3%, finished above our guided range of 60 to 62%. Adjusted EBITDA of $9.6 million exceeded the high end of our $7.7 million to $8.5 million range, and adjusted net margin of 20.4% exceeded the top of our 13.4% to 15% range. The outperformance in the first two quarters of the year, combined with the visibility we have in program launches and seasonal trends, supports our increased full-year outlook. For full-year 2026, we now expect full-year revenue of $114 million to $117 million, representing 39% to 43% year-over-year growth. Thank you for watching. With the increase in patient affordability revenues driving continued margin expansion and operating leverage, we expect gross profit margins between 62% and 63%, an increase compared to our prior guidance of 60 to 62%. GAAP net income is expected to be in the range of $21.5 million to $23 million, or $0.35 to $0.37 per diluted share. And adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in the range of $35 million to $38 million, or $0.57 to $0.61 per diluted share. These full-year net income expectations include the non-recurring non-cash gamma earn-out benefit recorded at the second quarter. Consistent with our adjusted presentation, adjusted EBITDA excludes that benefit. For the third quarter, we expect revenue of $28.5 million to $30 million, a year-over-year increase of 32% to 38.9%, with approximately $300,000 coming from other revenue and the remaining balance being split between the patient affordability and plasma businesses. Gross margins are expected to be in the range of 61% to 63%, reflecting a greater mix of plasma revenues. Our tax rate for the quarter is expected to be 17%, and our gap net income is expected to be $5.7 million to $6.0 million, or $0.09 to $0.10 per fully diluted share. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be $9.5 million to $10 million or $0.15 to $0.16 per fully diluted share. As of today's announcement, we have 157 active patient affordability programs and expect to exit the third quarter with 165 to 170 active programs. We also expect our active plasma center count to slightly increase from the second quarter. As a reminder, pharma revenue is typically highest in the first half as claims peak with annual insurance deductible resets and then moderate throughout the balance of the year. Plasma revenue, by contrast, is typically softest in the first quarter and builds as donor activity normalizes following tax refund season. Both dynamics are fully reflected in our full year guidance. In short, we are entering the second half of 2026 with stronger program momentum, improved plasma utilization, higher margins, and a clean balance sheet. Those factors support both our revised guidance and our confidence in the long-term earnings power of the platform. That concludes my prepared remarks. With that, I would like to turn the call back over to the operator to begin the question and answer session.

Thank you, and I'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to be placed into question queue, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question today is coming from Gary Prestapino from Barrington Research, your line is now live.

Good afternoon, all. At this point, Mark, have you contemplated or even really measure, you know, on a same store basis, what the revenue growth per program is, you know, for programs that you've had in hand for 12 months or so?

Yeah, can you, hey, this is Matt. Can you repeat that? Are you talking plasma or are you talking patient affordability?

Patient affordability, please.

So you're asking like month over month what it looks like when it normalizes?

No, no, just to get an idea of if you have a program, you know, the programs that you have 12, you know, in hand 12 months, what's been kind of, if you look at it like it's on a same store basis? What's been the, for lack of a better word, organic growth within a program or within your program?

Yeah, so Gary, so for the most part, all things being equal on a year-over-year basis, once it becomes a mature program, you would expect, you know, flattish revenue growth. However, we've been adding in more feature functionality into a program. A program may get an additional and many more. Education. There are a number of factors that we'll go into. I mean, we have some programs that we're turning on other services for that we're now billing for. So, you know, it's kind of hard to tell you. If we did nothing, if we did absolutely nothing, you would expect, you know, if there were X number of claims one year, there would be the same number of claims next year. But we're actually seeing growth in some of our existing programs because we're adding more products and services for those programs. We've got a couple of programs that are getting more indications, meaning there's other uses for the drug, and so that expands their opportunity. So that's what we're seeing right now.

Okay. So just the bulk of the growth is going to continue to come from adding new programs, and that's what I was –

Absolutely.

So I think at one time or another, Jeff, we talked and you said there's between 850 and 900 potential pharmaceutical programs. Is that still a good number?

Yeah, it's way higher. I mean, I think there's 850 drugs that currently have like maximizer and accumulator impact. But if you look at the total number of drugs in market with a copay program, you're in the tens of thousands. Pretty much every branded product as well as most biosimilars. And then you get into some medical devices as well, and you get into physician administered or infused products. There's still a tremendous TAM here for us to tap into. We're going back to analogies from from a couple quarters ago. You know, we're still in the first inning here.

Okay, that's great. And then just lastly, I know you mentioned something about the Ethereum program needing approval, but could you just go into that a little bit more, what you're waiting for here before you can launch it into the market?

Yeah. I mean, really, the regulatory process is something we're in the process of going through. I don't have a crystal ball, so anytime you're in that review process, it kind of is what it is, and you just kind of roll with it. I can't really give a date for that at this point in time, but you've got to figure that we're going to continue. We're getting lots of interest internationally and domestically, and I expect that to continue. We'll definitely give you additional feedback as it comes down the pipe on milestones met on that.

And it's the FDA that you're waiting for the regulatory approval from, right? Correct. Okay. So then just lastly, the TAM there is pretty big, probably over a billion dollars worldwide.

So the TAM for software, for blood and plasma software alone, Globally, today, it's $3.5 billion, and the estimates from third-party research that we looked at think that that's going to $7 billion over the next 10 years.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, that's great. Thanks.

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Jacob Stephon from Lake Street Capital Market. Your line is now live.

Hey guys, appreciate you taking the questions. Congrats on a really nice quarter here. Maybe just on the Q3 program guide, Q3 implies roughly 20 new additions in the quarter. That's pretty strong seasonally, just given Q3 is usually a lower quarter. But when you kind of factor in that Q4 is typically stronger and correlating that with your over 55 guidance, I guess, you know, what are you seeing differently in Q3 that gives you the kind of the strong sequential number of additions there?

So, you know, I want to push back on something that Q3 is normally not a slow quarter for us. Typically, Q1 is our weakest quarter for new program launches because of insurance resetting. So I think if you look at this quarter, we only are the first quarter of this year, we only launched a couple of programs. and that's really what we expect. You know, as you get into the end of Q1 and move into Q2, we have this conference that we talk about every year and that starts to set the stage for the back half of this year and the first half of next year. So, you know, what we're seeing come into Q3 now is representative of sales work that was begun in Q1 where we then launched Lull. as well as things that are popping out, you know, that we kind of closed up at Assembia and were able to get through. You know, on the non-portfolio accounts, right, so, you know, take the giant, you know, top 10 pharmas off the table for a second. For the smaller pharmas, our sell cycle is still holding around 90 days. So, you know, as we were planning this stuff in Q2, that That obviously, you know, you kind of take a framework and it starts to look towards, you know, Q3, you know, and Jeff already said, you know, we're sitting here on August 5th and, you know, we've already done plenty of launches in the last, you know, the last 30 days. So, yeah, I don't think there's anything necessarily a driver other than this is just the normal timing that we expect to see these types of deals come through. And Q4 always tends to be on par with Q3 because we've got a lot of people that will rush to get programs up and live before Q1 when insurance deductibles and everything else reset. And we enter what we call the blizzard, just to where every patient's calling about everything, every pharmacy's calling about everything because they're dealing with insurance deductibles resetting everything else. So that's really the push of Q3 and Q4 is get everything done before Q1 because nobody wants to transition a program in Q1. And typically what you'll see launch-wise in Q1 and sometimes as much Q2 is new programs that are, you know, this is a new-to-market drug, you know, as opposed to you won't really see us transitioning very many programs in January, February just due to, you know, and other resource constraints across the broader industry.

And Jacob, like I said, we sit here today. We exited July with 157 programs, so added another nine since the end of the quarter. Look, last year we added 28 programs in the fourth quarter. You know, the pipeline is extremely strong. We feel good about where we're headed and the number of programs. You know, I added 13 programs The second quarter was very solid as well, but if you look at our guidance, the pipeline is strong and the implementations keep coming. There's no slowdown.

Got it. Appreciate all the detail there. Maybe just one more, kind of a building off of the last analyst question, but, you know, how does, I guess, one year, I guess, first year revenue per program kind of compare with your more seasoned base? And do you guys typically, you know, do you land with DBR or is that kind of an add-on product that gets upsold later?

So we try to launch with DBR. That's our normal go-to. But that's obviously for specialty products that are impacted by maximizers. It's not to say that every product that we have is impacted by maximizers. So it's a little bit of a mix. I think it's very difficult to answer your other question around what does a program look like. And I pulled up some quick metrics looking at a program that we transitioned back in July of 24 And if you were to look at January of 25 versus January of 26, there was about a 15% increase in claims. That has nothing to do with pay sign. That has to do with the fact that that drug received a pediatric indication in Q4 of 25. So going into Q1 of 26, their claim volume is naturally higher. You know, on the reverse side of that is I have another drug that's, you know, maybe doing, say, 7% or less in that program year to year. But I'm not going to feel it because I actually have the drug that's cannibalizing that product. So a lot of times as pharma companies will have a drug start to enter a loss of exclusivity period. They will launch another drug timed, and it's for similar indications. The treatment profile is similar, adverse events and pharmacovigilance, efficacy, all that stuff is very similar, but it's a new molecule. And they'll launch that product in a way that it's designed to cannibalize from the product that's losing exclusivity. So you can't generalize that and say this is just how programs work. It's like, you know, it's like saying, hey, tell me how much it is, you know, for a drug and you have to account for aspirin as well as gene therapy. Gene therapy is $30 million. Aspirin is some pennies per pill. So, you know, when we get into our programs, there is that level of disparity. I've got, you know, we have programs that might do a couple claims a month. I've got programs that might do 30,000 claims a month. There's no way to just give you an average and say this is what you should look at for a program and this is what they look like year to year. You have to really be dialed into the efficacy of the drug, the pipeline of the manufacturer, everything else. And unfortunately, with our contracts, we're just not allowed to disclose our book of business.

Yeah. No, it makes sense. I appreciate all the detail. Nice quarter, guys. Thank you. Thanks, Jerry. Thanks.

Thank you. Next question today is coming from Peter Heckman from D.A. Davidson. Your line is now live.

Good afternoon. Great to see the good results. Back to pharma. Could you talk about maybe how these programs, how do the manufacturers or the middlemen that work with manufacturers, how do they procure these? Are there typically requests for a proposal or is it just kind of on a one-off basis. But I guess when you look at that, is there a way to think about your win rates? And Paysign obviously has great momentum in the business, but this makes me wonder if your win rates really have moved quite a bit higher. And then just thinking about seasonality of wins, just looking at the last couple of years, it doesn't seem that there's any real particular pattern, but I guess generally would you expect to win relatively more new programs in the first half or the second half?

So as far as win ratios, let me go back to kind of the sales cycle first since that was the first question you asked. There is a pretty good mix of RFPs, RFIs versus direct reward. I would say right now we're probably in the 75% of our wins are coming out of RFPs, RFIs, and the remaining 25% is word of mouth kind of direct award. Our RFP win rate is pretty high. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me. I'd have to go back and kind of dig that out. But we don't, you know, I would say our RFI, RFP win rate is north of 80%. If you... All right. That was the first question. Now, I lost your second one because I didn't write it down. So, sorry. What was the next one?

I wasn't thinking about any seasonality to the wins. I was just looking historically and just trying to, like, I think last fourth quarter was a great net win quarter. But, you know, in last year, you also had a very strong first quarter. So, just trying to, you know, if there's certain conferences or certain, you know, timing launch that Generally, we would expect you to add more net new in the first half or the second half, or it just depends on the year.

Yeah, so I think that there is seasonality in the transition wins, but I don't think that's necessarily related to selling. That's more related to what makes sense as to when to actually transition the program. There's quite a few programs that we may have known we've won and have been sitting on it for four or five months because the launch date is the middle of the year because that's what worked for the manufacturer. I kind of equate it to like building a house in Alaska. You don't build it in the wintertime. So we don't transition programs in the middle of the blizzard. So it kind of knocks out this whole three or four-month period of the year to where you're just not going to see a lot of transitions. But, you know, if you look at our business wins this year, we're about 50-50 on transition programs versus new to market, which is why you see some of these programs launching in the first quarter and the second quarter. They're brand new to market drugs. You know, we've won those products through RFP or through word of mouth. and, you know, those trickle in just throughout the year and that's based on the PDUFA dates that they receive from the FDA as well as their internal launch readiness around those products. So there's certainly a seasonality to the selling. You know, we do talk about Asymbia a lot. That conference is critically important to us every year. and we throw a lot of time, energy and resources at that conference. We consider it our single largest marketing event for patient affordability throughout the year. We attend five to seven other conferences as well at various levels to where we may have one or two people or some of them we have 10 or 12 folks show up. It just really depends on the conference and who we think is there that's on our target list. Cynthia is in the April-May timeframe, and then we get into the October-November timeframe with a couple of other conferences that are typically in the Philadelphia area or New Jersey area every year. I would say that's the seasonality into our cell. One of the things I'll talk about around wound rates, because I just thought about this, is if you look at last year and all of the new programs that came to market, There's a certain percentage of those that we were never going to be in a position to win. They have exclusivity contracts with their current vendor or something like that. This is going to be a small drug rolling into a mammoth manufacturer that already has exclusivity with somebody else. We went back and looked at that last year. Out of all the new drugs that came to market, we won over 80%. of those RFIs, RFPs that came out. So we know our win rate and our conversion rate is very high overall. And if you look at comparing us to the rest of the market, I don't think you see anybody else in the market doing 50 to 60 program launches a year. You know, I worked at another service provider prior to coming here, and I can tell you we quite certainly did not set up on average more than one program a month. So I think our growth is certainly leading the industry.

That's great. That's very good color. And then, Jeff, I just have one for you. And forgive me if I missed it. Earnings season, lots going on here. But in the last three years, the difference between your EBITDA in the third quarter and the fourth quarter were typically pretty even. And this year, just kind of working through your third quarter and full year guidance, it appears that third quarter is going to be very strong from a margin perspective. And then fourth quarter, not as strong and on an absolute dollar basis, pretty significant step down in the fourth quarter. So forgive me if I missed it, but can you talk about the reasons for that? It appears to be more than just your normal revenue mix shift back to Plasma.

No, it's a fair question. So if you look last year, we had so many patient affordability programs launched in the fourth quarter. I mean, it was like freaking out of a fire hose. This year, hopefully, we're seeing a little bit more, you know, more in the second quarter, more in the third quarter, some in the fourth quarter, so a little bit more, you know, evened out throughout the rest of the year. So that's going to be part of it. The thing you're going to see in the fourth quarter also, and one of the things I've experienced is it's the holiday season, and just like anybody else, we have people that take off, so that impacts some of the capitalization rates that we would do on a software development side, so I expect it to be lower. My tax rate, which I know it doesn't affect the adjusted EBITDA, but my tax rate is going to be higher in the fourth quarter. and the third quarter because we have a lot of the best things, the RSUs that are coming through. We have more in the third quarter than we did in the fourth quarter. So my deductions go down. So right now, if you look in the fourth quarter, I would expect my income tax rate in the fourth quarter to be closer to 27% versus the guidance of 17% in the third quarter. Just a number of things. Also, this year, like I said, our pipeline is strong. We are anticipating to hire more account managers to service the patient affordability business, hire more claims people, etc. We've got to be ready to go in Q1 when You know, the floodgates open. And so you're just seeing a little bit of that as well. So I could be wrong, but right now that's my expectations.

Yep. Yep. Okay. That's fair. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Our next question is coming from John Hickman from Vandenberg, Thalma. Your line is now live.

Hey, just kind of a model question for you guys. Going forward, is 15% year-over-year a good growth rate for your OPEX?

John, honestly, I don't really look at that. I do a bottoms-up build. You know, I haven't given guidance for next year, but, you know, I would expect, you know, Most of our growth is coming from the, from a hiring perspective, is coming from patient affordability. And that will continue as we add more programs. So, you know, it's, you know, I don't think 15% is unreasonable, maybe a little light, but, you know, probably, you know, 15 to 20% ish isn't crazy. I would, I would, I would look back and say, okay, last year we added 51 programs. You know, this year we're on track to add 55 to 60 programs. You can see what the OpEx is building. You know, adjust out stock comp and some of the, you know, DNA, if you want to look at just SG&A by itself. And I think you could probably get some good deduction from those numbers.

Okay. And then could you talk about, like – Are you going to be at any conferences or anything in the coming months, kind of on an industrial relations point of view?

Yeah, so we've got some non-deal roadshows that we're doing, and we've got some conferences. The conferences that we're attending is in New York in September, mid-September, we've got the There's a Lake Street conference, and there's also an Oppenheimer conference that we're attending. We have a Nondale Roadshow going to Boston. We've got the IDEAS conference in Chicago in August that we're attending. So we will be on the road quite a bit over the next couple of months.

Okay. Thank you and have a nice quarter.

Thanks, John.

Thank you. We've reached the end of our question and answer session. And ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's teleconference and webcast. You may disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.