Performant Healthcare, Inc.

Third quarter 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. I will now turn the call over to your host, Richard Zubek, Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, everyone. By now, you should have received a copy of the earnings release for our third quarter 2021 results. If you have not, a copy is available on the investor relations portion of our website. On today's call will be Lisa M., Chief Executive Officer, Simeon Colson, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Healthcare, and Rohit Ramchandani, Senior Vice President of Finance and Strategy. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that some of the comments made on today's call are forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, including those described in our filings with the SEC. Our actual results may differ materially from those described during the call. In addition, any forward-looking statements are made as of today, and the company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements based on new circumstances or revised expectations. Also, all non-GAAP financial measures discussed during this call are reconciled to the most directly comparable GAAP measures in the table attached to our press release. I would now like to turn the call over to Lisa M. Lisa?

Thank you, Rich. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our earnings call. We are excited to announce that our third quarter included year-over-year and sequential healthcare revenue growth, continued growth in our new implementation, and expansion of a number of audits conducted. This is being driven by our client-centric focused marketplace offerings that continue to support our position within an ever-consolidating industry. We maintain our visibility into strong growth toward our long-term targets, both among existing and new clients. Although we initially entered the healthcare market back in 2007, it wasn't until 2017 when we made the commitment to focus on the commercial market that we truly entered the healthcare space. Since that time, we have added numerous clients and contracts across large and mid-sized healthcare payers. We've also earned multiple contracts with these payers some which have grown from a few hundred thousand in annual revenue to millions across different services. Additionally, over the past couple of years, we have built a great healthcare leadership team with some of the top talent in the industry. The healthcare payer integrity market is large, growing, and well-structured. In this market, our gains have come from highly client-centric focused services, which have facilitated our ability to take market share from incumbents. We believe our midterm and long-term growth prospects remain very strong. From a macro perspective, despite rising vaccine rates, COVID continues to impact hospital core utilization rates. Based on a study by Peterson KFF, hospital admissions were below expected levels through early April 2021, and health spending overall for hospitals and ambulatory care remained below expected levels through at least June 2021. Specifically, KSF noted that following an unprecedented decrease in the number of hospital admissions in 2020, core utilization remained below expected levels. The persistence of lower-than-expected core utilization suggests that some of the care that did not occur early in the COVID-19 pandemic may have been foregone rather than simply delayed. We will keep a close watch on how these core utilization trends will impact available claims volume in the coming quarters, as this could cause temporary compression. We have similarly been impacted within third quarter due to back-end COVID slowdown, and some ramp-up implementation slippage that Finn will discuss. As we adapt to these temporary impacts, we have maintained our focus and excitement on the strong platform we have and the long-term focus of our company. As our transformation into a predominantly healthcare payment integrity company is nearly complete, and as we reflect back on our journey to this point, It's humbling how we've come from a company that was focused as a vendor in the student loan recovery market with no health care experience to becoming one of the leading independent health care payment integrity providers in the country. I want to thank everyone who's been a part of the Performance family, who are employees both current and former. We could not be the company that we are today without your effort and dedication. And for that, I am truly grateful. the long-term prospects of performance remain sound. And fundamentally, we are making great progress toward our long-term goals by continuing to capture additional market share and signing new clients. At this point, I would like Simeon Cole, our Senior Vice President and General Manager of Healthcare, to talk in greater detail about third quarter and other initiatives in our healthcare business. Tim? Thanks, Lisa.