Viemed Healthcare, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to ViMed's second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn this conference over to your host, Mr. Todd Zender, COO. Thank you, sir. You may begin.

Hi, thank you. Good morning, everyone. Please note that our remarks in this conference call may include forward-looking statements under the U.S. federal securities laws or forward-looking information under applicable Canadian securities legislation, which we collectively refer to as forward-looking statements. Such statements reflect the company's current views and intentions with respect to future results or events and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results or events to vary from those indicated in forward-looking statements. Examples of such risks and uncertainties are discussed in our disclosure documents filed with the SEC or the securities regulatory authorities in certain provinces of Canada. Because of these risks and uncertainties, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements made in this conference call are made as of today, and the company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements except as required by law. The second quarter financial news release, including the related financial statements, are available on the SEC's website. Now I'll turn it over to Casey to get things started.

Okay, thank you, Todd. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. As always, we'd like to begin by acknowledging and thanking the dedicated team of respiratory therapists, behavioral health specialists, staffing professionals, and administrative support staff who work tirelessly to deliver the best-in-class care to our patients living within the communities we serve. As of June, our BiMed family grew to 715 employees, a 25% increase over the number of employees a year before. We expect to continue to grow our labor force through strong retention of our existing employees and by identifying and recruiting top talent throughout the country. In addition to investments in our workforce, we are investing heavily in inventory, and supplies in response to the pent-up demand coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our renewed unrestricted access to referral sources and partners resulted in robust growth during the second quarter, a trend that we expect to continue based on feedback from the field. It's clear that health systems continue to struggle to address the demand for all services across the care spectrum. Overcrowding in physical facilities labor shortages, and supply chain constraints are reinforcing the critical need for the home-based care solutions that we provide to patients. Our strong relationships with manufacturers, our well-trained labor force, and our innovative approach to care and data capture is demonstrating to partners that BiMed is a premier solution to larger scale population health programs. Previously published confirmed Previous published studies confirmed to our partners that our services are real drivers of improving health outcomes and preventing hospital readmissions. The latest research published by Respiratory Medicine Journal also shows that non-invasive ventilation in the home significantly reduces overall healthcare costs. According to the recently released peer-reviewed medical study, when patients are placed on non-invasive ventilation within the first week of diagnosis, Total annual Medicare spending was reduced by 12%, while risk of death was simultaneously reduced by 43%. We were anxiously awaiting the publication of the results, and we are now incredibly excited to share the benefits with providers and referral sources. During the second quarter, our sales force was provided with robust training on the pre-published results of the study in preparation for the official June 29th release. Our team is currently in the field executing on a national rollout of the new study, communicating with referral sources the need to get patients immediately on therapy after diagnosis. This is a very powerful message to physicians and payers, one that demonstrates we cannot afford to wait to try and fail other forms of lesser therapy upon determining a chronic respiratory failure diagnosis. We also continue to see positive momentum in the regulatory environment. During the second quarter, we announced the successful appeal of the findings from the OIG report. While we have always maintained that the findings in the report were completely unsubstantiated, the success of the appeal sends a clear message to our external stakeholders that ViMed has consistently provided a true industry-best standard of care. In the first half of the year, we identified a tremendous opportunity and successfully executed on a capital strategy to buy back common shares at an incredible value. As the value of our equity shares approach pre-OIG report levels, our capital allocation strategies are able to shift towards acquisitive and transformative initiatives. Therefore, I'm extremely excited about the recently announced addition of two key executives to lead our acquisition and strategic partnership activities. We're currently developing our acquisition infrastructure and working closely with a number of potential acquisition targets to execute on these transactions when the capital environment stabilizes. As each month passes without action in the administrative window to institute a competitive bidding process for the 2024 round, the likelihood of implementation becomes less probable. CMS's annual inflation adjustments to the reimbursement rates also create regulatory relief in the current operating environment of rising costs across the industry and economy. The inflationary cost increases are nearly impossible to avoid and are having an impact on short-term profitability. Inflation-based annual statutory reimbursement rate resets are expected to counteract the long-term impact. We further believe that most of the repricing effects on our costs have already peaked. We believe that top line revenue growth will quickly offset the inflationary cost increases in recent periods. During the first half of the year, most of the increases in our costs were associated with the hiring and retention of our labor force to support our significant organizational growth. Our organic expansion has helped us to create many internal promotional opportunities for our existing employees to grow their careers within the organization while simultaneously developing our people and minimizing the turnover. Our sales-based performance compensation arrangements with existing employees has also helped us to retain top talent while keeping up with the good pace of growth. We continue to seek innovative ways to invest in our people so that we create an organization where all employees want to belong. Our external recruiting efforts continue to benefit from the impressive growth of our healthcare staffing division. We were able to enter nine new territories during the first half of 2022 as a result. ViMed Healthcare staffing has sourced approximately a third of the new sales hires in 2022, and we are extremely proud of the growth of the incremental revenue producing staffing activities as well. We are significantly diversifying our portfolio mix through the strong growth of non-vent products and services. While margin percentages have also been impacted by the evolution of our product mix, we are seeing the positive long-term benefits of revenue synergies based on the diversification of our portfolio. For example, the growth of the oxygen business serves as a wellspring for ventilator patients as disease states progress. Our behavioral health division is having a considerable impact on the compliance rates and length of stay on existing ventilator patients. We are also seeing similar results from our proprietary remote patient engagement technologies currently connected to 45% of our ventilator patients following the ongoing national rollout. Our high-tech model creates strong relationships with patients that can evolve over the course of their care journey. While many other corporations and sectors are preparing for a possible recession by slowing investments, we believe there is significant and growing demand for the cost-effective life-saving services that we provide. We will continue to invest in our ability to meet this demand and serve the patients in need. With more on our operations, financials, the buyback, and the regulatory landscape, I will now turn the call over to our Chief Operating Officer, Todd Zender.