Oak Street Health, Inc.

Q3 2021 Earnings Conference Call

11/9/2021

spk07: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Oak Street Health Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Sarah Kluck. Please go ahead.
spk03: Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. With me today are Mike Peikos, Chief Executive Officer, and Tim Cook, Chief Financial Officer. Please be advised that today's conference call is being recorded and that the Oak Street Health press release, webcast link, and the other related materials are available on the Investor Relations section of Oak Street Health's website. Today's statements are made as of November 9th, 2021, reflect management's view and expectation at this time and are subject to various risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. This call contains forward-looking statements, that is, statements related to future, not past events. In this context, forward-looking statements often address our expected future business performance and often contain words such as anticipate, believe, contemplate, continue, could, estimate, expect, intend, may, plan, potential, predict, project, should, target, will and would, or similar expressions. Forward-looking statements, by their nature, address matters that are to different degrees uncertain. For us, particular uncertainties that could cause our actual results to be materially different than those expressed in our forward-looking statements include our ability to achieve or maintain profitability, our reliance on a limited number of customers for a substantial portion of our revenue, our expectation and management of future growth, our market opportunities, our ability to estimate the size of our target market, the effects of increased competition as well as innovation by new and existing competitors in our market, and our ability to retain our existing customers and to increase our number of customers. Please refer to our annual report for the year ended December 31, 2020, filed on Form 10-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission, where you will see a discussion of factors that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from these statements. This call includes non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures are in addition to and not a substitute or superior to measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. There are a number of limitations related to the use of these non-GAAP financial measures. For example, other companies may calculate similarly titled non-GAAP financial measures differently. Refer to the appendix of our earnings release for reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. With that, I'll turn the call over to our CEO, Mike Pecos. Mike?
spk12: Thank you, Sarah, and thank you to everyone for joining us this morning. Looking back at the third quarter, we believe our results demonstrate strong operating performance along with significant accomplishments to advance our platform. I want to first thank our team for the continued dedication and focus on our patients, our communities, and our mission necessary to make that happen. Our team had to navigate through a challenging operating environment, including the Delta COVID surge and a historically tight labor market. Despite these high winds, operationally we achieved strong results across all the major drivers of performance for the third quarter. We have strong revenue growth driven by new patient ads in both new and existing centers. We're on pace to exceed our center opening projections. Third-party medical costs, which we'll cover in more detail, as well as direct cost of care and corporate costs, were all in line with expectations despite an increase in COVID hospitalizations driven by the Delta variant. The net result is a quarter in which we exceeded the top end of our guidance range in consumer revenue, membership, and adjusted EBITDA. Additionally, as we continue to gain more insight in 2022, we remain confident that the COVID-driven headwinds in 2021 will begin to subside and will return to a level of performance in line with what we experienced pre-pandemic. Strategically, we were thrilled to be selected by AARP as the only primary care provider to carry the AARP name. We're also extremely excited about our recently announced acquisition of Rubicon MD to advance specialty care delivery in the Oak Street model. In the third quarter, we generated a record revenue of $388.7 million in the quarter, exceeding the high end of the guidance and representing 78% growth compared to Q3 2020. Our revenue growth continues to be driven by our organic B2C marketing approach. This includes both central channels such as digital marketing and our core community-based outreach team. Our community-based team has continued to improve month over month despite having to navigate COVID surges in our communities. We are excited about the continued progress considering our teams were expecting significantly less COVID restrictions and hesitancy in the community when Q3 began. This improvement solidifies our confidence we can grow through any future peaks and valleys from COVID. We are excited to see our results from this COVID wave hopefully subsides, and we have the power of the AARP brand behind us. Now across the trend to in line with the revised expectations we share following Q2, This, combined with direct cost of care, sales and marketing corporate costs, all in line with expectations, and higher than projected revenue growth, resulted in adjusted EBITDA of negative 64.3 million, which is higher than the top end of our Q3 guidance. Specifically on metal costs, we highlighted three areas of increases in costs that exceeded prior expectations in our Q2 earnings call. These areas continue to be a headwind in 2021. But we also remain confident that they are largely temporary in nature as direct results of the pandemic and can be mitigated in 2022 and beyond. First, costs from COVID admissions. In our Q2 earnings call, we share that in the first half of the year, Oak Street experienced $15 million of costs directly from COVID admissions. In Q3, we estimated we experienced $10 million of additional COVID costs from COVID admissions. These costs were highest in August and declined slightly in September, bringing the estimated total year-to-date direct cost of COVID to $25 million. Looking forward, our COVID hospitalization costs generally rise and fall proportionally with the hospitalization rates in our communities. We are hopeful with the rollout of boosters and vaccines for children 5 to 12 that we will continue to see declining spread in the communities we serve and declining hospitalizations for our patients. That said, we recognize the majority of patients we serve are in northern markets that have historically experienced surges as the weather turned cold and people spend more time indoors. Second, non-acute utilization. In our Q2 earnings call, we discussed that non-acute utilization, including special visits, diagnostics, and outpatient procedures, increased $80 p.m. p.m. compared to the historical average in March, following the vaccine roll for older adults. These costs have decreased by roughly $15 p.m. p.m. in the subsequent months, but have remained elevated compared to historic averages. Roughly a third of this increase would be expected for medical cost trend from 2019 until this year. The net result is an estimated $35 million of increased costs across the first three quarters of the year above what we would have expected from increased trend. We believe this increase is driven in part by increased comfort with patients to access medical care following vaccination, relaxed payer standards to the public health emergency, and specialist and hospital system behavior. Additionally, based on the higher prevalence of chronic illnesses we are seeing in our patients, especially those who have joined us over the past 18 months, we believe part of this increase in non-acute utilization is driven by greater patient disease burden requiring more care. Based on the diagnosis codes we've captured for our patients here today, We will be able to offset the cost with additional revenue to compensate for the increased disease burden, as we'll discuss in more detail shortly. This is also the cost category where we feel the acquisition of Rubicon MD will have the greatest impact. Third, new patient medical costs. In our Q2 earnings call, we shared that new patient medical costs were 50% higher than what we have historically seen and drove $20 million in higher costs in the first half of the year. New patient medical costs have remained elevated compared to historic levels, but not to the magnitude we saw earlier in the year. However, new patient revenues have further declined to a level less than what we received for new patients in 2019 on an absolute basis and significantly less than what we would have expected when considering trend. The net result is a decline of new patient economics driven by a combination of higher costs and lower revenue than what we have experienced historically. This resulted in an estimated $36 million in lower patient contribution in the first three quarters. We have looked at new patients by geography, center of interest, provider tenure, and marketing channel, and we see a similar decrease of patient contribution across all cuts of the data. For that reason, we do not believe that new patient economics are being negatively impacted by new centers and markets, but instead, we continue to believe the primary driver of lower new patient economics is lower engagement of older adults, especially those in low-income communities, by the healthcare system in 2020. lower engagement results in higher medical costs because of undressed medical conditions, and lower revenue because those conditions went undocumented. As a reminder, risk scores lag by a year and depend on diagnosis captured during provider visits. Thus, the lack of engagement likely had a double effect of reducing the incoming risk score, but also likely increasing disease burden. When we consider the disease burden we are capturing for our new patients here today, we believe that their economics will revert back to what we normally see for a second-year patient in 2022. We are optimistic that increased engagement across the healthcare system for patients will lead to new patient economics more in line with what we have seen historically, although it remains to be seen how long it will take for new patient economics to revert to previous levels. A smaller factor impacting new patient economics was a lower mix of patients coming from community-based marketing channels compared to historic performance. While patients from community marketing channels had similarly lower patient contribution in 2021 compared to 2019 as new patients overall, patients from community marketing channels tend to be our most profitable channel in their first year at Oak Street. So as Nick shifts back to community channels, this should improve new patient economics overall. We continue to focus on operating our care model to keep our patients healthy and out of the hospital. Because of these efforts, we've seen a decrease in non-COVID acute care for our tenured patients compared to the same period in 2019. This decrease has largely offset the increase in COVID and non-acute costs for these patients, resulting in equivalent patient contribution for our existing patients this year compared to 2019. Because of this, the overall decrease in patient contribution in 2021 is largely driven by the decrease of new patient contribution, which, as we discussed above, we believe is mainly caused by lower engagement with the healthcare system in 2020. As we discussed in Key 2, based on the data collected year-to-date, We have seen that the disease burden of our patient population is substantially increasing compared to prior years, which we believe is a trend that began in 2020, both masked by less effective patient assessments due to more care being delivered virtually. The data we've captured here today is more representative of our patient's actual disease burden, and we expect that the increase in revenue per patient in 2022 will drive significant improvement to the patient economics we have seen this year. If COVID-related medical costs we see causing medical costs to revert to a level more in line with what we witnessed prior to the first half of the year, and or our care model is able to further impact the cost trend, we will see significant improvement in per patient contribution compared to 2019. This, combined with the continued strong results on patient growth and operating costs, gives us confidence in the continued strength of our center economics and center ramps. We plan to share additional details around 2021 and forecast the 2022 Center Economics in comparison to historical performance in our year-end call following Q4. Looking forward, our mission at Oak Street is to rebuild healthcare as it should be. For us, that means redesigning the way older adults are cared for across the healthcare continuum. This includes how older adults are engaged by the healthcare system, the composition and operating model of the team that provides them care, the resources available to them beyond traditional primary care, and the data and technology that bring it all together. We believe Oak Street has driven transformational change across all of these dimensions. That said, we continue to innovate across all parts of our model and will continue to do so long in the future to advance our position at the forefront of value-based care. I am proud of our performance to date and the impact our team makes on our patients and communities every day, and I am confident we'll continue to improve along all dimensions as we build out our model. To that end, Q3 is an exciting quarter for Oak Street as we announce our relationship with AARP and the acquisition of RubiconBee. Both have been in works for a long time before Q3 began and were made possible by hard work and perseverance from our team. Being the only primary care provider selected by AARP is an exciting milestone for Oak Street and a testament to the quality of care and outstanding patient experience we deliver. We're the only senior-focused primary care provider nationally to carry the AARP name, and we believe it will enhance our ability to attract and engage patients. We often face the challenge when engaging with potential patients of getting them comfortable trying something that sounds too new to be true. AARP is the most trusted brand for older adults, and by going to market with AARP in a co-branded manner, over time we believe we can more quickly build trust, leading to faster patient growth and deeper patient engagement. AARP has a long track record of helping organizations grow across a range of industries, including within healthcare. Additionally, we are collaborating with AARP on ways to bring wellness activities, enhance patient education, and other benefits to Oaks Free patients and AARP members. A few weeks ago, we closed our acquisition of RubiconMD, the largest virtual specialist network of its kind. Our acquisition of RubiconMD will allow us to include specialty expertise in the primary care setting. It will also give us the ability to provide needed specialty care quickly and be tightly coordinated while reducing unneeded specialist visits. We believe this is the way specialty care should be delivered. In a similar manner to how we designed primary care for older adults from the ground up, the RubiconMD acquisition will also be the same for specialist care for our patients. The result will be better access, lower costs, superior outcomes, and improved experience. We believe both our exclusive AARP relationship and the Rubicon MD acquisition further differentiate Oak Street, both from the traditional primary care providers and will continue to drive our long-term success. One additional item to comment upon. We disclosed in our 10-Q file yesterday that on November 1st, we received an inquiry from the Department of Justice seeking information related to our relationships with third-party agents or entities, and also regarding any advertising or promotion of our transportation services. At this point, we've had no meaningful conversations with the department and do not possess any additional details beyond the information requested in the inquiry. Since the early days of Oak Street Health, we've aimed to create a compliance-focused culture and maintain what we believe to be an effective compliance program. including utilizing both internal and external compliance advisors. Oak Street strives, in all of our business operations, to operate compliantly and transparently. Our team is currently working on responding to the Department of Justice inquiry, and we intend to cooperate with the Department's requests. At this point, we do not possess enough information to speculate on the precise reasons for, the outcome of, or the duration of the Department of Justice inquiry, although we understand that it is not unusual, particularly in the healthcare industry, for these inquiries to take months or even years to be full results. While we respond to the Department's inquiries, we intend to remain focused on our mission in providing high-quality care to adults on Medicare. In summary, we are encouraged by the performance across the quarter on our key operating metrics. We're also thrilled with the strategic additions of our AARP relationship and Rubicon and deacquisition. Over the last quarter, our team has navigated through a COVID surge, challenging labor markets, driving near-term results while at the same time setting the platform up for differentiated long-term success, transforming healthcare for older adults. I'll now turn it over to Tim Cook, who will walk you through our financial results in more detail.
spk14: Tim? Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone. We produced another strong quarter with record revenue of $388.7 million, representing 78% growth from a year ago and exceeding the high end of our guidance range by approximately 8%. For the year-to-date period, we crossed the $1 billion of revenue mark for the first time in the company's history. We also continue to see strong demand for Oak Street services as we provided care to 100,500 at-risk patients, which include our direct contracting patients, during the third quarter, resulting in growth of 69% compared to Q3 2020. At the end of the third quarter, we operated three more centers than we operated at the end of Q3 2020. We are operating 123 centers as of today. Capitated revenue for the third quarter of $376.7 million, representing growth of 78% year over year. Additionally, $15.4 million of capitated revenue in the third quarter of 2021 was related to prior periods. The largest driver of this prior period amount was patient retroactivity pertaining to the first half of 2021. Excuse me. As a reminder, patient retroactivity is typical and occurs in health plans. Pay Oak Street retroactively for patients managed in prior periods but not previously included in our rosters and therefore not previously recognized in a revenue or medical claims expense. Other patient service revenue for the third quarter was $12 million, representing growth of 97% year-over-year. $3.9 million of this growth was attributable to savings generated in 2020 for the performance of our ACORN ACO. As you may have seen, our ACO generated the fourth-highest savings rate across the 513 participants in the Medicare Shared Savings ACO program in 2020. Our medical claims expense for the third quarter of 2021 of $309.7 million, representing growth of 100% compared to third quarter 2020. We recorded $9.4 million of medical claims expense, primarily due to an increase in prior period incurred claims, primarily driven by the same patient retroactivity impacting capitated revenue. Our cost of care excluding depreciation and amortization was $76.3 million for the third quarter, a 77% increase year-over-year driven by higher salaries and benefits expense from increased headcount, as well as greater occupancy costs, medical supplies, and patient transportation costs, all related to the significant growth in the number of centers we operate and our patient base. Sales and marketing expense was $30.5 million during the third quarter, representing an increase driven by a $9.4 million increase in advertising spend to drive new patients to our clinics, as well as an increase in salaries and benefits related to headcount growth.
spk08: As a reminder, growth in year-over-year sales of marketing expense was artificially inflated as it was partially depressed during Q3 2020 due to the COVID pandemic, which included the temporary suspension of community outreach activities and other marketing initiatives.
spk14: Corporate general and administrative expense was $77 million in the third quarter, an increase of 35% year-over-year, primarily driven by headcount costs necessary to support the continued growth of the business. We generated significant operating leverage year-over-year with corporate general administrative expenses, excluding stock-based compensation and transaction expenses, decreasing to 10% of revenue in Q3 2021 compared to 13% in Q3 2020. I will now highlight three non-GAAP financial metrics that we find useful in evaluating our financial performance. Patient contribution, which we define as capital and revenue less than medical claims expense, grew 17% year-over-year to $67 million during the third quarter. We expect at-risk per patient economics to improve the longer that our patients are part of the Oak Street platform. As Mike mentioned, this metric has been impacted by the number of new patients to the Oak Street platform in 2021. Platform contribution, which we define as total revenue, plus the sum of medical claims expense, the cost of care, excluding depreciation and immunization, was $2.7 million, an 87% decrease year-over-year from $20.2 million. The year-over-year decrease was driven by the previously discussed increase in medical claims expense, as well as the significant recent growth in our center base, and therefore the portion of our centers which are immature. Over 50% of our centers have been open for less than two years, and approximately two-thirds have been open for less than three years. Adjusted EBITDA, which we calculate by adding depreciation and amortization, transaction, and offering related costs in stock and unit-based compensation by excluding other income to net loss, was a loss of $64.3 million in the third quarter of 2021 compared to a loss in the 24th quarter of 2021. We finished the third quarter with a strong balance sheet and liquidity position. As of September 30th, we held over $1 billion in cash, restricted cash, and marketable debt securities. Note that those balances are prior to the effect of our acquisition of RubiconMD in October. Our liquidity position will support our continued growth initiatives, primarily our de novo center-based expansion. For the nine months ended September 30th, 2021, cash used by operating activities was $125.9 million. while our capital expenditures were $40.6 million. Finally, I'll provide an update on our 2021 financial outlook. For fiscal 2021, we are increasing our guidance for total centers to 128 to 129, which represents 49 to 50 new centers in the year 2021. our at-risk patients to a range of $111,500 to $113,500, and our revenue guidance to a range of $1.42 billion to $1.425 billion. Note that the revenue range was inaccurately shown as $1.4 billion in the 8K released last night, but it's been amended to reflect this $1.42 billion. We are narrowing our adjusted EBITDA dollars, roughly half of which relates to support And the other half is associated with investments in growth, including greater new centers and previously contemplated investment in sales and marketing during the annual enrollment period to capitalize on our AARP relationship. We also remain focused on potential COVID costs in Q4, given our experience in Q4 2020 from Mike's earlier comments, and are taking a cautious view heading into the last quarter of the year. Adjusting for these factors, our Q4 guidance is effectively in line with the high end of our full year guidance provided during our Q2 earnings call. And with that, we will now open the call to questions. Operator?
spk07: Thank you, sir. At this time, I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Justin Lake of Wolf Research.
spk15: Thanks. Good morning, DOJ inquiry. First, can you tell us if you have any idea what the DOJ might be getting at? And specifically, I think a lot of us would benefit from your kind of insight and some of the mechanics around what they were talking about in terms of third-party agents relationships.
spk12: Thanks, Justin. Appreciate the question. Honestly, at this point, we really don't have enough information about meaningful dialogue with the DOJ, so we're still learning as well and sharing really what we know in the statement.
spk15: Okay, but can you tell us the I've talked to a few of your peers, and it just sounds like, are you buying leads from third-party agents like eHealth, et cetera? And how does that work? Are you finding your patients that way? And do you think that's standard industry practice? Have you been doing more of this more recently? And then I guess just lastly, Is there any relationship between these third-party agent relationships and provider transportation? Do you think any link between the two?
spk12: Yeah, Justin. Again, I'm not really sure what the link is. I mean, we obviously provide transportation to our patients as part of getting access to primary care. We have a number of different patient acquisition channels. The vast majority we talked about are through our community-based marketing approach and then followed by our kind of central digital channels. So there's a number of different programs out there and things we do to get patients. I'm still trying to get our hands around, again, what the inquiry is really based on and what information they're looking for.
spk15: Okay, thanks for the call.
spk07: Your next question comes from the line of Ricky Goldwasser of Morgan Stanley.
spk02: Yeah, hi, good morning. Just trying to get some more clarity on the commentary on fourth quarter. Tim, if I heard you right, I think you said that you were going to be at the high end of your guidance range for Q. Can you give us more clarity also on where should we expect MLR range to settle?
spk14: So this is Tim. Thanks for the question. Full year EBITDA loss range we provided in the Q2 call was $220 million to $240 million loss. The revised range I mentioned this morning is a $230 to $235 million loss. As we narrowed that range, I just wanted to make sure folks understood that as we narrowed it, we incorporated data points that we didn't have at the time that we closed Q2, predominantly around um the rubicon and the acquisition as well as the aarp relationship so we factor those things in those are you know those plus again taking a cautious approach in q4 to covet costs um those would have we would have guided 10 million dollars lower had we known those things uh in early august and so as we think about the 230 to 235 in our minds it's actually from an operational perspective or sort of a runway perspective more akin to the high end of the prior range being the $220 million. On the MLR for the second half of the year, one comment I just want to make sure is clear for folks. As Mike has said, our new patients are coming in at a lower patient contribution than we've seen historically, which means the MLR for those patients is higher. One thing that we're very focused on at Oak Street is our 10-year adjusted MLR. So we look at MLR not at the aggregate level, but at the specific patient 10-year level. But that's important because the MLR for a patient will change significantly the longer that patient's on the X-Tree platform. So as we grow more quickly than we anticipated, I think we had previously discussed second half MLR to be uh, in a 82 percentage range, say we are, you know, if we, if we look at Q3, um, we were slightly higher than that, including the COVID costs that Mike mentioned, excluding those COVID costs. Um, you know, we are in that 81% range for Q3, um, for Q4, I would expect it to, to be obviously higher than Q3, just given the quarterly trends that we see. Um, But it's hard to give a specific number at this point. I'd say the guidance I gave earlier on Q2 is still relevant when we strip out the impacts of some of these one-time items, both being prior period development as well as COVID-related costs.
spk02: Okay. And just one follow-up here. You talked about being cautious in terms of COVID costs. What are you seeing within your population in October, November timeframe? Because it seems that everybody else we're talking about are saying that COVID costs have pretty meaningfully dropped off.
spk14: Yeah, I'd say our experience has been similar, Ricky, in that, you know, obviously, as Mike mentioned, we saw a surge in the latter half of August into September. As we've seen more data, those costs have tailed off as we got early in the Q3. That being said, you know, most of our patients are in the northern climates. I don't know what it's like in New York and Chicago. It turned cold very quickly last week, so we will see what happens in November and December. And the dollars that are sort of incorporating that EBITDA guidance I mentioned before are relatively small compared to the overall COVID costs we've seen for the year. So if I think back to Q2, for instance, where there was relatively fewer COVID cases, we still had a couple million dollars of COVID costs in Q2.
spk02: Okay, so it sounds like maybe some more colder, you know, flu and cold season embedded in November and December versus, you know, direct COVID costs. Is that fair?
spk14: Sure. I mean, yes. I mean, like while COVID costs are going to be lower in Q4, unfortunately we're not in a world yet where COVID costs are going to be zero.
spk02: Understood. Thank you.
spk07: Your next question comes on the line of Jessica Taffin of Piper Sandler.
spk05: Hi. Thank you for taking the question. So can you maybe help us understand some of the dynamics impacting capitated revenue rates PMPM going forward? Specifically, is direct contracting expected to be dilutive to the growth rate that we might otherwise forecast for at-risk patients given the year-over-year increase in average risk levels?
spk14: Sure, Sarah. This is Tim. Thanks for the question. So generally speaking, if we had very steady state and consistent growth and we were paid for every member we served in every period, i.e. there wasn't this patient retroactivity dynamic, what we would see over the course of a quarter is Q1 PMPM revenue would be the highest, Q4 PMPM revenue would be the lowest, and we'd step down over the course of the year. And the reason for that being that, you know, Our patients in Q1 are the most, the longest tenured, and as tenured patients that trade over the course of the year, you're replacing those tenured patients with new patients, and new patients come in at a lower revenue PMPM, predominantly because the patients that we're serving are generally unengaged in the healthcare system, and therefore, historically speaking, their disease burden has been less accurately recorded, documented by the healthcare system. So that is the general dynamic here. So what we're experiencing in 2021, Sarah, is consistent with what you outlined, which is, and what Mike discussed, right? New patients are coming in with a lower revenue PMPM than we've seen historically. The reason being that in 2020, those patients were even less engaged in the healthcare system given all of given the impacts of COVID and their ability to access the healthcare system. So that would, all the things being equal, that would exacerbate this downward trend in revenue PMPM from Q1 to Q4. Offsetting that a bit in Q2 of 2021 would be the impact of direct contracting patients coming into that patient cohort, direct contracting patients, just to remind everyone coming into higher revenue PMPM. So that would distort that quarter-to-quarter change. uh as we look from uh q2 to q3 or q3 q4 uh you know direct contracting patients will impact that trend a bit um but i would say likely not significantly enough to to make it to reverse it so and um you know i'd say as you look at that as you look at those changes from period to period it's obviously it's important to adjust for prior periods because um That would be revenue that we're booking in the period, but not related to that quarter's actual performance. And the membership count that you're looking at at the end of the quarter doesn't include all the member months we were paid for in that quarter, if that makes sense.
spk05: Yeah, that's helpful. Thank you. And it's Jeff, by the way. Sorry, Jeff.
spk14: I apologize. Early warning.
spk05: Thanks. Yeah, early morning. So just as a follow-up, can you kind of help us understand what percent of your 132,000 patients you've been able to see in person or either in an Oak Street Center or in their home year-to-date? And kind of what are you doing qualitatively to re-engage some of the older patients who fell off the radar in 2020 or 2021, early 2021? Thanks.
spk12: The number I have kind of at ready regarding engagement is the completion of annual wellness visits for our patients. Obviously, some of our patients we've seen have kind of low to mid-80s on annual wellness visits and completion against our patients so far this year. And so I think we certainly see those are all, you know, in home or in person. So we certainly see more than that if you include kind of just normal check-in visits.
spk08: But hopefully that gives you a sense of engagement so far this year.
spk05: Awesome. Thank you. And that compares to, sorry, what at this time last year?
spk12: That is something higher than this time last year when you take away virtual visits because last year a fair amount of our annual wellness visits were completed virtually. It is similar to what we experienced, I think, slightly ahead of what we saw in 2019 and 2018. Thank you.
spk07: Your next question comes from the line of Gary Taylor of Cowan.
spk10: Hi, good morning. I just wanted to hit a couple things. Maybe I missed this in the queue with a lot of queues flying yesterday. Did you give us your direct contracting enrollment? And then I thought last quarter we sort of talked about the MLR you were booking or the contribution, so I may have just missed that.
spk12: No, we did not break out direct contracting separately, membership nor direct contract economics. So you may be thinking of another queue that flew at you.
spk10: Okay. So, but I thought last quarter you guys maybe on the call disclosed that we're looking at 6,500 members, but that's... We did talk about...
spk14: If direct contracting started in Q2, we expected to start the program with about 6,000 to 7,000 patients, 6,500 being the midpoint. That's roughly right. We also mentioned we expect to add about 2,000 to 3,000 patients a quarter in the program. All of that guidance is still largely relevant or accurate. I'd say the one caveat, the reason why we are agnostic predominantly between those two programs. So we are most focused on growing our at-risk patient base. Many of those direct contracting patients we engage in MA, right? So they may never even show up in our direct contracting accounts. And as we're continuing to drive more and more patients to our centers, a little less relevant to us which bucket they fall into. As you think about our growth in the quarter, our growth is driven almost entirely by our MA book, just given its proportional size. From a contribution perspective, we have not broken out those details. Those patients are profitable to us today, albeit we're six months into the program.
spk10: Got it. And then on Rubicon, when we see that in the fourth quarter, external sales are just going to go in other patients. service revenue and then there'd be eliminations for the consultations they're doing to Oak Street members is how we think about it? That's correct. And is there a, I know you had talked about some of the EBITDA impact for the 4Q, but just sort of thinking about revenue, EBITDA, either quarterly or kind of run rate, how should we be thinking about that into the model?
spk14: As you're talking about going into 2020? Excuse me, 2022?
spk10: Either for the 4Q impact, if that's easier, or just, you know, 2022, thinking about that, yeah.
spk14: So, you know, obviously there's an implied Q4 performance given the kind of $1.42 to $1.425 billion in revenue for the quarter, you know, Q4 is obviously a starting point for Q1, but a lot of changes from Q4 to Q1, one being obviously the resetting of risk scores based on 2021 documentation, two being all the growth we're experiencing right now or embarking on right now as part of AEP.
spk08: So there is a step function change every year as we move from Q4 to Q1, so it's hard to take Q4 and use that
spk14: as sort of a run rate basis, particularly in a profitability line, to Mike's point, right?
spk10: Oh, I was just thinking Rubicon specifically. I'm sorry. Sorry, Gary. I wasn't trying to backdoor the 22 guidance yet. I was just trying to backdoor it.
spk14: Sorry, Gary. I totally missed that. Yeah, Rubicon's a relatively small contributor on the revenue line. Also, obviously, a small drag on EBITDA. So, you know, from a top line perspective, it's you know, high single digits of revenue.
spk12: Yeah. And, uh, you know, how I think about this going forward, um, you know, obviously in the fourth quarter where, you know, we, we just, we just finished the acquisition. We're just starting the integration work, et cetera. Um, in 2022, um, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll get the, strategy with rubicon up and running um and and we hope that uh that's kind of the ramp period uh from from the revenue perspective as tim said i mean you know it will contribute to other revenue but it's not going to be a uh a major contributor um rubicon but for oak street health you know i think uh It's, you know, if it's losing money today, I think it certainly can be, you know, a break even outside of Oak Street Health over time. But really the real value, you know, why we are incredibly excited about the acquisition is for what it can do to our amount of costs, right, and our quality of care and our patient experience. And so I think you'll see the benefit in 2023 is a, you know, a relatively small amount of external revenue. Some, hopefully, and that will offset some of the operating costs for the platform. lower cost of care and better patient experience and just, you know, an improved model for specialty care for our patients.
spk10: Last one for me. Is the ARP relationship, is that an exclusive in terms of primary care clinics or some category?
spk12: Yes, it is. It is exclusive for primary care. Thanks, Gary. Thank you.
spk07: Your next question comes from the line of Lisa Gill of J.P. Morgan.
spk06: Thanks very much. Mike, one of the comments that stuck out to me was when you talked about the headwind of lower mix from community market channels. When we think about members who join from the community market channels versus others being more profitable, can you maybe just spend a minute and talk about what the differential is with those members versus other channels, and then typically what a new joiner mix looks like by channel?
spk12: Yeah, so to kind of reverse your question, if you go back to kind of 2019 and prior, the pre-pandemic years, the majority, maybe even the vast majority of our patients were coming through our community marketing approach. That was really the core of what we did. And it was quite effective. And I think because you were generally finding people at community events. I think it was a more active channel. I do think the patients who came in tend to be a bit more engaged and also just not as needy on healthcare services. It was much more engaging. Some of the people obviously were coming in very much needing a doctor's appointment. That always happens, but I think when you shift the mix to more things, for example, digital marketing, now people are actually kind of clicking on you because they want a doctor, which tends to mean they have more healthcare concerns. And so if you look at what that looks like for kind of a year two and beyond patient, the two channels converge. So you really don't see a meaningful difference between them going forward because you have enough of an offset from the kind of disease burden of the patients who are coming in who really need your care. But what we do find is because people who are finding you need your care generally have higher medical costs, right? In year one, there's different economics. It's you know, it's not massive, but it's real. So I think kind of that combined with all the other pieces, I think the biggest piece being the lack of engagement in 2020 in the healthcare system. Yeah, I think those are the reasons why we are seeing, you know, obviously worse patient economics this year than we've ever seen for new patients.
spk08: And again, I think that gives me
spk12: I guess, confidence despite that is seeing that next year when we actually are able to capture the disease patients are bringing in, that they'll be on track, and that actually for our existing patients, we're seeing similar economics and MLR that we saw in 2019 on those patients. So, obviously, it's something we need to work through, and I think we need to focus on really getting our patients engaged very quickly, understanding their conditions very quickly, and taking great care of them. But I do think as the healthcare system normalizes more after 2020 and how patients are interacting with and how they're engaged. And we're able to keep opening up more of our channels. Again, I'm optimistic that we'll start to see a reversion back to what we've seen for years historically.
spk06: And then just my follow-up would just be your comments around the big three headwinds with number one being COVID admissions, $25 million. As we think about the new antiviral treatments that are coming to market, with the potential of a $400 to $500 type of price to manage those patients. So roughly 90% of them are not hospitalized based on the data that we see from Pfizer. How do we think about that opportunity on the antiviral medications that are coming versus hospitalizations?
spk12: Yeah, I mean, if those results, which obviously we all rally with a lot of excitement, if those play out, I think it's another really valuable tool in the toolkit. And so obviously we'd much, much, much rather spend $500 on medication to keep our patients out of the hospital, and most importantly, keeping our patients out of the hospital. And so whether that be breakthrough infections or people who have chosen not to have not to be vaccinated, either way you're going to reduce hospitalizations. And obviously that would, most importantly, lower the number of patients who we have that are in the hospital and have poor outcomes. But obviously it would be a nice cost favor too. So anything that keeps patients out of the hospital is a potential talent for us.
spk06: Okay, great. Thank you.
spk07: As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. Please limit to one question and one follow-up.
spk11: These growth businesses are aligned with industry trends and positions.
spk07: Your next question comes from the line of Kevin Fishback of Bank of America.
spk13: All right, great. Thank you. I wanted to ask, you mentioned in your prepared comments that you manage through labor, the labor market. Can you just talk a little bit about, you know, where those pressures might, you know, most likely manifest themselves as far as pressure on you guys and how you're dealing with it?
spk12: Yeah, absolutely.
spk08: I mean, first off, we've expanded a lot this year. I know you're aware, which means both for existing centers and for new centers, we've hired a good deal of providers.
spk12: Provider hiring, you know, our team will tell you it's never easy, but actually, I think over the years, it's actually gotten easier, even today, because I think we're getting more well-known at Oak Street, and people, I think providers are very excited to join our model and practice medicine differently. More of the challenges that come in and kind of some of the uh, lower, lower skilled, uh, jobs that have developed, you know, the less licensed jobs like, um, call center team members, receptionist, things of that nature. Um, and, and, and to be clear, I'm proud of our team for really managing through it and still putting out strong results and not letting, not letting that become a headwind, but, uh, It is certainly the most difficult to hire kind of that type of role that it's been, you know, since we started the organization nine years ago. And, you know, the team, I think, has done a very nice job of building a great culture and generating referrals from our team members and using tactics like that to build roles. But, you know, just posting a role and expecting job applicants to come in is not a strategy that works anymore. So we've had to really, you know,
spk13: work with our teams and be creative and uh you know make sure we get real filled all right great and then as far as the medical costs uh commentary is there anything that you would um spike out i guess you obviously made comments about um tenure of the of the mlr so i guess probably these sites are acting differently than existing sites but anything you know sites that have been around since
spk12: you know, 2014, 2015, you know, are seeing the same with new patients at sites that are in brand new markets and are new.
spk08: Care teams that have been around for, you know, for years, right, some of those early sites and providers that have been around, you know, for years are seeing the same challenges as they, you know, they bring on new patients to there.
spk12: So I think it is definitely something that assists them. Why? Which, again, one of the reasons why, you know, we believe more and more that it really is driven by kind of the strange engagement with the health care system, especially for lower-income older adults in 2020, and not something that is, you know, a function of our model behaving differently. And obviously, when we look at our tenured patients, and tenured patients can be patients who joined us in 2020 in a new market in 2020, tenured patients, someone who's been with Oak Street for six years, and we look at that group, right? That group, you know, uh, is essentially the same patient contribution as it was in 2019. So we're not, we're not seeing that in that group, which, which again, uh, I think makes sense to us because, um, those patients seen by us in 2020 and by us. So we, you know, have some of those, uh, kind of other, other challenges. So, um, Again, it really, I think it's an issue we have our hands around as far as innovations go, but I think it's going to take, you know, into 2022 before we can kind of have a reset from what happened to 2020 for patients who weren't in our control in 2020. All right, great. Thanks.
spk07: Your next question comes from the line of Jamie Peirce of Goldman Sachs.
spk09: Hey, good morning. So you guys have made some comments just about revenue stepping up next year on a PMPM basis and that mitigating some of the higher costs you're seeing this year. So I wanted to follow up on that comment. You also mentioned just this higher disease burden of your patient base. You know, so with that in mind and 2020 being kind of the last year from a risk assessment standpoint, how should we think about the step up in revenue PMPM going into 2022? Hey, Jamie. It's Tim.
spk14: Good morning. Thanks for the question. As we think about PMPM revenue going into 2022 for our new patients, we tend to be more focused on patient contribution, PMPM patient contribution dollars, obviously the net of the revenue and the medical costs. Essentially what we're saying is the medical costs, while we believe we can more effectively manage them than the 2021 results may suggest, particularly with COVID being less of a factor from a financial perspective, Let's assume for a moment that is not the case to Mike's earlier commentary. What we believe is the patients that are new to us this year, that next year will be second year patients.
spk09: Okay. Thanks for that. And just wanted to go to the center guidance that stepped up a little bit this quarter. Just wanted to get your thoughts on that for 2022 as well, longer year versus last year in terms of the increase in de novo. Um, you know, what are your thoughts just in the context of the elevated MLR currently as it relates to new center openings into next year?
spk12: Yeah, I mean, you know, for us, and again, Tim mentioned this, but, you know, for us, MLR is really much more of a function of mix. We look at MLR on the top line. So what we really look to is what is our MLR by cohort, right? And then what is actually more important than this MLR by cohort is what that means for our, at least what that means to our union level economics. And so, you know, the thing that we're very focused on is how do we think our centers are going to perform in 2022, right? Because we know 2021 is going to be a strange year, and really driven by those new patient dynamics. And you guys, you know, you see our growth rate. A lot of our patients by this time of the year, and especially in Q4, will be new patients. So the question is, what are those new patients going to look like? What are the patients who joined us in 2021 going to look like next year? What's our existing patient base that joined us in 2020 prior going to look like next year? And what does that mean for the unit after the level of economics of centers next year and beyond? And when we do that math, we feel very confident that we will still have a very strong center ramp, which is something, like I said in my comments, we will share kind of the embedded center ramp information. in guidance, what we're looking at. And I think that, again, when we look at the data, I think it shows that every center we put up is a fantastic investment. I think it shows that, you know, we're still seeing very strong results on the kind of intermediate tenured centers and the new centers.
spk08: compared to what we saw for our early centers, which are very profitable.
spk12: And so that gives us confidence that we still have very strong unit economics. We're not really seeing a degradation of the economics as we scale. So assuming that's still the case, and so far the Q3 results very much strengthen that feeling amongst our team, then I think we will see a step up in the number of centers we put up for 2022. Because, again, I think that right now we're just trying to grow through a period of time where we really don't have that many, you know, tenured mature centers because we didn't grow that fast in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017. So we've got to play a little bit of catch-up and get a big enough installed base because there's a huge need for what we do. And that's the period we're in.
spk13: All right. Thanks for the call.
spk16: Your next question. Hi, guys. Thanks so much for the question. Maybe following up on some of the prior questions, about the MLR. If we think about a traditional, maybe non-COVID effective change between, say, first-year patients to Oak Street and maybe year two or year three patients to Oak Street, can you talk about that MLR difference? Thanks.
spk08: Yeah, I mean, look,
spk12: As you can tell based on my comments, if we're similar to the patient contribution we saw in 2019 on existing patients and we are not where we were on an overall MLR basis compared to what we were in 2019 overall, you can tell that new patients obviously have a significant worse and the gap has widened between more tenured patients and new patients. As I shared, I think that the same new patients this year that are headwind will be back on track and no longer headwind in 2022 based on what was captured to date on their disease burden. So we do think it's a very large issue around under documentation. Generally, there is a step up every year we see a patient. The longer we have them, the more profitable they are. The step up is not nearly the step function. from year two to year three, and it goes up from year three to year four, et cetera. And so this is certainly an outlier. year from every other year we've had results. And we think we have a handle on why. And so, again, there's some tactics we can certainly mitigate to take better care of our patients faster, which we will obviously always try to do regardless of what their economics are. But I think when we look at our tenured patients and we look at the kind of expected revenue even for our new patients next year, we do believe our model is working and working to the same, if not better, effectiveness than it was in 2019 and earlier.
spk08: earlier.
spk12: It's just now it's a question of working through this last lingering impact of what happened in 2020.
spk16: Okay, that's helpful. And I noticed also that CapEx stepped up a bit in the quarter relative to prior quarter spend. Can you talk about what drove that increase and should we run rate that maybe $23 million amount going forward?
spk14: Hi, Liz. Beth, it's Tim. Generally speaking, the two largest drivers of CapEx are going to be new center development as well as anything related to IT development and labor, with the latter being a minority contributor. So typically speaking, you're seeing increases in CapEx can be driven by increased center opening ramp. And remember, just because we open a certain number of centers in the quarter and we've got several – if you look at the guides, we're up in – 17, 18 centers in Q4. So as you think about that, those centers are underway now, obviously, or they were underway as we were coming out of Q3. So it's not just the centers that opened in that period. So predominantly, it's going to be that center opening, the pace of center openings, essentially. So I would expect CapEx to increase commensurately with the number of centers we're opening in any given time period.
spk16: Great.
spk07: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Richard Close of Chronicle Ingenuity.
spk11: Yeah, thanks for the question. Just to maybe expand on Kevin's labor question a little bit. Tim, can you quantify any meaningful changes in the recruitment costs or wage inflation that you're seeing maybe on those lower positions? And then anything to speak up on turnover at maybe more mature centers?
spk14: Sure. Sure. Thanks for that. On the impact of the tight labor market on cost, I'd say at this point, the impact on cost has been relatively minimal. We benefit from a very unique mission at Oak Street, which really resonates with our employees. And thus far, that has enabled us to manage through the labor market conditions fairly well. Obviously, it's a challenging market to recruit folks in. So, you know, retaining talent has been less of an issue. We have not had a situation where we've experienced significant labor cost pressures across our book of business. So at this point, the answer to this question is relatively minimal. Okay, thank you.
spk07: Your next question comes from the line of Lance Wilkes of Bernstein.
spk15: Yeah, just a couple quick clarifications. Medical cost management, just interested, in addition to the three major drivers of kind of incremental medical claims expense costs this year, just on the core operations, what are the major medical cost action plan items that you guys are focused on or in your patient or COVID admissions? And then the second question is just related to the AARP relationship. Just trying to understand the economic model a little better there? You know, kind of where will the costs be housed within P&L? Is it fixed or variable costs? You know, is there any sort of splitting with ARP, or is it something where it's more like a licensing agreement? Thanks.
spk12: Yeah, on the first question, I mean, the core of what we do is keep our patients happy, healthy, and out of the hospital. And the majority of our spend, despite some of the movements in 2021 from SORP, the majority of our spend is It still remains patients in hospitalizations. And so our big focus of our care models is understanding patients' needs, engaging them in our model, seeing them on a regular cadence based on that need, enrolling them in other programs such as behavioral health or care in the home if they need that for our sickest patients, and really keeping them out of the hospital. And there's a very... consistent approach across all of our centers. We use the same operating model, the same data, the same technology, the same team structures. And so that remains a large focus and will continue to remain a large focus. As well as we've done reducing hospitalization by about 50%, I'm confident we can do better.
spk08: Part of that doing better, as you mentioned, Making sure we're understanding our new patients and engaging them faster so we can have a quicker impact on their medical costs.
spk12: Part of that will be, you know, again, making sure all of our patients are complying with our instructions and making sure we're providing them with a great experience. And then, obviously, for the other, you know, third of the stand, the non-expedient utilization, I think this is where, I think Rubicon will be, you know, a huge part of our strategy because I think we can both provide a better alternative than referring patients to a specialist. That's a better alternative for coordination of care. That's also a better alternative for the patient experience. I think we can bring a lot more expertise into our model faster to, again, to arrest chronic illnesses and drive better quality of care. So those are really big focuses, and I think What we continue to learn is that our model works very well, and while we'll always be adding things to the model, oftentimes what we also really focus on is making sure that all of our patients are engaged in the model and getting the care that we know they need. And then to your second question on AARP, I think your hypothesis is correct. Any cost associated with it will be in sales and marketing, and I think a license is probably a good frame of reference.
spk15: And just on that first part, as far as trying to keep people out of the hospitals and keep them healthy, are you guys doing anything with respect to either, you know, hospitalists?
spk08: So we have a transitions program, and that involves nurses and other providers, including
spk12: and nurse practitioners, depending on the patient need, who are managing where the patient goes from a close to acute setting, making sure that it's the right venue, the right length of stay. They're also really focused on readmissions. How do we make sure that we're doing medication reconciliation, identifying factors for readmission, and really making sure our patients don't go back to the hospital and let go. So both kind of the what happens, everything around what happens after the admission is a big focus.
spk08: We have a very specific program again perspective not a cyber program so yes to that question we don't have as much focus today on kind of
spk12: rates and contracting individual hospitals. I mean, our model obviously is much more geographically spread. So take a place like Chicago or any of our markets, we generally cover the majority of neighborhoods in those markets, which means we have to work with the majority of hospitals.
spk08: And for most of our patients, they're going to go to the hospital. hospital that's closest to their home or, you know, where they're taken.
spk12: And so we think we need a strategy that doesn't just work at, you know, a couple hospitals. And frankly, our strategy is less focused on kind of rate arbitrage and pushing patients to places, and it's more focused on, you know, patient choice and higher quality care and, you know, keeping patients healthier. So that's our focus today. We do do things around utilization management to make sure that we're you know, hospitals are doing the right level of care and the right, you know, kind of level of care that the patient needs is happening. And so, you know, it's beyond just.
spk04: Your next question comes from the line of Ryan Daniels of William Blair.
spk14: Hi, guys. This is Jack Sumpton for Ryan Daniels. I think most of our questions were answered, but I guess just keeping on the labor front, are you guys seeing any trends of folks who, you know, are kind of facing burnout but still coming to Oak Street after the past year of stress in other markets? I guess in our minds, you know, it would just be kind of bolstering Oak Street as an escape from these pressures and demonstrating, you know, kind of your insulation from the labor pressures. And, you know, if not, I guess kind of what are you seeing on that front?
spk12: Thanks. Yeah, I mean, great question. I think you have to divide up your team members across Oak Street by kind of role and function, right? We have a workforce that spans a lot of different types of team members, which is one reason I think we are as effective as we are. It is very multidisciplinary and look for opportunities for people to work at the top of their license. And so I absolutely think that's the case for providers. We hear that all the time from doctors and their physicians joining Oak Street Health that this is the model they've been looking for and this is the way to practice medicine. And that's a big reason why they come to Oak Street Health is because they actually get the resources they need to do what they went to medical school for, which is keeping patients healthy. So that certainly is the case. I think that's the case when you kind of talk to healthcare professionals generally. I think if you move to other roles, you know, the example I think is probably the other extreme is, you know, call center team members. I think that, you know, they're less coming out to you because the normal burnout pressures in primary care. I think they're coming out to you because they believe in our mission, and I think we've created a really great culture across the organization. And so that's really what we try to use as our biggest, you know, factor to attract and retain employees. This is a great place to work. We recently received an award from Chicago for being actually around being one of the best places to work. And so we take our culture and being, you know, we have four objectives at Oak Street Health. you know, bringing on more patients and growing to help more people, providing the best care anywhere, providing unmatched patient experience, and being the best place to work in healthcare. And I think you need all four of those to really achieve our mission. I think employees feel that, that one of your kind of four objectives is about them.
spk11: Understood. Thanks. And thanks for taking the question.
spk07: Your next question comes from the line of David Larson of BTIG.
spk01: Hi, just one really quick one from me. Can you maybe just comment on the competitive environment? Like we're obviously seeing, you know, Kano, One Medical and Iora, Walgreens is putting a big investment into VillageMD. And is this having any impact on like, you know, let's call it adverse risk selection where maybe older Medicare members are potentially affected?
spk12: joining oak street as compared to those perhaps in their 60s just any color there would be very helpful thanks yeah obviously uh over the last i don't know 15 months or whatever it's been since we since we went public um there's been a lot more organizations who are you know public and growing in the space um which is which is great i think for uh our country because we need more value based care we need better quality care because uh at least at this point in time we don't we don't really feel like there's a lot of um pressure or competitive dynamics influencing our performance. We have some centers that are near, you know, a competitor's operation. We have some centers that there's no competitors in the market. And we really don't see a difference in performance against any dimensions, whether that be growth or economics, et cetera. I think the reality is the vast, vast, vast majority of older adults are still receiving their care from traditional primary care doctors' offices or, even worse, from the neighbor's reserve, oftentimes receiving their care from the emergency room. And so what is the enabler of our success, and I think will be for a while, is our ability to engage people in the community and educate them about why primary care is important. And I think if they are wanting to see a doctor, one or two, Neal Street Health is a great place to get that care. We think our experience is very strong and obviously have a 90 net promoter score that backs that up. And so for us, it's all about maintaining our culture, leveraging our technology, our data, our model, and frankly, what I believe, and I'm biased, but what I believe is a phenomenal team to continue doing what we did. And in 10 years, we may have a different conversation about stealing share, and that'll be a very good problem to have for everyone. And we're confident with the platform we're building. We'll soon be one of the big platforms And we'll cross the bridge on competition then because right now it's really all about what we control. Do you have any desire to get into the commercial markets? No. I think that one of the reasons why we are so successful and will continue to be successful is because of our focus.
spk08: We take people who are 60 and up who have chronic illnesses, but that's really just an extension of our core population.
spk12: I think that our model works incredibly well for our patients, but it's obviously a resource-intensive and expensive model, and if you had a patient population that was statistically healthier. It wouldn't necessitate the level of investment we make, and now we wouldn't be taking cost out of the system. We'd be adding cost to the system. And I joke with my wife that I wish I was an O3 patient because the experience is pretty darn good. But the reality is I don't need that level of focus, right, and that level of resources because I don't have enough expected milk cross to necessitate it. So that's why we're going to keep it. Great. Thanks very much. Congrats on your success.
spk01: Thanks, everybody.
spk07: This concludes today's conference call. Is there any closing remarks?
spk04: Thank you, everyone, for joining the call, and we look forward to talking again soon. Thank you. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Everyone else has left the call. It looks like no one
Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

-

-