OptimizeRx - Q4 2023

Transcript

Steve Silvestro (President)

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining OptimizeRx's fourth-quarter fiscal 2023 conference call. With us today is the Chief Executive Officer of OptimizeRx, William Febbo. He is joined by Chief Financial Officer Ed Stelmakh, President Steve Silvestro, General Counsel Marion Odence-Ford, and Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance Andrew D'Silva. At the conclusion of today's call, I will provide some important cautions regarding the forward-looking statements made by management during today's call. I would like to remind everyone that today's call is being recorded and will be made available for replay via webcast, and a transcript and a link to the audio recording of this conference call will be provided on the investors' section of the company's website. Now I would like to turn the call over to OptimizeRx CEO William Febbo. Sir, please go ahead.

William Febbo (CEO)

Good morning, and thank you for joining our conference call to discuss fourth-quarter 2023 preliminary unaudited financials. As already communicated, our audit is taking longer than previous years due to the October 2023 acquisition of Healthy Offers, Inc., which does business under the name of Medicx Health, the November 2023 solutions portfolio streamlining around core business lines, and the validation and testing of certain third-party vendors' internal processes that are part of our previously disclosed material weakness remediation plan. The audit is in the final stages, and we are confident that we will be in a position to file our 10-K and audited financials no later than April 15th. I'm pleased to note that Q4 represented a strong end to 2023 and has favourably positioned us to start 2024.

The quarter's financial results came in better than our initial expectations and topped analyst estimates, with Q4 revenue growing 44% year-over-year to $28.4 million. The improvement was driven by strong organic growth in messaging led by our Dynamic Audience Activation Platform, or DAP for short, as well as from approximately two months of contribution from our acquisition of Medicx Health. Notably, our legacy core HCP business grew over 30% when compared to the fourth quarter of 2022. We are excited about the many business highlights from the fourth quarter. We continue to validate our thesis on DAP as we increase the number of deals in 2023 to 24 deals, providing us with a significant revenue launchpad this year.

Progress coming in ahead of what we had anticipated is very favorable as, by their nature, these DAP deals are larger, stickier, and more strategically targeted, making us a more relevant partner with our client base. We also acquired Medicx Health, resulting in a combination of a leading direct-to-consumer audience activation and messaging execution business with our HCP-focused omnichannel digital point-of-care marketing business. This acquisition unlocks a significant adjacent market with an extremely large white space and cross-sell opportunity. The integration of Medicx Health is tracking ahead of schedule, and the majority of integration activities have been completed. Furthermore, we have optimized our operation by trimming our legacy OptimizeRx costs by over 10% and simultaneously realigning our focus on core business lines and moving away from non-core business.

As noted in our March 11, 2024, press release, we are reiterating our guidance for 2024 but revising our original 2024 revenue target. This revision is due to a change in the revenue accounting treatment for certain revenue streams for messaging executed through Medicx Health's channel partners that were historically recognized on a gross basis but now will be recognized on a net basis. As a consequence of this gross-to-net accounting treatment, we adjusted our revenue target and anticipate revenue to reach at least $100 million for 2024. Importantly, this adjustment maintains our bottom line and, in fact, enhances our margin profile. Therefore, our Adjusted EBITDA guidance remains unchanged, standing at least $11 million for 2024. We believe the macroeconomic and competitive challenges we identified in 2022 and 2023 are returning to normal.

In particular, we're witnessing encouraging momentum as our clients that had initiated pilot programs with newly established entrants in our field over the past two years are concluding the assessments of these programs and, as anticipated, are finding that these perceived competitive solutions lack scalability and the ability to adequately report information back to customers, ultimately driving spending back towards our offerings. Before proceeding, I'd like to express my sincere gratitude to the OptimizeRx team for their unwavering dedication and relentless pursuit of our mission. Over the past few years, our collective efforts have led to the development of one of the most scalable solutions in the industry, tailored specifically for pharmaceutical marketers. We've recently expanded this initiative to include a highly impactful DTC component. This journey hasn't been without its challenges.

Navigating through the dynamic landscape of the industry shifts and embracing early digital advancements has been no small task. Yet, OptimizeRx's achievements stand as a testament to our resilience and foresight, fundamentally reshaping the dynamics of engagement between pharma, patients, and prescribers. As previously mentioned, in September of last year, we introduced a significant enhancement to our omnichannel healthcare engagement platform, known as DAP. This pioneering AI-driven capability seamlessly integrates point-of-care and traditional digital media, offering a holistic solution for pharmaceutical marketing. The unveiling marked the culmination of years dedicated to the understanding of how AI can augment OptimizeRx's customer use cases, resulting in a transformative journey for our HCP engagement platform. Building upon our existing technology, we have extended the AI-driven platform reach to encompass social media, web display channels, and CRM alerts, which fosters greater efficiency to collaboration with our customer salesforces.

Since then, we've expanded these capabilities to now also encompass the DTC channels utilized by Medicx Health that include streaming and connected TV, as well as various digital channels such as display, audio, online video, and mobile, among others. We're encouraged by this timely enhancement as we've already witnessed early initial cross-selling success with DAP in the short time since we've consummated the acquisition. We will update everyone regarding our DAP cross-selling efforts in our Q1 earnings call in early May. DAP advances our land-and-expand strategy, enabling clients to gain maximum market penetration through the scaling of outreach in real time across the company's network of over 2 million HCPs and 240 million US adults across multiple major digital media channels and at point-of-care via EHRs, e-prescribing, and telehealth platforms. With this, OptimizeRx has evolved into one of the most comprehensive digital healthcare marketing platforms in the nation.

This evolution firmly aligns with current pharma trends as the industry is moving a greater portion of their commercial spend towards omnichannel digital solutions while looking for these solutions to deliver more impactful results by not only identifying patients known to HCPs but also pinpointing new patients for their therapies. We continue to believe smarter solutions such as our DAP offering will capture the lion's share of the pharma spend, particularly with legacy commercial dollars that are reallocated to digital. We believe early proof of this trend is clearly highlighted by the 4x year-over-year increase in DAP deals seen in 2023. DAP represents a transformative leap for us, transitioning us from being a mere tactical player within the pharmaceutical industry to a formidable strategic partner.

This shift affords us the invaluable advantage of garnering top-down support from decision-makers while also securing revenue streams with greater durability, enhanced margin, and amplified growth prospects. These pivotal developments are reinforcing my level of excitement regarding our strategic positioning. I anticipate that the collective impact of our initiatives outlined today could yield substantial dividends over the next 3-5 years, catapulting our revenue to multiples of its current standing. As we diligently pursue our land-and-expand strategy, we continue to reap the rewards of delivering superior return on investment, maintaining our impressive ROIs of over 10-to-1 for HCP messaging. This achievement holds particular significance with the pharmaceutical landscape, where achieving ROIs of 2-to-3 times spend has traditionally been the benchmark. We believe we turned a significant corner in recent months and have incredible momentum going into 2024.

With that, I'd like to turn the call over to our CFO, Ed Stelmakh, who will walk us through our financial details. Ed?

Edward Stelmakh (CFO)

Thanks, Will, and good morning, everyone. As noted previously, a transcript and a link to an audio recording of this conference call will be provided on the investors' section of the company's website. Fourth-quarter revenue came in at $28.4 million, an increase of 44% from the $19.7 million we recognized during the same period in 2022. This included revenues from our legacy core and non-core business lines as well as from approximately two months of Medicx Health-related revenue streams. Going forward, we will be reporting both OptimizeRx and Medicx Health as one consolidated business. Meanwhile, our previous non-core business lines that we have called Access and Patient Engagement will no longer be revenue streams for the company, and we have eliminated associated costs to these business lines.

On a pro forma basis, when stripping out these non-core business lines from our 2023 results and accounting for the full-year benefit of Medicx Health financial results in our 2023 actuals, our revenue for calendar year 2023 would have been approximately $91.8 million, which we are utilizing as our comparison point to chart progress going forward. Meanwhile, our net loss came in at $7.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2023 compared to a loss of $0.3 million during the fourth quarter of 2022. Our Adjusted EBITDA came in at $5.8 million for the fourth quarter of 2023 compared to $3.9 million during the fourth quarter of 2022. The GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation table has been included in the investor relations section of our website at investors.optimizerx.com in the events and presentations folder.

We ended the year with cash and short-term investments totaling $13.9 million as of December 31, 2023, as compared to $74.1 million on December 31, 2022. The majority of the year-over-year decline was due to our acquisition of Medicx Health and share repurchase program, through which we bought back 526,999 shares of common stock for $7.5 million during 2023. Our current debt balance currently stands at $38.3 million. Recall, to help fund the $83.9 million cash portion of the Medicx Health transaction, the company took on $40 million in debt financing, and we paid off $1.7 million of principal during the fourth quarter. We continue to believe we're well-funded to execute against our operational goals. And with that, I would like to turn the call back over to Will. Will?

William Febbo (CEO)

Thanks, Ed. Operator. Now let's move to Q&A.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you'd like to remove your questions from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we pull for questions. Thank you. Our first question is from Sean Dodge with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Sean Dodge (Healthcare Technology Analyst)

Yep. Thanks. Good morning, and congratulations on the strong finish to the year. You signed, Will, you said 24 DAP deals in 2023. That was up 4X, 4 times versus the previous year. So lots of momentum there. I guess anything you can share on how demand or activity around those has carried into this year? You'd mentioned some macro headwinds before. Have those continued to dissipate?

William Febbo (CEO)

Hey, Sean. Yeah, thanks. So yeah, on macro, for sure, we're seeing sort of a return to what we saw in 2021 in terms of our clients making decisions, flow, seasonality, all that good stuff, FDA approvals, all tracking towards previous dip. And yeah, and we'll obviously talk to Q1 in May. But yeah, it's really resonating with the clients. I think we talked a lot about it after the Q3 report, that clients are really the adoption of digital has also forced the adoption of accuracy reporting, data-driven outreach, less is more if it's effective. And we're in the right place at the right time there with this innovative approach. So yeah, continued adoption.

And Steve, just to say a couple top-level words on the sales training and such, but very positive momentum and really encouraged by the team's ability to deliver in a way that the clients respond to and in a way that's efficient around digital. Steve, you want to just chime in a little bit?

Steve Silvestro (President)

Yeah, happy to. Hey, Sean. Good to hear you. I think one of the other things that's been really encouraging is that the initial set of DAP deals that we did previously have renewed, and those same set of clients have expanded. So I think that's also a positive confirmation on value prop and what we're delivering to those clients, Sean. So that land-and-expand strategy that we talked about previously is really coming to fruition. And then I think, as Will highlighted, the team's ability to get a little bit more technical and approach the client in a different way, that the sales slightly different, right? It's more of a much more of a strategic sale in that you're having a conversation around patient profiles and strategies, a little bit more mature than we would have had in times past. So really encouraged by that.

I think that makes it significantly more sticky. As Will said, we'll have more positive news to share during Q1, but really encouraged by what we're seeing on the DAP front.

Sean Dodge (Healthcare Technology Analyst)

Good. That's a good segue into my follow-up. Will, in your prepared remarks, talked about omnichannel and kind of trends within big pharma. You've done the Medicx acquisition. That adds a lot of nice breadth for you. When we think about kind of omnichannel, do you have everything you need there now? Are there other areas or capabilities you think could make sense to bolt on in the future?

William Febbo (CEO)

So yeah, I would say, look, we have no major CapEx. We've got the tech that can enable what we're doing. We're constantly looking at different types of channel partners. And I think, Sean, that'll be an evolution pretty much every year because there's just so much changing so fast the way doctors and patients interact with their own medical records, with their own doctors, with their caregivers. And so luckily for us, we have a team, and that was enhanced with part of the Medicx team as well, that's completely focused on channel. And omnichannel is really something that shifts with the needs, right? It's not a stagnant thing. You don't sort of get there and you're done. It's constantly evolving. But the good news is we've got a lot of reach today that is highly relevant, that gives us growth.

We've got the team to be keeping their eye on the ball on what's next in terms of enablement for communication with both HCPs and patients and consumers of health.

Sean Dodge (Healthcare Technology Analyst)

Okay. That's great color. Thanks and congrats again.

William Febbo (CEO)

Thanks, Sean.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question is from Stephanie Davis with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.

Stephanie Davis (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. You're talking about trimming costs further, but you're talking also to a few different initiatives that would normally require some headcount investment, such as these DAP wins and the Walmart partnership. Can you just walk us through how to think about that?

William Febbo (CEO)

Yeah, sure. Hey, Stephanie. Good to hear your voice. So no, we're not looking at additional.

Stephanie Davis (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Long time, no talk.

William Febbo (CEO)

Yeah, I know, right? Great conference, by the way. Thank you.

Stephanie Davis (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Thank you.

William Febbo (CEO)

So no, we're not looking at additional costs, right? That was just all messaged last year, and we're just reminding everyone that we completed it. The beauty of this model, Stephanie, is it's a technology platform, right? We're not an agency. We don't generate content. We help our clients get the content that they've already generated to the right people at the right time, whether that's a doctor or a patient. So our additional people this year will be commercially focused and also just as a public company, having more heft as we get over $100 million in revenue. And then, as we've messaged before on the reporting side, that's a key piece. Now that pharmaceutical companies have adopted point-of-care digitally as a channel, all the standards go up, and transparency needs to go with it as well as measurement. So now this is a very scalable model.

We've shown it before in past years, even as a smaller company. If investors go back and look, and I think they'll see that as we progress through the year.

Stephanie Davis (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Awesome. And I do have to ask because we have seen a public peer go through some issues when delaying their reporting. How should we think about the cost associated with that because there usually is a little bit more accounting cost and some management attention, if you will, when that happens?

William Febbo (CEO)

Yeah, no problem. Yeah, we did a lot last year. Again, as I said in my prepared remarks, I'm super proud of the team because for a small company, it's no small feat to buy one, outlicense some tech, and simultaneously see your core starting to grow, which you believe, but when it happens, it happens fast. As we said, all that coupled with reviewing material weakness that we have a remediation plan for 2024, everything's just taking longer. So yeah, there'll be some incremental costs for third-party assistance on the acquisition stuff. A lot of the cost was already rolled into the acquisition costs, and once we actually file, people will see that. So I wouldn't anticipate a ton, but there will be some additional.

Stephanie Davis (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Awesome. Good to hear. Good luck with the sprint.

William Febbo (CEO)

Thank you. Talk soon, Stephanie.

Operator (participant)

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1. Our next question is from William Wood with B. Riley Securities. Please proceed with your question.

William Wood (Biotech Rquity Research Analyst)

Thanks so much, and congratulations on a nice fourth quarter. Just a couple from us. We're just kind of curious, wanting to dig in a little bit more to the DAP expectations, the DAP growth expectations for this year. You obviously noted 2024 at the close of next year. How should we be thinking about this growth for this year in terms of the number of deals, as well as maybe potentially commenting on pharma partners that you already sort of have in the queue to sign up for the year?

William Febbo (CEO)

Yeah. We don't want to get well, it's good to hear your voice. We don't want to get too far ahead because we're going to report in basically a month or so on Q1. But very positive momentum. We'll give an update on the closes we've seen in Q1, but we don't want to get ahead of that. But I think what's telling and what Steve mentioned is we went from 2 to 6 to 2024, 100% of which renewed. From the 2, 2 went into the 6. The 6 went into the 2024. And we're really seeing cases across multiple therapeutic areas and also different needs by the client. And I think what's going to be most encouraging when we talk about it is just seeing how this can now apply to the DTC part of our business because their method is spectacular around creating micro-neighborhoods.

But when you can layer in DAP with the algorithm, the two together, first of all, simplifies life for our clients. We think increases quality of outreach and will certainly drive better prescription lift. So stay tuned. Can't give you any hard numbers, but really positive momentum year over year and certainly what we're seeing initially.

William Wood (Biotech Rquity Research Analyst)

Appreciate that. That's very helpful. In terms of your Medicx, you mentioned that it was almost complete or near completion. I'm just curious when we should be expecting for that to complete. Is it month timeline, or is it longer or slightly longer term? And then how should we think about that as adding to the growth and the expectations for 2024 coming?

William Febbo (CEO)

Yeah. So we've got a pretty seasoned team with Ed, Steve, Marion, and myself, and then the whole team below us. A lot of us have done acquisitions. We tend to be pretty conservative on the first year. I will say the process of integration was really well run. Ed Stelmakh, our CFO, set up a particular office to do that. All the major stuff is done. Now it's fine-tuning, and then it's just operations. I think the part that, on the commercial side, which is where the growth can come from to your question, we did a great training in January of both teams together. I was there as well. The entire senior team was there. I think that was really brilliant. It just brought together, first of all, people that already worked together.

They've gone through the knife fight of digital spend before it was cool and then also got their head around what DAP is. So we're really excited about that. And in Q1, we can give a little bit more color in terms of DAP's contribution to growth, percentage of overall revenue, that kind of thing. But we'll be there soon enough.

William Wood (Biotech Rquity Research Analyst)

Got it. Appreciate that. And one last quick one. Could you remind me what Medicx gross margins were or historically have been, and then how you would expect those to sort of integrate into OptimizeRx and how sort of the outlook for the future on how we should expect those to integrate? Thank you.

William Febbo (CEO)

Sure. Ed, do you want to take that?

Edward Stelmakh (CFO)

Yeah. Hey, William. Yeah. So the margins for Medicx, I think they were disclosed for Q1, Q2, so you can look at those filings. As far as full-year margins concerned, as we said before, we're not going to be splitting out their numbers. We're pretty much now a fully integrated business. So the margins are all baked into our current guidance as one company.

William Wood (Biotech Rquity Research Analyst)

Understood. Thank you for taking our questions.

Edward Stelmakh (CFO)

Yep. No problem.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to hand the floor back over to William Febbo for any closing comments.

William Febbo (CEO)

All right. Thank you, operator. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I trust you share in our excitement and can perceive the positive momentum we've built throughout the second half of 2023 and now into 2024. As we embark on our financial and operational journey for the year ahead, I'm pleased to say that we are stepping into this new chapter on solid ground. Our reach with healthcare professionals and patients has undergone a remarkable expansion thanks to our proprietary AI models. This has allowed us to overcome many of the challenges we faced previously. Today, we proudly offer a comprehensive solution that seamlessly integrates various elements into the powerful Agile strategies. These strategies address critical challenges such as brand awareness and education, affordability, and the recruitment of hard-to-find patients.

These are the very issues our clients, doctors, and patients encounter daily in today's healthcare landscape, and we are honored to be part of the solution. Our commitment to generally aiding doctors and patients in aligning on care is what truly drives us as a team. Thank you for your time today, and I eagerly anticipate our upcoming discussion on next quarter's earnings call. Wishing you all a fantastic remainder of the day. Thank you, operator.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, sir. Before we conclude today's call, I would like to provide the company's safe harbor statement that includes cautions regarding forward-looking statements made during today's call. Statements made by management during today's call may contain forward-looking statements within the definition of Section 27A and the Securities Act of 1933 as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Act of 1934 as amended. These forward-looking statements should not be used to make investment decisions. The words "anticipate," "estimate," "expect," "possible," and "seeking," and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. They may speak only to the date that such statements are made. Such forward-looking statements in this call include statements regarding estimation of total addressable market size, market penetration, revenue growth, gross margin, operating expenses, profitability, cash flow, technology, investments, growth opportunities, acquisitions, and upcoming announcements. They also include management's expectations for the rest of the year.

The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events, or otherwise. Forward-looking statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties, some of which cannot be predicted or quantified. Future events and actual results could differ materially from those set forth in, contemplated by, or underlying these forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties to which forward-looking statements are subject to include, but are not limited to, the effects of government regulation, competition, and other material risks. Risks and uncertainties to which forward-looking statements are subject could affect business and financial results are included in the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the quarter ended December 31st, 2022. This form is available on the company's website and on the SEC website at sec.gov.

Before we end today's conference, I would like to remind everyone that this call will be available for replay via webcast only starting later this evening, running through for a year, and a transcript and a link to an audio recording of this conference call will be provided on the investor section of the company's website. Thank you for joining us today. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect your lines.