TriNet Group - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Executive Summary

• Q1 2025 delivered in line with plan: total revenues up 1% to $1.292B, GAAP diluted EPS $1.71, adjusted EPS $1.99, and adjusted EBITDA $162M (12.6% margin); management reiterated full‑year guidance and highlighted stable but elevated health cost trends and disciplined pricing.
• TriNet raised FY25 total revenue guidance to $4.95–$5.14B (from $4.90–$5.10B) while maintaining ranges for professional services, ICR, adjusted EBITDA margin, and EPS; dividend increased 10% to $0.275 per share.
• Versus S&P Global consensus, Q1 adjusted EPS beat ($1.99 actual vs $1.60 estimate*) and reported total revenue exceeded consensus ($1.274B actual vs $0.318B estimate*), although revenue consensus appears non‑comparable to TriNet’s reported total revenue definition; adjusted EPS outperformance is the cleaner signal*.
• Strategic execution: benefit repricing taking hold with retention above historical average expected, operating expenses down 6% YoY, and progress on broker channel and benefit bundles for the fall selling season.
• Capital returns: ~1.2M shares repurchased and ~$102M returned to shareholders via buybacks and dividends in Q1, signaling confidence amid a tougher macro and lower new sales conversion.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• “We had a strong start to 2025 delivering financial performance consistent with our full-year guidance,” with revenues up 1% YoY and adjusted EPS $1.99; adjusted EBITDA margin expanded sequentially from Q4 to 12.6%.
• Benefit repricing progress: nearly two‑thirds of the book renewed between Oct 1 and Jan 1; April cohort successfully renewed, with pricing adequacy improving and retention expected above historical average.
• Operating discipline: operating expenses down 6% YoY, automation and workforce strategy helped margins while funding strategic initiatives; strong cash generation supported repurchases and a 10% dividend increase.

What Went Wrong

• Demand headwinds: SMB confidence weakened during the quarter, lowering new sales conversion; new sales declined YoY and co‑employed WSEs fell 6% YoY to ~311K (total WSEs -3%).
• Insurance costs rose 4% with ICR at ~88% (CFO cited 88.4%), above prior year (86%); this compressed YoY margins despite sequential improvement from Q4.
• Retention ticked lower by ~1 point vs prior year due to higher health fee increases and macro pressures, though management expects annual retention above the historical 80% benchmark.

Transcript

Speaker 3

Good day, and welcome to the TriNet Group First Quarter 2025 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Alex Bauer, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Operator. Good morning. My name is Alex Bauer, TriNet's Head of Investor Relations. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to TriNet's First Quarter conference call. I'm joined today by our President and CEO, Mike Simonds, and our CFO, Kelly Tuminelli. Before we begin, I would like to preview this morning's call. I will first pass the call to Mike, where he will comment on our first quarter performance and discuss our progress on our strategy and medium-term outlook. Kelly will then review our Q1 financial performance in greater detail. Please note that today's discussion will include our 2025 full-year financial outlook, our medium-term outlook, and other statements that are not historical in nature or predictive in nature or depend upon or refer to future events or conditions, such as our expectations, estimates, predictions, strategies, beliefs, or other statements that might be considered forward-looking.

These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and assumptions and are inherently subject to risks, uncertainties, and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict and that may cause actual results to differ materially from statements being made today or in the future. Except as may be required by law, we do not undertake to update any of these statements in light of new information, future events, or otherwise. We encourage you to review our most recent public filings with the SEC, including our 10-K and 10-Q filings, for a more detailed discussion of the risks, uncertainties, changes in circumstances that may affect our future results or the market price for our stock. In addition, our discussion today will include non-GAAP financial measures, including our forward-looking guidance for adjusted EBITDA margin and adjusted net income per diluted share.

For reconciliations of our non-GAAP financial measures to our GAAP financial results, please see our earnings release, 10-Q filings, or our 10-K filing, which are or will be available on our website or through the SEC website. With that, I will turn the call over to Mike. Mike.

Speaker 6

Thank you, Alex. Our first quarter financial and operating performance once again highlighted the strength and durability of TriNet's business model. We delivered financial results that were in line with our expectations and that put us on a path to achieving our annual guidance. That was in spite of an increasingly uncertain economic environment. As the quarter progressed, we saw a decline in SMB business confidence. This weaker business sentiment flowed through to TriNet in the form of low-net customer hiring and as a contributing factor to lower new sales conversion rates. Despite the external challenges, I am encouraged by the resilience of our business model, evidenced by our strong customer retention, and I'm pleased with the accelerating pace of execution at TriNet, work that is positioning us for future success.

For this call, I'll use our strategy, which we covered last quarter, to frame the discussion of our financial and operating performance. As a reminder, through the medium term, we intend to accelerate total revenues growth, achieving a compounded annual growth rate of 4-6%, expand our adjusted EBITDA margins to 10-11%, and ultimately drive total annualized value creation of 13-15% through EPS growth supplemented by share repurchases and dividends. Starting with revenues, for the first quarter, growth was 1% and in line with our plan. We continue to expect revenue for full year 2025 to be in the range of $4.9 billion-$5.1 billion, with the key drivers being healthcare price increases and strong customer retention, with new sales growth expected to emerge later in the year.

Net customer hiring is expected to remain low throughout 2025, an assumption that seems increasingly likely given the economic environment. I'm encouraged by the progress we're making with our benefit price increases. Our results to date suggest we are effectively balancing repricing and cost ratio improvement with a prudent focus on retention, all while supporting our customers in a challenging environment. Between our October 1, 2024, and January 1, 2025, renewals, we've renewed nearly two-thirds of our books since resetting our cost trend assumptions. Looking forward, our April 1 cohort has been successfully renewed, and we're currently working with customers that renew on July 1. At this point, all our indicators suggest we are on track to achieve the planned rate increases while maintaining retention above our historical average.

We are seeing the benefits of our strong service delivery, and our investments in insurance talent and a more disciplined pricing process are paying off. Regarding new sales in the quarter, we're pleased with the customers we've added. This is a high-quality cohort of customers with contracts priced appropriately to their risk and who stand to benefit from our strong offering, including our technology and service model. Pricing to our view of current insurance cost trends created a sales headwind versus a year ago, which, when paired with a more uncertain macro environment, led to lower sales conversion rates and new sales declining year over year. Absent a significant economic slowdown, I expect sales results to improve as we move through 2025 and continue executing on our strategic initiatives. We have a motivated sales team and important deliverables lined up for our fall selling season.

First, we expect to launch our first set of benefit plan bundles. As a reminder, our benefit plan bundles use our broad set of carrier partnerships paired with our proprietary data to create new plan bundles that meet customer needs for actuarial value and price while simplifying the offering and sales process. This product innovation is made possible by our differentiated operating model. Our combined scale and risk-taking provides us with a seat at the table with carriers and allows us to innovate in ways our increasingly tenured and productive sales force can leverage. Turning to our go-to-market approach, we're making progress towards scaling our benefits brokerage channel. This new channel approach is a comprehensive undertaking. TriNet is using our proprietary technology and redesigning a number of our processes in order to reduce friction and improve both the broker and the customer experience.

We're pleased to have engaged several national insurance brokerages in a co-development effort. We believe TriNet's innovative benefit bundles will prove to be compelling for health and welfare brokers as they aim to provide their SMB customers with the best possible solutions delivered in a more simplified and streamlined way. Our progress in putting TriNet on a path to sustainable customer and revenue growth through new sales and retention goes beyond product and broker investments. We will continue to provide details in coming quarters on the meaningful milestones ahead, driving up rep tenure and productivity, as well as improving our customer experience. The final element of revenue growth is CIE, net hiring within our installed base, and our first quarter result was largely in line with our muted expectations.

In sum total, revenues were up 1% in the quarter, and absent severe economic disruption, I believe a strong second half will set us up for accelerating revenue growth in 2026. We will have completed the most aggressive portion of our repricing and begun to reap the benefit of our distribution and product investments, with growth accelerating towards our medium-term expectation of 4-6%. A second component of our strategy is margin expansion, and we're making progress on this dimension as well. Expenses in the quarter declined year over year. This is a meaningful achievement given we are concurrently investing in our strategic initiatives. Though we've got plenty of work ahead, I'm encouraged with our progress in constructing a scalable, high-quality operating platform. Margin expansion over the medium term will also be supported by improvements in our insurance cost ratio.

On that front, our first quarter performance was in line with our expectations. As I mentioned, price increases are taking hold, and medical claims trends, though still elevated, have stabilized for several months now. As claim trends stabilize, we are increasingly confident with the adequacy of our pricing. As we exit 2025, we expect to have positive momentum returning to our long-term ICR range of 87-90%. Our margin performance in Q1 drove strong cash generation, and consistent with our strategy, we deployed capital for the benefit of our shareholders. We recently announced a 10% increase in our dividend and repurchase stock, taking advantage of the recent pullback and supported by our confidence in the momentum we're building as a company. I am pleased by the accelerating pace of execution and early successes across our portfolio of initiatives.

We are positioning ourselves to launch new commercial initiatives in time for the fall selling season. We are controlling expenses while reinvesting in our business, and we're delivering exceptional service to our customers in a challenging business environment. Our decisions to narrow our focus to our core high-value-add HR solutions is bringing clarity and helping speed our decision-making. At the same time, we recognize we are operating in a dynamic environment and may need to adapt and adjust, staying focused on our customers and our medium-term commitments. There's growing momentum at TriNet, and I expect as the year progresses, shareholders will see our initiatives translate into positive commercial, operating, and financial outcomes. With that, let me pass the call to Kelly for her financial review. Kelly?

Speaker 5

Thank you, Mike. We performed in line with our overall expectations during the first quarter, putting us on track to meet our full year financial guidance. The strength of our business model provided the stability to navigate the environment, being prudent with expenses and still investing in our business, continuing to bring solutions to SMBs at times when they need them the most. One of the priorities we laid out in February was repricing our installed customer base to better reflect the inflationary environment in healthcare costs. As we shared at the time, there were select cohorts that needed to be substantially repriced. We feel confident in our progress there, and our first quarter ICR performance was in line with expectations. New sales in the first quarter were down year over year as these repricing efforts created a temporary new business headwind.

Along with the repricing dynamic, we had a difficult prior year comparison to a period in which pricing ultimately proved too low for the cost trends that emerged. Although retention came in a point below expectations due to higher health fee increases in a challenging external environment, our strong service model and differentiated customer experience kept us on track to achieve annual retention above our historical 80% benchmark. Now let's dive into our financial performance in greater detail. Total revenue grew 1% year over year in the first quarter. Total revenue performance in the quarter was largely driven by insurance repricing and stronger-than-expected interest income. Customer hiring was slightly below our forecast and came in worse than the first quarter of 2024, driven by the main street and professional services verticals.

We finished the quarter with approximately 340,000 total WSEs, down 3% over the same quarter last year, and 311,000 co-employed WSEs, down 6%. As a reminder, total WSEs include platform users who are accessing our platform, as well as co-employed WSEs receiving the full benefit of our PEO services. The decline in co-employed WSEs was driven by reduced new sales when compared to the prior year. We faced a difficult Q1 sales comparison as we were operating in a much different health plan pricing environment last year, and we've sharpened our pricing discipline to reflect current trends. Retention ticked lower this quarter by approximately 1 percentage point of beginning co-employed WSEs when compared to the prior year. Given our repricing efforts, we're pleased with our overall retention rates.

First, in aggregate, those clients that left in Q1 had an insurance cost ratio that was notably higher than the companies that stayed, and second, we're on track to exceed our historical retention benchmark, and our full year EPS forecast remains intact. Professional services revenue in the first quarter declined 2%, largely due to the decline in volume, as well as the discontinuation of a specific client-level technology fee. Professional services revenue was supported by the timing of pseudopayments and low single-digit improvement in admin pricing. HRAS fees and ASO revenues, which included conversion from HRAS, were modestly down year over year. We continue to transition away from our SaaS-only solution, and we're pleased with the pickup in ASO conversion. Insurance revenue grew 1% in the first quarter. We expect to see the benefit of renewal pricing per WSE build through the course of 2025.

Insurance costs in the first quarter grew 4%, reflecting a continuation in trends experienced last year. As a result, our first quarter insurance cost ratio came in at 88.4% within our forecast and on track to be within our full year range. Operating expenses in the quarter were down 6% year over year. While we continue to reinvest a portion of our savings back into our value creation initiatives, we managed expenses tightly and benefited from continued automation efforts and lower overall compensation expense as our workforce strategy took hold. First quarter GAAP earnings per diluted share was $1.71, and our adjusted earnings per diluted share was $1.99. TriNet continued its strong cash generation. In the first quarter, we generated $162 million in adjusted EBITDA, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 12.6%.

Operating activities generated $95 million in net cash and $79 million in free cash flow, or approximately half of our adjusted EBITDA. Our strong cash generation afforded us the ability to take advantage of the volatility in our stock after our fourth quarter earnings report and repurchase approximately 1.2 million shares. In addition to share repurchase, we paid a $0.25 dividend and announced a 10% increase to our next dividend. In total, we deployed a little over $100 million to shareholders in the first quarter. In 2025, our capital return priorities remain unchanged. We will continue to create value for our shareholders by investing in our value creation initiatives, funding dividends and share repurchases, while maintaining an appropriate liquidity buffer. Now let's turn to our 2025 outlook. For the year, given first quarter performance, we are tracking within our previously disclosed range and are affirming our full year guidance.

As a reminder, for 2025, we expect total revenue to be in the range of $4.95 billion-$5.14 billion. We expect professional services revenue to range from $700-$730 million, our insurance cost ratio to be in the range of 92%-90%, and our adjusted EBITDA margin to be from just under 7% to approximately 8.5%. Finally, we expect GAAP earnings per diluted share to be in the range of $1.90-$3.40, and adjusted earnings per diluted share to be $3.25-$4.75. With our laser focus on those items critical for TriNet success, we delivered a strong first quarter and strong start to the year. Despite the uncertainty introduced by the difficult economic environment, we are on track to achieve our annual guidance, and we will keep our focus on serving our customers and executing our strategy.

With that, I will pass the call to the operator for Q&A.

Speaker 3

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, please press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Jared Levine from Cowen. Please go ahead.

Speaker 0

Thank you. Yeah, I wanted to start in terms of double-clicking on the demand environment. You did mention the kind of increasing macro uncertainty did impact sales conversions over the quarter here. I guess what drives the confidence on that improving sales performance from here, you know, despite this increasing uncertainty? Is that more so a dynamic of easing comps and the maturation of the sales force, or anything else to kind of note there?

Speaker 6

Yeah, good morning, Jared. It's Mike. Appreciate the question. I think you actually, you know, hit it there at the tail end. I mean, I think it's a combination here when we look at the comp year over year, and Kelly made the point earlier. The way we're thinking about healthcare pricing in this period versus a year ago is pretty markedly different. That's going to have a bit of an impact on the sales conversion rate on a year-over-year basis. You pair that with, you know, the uncertainty in the environment, which we saw pick up towards the end of the quarter. Our confidence, though, is based on a few things. One is just the pipeline itself, and so the demand environment is still there.

It is kind of environments like these where small businesses are looking for really scalable solutions, and sometimes that's scaling up, and sometimes that's scaling down. We bring that sort of variable cost model to play. Part of it too is, you know, we continue to invest in the productivity, and we're picking up some tenure in the sales force, and then some of the initiatives that we're bringing into the market for the fall selling season. All that kind of comes together, and you know, you don't want to get too predictive given, you know, it's a little bit of a volatile macro. On the things that we can control, there is definitely a building sense of momentum on the new business front for us.

Speaker 0

Great. In terms of the HRAS wind down here, can you give an update on your efforts to retain those clients with the ASO offering, and then any change in expectations of a $15 million-$20 million year-on-year headwind for FY2025?

Speaker 6

Yeah, absolutely. As you know, Jared, we made the decision to exit the SaaS-only business, but wanted to do that in a very customer-first way. We are gradually moving customers off of that platform and either up into the ASO service category or into partners that are, you know, better suited to deliver to kind of particularly the smaller end of that customer base and a lower PEPM SaaS-only offer. They had to make a series of assumptions as we went through our plans for this year, and I'd tell you, you know, a quarter into it, we are driving actually right in line to maybe a tick or two higher in terms of the upsell rate into that ASO product.

Early days, plenty of work to do between now and the end of the year, but I'd say consistent with kind of the plans and the set of assumptions that went into our forecast. I think that's what we're tracking.

Speaker 5

Yeah. Jared, I'd just add one quarter in, we really haven't changed our assumption there, but we are pleased with the conversion rates.

Speaker 0

Great. Thank you.

Speaker 6

Thanks.

Speaker 3

Thank you. Your next question comes from Kyle Peterson from Needham. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Great. Good morning, guys, and appreciate you taking the questions. You know, wanted to see if we could dive into some of the moving pieces and the guidance. I know in aggregate, things seem to be tracking about in line, but, you know, is there anything? Sounds like CIE was in the ballpark, but maybe a little more conservative or tracking towards the low end. I guess anything at a more micro level that's progressing a little better or worse, you know, than expected in the guides and year-to-date performance?

Speaker 5

Yeah, Jared, happy to take the question, Kyle. You know, in general in guidance, yeah, a few things have moved slightly, but really we feel like we're on track for the full year overall. You know, insurance was roughly in line with our expectation. Expenses were maybe a tick better. CIE and attrition was a tick worse. It really just puts us in line. Those are probably the major drivers that moved.

Speaker 1

Okay. Okay. That is really helpful. I guess on, you know, some of the commentary with, you know, net new sales and S&B confidence kind of fading a bit as the quarter progressed, I guess any color as to what you guys have seen or how you guys feel for a few weeks of April has gone? I know there's been a lot more, you know, volatility and uncertainty given tariffs and all that. Any, you know, update as to how this has looked, you know, quarter to date would be really helpful.

Speaker 6

Yeah, sure, Kyle, Mike. Yeah, it's certainly been up and down, and I think we've all experienced that. I think a couple of things, and you know this, but our mix of business is one that doesn't have a great deal of exposure directly into things like tariffs. Outside of some manufacturing in Main Street and some tech, actually, and life science manufacturing, you know, all in something, you know, well south of 20% of our business kind of has that exposure. It's really more about the secondary impacts and sort of the broader business sentiment for us.

In general, like we're just going to have a big market opportunity in front of us, and a lot of times, in fact, the majority of the times, our biggest competitor is just inertia and getting a small business owner to make the decision today to move forward with our HR solution. Really, you know, you just kind of looked out. As long as we, you know, do not see something deteriorate materially beyond where we are today, again, looking at our pipeline, looking at some of the momentum and things that we're bringing to market, there are reasons, I think, for us to be optimistic as we come into the sort of middle and latter parts of the year and, as you know, the important fall selling season that we're going to be in a much better position.

Actually, it's worth commenting in the first quarter, while sales are down from a volume point of view, the revenue associated with new sales in the quarter was a little bit of an upside for us. Again, these are customers that are coming in, they're priced to risk, they're really a good fit in terms of our vertical mix. Yeah, again, some uncertainty for sure, but I think reasons for optimism.

Speaker 1

Got it. That's very helpful. Thanks for taking the questions and nice results.

Speaker 5

Great. Thank you, Kyle.

Speaker 3

Thank you. Your next question comes from Andrew Nicholas from William Blair. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Wanted to first touch on healthcare utilization trends and just generally what you're seeing under the hood. It seems like largely in line with your expectations in the first quarter, but, you know, you've seen some of the managed care providers cite weakness in certain pockets of the market. Just any additional granularity you could provide there and maybe on price trends broadly. I think, Mike, last time we spoke, you spoke to like low double-digit increases, stabilizing, just making sure that's still your viewpoint.

Speaker 6

Yeah, sure thing. Good morning, Andrew. You're right. I'll let Kelly speak to some of the underpinnings on the healthcare side. Two things I'd highlight. First, you know, keep in mind that our insured is the average working-age insured, and some of the things that you've seen in the external market are really more older age and government program specific. That sort of leads to the second point, which is, you know, low double-digit year-over-year healthcare cost trends have really sort of stabilized. It's, you know, we're a little over two quarters here of, you know, kind of tabletop flat year-over-year inflation in terms of what we're experiencing.

While that's settled in at a higher rate and is sticking, that's really important to us because that's the underlying assumption that's going into our renewal and new business pricing, and it really helps build confidence that that ICR trajectory that we sort of laid out in our plans and forecast that we can achieve that with some confidence. Should we see, and eventually we will see, that trend come down from the low double-digits, if it comes down a little bit faster, then that's a little bit of a tailwind for us. In terms of like what's happening and what's sort of persisting in the cost trend, I don't know, Kyle, if you've got anything you want to add to that.

Speaker 5

Yeah. Andrew, happy to add a little bit of color. You know, when we think about differences between medical and prescription, you know, both are in the double-digit range when we look kind of year-over-year, but very low double-digit for medical, but a little bit higher on prescription. The thing that we're seeing, though, is on the prescription side, we are seeing it tail down a little bit. The rate of acceleration of cost is coming down a little bit. We're watching it, but, you know, that's what it is. In terms of what's underneath that, you know, more people are taking more scripts, and but on average, the cost per script is coming down a little bit.

Speaker 4

Great. Thank you for the response. That was thorough and helpful. For my follow-up, I just wanted to ask about the cost of providing service line or your COGS line. You know, pretty sizable decrease in absolute dollars year-over-year, and it sounds like you're gaining efficiencies throughout the organization. I was just wanting to kind of better understand that line in particular, how much of that is benefits-related versus some of the efficiency programs you have in place, and maybe how sustainable that kind of level of COGS line is for this year. Thank you.

Speaker 5

Yeah, and I'm happy to take that one, Andrew. You know, when we laid out the strategy, we talked about over the medium term, you know, expenses growing modestly, but a couple points lower than we would expect from a revenue growth perspective. I'm really proud of the team for, you know, really focusing on making sure that we're providing the right level of service, you know, that's going to drive the right NPS score, but we're really focused on those areas that matter the most. We have been working on automation. We went into the year expecting kind of low single-digit CIE and knew we were going to have to really manage expenses tightly so that, you know, so that we could, you know, still work on margins and make sure we had acceptable margins.

We're on track and actually a little bit better than I had planned for the first quarter. The one thing I do want to hit on that, though, is we are still investing. We've got dedicated teams that are working on a set of strategic priorities, including scaled service delivery, which will help us continue to, you know, not only just get efficiencies, but make sure we're really delivering the value to our clients.

Speaker 4

Very helpful. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thank you. Your next question comes from Kevin McQuaid from UBS. Please go ahead. Kevin, your line is unmuted. Please proceed with your question. As there is no response from the line of the current participant, we'll move on to the next question. Before we move on to the next question, a reminder to everyone to register for a question, you may press star then one on your touchstone phone. The next question comes from Andrew Volkovitz from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Hey, good morning, everyone. Really nice results. I wanted to start by asking just about the 4Q to 1Q cutover. I understand that 1Q is typically the seasonally lower watermark for WSEs, but I was wondering if you could contextualize how much of this quarter was sort of that normal course churn versus maybe excess from the pricing environment that you guys have talked about.

Speaker 6

Yeah, thanks, and good morning. Yeah, I think a little bit, I think Kelly alluded to it. You know, we came into the year and we've achieved record retention last year. We felt confident that sort of given where we are, given the positioning, given the investments we've made in the technology and the service delivery that we could maintain quite favorable and have done so. I think there's about a point to Kelly's earlier conversation of healthcare-related.

Speaker 1

Attrition.

Speaker 6

Attrition, yeah, exactly. I think in general, you know, as we sort of look out over the year, you've sort of seen the bulk of the attrition that we're going to see happens in the first quarter, and the team has done a really good job of being close to customers and understanding, you know, sort of, yes, a little bit higher shopping activity in the market. What they're finding, I think, pretty consistently is that the healthcare price increase is so sizable that we're placing there in line with other options out there in the market. It's an industry-wide phenomenon.

Speaker 1

Okay, great. That's super helpful to color, Mike. Then just for my one follow-up, I wanted to ask sort of about the go-to-market plans in the back half of the year. I know you alluded to scaling the broker channel and some co-development efforts there. I just wanted to ask as far as, you know, what's baked into the outlook, how important is the scaling of the broker channel versus the maturing of your sales force that you've sort of spoken about in the past?

Speaker 6

Absolutely. They are actually both quite important. The good news is we are not sort of at a standing stop when it comes to the brokerage channel. It is about 10-15% when we think about healthcare brokers contributing to new business. We would see that becoming incrementally more important. Also, you know, we did see the median tenure of our sales force tick higher here. Good retention amongst our senior reps, that is a really important metric for us just because the productivity curve is so steep with each year of experience. Both, I think, are going to contribute to it. We are pretty excited about some of the quick wins that we are developing with some of our national brokerage relationships. I think that those will be additive as we go into the second half of the year.

I think it's also really exciting because there's more material things on the roadmap from a technology and a process point of view that'll represent upside even past the second half of this year. We're pretty excited about it.

Speaker 1

Great. Thank you very much for taking my questions, and congrats again on the quarter.

Speaker 5

Thanks, Andrew.

Speaker 3

Thank you. Your next question comes from David Grossman from Stifel. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Thank you. Good morning. You know, Mike, I think you talked about, you know, 90 days ago, you know, taking that underperforming segment, excuse me, of the healthcare book and repricing it over multiple years and, you know, the rationale being, you know, to retain those clients that you wanted to retain because you thought there was, you know, a solid cohort of customers in that book. Is your thinking pretty much the same where you think it's still going to be a multi-year period or, you know, just based on the experience in the first 90 days? Do you think maybe you could come in a little bit below that where, you know, you could get that book price to risk maybe a little more quickly than you had thought?

Yeah, good morning, David. Thanks for the question. I think we're still, I'd say, on a similar track at this point. A little bit more attrition, a little bit more attrition, frankly, in that cohort that you were describing when we look at things like what's the insurance cost ratio for the attrited business versus the business that we've retained. There's a pretty big delta between the two. We don't like to lose customers, but if we sort of can't get to a sort of economically lifetime value kind of equation, then that's usually what's going to happen. At this point, I think we're sort of staying the course. Again, you know, a little bit of green shoots in terms of like what Kelly was talking about where our pricing has assumed no abatement in cost trend from the current low double-digit level.

We're seeing a little bit of, you know, reasons for optimism on the script side. No real movement on the medical side. If some of those year-over-year inflation trends were to tail off a little bit, then we would see a recovery back into our targeted, you know, 87-90% range a little bit quicker. I think right now the team's doing a really good job of just, you know, balancing retention of customer over a couple of cycles. It's a difficult environment for small businesses, and we want to sort of meet them halfway through the process.

Got it. You mentioned in your prepared remarks that I think you're going to start introducing your benefit bundles maybe towards the second half of the year when the selling season becomes more important. Maybe you could just give us a little bit more color on what the plan is there in terms of what the major changes are and how you expect that to impact the sales process as we get into the selling season in the back half of the year.

Yeah, sure. There's a lot of really good work happening right now. Just, you know, a minute of context, TriNet, as you know, takes risk. Over the years working with our carrier partners, we've built out a really rich and diverse set of healthcare benefit plans. That's a good thing to have that set of choices. In some instances, David, I'd say, particularly SMBs that have employees in a lot of different states, for instance, and as you know, with remote work, that's happening more often, having that number of choices does introduce some complexity and probably a little less ability to hit specific budget targets without broad-based discounting. We've really moved away from that.

What bundles, and we're going to start in some select markets here in the fall selling season, what they do is just gives clients a simpler set of planned choices to help them manage their cost. I think it will also, and I think this is actually pretty important, it'll make the sales and renewal process more streamlined and simplified for our teams, which I think could help with the sales velocity in the process. You know, pretty excited about the work that's happening. We're going to learn a lot here in the coming months, and we'll continue to build on that. I think it is an important part and one of a set of actions that we're taking to grow this business in a sustainable and profitable way.

Right. If I could just squeeze one more, could you just give us a rough sense of what mainstream is, you know, currently as a percentage of your revenue mix?

Speaker 5

You know, David, I don't have it in terms of revenue mix, but it is roughly, you know, 20% of our worksite employees for Main Street when we think of PEO.

Speaker 6

Logically, it would be less than a percentage of revenue, right? Is that, am I understanding that right?

Speaker 5

Correct.

Speaker 6

Yeah.

Speaker 5

Yeah. Generally, it drives two things. One, a slightly lower PEPM, and then two, less healthcare participation.

Speaker 6

Right. Great. All right, guys. Thanks very much.

Speaker 5

Great. Thank you, David.

Speaker 6

Thanks, David.

Speaker 3

Thank you. This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mike Simonds for closing remarks.

Speaker 6

Thank you, Segar. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today on the call. Hopefully, you know, you get a sense for the strong start that we've got to the year and the confidence and momentum that we're building here at TriNet, albeit in an uncertain environment. I look forward to updating you again on our progress here in about 90 days. With that, Segar, we can conclude today's call.

Speaker 3

Thank you. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.