Airsculpt Technologies, Inc. Q2 FY2024 Earnings Call

Greetings and welcome to the AirSculpt Technologies Second Quarter Fiscal 2024 Earnings Call. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Allison Malkin with ICR. Thank you. You may begin.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us to discuss AirSculpt Technologies results for the second quarter of fiscal 2024. Joining me on the call today are the company’s Founder and Executive Chairman, Dr. Aaron Rollins; and Interim Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, Dennis Dean. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this conference call may include forward-looking statements. These statements may include our future expectations regarding financial results and guidance, market opportunities and our growth. Risks and uncertainties that may impact these statements and could cause actual future results to differ materially from currently projected results are described in this morning’s press release and the reports we will file with the SEC, all of which can be found on our website at investors.airsculpt.com. We undertake no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements or information, except as required by law. During this call, we will also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures. We use non-GAAP measures in some of our financial discussions as we believe they more accurately represent the true operational performance and underlying results of our business. A reconciliation of these measures can be found in our earnings release as filed this morning and in our most recent 10-Q, which also will be available on our website. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Dr. Rollins.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining today’s call. Earlier this morning, we announced second quarter results below our expectations amidst a challenging demand backdrop. Despite these results, we remain committed to reestablishing our same-store growth trajectory, opening and ramping our de novo centers, and improving our operating margins. To achieve these objectives, the management team’s current focus is on back to basics. For us, that means investing prudently in our performance marketing efforts, providing the best experience for our patients, and letting our doctors do what they are expertly trained to do, which is perform best-in-class body contouring procedures using our proprietary AirSculpt technology. This morning, we also announced a series of management changes. Effective today, Dennis Dean will serve as our Interim CEO in addition to his ongoing role as CFO as we work with a top-tier global executive search firm to lead our search for a permanent CEO. Dennis’ proven financial acumen, disciplined leadership style, and passion for our firm’s patient-centric mission will enable the company to improve performance as we pursue our back-to-basics approach. I will remain in my position as Founder and Executive Chair. In this role, I’ll continue to provide strategic guidance and clinical leadership gained from my 20 years of experience in the industry as a surgeon as well as a company executive. Before I turn the call over to Dennis, I would just like to comment on our very strong track record, having successfully completed more than 60,000 procedures since I founded the company in 2012. Our positive performance record, the proprietary technology we possess, and the large addressable market with which we operate provide us with a vast opportunity for growth. We look forward to updating you on our progress as we dedicate our efforts to improving near-term performance and to building long-term shareholder value. I’ll now turn the call over to Dennis to provide more details on the quarter as well as our outlook for the year.

Thanks, Aaron. Good morning, everyone. It is a pleasure to speak with you today as Interim CEO and ongoing CFO. I would like to express my appreciation to the Board of Directors for their confidence in me in my new role. I recently celebrated my third year at AirSculpt. In spite of a challenging past couple of quarters, I strongly believe that our best days lie ahead of us. I’m excited to lead the company as we intensify our focus on delivering positive patient experiences with our body contouring procedures across our national footprint of 28 centers in 19 states as well as in Canada and the United Kingdom. Our second quarter results reflected the increasingly difficult consumer environment, which is being felt across the aesthetics market as well as other sectors. We are taking decisive actions to align our cost base to the current environment. To this end, we will allocate our resources to opportunities that deliver a high return on investment, including the continued opening of de novo centers and lead-generative marketing while reducing marketing efforts that are longer-term oriented. In total, second quarter revenue decreased 8.4% to $51 million, reflecting a 17% decline in same-store revenue compared to the prior year quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was down $7.7 million year-over-year, resulting from lower revenue combined with growth in brand awareness marketing activities and advertising cost inflation. While the results of the quarter were weaker than we expected, there were several bright spots in the quarter. Let me share some highlights. First, our 2023 de novo class performed ahead of our expectations, demonstrating the demand for our procedures and our ongoing ability to successfully identify and open strong centers. As a cohort, these locations continue to exceed our ROI expectations despite the challenging consumer environment. As it relates to this year’s openings, we welcome patients to our new center in Kansas City, Kansas following quarter end and expect to open 3 additional centers in the third quarter and one in the fourth to end the year with 32 locations. The sixth center we had targeted will now be part of our 2025 plans. Second, lead generation activities provided a 30% sequential increase in lead volumes. However, we experienced lower-than-expected conversion rates, which we attribute to the difficult macro environment. Keep in mind that our average procedure cost is in the range of $12,000 to $13,000, which makes us a considered purchase for our customer base. We believe consumers are taking more time to evaluate their spending needs before scheduling procedures, which is a consistent theme highlighted by others in the aesthetic and higher-end consumer and retail spaces. We continue to interact with these leads as they provide us with a robust customer profile from which to target going forward. Third, we have accelerated our cost management efforts. In fact, marketing costs are expected to decline by over $4 million in the second half of the year compared to the first half spend as we pivot away from brand awareness activities and focus our attention back on paid search, which typically provides a quicker conversion to a procedure due to higher customer intent. That said, we expect second half marketing expenses to grow year-over-year by approximately $2.5 million as we continue to support lead generation for new center openings and incur higher costs in paid search due to inflationary and other competitive factors. We expect to mitigate a portion of this expense as we further reduce corporate overhead costs, which will generate an additional $1 million of expense savings in the second half of the year. We will continue to evaluate opportunities to further streamline our expense base. And fourth, we continue to possess a solid balance sheet with approximately $10 million in cash and a modest leverage ratio at 1.81x. Let me now share some specific highlights of the second quarter. As mentioned, revenue for the quarter was $51 million, an 8.4% decline over the prior year quarter with same-store revenue down 17%, mitigated by strong performance from our 2023 de novo class and incremental revenue generated by two new centers that opened at the end of the second quarter of last year. As of June 30, 2024, we operated 27 centers versus 25 at the end of the second quarter of 2023. And as of today, we operate 28 as I mentioned earlier. Average revenue per case for the quarter was at the high end of our range at $12,916. This represented a 3% decline over the prior year quarter. The percentage of patients using financing to pay for procedures was approximately 52%, which is consistent with recent quarters. As a reminder, we receive full payment of all procedures upfront, and we had no recourse related to patients who finance their procedures with third-party vendors. Our cost of service declined $1.1 million from the second quarter last year but increased as a percentage of revenue to 36.9% from 35.8%, reflecting the deleveraging of certain fixed costs due to our sales decline. Selling, general and administrative expenses increased $6.4 million or 22.9% in the second quarter compared to the same period in fiscal 2023. This increase was driven by marketing expense growth and a severance charge related to our leadership changes. As I previously mentioned, we will realize an incremental $1 million in corporate overhead savings in the back half of the year related to headcount reductions, which have recently been made. We expect to increase these savings even more as we continue to focus on cost reductions. Our customer acquisition cost for the quarter was $3,325 per case compared to $2,250 in the prior year. This increase is due to further investments in our brand awareness activities. Excluding these activities, our CAC would have been approximately $2,800 per case. We expect our total CAC to decline sequentially as we move into the second half of the year as we shift away from brand awareness initiatives and return our focus to primarily paid search and social activities. Adjusted EBITDA was $6.9 million compared to $14.6 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2023, a decrease of $7.7 million. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 13.5% compared to 26.2% in the prior year quarter. Adjusted net income for the quarter was $5.1 million or $0.09 per diluted share. Adjusted net income excludes $4.9 million in equity-based compensation and $4.1 million in restructuring and related severance costs. Turning to our balance sheet, we maintain a healthy balance sheet at quarter end. As of June 30, 2024, cash was $9.9 million, and we had $5 million available on our revolving credit facility. Our gross debt outstanding is now $71.8 million, and our leverage ratio at the end of the quarter as calculated under our credit agreement was 1.81x. Cash flow from operations for the first 6 months of the year was $6.8 million compared to $18.5 million for the same period of 2023. The decrease is primarily due to the decline in adjusted EBITDA. Also during the first 6 months of the year, we invested $5.6 million, which was mostly related to new center openings. Let’s now discuss our outlook for 2024. We continue to see near-term headwinds impacting same-store centers as we move into the third quarter and expect some modest improvements in the fourth quarter as a result of a lower comparative. Therefore, based on our performance in the first half of the year and the current macro environment headwinds we are experiencing, we are adjusting our guidance for full-year revenue to a range of $180 million to $190 million and adjusted EBITDA to a range of $23 million to $28 million. Keep in mind that given the flow-through of revenue from our highly variable cost base, a $1 million change in top line typically has a $650,000 change in adjusted EBITDA. I strongly believe AirSculpt is a 30% EBITDA margin business. As we return to same-store revenue growth, successfully roll out new centers, and continue to reprioritize our marketing initiatives, we will be positioned to achieve our historical EBITDA margin rates. In summary, I expect the actions we are taking to focus on our core and contain costs will enable us to navigate the current dynamic environment and provide us with a strengthened platform to execute the strategy that delivers consistent long-term profitable growth and increased value for shareholders. With that, I’d like to turn the call over to the operator for some questions.

Thank you. Our first question comes from Korinne Wolfmeyer with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead with your question.

Hey, good morning, team. Thanks for taking the question. The first one I’d like to touch on is just the general consumer trends you saw throughout the quarter. Did the volume fluctuate at all month-to-month? Did it progressively get worse? And also, what would you attribute the bulk of the decline to? Is it really just the macro? Are you seeing any more competitive pressures? Are GLP-1s becoming more of a pressure point than you once were projecting? Just any color there would be great. Thank you.

Sure, Korinne. As it relates to the trend throughout the quarter, we did see a little bit of a fall-off in the month of June. That was a little unusual from what we typically see. We started to see the season pick up a little bit as we moved into April and May. Clearly, it was less than what we normally experience. We did have a season, but it was very much muted comparatively speaking. But that was sort of the cadence of it. June did slack off. The interesting thing about that is that our June lead volume actually improved. So our lead volume increased throughout the quarter. That gives us continued optimism because there’s still significant interest in AirSculpt. But what we’re finding is that the customers are holding back a little bit right now. So conversion rates declined in spite of the increase that we saw in our lead volumes. Right now, what we’re feeling is the consumer. We’re experiencing a lot of lead volumes but just not ready to kind of pull the trigger and schedule the cases. We expect over time, as things improve, that we will continue to return to those conversion rates that we’ve experienced in the past, but that’s primarily what impacted the numbers. As for the GLP-1 standpoint, we are seeing a lot of customers that are on GLP-1s when they enter the office. But right now, it’s really not something that we are seeing as a factor regarding the decision-making. It’s possibly causing some additional time in patients having the procedure done. Again, really, it’s primarily the macro from the economic factors.

Great. That’s really helpful. And then on some of the marketing strategies and some of the A&P stuff that you called out and that you are changing, can you walk us through what new tactics you are now implementing? We have seen some promos, but not sure how incremental those are to past quarters. And then what gives you confidence that that really is going to help that conversion improve? And then what timing are you embedding in your expectations for that conversion to improve? Thank you.

From the marketing standpoint, the things we have been doing over the last 1.5 years have very much been shifting around to brand awareness activities. We have continued our paid search activities and similar initiatives. For the quarter, we actually invested a little over $2 million in brand awareness initiatives. I am not saying that those are the wrong thing to do, but they have a much longer tail when it comes to converting those cases. We have seen historically those as investments for the long term. So, we decided to go back to the basics, as Aaron shared. We know that paid search has been very effective for us in generating cases. Those patients typically have a higher intent of converting than some of the less traditional brand awareness initiatives we have been trying. We are going to remove the brand awareness activities and focus back on the paid search activities that we know worked for us in the past. We believe that this approach will begin to improve our conversion rates over time. We expect the third quarter to maintain our outlook as if things aren’t going to significantly change. We were down approximately 17% in same-store revenue in the second quarter, and we are modeling something somewhat similar in the third quarter with some improvement expected in the fourth. Most of that improvement in the fourth quarter is related to a lower comparative to work up against. Again, we are excited about the lead volume but are making efforts to improve the conversions. We’re aligning our sales team and focusing on conversion rates from that standpoint, and we think these changes will help us as we move through the rest of this year and into next year.

Great. Thanks so much.

Our next question comes from Josh Raskin with Nephron Research. Please go ahead with your question.

Hi. Thanks. So, excluding stock comp, the SG&A expenses were still just over $29 million in the quarter. Can you give us some color on how much of that was marketing or maybe sales and marketing? And maybe what specifically that was spent on? I heard the $2 million on brand awareness. And then how much of that total G&A do you view as variable? How much of that is personnel? And then how much of that is truly fixed?

Hi. Thanks, Josh. When looking at it from an SG&A standpoint, there are a couple of large items to note. First, we had a little over a $4 million charge that goes against the SG&A number related to severance activities from some of the management changes made. That’s 100% variable and will go away. As for the marketing expenses, the brand awareness amount was just over $2 million. Both those items are variable. The remaining increase was driven by professional fees, primarily legal fees. However, the two largest drivers of the SG&A increase were the severance and marketing costs, both of which will be removed going forward.

Okay. That’s helpful. And then can you juxtapose the fact that rates seem to be holding up really well while the case count drops, especially in the same-store? What consumer behavior do you think explains that? Do you think there is just no real price sensitivity to this consumer that discounting doesn’t work?

I wouldn’t say discounting doesn’t work. If you were to go back a couple of years, we did some heavy discounting in the fourth quarter of 2022, which generated some volumes. However, from a profitability standpoint, we saw reductions there. It’s not something we are targeting at the moment as far as discounts go. As you mentioned, our rates have held up well, and I think it speaks to the value we offer. Consumers see the value that AirSculpt brings. The current environment does stretch the consumer, so those cash-conscious individuals are delaying their activities. However, we are pleased the rates have held up. That doesn’t mean we might not explore promotional strategies to drive additional volume; we have just chosen not to go that route for now.

Okay. Just one last question for me. Same-store cases are down 14%. But that wasn’t terribly far off from the 10% decline last quarter. If we rewind three months ago when you confirmed guidance, what did you think was going to snap back, or what changed in the last three months?

One of the things I shared earlier is that we were seeing our normal sequential increase in lead volumes. Therefore, we believed we would begin to snap back. We did call out that we expected some same-store declines, similar to the first quarter. However, it did accelerate a little more. Coming out of the first quarter, we expected to convert the lead volumes coming in, but we saw conversion rates drop. We believe that’s macro consumer-related. It’s important to remember that we are a high price point, low volume business, so it doesn’t take much to move the needle. We are focused on returning to our core marketing basics, and we believe these changes can help bring case volumes back up.

Thank you. I am seeing no other questions at the moment. I will turn the floor back to Mr. Dean for any final comments.

I want to thank you for joining the call today, and we look forward to speaking with you when we report third quarter results.

Thank you. This concludes today’s conference call. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.