Earnings Call Transcript - LFMD Q2 2022

Operator, Operator

Good day. Thank you for joining us today to discuss the results for LifeMD’s Second Quarter ended June 30, 2022. Joining the call today are Justin Schreiber, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Marc Benathen, Chief Financial Officer of LifeMD. Following management’s prepared remarks, we will open the call for a question-and-answer session. I’d like to remind everyone that today’s call is being hosted via webcast and the recording will be made available via the link in today’s press release which is available in the Investor Relations section of the company’s website. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that during this call, the company will make a number of forward-looking statements which are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that may cause the company’s actual results to differ materially from those projected. These risks and uncertainties are described in the company’s 10-K and 10-Q filings and other filings that LifeMD may take with the SEC from time to time. Forward-looking statements made during this call are based on current information available to the company as of today, August 11, 2022. The company assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements after today’s call, except as required by law. Also, please note that the management will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures that the company believes are important in evaluating LifeMD’s performance. Details on the relationship between these non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures and reconciliations thereof can be found in the press release issued earlier today. Finally, I would like to remind everyone that today’s call is being recorded and will be available for replay in the Investor Relations section of the company’s website. Now, I’d like to turn the call over to LifeMD’s CEO, Justin Schreiber. Please go ahead.

Justin Schreiber, CEO

Thank you, operator and good afternoon, everyone. Today after the market closed, LifeMD issued a press release containing our second quarter results. Additionally, and for the first time ever, we’ve also made available a Q2 supplemental investor highlights presentation, which is available on the LifeMD IR site. I would encourage everyone to download and review this as it summarizes why our second quarter was really what I believe to be a pivotal period in the 2022 transformation of LifeMD. During the second quarter, LifeMD made significant progress on several important strategic initiatives to position the company for its next phase of growth. We believe that our growing profitability and expanding margins will be key to our continued transformation from a seller of prescription and OTC products into a rapidly growing and highly profitable telehealth services company. There are a few key accomplishments I’d like to highlight for Q2. First, in the second quarter, we began nationwide direct-to-patient marketing for our virtual primary care platform. And it’s been extremely successful. We’re seeing some of the best acquisition costs we’ve ever seen. And our technology platform and clinical operations are working beautifully. We’ve also proven that we can cross-sell this to our indication-specific patient base, which is a very big deal. I’m more confident than ever that this platform will be a very big growth driver in the years to come. Second, we introduced several new telehealth treatment categories to complement our primary care and existing treatment offerings, which we believe has significant growth potential. Third, we drove meaningful improvements in our margin performance and profitability. And lastly, we are streamlining our overall company into a telehealth-only business through the impending divestiture of WorkSimpli. Given our intense focus on profitability, growth of new telehealth offerings, and enhancing long-term scalability, we expect the short-term slowing of sequential growth for the next few quarters, after which we will resume a more aggressive growth trajectory at substantially higher levels of profitability. What excites me the most about our second quarter is the strong traction we’re beginning to see with our virtual primary care platform. Since launching in late Q1, we now address over 200 of the most common medical conditions across all 50 states. We’ve built a highly differentiated and now proven technology platform that is staffed by some of the best doctors, nurse practitioners, medical assistants, and operations personnel in the country. What’s even more amazing to me is the difference this platform and our affiliated physicians and the entire medical team are making in the lives of our patients every single day. While still very early on in the growth of this platform, patient feedback about their VPC experience, their experience with our virtual primary care platform, and our affiliated physician network has been tremendous. It’s been better than any product this company has ever offered. During the second quarter, we saw 1500% growth versus the prior quarter in our VPC patient count. Currently, we have over 1200 active patients on the platform, and we are adding about another 20 to 30 new patients per day net of attrition. I expect this number to grow very quickly. Retention is strong, with early attrition rates in the low single digit percentages. We continue to believe that the VPC platform is one of the most significant, if not the most significant, launches the company has done to date and will be a key driver of both top and bottom line growth going forward. We also introduced several new treatment areas during the quarter that have been well received by our new and existing patient populations. These offerings include a proprietary topical pain management treatment called Protaren, sleep treatment, and over-the-counter dermatology treatments that complement our existing REX offer. These additions enhance our revenue mix with 38% of new patient order volumes coming from non-erectile dysfunction treatments during the second quarter of 2022, which compares to 22% during the same period last year. We remain on track to achieve consolidated adjusted EBITDA profitability by the fourth quarter of this year. As an important stepping stone toward profitability, we continue to drive improved unit economics through higher gross margins and improve returns on our advertising spend. As noted in our press release, we achieved record gross margins in the second quarter on both a consolidated and telehealth-only basis, while also driving an 8% improvement in the blended first year LTV to CAC for our telehealth platform. Finally, I am proud to report that we have made solid progress in the process to streamline our overall company into a telehealth-only business through the impending divestiture of WorkSimpli. Despite challenging market conditions, we have received significant interest in WorkSimpli from a broad range of buyers. We believe we remain on track to consummate the transaction prior to year-end. With that, I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Marc Benathen who will provide a summary of our financial results. Mark?

Marc Benathen, CFO

Thank you, Justin. And good afternoon, everyone. As Justin mentioned, the second quarter of 2022 was a pivotal quarter for the entire company, as we executed upon the early phases of several key strategic initiatives. While the focus on these critical long-term areas of growth and profitability will mean our sequential growth will slow for the balance of 2022, our continued execution will position us for heightened growth in the year ahead with strong underlying profitability and be in the best interest of creating long-term value for our shareholders. While we continue to reiterate our previous guidance on adjusted EBITDA and consolidated profitability by the fourth quarter of 2022, we’re revising our revenue guidance to be in the range of 122 million to 128 million to reflect slower growth from the back half of the year as we focus on these critical long-term strategies followed by a return to elevated growth, with consolidated profitability in 2023. Now turning to the results for the second quarter of 2022. Revenue in the second quarter totaled a record 30.5 million, up 37% as compared to the same quarter a year ago. 93% of total revenues in the second quarter were generated by recurring subscriptions. Telehealth net revenues grew by 41% to 22.3 million while WorkSimpli net revenues grew by 26% to 8.2 million. WorkSimpli revenues grew 27% sequentially as compared to the first quarter, following the execution of several key initiatives we previously discussed. Importantly, WorkSimpli achieved EBITDA margins during the quarter of mid-teens for the first time in its history. We expect WorkSimpli’s growth and rising profitability to continue at a rapid pace. On the telehealth side of the business, we increased our active subscriber base by 53% versus prior years, ending the quarter with over 168,000 active subscribers. More importantly, we continue to transition more of the patient base to longer-term subscriptions, with 71% of active patient subscribers on multi-month subscription plans as of June 30, 2022. While this caused some impact to the timing of revenues this quarter, as well as the next one to two quarters, multi-month subscribers drive faster payback and significantly higher unit economics, as well as stronger retention. By being able to link this data with detailed analytics on patient acquisition, marketing efficiency, retention and product, we are driving record performance in our unit economics. This is already playing out with an 8% increase in first year LTV to CAC in the second quarter versus the same year-ago period. Gross margins for the second quarter reached record levels at 85%, up 300 basis points versus the prior year with our telehealth-only gross margin reaching 80% for the first time. Gross profit for the quarter totaled 25.8 million, an increase of 42% from the same year-ago period. Operating expenses for the second quarter totaled 41.5 million, an increase of 7.1 million versus the year-ago period. Our second-quarter 2022 operating expenses included 7.8 million of non-cash expenses associated with stock-based compensation, the revaluation of the earn-out related to the cleared acquisition and depreciation and amortization expenses. Net of non-cash expenses, operating expenses decreased as a percentage of company net revenue by 2200 basis points. Equally as important, we reduced our marketing expense as a percentage of revenue to 72% versus 100% of revenue in the same year-ago period and improved leverage in this key spending area by 300 basis points versus the prior quarter. Our GAAP net loss attributable to common stockholders for the second quarter totaled 13.8 million, or a loss of $0.45 per share. This compares to a net loss attributable to common stockholders of 16.8 million or $0.64 per share in the second quarter of 2021. Adjusted EPS, a non-GAAP financial measure that excludes non-cash expenses, preferred stock dividend litigation expense, severance, and M&A expenses totaled a loss of $0.22 per share, as compared to a loss of $0.46 per share in the same year-ago period. Adjusted EPS improved 12% sequentially versus the prior quarter. An adjusted EBITDA loss, a non-GAAP financial measure excluding the same account categories as noted in the adjusted EPS, totaled a loss of 6.9 million in the second quarter of 2022. This compares to an adjusted EBITDA loss of 12.2 million in the same year-ago quarter. Now turning to the balance sheet. Cash totaled 11.7 million as of June 30, 2022. Importantly, and as noted in our second-quarter investor highlights presentation, through many of the efforts highlighted earlier on this call, we reduced our adjusted EBITDA loss and cash burn to under one million in the month of June and expect meaningful improvements in our cash burn for the balance of the year, including achieving consolidated adjusted EBITDA profitability by the fourth quarter. Additionally, as Justin noted, we are receiving strong demand from prospective buyers of WorkSimpli. Interestingly, we expect to consummate the divestiture transaction of the business prior to year-end 2022. We believe the combination of LifeMD crossing into profitability plus estimated proceeds from this potential divestiture will capitalize LifeMD extremely well and strategically position us for the company’s next league of growth and margin expansion. This wraps up our financial results. I’d now like to turn the call back over to Justin.

Justin Schreiber, CEO

Thanks, Marc. In summary, while we expect more moderate growth for the balance of the year in our core telehealth business, I’m extremely excited about the future of LifeMD and the role that our company will play in the rapidly evolving telehealth marketplace. The key initiatives that we executed against in the second quarter include nationally launching marketing and beginning to scale our virtual primary care business, diversifying our telehealth revenue, driving meaningful margin and economics and profitability improvements across all our existing telehealth categories, and taking steps to streamline our company into a leading telehealth-only business through the impending WorkSimpli divestiture. Continued execution against these critical initiatives will cement our future as a leader in telehealth with profitable operations, tremendous organic growth prospects, and a strong non-dilutive capital base post a potential WorkSimpli divestiture to support future investment as we transform from a telehealth products provider to a differentiated full suite telehealth services company. In closing, I would like to thank our entire team, especially our doctors that are treating patients every single day on our platforms for their tireless efforts as they continue to transform the face of medicine and make amazing healthcare more accessible, affordable, and convenient for our patients. With that, I’d like to open the call for Q&A.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our first question will come from Marc Wiesenberger with B. Riley Securities.

Marc Wiesenberger, Analyst

Thank you. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions and appreciate all the additional detailed information. It’s a lot to chew on here. But looking at the supplemental chart showing the progression of adjusted EBITDA, can you talk about the dynamics going from April to June? And then some of those puts and takes going from June into the third quarter?

Marc Benathen, CFO

Yes, Mark, this is Marc. So the biggest thing starts with advertising. We’ve spent a considerable amount of time in the second quarter after we completed our data analytics infrastructure, which gave us a lot more insight into frankly, every campaign down to every single product subscription and pretty much any variable that you’d want to look at, being able to refine a lot of our strategies. Obviously, I can’t get into competitive reasons, but the secret behind that is we exceptionally refined it. And we’re seeing record levels of return on our investment. Now in doing so, what happened was we just did some additional dollars for scaling some new verticals, which is really some of the topical pain to sleep and obviously VPC and also driving a lot more longer-term subscriptions. That, in turn, causes a little bit of short-term impact on revenue but really positions the company for accelerated growth in much more profitable economics with quicker payback. So that was the biggest step. The second one is we’re at a point now where we’ve said this all along, going all the way back to the middle of last year, when we said we were going to improve our EBITDA sequentially each quarter. We have the infrastructure to scale the business. I mean, we’ve had that for some time now. And we’re really continuing to see the benefits of the fact that we’ve had, we’re actually going to see some further benefits in our capital expenditures in the coming quarter. After we’ve gotten past that initial lift to finish building out the VPC platform and enhance settlement, we’re really in an enhancement and growth phase at this point. But that’s where really a lot of the progress is happening on the telehealth side. Obviously, WorkSimpli has hit its stride and it’s continuing to grow, and we expect to divest it by the end of the year, but both of the businesses are set up for profitability growth, with the leading reason being that we’ve gotten to a point where we have very strong unit economics that are on a path that continue to get better.

Marc Wiesenberger, Analyst

Very helpful. Appreciate that. I think you alluded to it a little bit in the answer, but maybe if you could talk about the specific factors that are contributing to some of the sequential growth that you’re talking about and I guess, is that primarily related to how you are actually allocating the marketing spend and with the patient cohorts you’re targeting? And then I guess, what factors contribute to your confidence in the reacceleration of growth that you talked about?

Marc Benathen, CFO

Yes, so the first factor is the length of subscription. So at the end of the day, while there’s obviously a benefit to us long-term to get people on to six-month subscriptions and in some cases, 12-month subscriptions, it stretches out the rebuild period. So there’s a short-term period where you’re trading people off. You’re bringing on some of those longer-term subscriptions, where you’re not going to have to rebuild every single quarter associated with those longer-term subscriptions. We started to really make some of that transition in the first quarter. We saw some impact from timing in the second quarter, and we may continue to see that for the next couple of quarters related to that, because what’s going to come back to us positively is the rebuilding of those subscription lengths that are a little bit longer. The data that we’ve looked at shows we are continuing to see higher rebuild rates and retention associated with those longer-term subscription lengths. It’s just that we’re getting to a point of building those up much more significantly this year versus what we did at the beginning of this year and the very end of last year. So that’s what we’re seeing. Secondly, on the product mix piece. One is VPC. We truly hit our stride in the second quarter. And the numbers are still very small, but I think directionally, as far as July goes, the revenue in July was four times the amount of LifeMD revenue for the VPC, and the numbers are still small since the subscriber base is small. But we’re really starting to see a ton of traction after we made certain enhancements to that program.

Marc Wiesenberger, Analyst

Got it. Very helpful. Can you talk about how we should think about, I guess, the unit economics in light of showing how the business has kind of been shifting away from ED? How do those unit economics compare to some of the other indications? And as that mix continues, I guess, how do we think about that impacting the business?

Justin Schreiber, CEO

Yes, Mark, I’d love to comment on that. This is Justin. I think that what we’re seeing with the early data from the VPC platform is big enough to draw some early conclusions from. We’re seeing extremely low churn, which is something I’ve always communicated to you and to shareholders that when you give somebody an amazing doctor, it’s the stickiest service on the planet, right? So that’s very encouraging. We’re even seeing low churn with people that are joining on the lower-priced $15 a month memberships and coming in for something like a prescription. Even among those patient populations, we’re seeing low churn, where churn should be if you Google where should churn be in a great SaaS business. That’s where we’re at, right in the single digits. I think you might see a little bit longer payback on your initial investment and acquisition, but I’m really confident we still have a lot to learn there. But I think we’ll be able to see $1 that we spend on acquisition back in our bank account within six months, which I think is really good. But again, it’s still a little bit too early. We also need to figure out what percentage of the population is on a $15 a month subscription that we can move up to $99 or maybe $49 monthly subscriptions. There are things that we’re going to learn as we continue to build the business. We’re also working on a lot of highly differentiated service offerings that we’re building around chronic conditions. A great example could be diabetes or GERD or even longevity treatment. We think that over time, these offerings will be really attractive to patients who come in for episodic or urgent treatment at LifeMD.

Marc Wiesenberger, Analyst

Got it very helpful. And we’re touching on the VPC patient cohorts. What’s been the mix thus far and how has it evolved in terms of the lower tier versus the upper tier offering?

Justin Schreiber, CEO

The mix has been at least 90%, I would say, from the $15 month platform subscribers, which are paying per consult with a doctor. But some of that has to do with the markets just because that’s where we put a lot of our energy initially. We have some really amazing initiatives that are underway to refine and build out the $99 a month offering. We’re really close to launching our prescription drug discount program, which we didn’t mention on the call, but it’s going to make low-cost drugs really accessible to many Americans who are on high deductible health plans or uninsured. So I’m really excited about that. This month we’re taking steps to launch the symptom checker that we’ve been working on for over a year, which is just going to be an awesome product to offer to patients. We’re adding a lot of these features which just taken longer than we thought to get live, but they’re highly differentiating for our platform and I think they’re going to be important to really grow the $99 subscriber base.

Marc Wiesenberger, Analyst

And then I’ll just ask one more, and then I’ll jump back in. If you could just talk about, I guess, the overall ad market in the second quarter, what you’re seeing thus far into the third quarter? And how do you expect that to play out in terms of the rest of the year, and then relating to your ad spend efficiency? Thank you.

Justin Schreiber, CEO

I can start and maybe let Marc chime in as well. But we haven’t seen a lot of fluctuation in overall advertising costs. We still see a very competitive environment online. We’ve seen some reduction in CPMs online, but nothing drastic. We expect like the third quarter to be strong and obviously, like in prior years, towards the end of the year, we typically slow down our ad spend more because the environment gets a lot more difficult. Marc, unless you want to add anything to that.

Marc Benathen, CFO

No, I think that’s all very accurate.

Operator, Operator

And we will take our next question from David Larsen with BTIG.

David Larsen, Analyst

So can you just provide a little more color around, I think, like why product revenue, I think, declined on a sequential basis? And I think telehealth net orders declined on a sequential basis? Was that sort of an intentional strategy to focus on higher margin product sales?

Marc Benathen, CFO

Yes, this is Marc. It was exactly what I mentioned before for Mark. A lot of it has to do with longer subscription lines, focused on products that are higher margin. We have more space that we’re building. We started that focus earlier in the year. We intensified that focus as we move into the second quarter. We’re going to continue to see some impact from that for the next couple of quarters as we build up a more critical mass of longer subscription lines, i.e., six- and 12-month contracts, and those begin to start rebuilding next year. But that was an intentional decision. Secondly, we shifted more focus to launching and scaling a lot of these new indications such as pain, sleep, virtual primary care, which is also a great star. All those factors added up to what you were seeing and added up to what we called out in the release today regarding what we expect to see for relatively more modest sequential growth over the next couple of quarters, and then obviously rebounding from more aggressive growth but much more profitable growth going forward next year.

David Larsen, Analyst

So if you have more lives convert to a subscription model or a longer-term subscription model, I guess I’m a little unclear on why that would result in a sequential decline in revenue.

Marc Benathen, CFO

So what happens is when we rebuild along, we recognize 100% of that revenue at that time. So if you’re rebuilding, if you’re on one or three months and you get rebuilt every month or every single three months, we can be getting anywhere from one to three rebills next quarter. If you’re on a six or 12 months, we’re not going to get any rebills from the next quarter, but we’re going to get a lot larger, higher sum of dollar rebills in the next year. There’s some timing associated with that, which is what contributes to some of that impact.

David Larsen, Analyst

And then for WorkSimpli subscribers, I think that there was a pretty good jump sequentially from Q1 to Q2. Is that correct? It looks like revenue picked up pretty significantly.

Marc Benathen, CFO

That’s correct. Almost all the WorkSimpli subscribers are on monthly plans; they have month-to-month and annual subscriptions. Most people are on a month-to-month plan. So their revenue growth tends to be pretty closely linked with our subscriber growth.

David Larsen, Analyst

And then how is the sale process progressing? And any color you can provide around potential strategic acquirers?

Marc Benathen, CFO

Yes. Very well said. We are optimistic about closing a transaction before the end of the year. I can’t get into specifics because we’re actively in the LOI phase. We’ve received a lot of interest. We’ll leave it at that. Both ourselves and our bankers feel very good about it. There’s very strong demand. I just can’t get into specifics, but we’re actively in the process.

David Larsen, Analyst

And then for CAC, how did that trend in the quarter like from Q1 to Q2 and year-on-year?

Marc Benathen, CFO

Yes. It was down slightly year-on-year on a blended basis, and it was essentially flat quarter-on-quarter; not much change.

David Larsen, Analyst

And then assuming if there is a recession through 2022 and into the first half of 2023, how would you expect that to impact the business, if at all?

Marc Benathen, CFO

I don’t think it’s going to impact demand for products and services. If anything, it could drive down CPMs more. So we could see some benefit on the tax side of the business. But we don’t really expect that the impact of demand for the company’s products and services.

Justin Schreiber, CEO

Yes, David, just to add to Marc’s comments. It’s Justin. I think if you look at most of the conditions that we treat, they are things that need to be treated in a great economic environment or a terrible economic environment. So even if you did see more price sensitivity or some decreases in demand, we spend a lot of time looking at this. We believe that’s possible. But we believe that would also likely be offset by reductions in advertising costs. We continue to diversify the business, which I think is one of the most important things; for me, that we continue to diversify the business. The primary care businesses are the ultimate diversification. I think in more difficult economic environments, that’s a big plus for LifeMD.

Operator, Operator

And that will conclude today’s question and answer session. I will turn the conference back over to Mr. Schreiber for any additional or closing remarks.

Justin Schreiber, CEO

We don’t have any additional remarks. I just want to thank everybody, all of our shareholders for their continued support. We’re really, really optimistic about the future of LifeMD and we’re going to do some great things and continue to build a leadership position in telehealth. Have a nice evening.

Operator, Operator

And that does conclude today’s conference. Once again, thanks everyone for joining us. You may now disconnect.