Paysign, Inc. Q3 FY2025 Earnings Call

Good afternoon. My name is Shyamali, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the PaySign, Inc. Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. The comments on today's call regarding PaySign's financial results will be on a GAAP basis unless otherwise noted. PaySign's earnings release was disseminated to the SEC earlier today, and can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website, PaySign.com, which includes reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to GAAP reported amounts. Additionally, as set forth in more detail in the earnings release, I would like to remind everyone that today's call will include forward-looking statements regarding PaySign's future performance. Actual performance could differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Information about the factors that could affect future performance is summarized at the end of PaySign's earnings release, and in its recent SEC filings. Lastly, a replay of this call will be available until February 12, 2026. Please see PaySign's third quarter 2025 earnings call announcement for details on how to access the replay. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Mr. Newcomer, President and CEO. Please go ahead. Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone.

I appreciate you joining us as we review our third quarter 2025 results. I'm Mark Newcomer, President and CEO of PaySign. Joining me today is our CFO, Jeff Baker. Also on the call are Matt Turner, President of Patient Affordability, and Matt Lanford, our Chief Payments Officer, both of whom will be available for Q&A following our prepared remarks. I'm pleased to report another outstanding quarter of growth for PaySign. Earlier today, we announced record revenue of $21.6 million, up 41.6% year over year. Adjusted EBITDA reached a record $5 million, an increase of 78%, and net income rose 54% to $2.2 million, or $0.04 per fully diluted share. Alongside these financial results, we achieved meaningful operational efficiencies that Jeff will discuss in more detail shortly. Our patient affordability business continues its exceptional growth trajectory, generating $7.9 million in revenue, up 142% from the prior year's quarter. We ended the quarter with 105 active programs and expect to add 20 to 30 more by year-end, including 13 launched in October. This would bring us to 125 to 135 active programs by the end of the year compared to 76 at the end of 2024, a clear indicator of our sustained momentum and future growth potential. During the quarter, we announced the opening of our new 30,000 square foot patient support center, a major milestone for PaySign. This expansion quadruples our support capacity, allowing us to meet growing demand and deliver an exceptional service experience for our clients, patients, and providers. This facility also supports a growing high-value offering: dedicated patient support representatives, which has become increasingly popular across our client base. Our growth is driven by comprehensive product offerings, best-in-class service, transparent pricing, and our proprietary dynamic business rules technology. By integrating dynamic business rules into the traditional commoditized pharmacy claims process, our pharmaceutical clients save hundreds of millions of dollars while unlocking new revenue streams across the patient affordability ecosystem. Our success in specialty pharmaceutical programs continues to open doors in the pharmaceutical space, where higher claims volumes and multi-product manufacturer engagements present significant opportunities. Expanding our presence in this area remains a top priority of our sales teams. Our pipeline remains robust, fueled by both new and existing clients across retail and specialty. We anticipate activity from new drug launches and transition programs already in the queue, with the sales cycle holding steady at roughly ninety days, a strong signal of consistent execution and demand. Our mission extends well beyond payments. We're redefining how financial support is delivered across healthcare, removing cost barriers to treatment and generating measurable savings for patients and our pharmaceutical partners alike. The continued strength of the patient affordability business underscores the power and scalability of our model. Turning to our plasma donor compensation business, revenue grew 12.4% year over year to a record $12.9 million, despite a net loss of 12 centers, leaving us with a total of 595 active centers at quarter-end. As we have previously discussed, the plasma industry continues to face an oversupply of sourced plasma, which we expect to normalize in 2026. Encouragingly, average donor compensation per donation increased during the quarter, and that trend has carried into Q4. Combined with positive client discussions, we see potential for organic growth at the center level sooner than previously anticipated. We are executing on our strategy to expand our role in the blood and plasma ecosystem, evolving from a trusted payments provider to a technology partner. Our Software as a Service engagement platform, which includes a donor app, plasma-specific CRM, and a donor management system, also known as a blood establishment computer system or BECCS, continues to generate strong interest both domestically and internationally. As we await FDA 510 clearance for the BECCS, we are actively showcasing the platform to the blood and plasma industry, who are eager to find efficient, user-friendly, cost-effective alternatives to the current offerings. The reception has been overwhelmingly positive, reinforcing our confidence in the long-term opportunity for this business line. In summary, Q3 was a stellar quarter of strong execution and innovation. We are scaling efficiently, expanding into new markets, and delivering transformative value across both patient affordability and plasma, two sectors where we're redefining expectations and disrupting the status quo. I'm incredibly proud of our team's continued focus and discipline. Their dedication to delivering results with purpose continues to drive our momentum. Looking ahead, we remain confident in our growth trajectory and firmly committed to building long-term value for our shareholders. With that, I'll turn it over to Jeff for a closer look at the financials.

Thank you, Mark. Good afternoon, everyone. As Mark said, we had another strong quarter as we continue to build momentum heading into 2026. We had some nice wins in our patient affordability business, from both new relationships bringing us multiple programs to existing customers bringing us additional programs. Our plasma business posted year-over-year growth during the quarter with the additions of the new centers we won in the second quarter. We exited the quarter with 595 active plasma centers and 105 active patient affordability programs. More importantly, we ended October with 118 active patient affordability programs, with additional programs being added weekly. Our consolidated gross profit margins continue to improve on a year-over-year basis despite the new plasma centers weighing on the margin due to their lack of maturity. We expect improvement from these levels as the new centers mature over the next six to nine months. We also expect improvement in our consolidated gross profit margins as we ramp up our new customer service contact center that we opened in September. As our business continues to grow and we continue to make the necessary investments in people and infrastructure to ensure the success of our growing business, we expect our operating margins and adjusted EBITDA margins to continue to expand on a year-over-year basis, demonstrating the operating leverage inherent in our business. In summary, we could not be more excited about the prospects of our business for the remainder of this year and throughout 2026. I encourage everyone to read our 10-Q for more details about our financial results, which is expected to be filed tomorrow morning before the market opens. Now turning your attention to the results for the third quarter. Revenue and adjusted EBITDA results exceeded the guidance we provided last quarter. Third quarter 2025 total revenues of $21.6 million increased $6.3 million or 41.6%. Adjusted EBITDA of $5 million increased $2.2 million or 78.1%. Plasma revenue increased 12.4% to $12.9 million, while our revenue per plasma center declined to $7,122 as the new plasma centers added in the second quarter have not reached full maturity and our legacy centers continue to be impacted by the industry-wide oversupply of plasma. Gross dollars loaded to cards increased 21%, total number of loads increased 19.3%, and gross spend volume increased 19.2% due mainly to the new centers added in the second quarter. Patient affordability revenues increased 142% to $7.9 million and accounted for 36.7% of quarterly revenues. This is a significant increase from the 21.5% of revenue that Pharma represented just during the same period last year. We added eight net programs, exiting the quarter with 105 pharma patient affordability programs and grew the number of claims processed by over 60% versus the same period last year. Gross profit margin for the quarter improved 72 basis points to 56.3%. SG&A excluding depreciation and amortization and stock-based compensation improved by 410 basis points to 32.9% of revenue, while total operating expenses improved by 210 basis points to 48.9% of revenue. Having made significant investments in our employee base over the past year to support the continued growth in our businesses, compensation and benefits increased 20.3% to $7.2 million. We exited this quarter with 222 employees versus 162 during the same period last year. Stock compensation increased 32% to $1.3 million related to the issuance of additional restricted stock units for new hires and employee retention. Depreciation and amortization expense increased 39.9% to $2.2 million due primarily to the amortization of continued enhancements in our technology platform. Net income for the quarter was $2.2 million or $0.04 per fully diluted share versus $1.4 million or $0.03 per fully diluted share for the same period last year. Positively impacting net income was a lower income tax provision resulting mainly from the recent changes in tax code offset by lower net interest income mainly related to the implied interest expense of future cash payments for the Gamma acquisition. Third quarter adjusted EBITDA, which is a non-GAAP measure that adds back stock compensation to EBITDA, was $5 million or $0.08 per diluted share versus $2.8 million or $0.05 per diluted share for the same period last year. The fully diluted share count for the quarters used in calculating the per share amounts was 61.8 million and 56.1 million respectively, an increase of 5.7 million shares. Regarding the health of our company, we exited the quarter with an adjusted unrestricted cash balance of $16.9 million and zero debt as we generated strong operating cash flow and continue to experience operational benefits of our Gamma acquisition. Just a reminder, the adjustment to our unrestricted cash balance reflects the short-term impact of our account receivable and account payable balances related to our pharma patient affordability business. Now turning your attention to our revised guidance for 2025, which now incorporates Q3 actuals. We are raising our revenue guidance to a range of $80.5 million to $81.5 million, reflecting year-over-year growth of 38.7% at the midpoint. Plasma is estimated to make up approximately 57% of total revenue, representing a modest year-over-year growth, while pharma patient affordability revenue is expected to make up approximately 41% of total revenue, representing year-over-year growth of over 155%. Full-year gross profit margins are expected to be approximately 60%. We expect operating expenses to be between $41.5 million and $42.5 million, with depreciation and amortization expense of approximately $8.4 million and stock-based compensation of approximately $4.3 million. We expect interest income to be approximately $2.6 million, our full-year tax rate to be 18.7%, and our fully diluted share count to be 59.76 million shares. Taking all the factors above into consideration, we have raised our net income estimates to be between $7 million and $8 million for the year, or $0.12 to $0.13 per diluted share. Adjusted EBITDA is now expected to be in the range of $19 million to $20 million, or $0.32 to $0.34 per diluted share.

You may press 2 to remove yourself from the queue. Our first question comes from the line of Jacob Stephan with Lake Street Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, guys. Appreciate you taking the questions. Congrats on a nice quarter here. Maybe just first, wondering if you could help us think through some of the comments Mark made on retail versus specialty pharmacy. Do you have a current mix number you maybe could give us? Or, I mean, maybe you could talk through pipeline mix a little bit as well between the two?

Hi, this is Matt Turner. We don't I don't have that information in front of me. We can, you know, Jeff can follow back up with you on that. And we'd probably want to give more of a maybe a percentage there. But we do have a decent mix right now of retail versus specialty. As you look at the pipeline moving into next year, there is the addition of more retail programs. I don't know the exact number. If you were to look at overall program count, but it's a higher percentage moving into next year in the pipeline that would have a retail versus a specialty component.

Okay. Got it. Maybe so it sounds like this is a little bit bigger opportunity. Maybe, you know, higher claims volumes on the retail side? Maybe you could just kind of elaborate on that a little bit.

Yes. So retail products, due to their cost and the propensity to be prescribed, often deal with a lot more what I would call generic types of ailments. You'll tend to see just a higher percentage of people be prescribed those drugs. Sometimes it's for acute issues. Sometimes it's for chronic. If you were to look at the retail programs right now that we have, we have some in the pulmonary space, like inhalers and similar products. There are people who will get written prescriptions for inhalers for asthma and will need them every day for the rest of their lives. Then there are other patients who will come down with bronchitis and use it for a month or two and then stop. The mix you see in utilization tends to be a little higher, which allows for a higher patient count in those programs. Whereas with specialty drugs, the number of people that are taking them is typically much lower because they are specific and don't usually address acute indications. Therefore, onboarding more patients into the retail programs tends to yield higher claim volumes as well as a higher offer value. Retail products, for instance, might have an offer value of $200 or $300, allowing patients to utilize that multiple times throughout the year, resulting in many more claims compared to specialty products, where a single patient can exhaust their out-of-pocket maximum after only a few fills due to higher costs.

Okay. Got it. That's very helpful. Maybe second one. Jeff, you kinda talked a little bit about gross profit margins expanding as you know, the patient success center continues to ramp. I'm wondering if you could kinda help us think through, you know, current capacity, utilization, and maybe, you know, where you expect to be with these roughly 20 to 30 new centers online in the second half or last quarter here?

Well, that's this I think you're mixing the centers. We didn't say there would be 22. We were saying in the second half of the year on the patient affordability pharma side, we would add between 20 and 30. The centers, we don't really expect those to change too much, you know, plus or minus a couple here or there. And the comment about the majority of those relates to those centers coming up to the average productivity of our core base. The fees for most of these don’t typically kick in for about ninety days, so we start to see the benefit of fully mature centers. The centers have been open for quite some time, but it just takes time for revenue opportunity to materialize. For example, inactivity fees and other factors. As those centers mature and we see a return to growth, I do expect the gross profit margins in the plasma business to improve from where they were this quarter.

Okay. Got it. And then maybe just last one. You know, I think when you kinda run the numbers as you look at Q4 here, and what you're communicating with pharma revenue growth, you know, it implies a sequential step down in average quarterly revenue per program. Maybe you could kinda help us think through, you know, what the difference is and maybe contrast that with what you see this year versus last year when it was actually a sequential step up from Q3 to Q4.

Yeah, I mean, last year we had more newer programs with fewer claims. Now this year, we have a lot more programs with actual claims, and the claim volumes typically fall off in the second half of the year due to seasonality. As Matt pointed out earlier, there was a reset. So the main difference lies in the current mix, which favors claims over initial launch fees. Okay. Understood. I appreciate all the color. Nice work.

Thank you. And the other thing I will say, Jacob, is you cannot look strictly at these numbers sequentially. You have to evaluate on a year-over-year basis. Last year, we did $56,700 in the fourth quarter revenue per program. That will be up year over year. This year, we did $75,434 in the third quarter compared to last year, where we did just under $50,000, so you have to assess this business on a year-over-year basis. Sequential numbers are absolutely meaningless.

Hi, everyone. Could you kind of tell us what a mature program would do on an average revenue basis versus what you say is $75,000 now, but you have obviously some programs that are just coming into the mix? What does a mature program do per quarter?

Gary, it really depends. I don't mean to skip or overlook the question, but I mean we have programs that do $2,000 a month, and we have programs that do 20 times that. It just really depends on the program. When it's mature, it tends to come into the numbers, and there are various constraints on potential earnings from drugs that may acquire new indications.

Is there a difference between a specialty versus just a regular retail program in terms of the average revenues?

Yeah. Hi, Gary. This is Matt. So when you look at the different product suites that those programs would use, we would typically value a specialty program as being worth more money provided it has the appropriate indications. But again, it's all in the mix. I can name off medications that have been highly advertised versus those that haven’t, and public perception can lead to assumptions about profitability that are not necessarily accurate. It comes down to understanding the patient population that each drug targets, their demographics, and ever-changing dynamics of the industry, including the information we’d collect from manufacturers.

Okay. And then just Mark, you mentioned something about this BECCS. Could you go into that and how that is gonna help you going forward?

Yeah. That is what we refer to as a blood establishment computer system or a BECCS. It's really a donor management system and it allows us to place into the plasma blood space. We have a suite of products that we have built out. It's a Software as a Service model. We’re dealing with a donor app, a plasma-specific CRM, and the donor management system. This system will give us additional business opportunities once approved with the FDA, allowing us to fully pursue that segment.

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. I'm just curious in the plasma business. It's probably hard to disaggregate, but have you sensed any uptick in donors given some of the issues around withholding SNAP benefits as part of the government shutdown? And conversely, what type of headwind are you feeling in terms of just the increased ICE activity with detaining immigrants and deporting immigrants? On a net basis, do you think those offset each other? Or could you just comment on any dynamics you're seeing?

Peter, regarding the latter question, I can tell you that we haven't seen any change. Remember, when you give plasma, you need to present an ID. People who are here illegally without proper identification don’t donate plasma. So there’s been zero impact related to the changes in the immigration population. Regarding the government shutdown, it's only been around for a couple of weeks. We haven’t observed any notable changes in donors due to this situation. Mark, have you seen anything?

No, we haven't seen anything significant. We're not expecting to at this point. We've observed signs that the environment may be improving a bit as we enter the fourth quarter, and we expect that potentially to continue in the following months, particularly relating to donor payments, which appear to be increasing.

Okay. I see. And then just on that latter question on the donor management CRM engagement platform, any insights into the timing for when that approval might come through? And in terms of sizing that opportunity, is that something where there are hundreds of customers and each system could be hundreds of thousands of dollars? How should we be thinking about that in terms of potential benefits?

Yeah, we were anticipating getting through the FDA approval sometime in the fourth quarter, going into the first quarter. We obviously didn't expect the shutdown to last as long as it has, and it will probably push us back to the first or possibly the second quarter for approval. Regarding the overall market, the number of clients is relatively limited in the U.S. For the blood industry. However, the engagement we foresee could allow us to license many centers. It's early in the process, and I wouldn't want to disclose specific modeling aspects at this point in time.

As a reminder, if there are any additional questions, we have reached the end of the question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back to Mark Newcomer for closing remarks.

Thank you. Obviously, we're proud of our progress, optimistic about the future, and dedicated to delivering substantial growth and long-term shareholder value. We look forward to updating you again next quarter.

Thank you. And this concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.