Michael B. McCallister
Analyst · Josh Raskin with Barclays
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Today, Humana announced third quarter earnings of $2.67 per share compared to $2.32 per share in the year-ago quarter. This quarter's favorable result was due to strong operating performance across multiple businesses. Consequently, and looking to the remainder of the year, we raised our 2011 earnings per share guidance this morning to a range of $8.35 to $8.40 from the previous range of $7.50 to $7.60. Along with these positive financial results, we also made good progress during the third quarter on a number of operational fronts. One, we received approval for our 2012 Medicare bids from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services with the related annual election period for Medicare beneficiaries now underway. We announced our intention to acquire 2 Medicare HMOs: Arcadian and MD Care. Updated Star ratings have been issued by CMS, and we experienced significant progress, with 98% of Humana members now in plans that will qualify for quality bonus payments in 2013. Many of our Commercial members are now receiving our innovative HumanaVitality well-being rewards offering as part of their benefits package as they renew. We again returned capital to our stockholders through approximately 240 million in share repurchases in the third quarter, increasing the total year 2011 to 500 million. During the third quarter, we paid our first cash dividend to shareholders since 1993 and have followed that up with another cash dividend this month. I'll devote most of my remarks this morning to Humana's Medicare growth strategy from the standpoint of long-term corporate sustainability, what I would call the most important chapter of our story. I'll also comment on our expectations for Medicare Advantage and PDP membership next year, and comment on our preliminary estimates for 2012 earnings per share. As we've done in past years, we will continue to enhance our value proposition for seniors by reinvesting the savings we've achieved through our 15 percent Solution into stable premiums and better benefits for Medicare beneficiaries. The result is the robust 2012 membership growth projections you see on the slide. We've essentially built a circle that is repeated and reinforced each 12 months that operates like this. One, we reset our Medicare margins in the bids we file each June. Two, we vigorously pursue the medical management and operating cost initiatives that make up the 15 percent Solution. Three, the progress we make is translated into attractive, highly competitive products for the following year. And then our growing size and scale in Medicare gives us operational advantages that make it increasingly difficult for competitors to match these products in the marketplace. Accordingly, we project our Medicare Advantage individual membership will increase by 145,000 to 155,000 net new members on the individual side in 2012, and by 55,000 to 75,000 net new members in Group Medicare. We're particularly pleased that our projections for Group Medicare include more than 50,000 members from our recent addition of the State of Texas Employee Retirement System. We're also projecting an increase in our standalone PDP membership of 500,000 to 600,000 net new members in 2012. Our PDP membership growth estimates are built substantially on the success of our co-branded offering with Wal-Mart. For the second year in a row, this innovative plan has the lowest monthly premium of any nationwide PDP offering. In addition, again like last year, it has one price and one benefit structure nationwide, the first PDP plan in history with this strong competitive advantage. Among other things, this makes the plan easy to understand, the key element for Retail consumers, especially in the PDP environment, where the number of plan choices runs into the hundreds. In terms of EPS guidance for 2012, we expect our projected Medicare Advantage and PDP revenue growth to be offset by the annual reset of our Medicare margin. Although based on our most recent estimate, that reset is expected to result in a margin slightly higher than the 5% margin included in our bids this summer. Other mitigating factors include movement of commercial and medical cost trends closer to historical levels, and lower projected results for Humana Military as we transition to the new South Region contract. The combined results of these and less substantial factors is our expectation for 2012 earnings per share of $7.40 to $7.60. Jim Bloem will discuss this projection in more detail during his remarks. One of the key elements seniors look for in a Medicare Advantage plan is provider access. For 2012, we dramatically expanded both our local HMO and PPO networks and product offerings. As we've often emphasized, this type of expansion is done carefully, adding only those providers to our networks who we believe will offer quality care efficiently. This map indicates the breadth of our Medicare Advantage network, which covers geographies where over 75% of the Medicare beneficiaries live in the United States. While we're a major national competitor already, we're also actively seeking to shore up those areas of the country where our networks are not as extensive as we'd like them to be. That strategy will be aided by the MD Care and Arcadian acquisitions, each of which enables us to strengthen our networks in areas where we're already present, as well as enter new counties, particularly in California. As we expand our base of efficient provider networks, we can more readily coordinate targeted clinical initiatives and address high cost situations more efficiently to achieve better patient outcomes and lower costs. To us, the expansion of our provider networks contributes to member satisfaction in 2 ways: initially in terms of provider choice, subsequently by enhancing the member experience through our 15 percent Solution. As we once again reset our overall Medicare target margin for 2012, it's important to note that the most important chapter of the story that I mentioned a few minutes ago is not a margin expansion story, it is a long-term, sustainable membership volume story. This slide illustrates why. With few competitors in Medicare able to match our scale, experience and compelling senior value proposition, we're growing Medicare Advantage membership as aggressively as possible today to create lifelong relationships that will enable us to offer our members a wide variety of Humana products and services over many years. The slide suggests what some of these products and services are and could be. Notable among them is home care, pharmacy, integrated wellness, all areas where Humana has made good recent progress and where the long-term revenue horizon, given baby boomer demographics, is promising. Concentra, which we acquired 10 months ago, is performing nicely and gives us a strong foundation on which to further build out our PCP management business. You can summarize this slide with a 3-part mantra that describes how our near-term Medicare Advantage growth is expected to produce long-term Humana prosperity: Diversification, cross-selling and customer retention. With all this as background, we believe we will continue to achieve strong growth overall to position Humana for success next year and for many years to come. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jim for a detailed discussion of our financials.