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Inogen, Inc. (INGN)

Q1 2018 Earnings Call· Mon, Apr 30, 2018

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon. And welcome to the Inogen 2018 First Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode [Operator Instructions]. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions [Operator Instructions]. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Matt Bacso, Investor Relations Manager. Please go ahead.

Matt Bacso

Analyst

Thank you for participating in today's call. Joining me from Inogen is CEO, Scott Wilkinson and CFO and Co-Founder, Ali Bauerlein. Earlier today, Inogen released financial results for the first quarter of 2018. The earnings release and Inogen's corporate presentation are currently available in the Investor Relations section of the Company's Web site. As a reminder, the information presented today will include forward-looking statements, including statements about our growth prospects and strategy for 2018 and beyond, hiring expectations, marketing expectations, direct-to-consumer pricing trials, international growth, manufacturing developments, the impact of CMS rate adjustments and potential legislative measures and financial guidance for 2018. The forward-looking statements in this call are based on information currently available to us. These forward-looking statements are only predictions and involve risks and uncertainties that are set forth in more detail in our most recent periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Actual results may vary, and we disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements except as maybe required by law. We have posted historical financial statements in our first quarter investor presentation in the Investor Relations section of the Company's Web site. Please refer to these files for more detailed information. During the call, we will also present certain financial information on a non-GAAP basis. Management believes that non-GAAP financial measures taken in conjunction with U.S. GAAP financial measures provide useful information for both management and investors by excluding certain non-cash items and other expenses that are not indicative of Inogen's core operating results. Management uses non-GAAP measures internally to understand, manage and evaluate our business and make operating decisions. Reconciliations between U.S. GAAP and non-GAAP results are presented in tables within our earnings release. For future periods, we are unable to provide a reconciliation of our non-GAAP guidance to the most directly comparable GAAP measures without unreasonable effort as discussed in more detail in our earnings release. With that, I'll turn the call over to Inogen's President and CEO, Scott Wilkinson. Scott?

Scott Wilkinson

Analyst

Thanks, Matt. Good afternoon. And thank you for joining our first quarter 2018 conference call. And what is historically a seasonally slower quarter, I am very proud to say 2018 got off to a great start as we generated total revenue of $79.1 million in the first quarter. Our record direct-to-consumer sales of $28.7 million in the first quarter of 2018 exceeded our expectations, primarily due to increased sales representative headcount and associated consumer spending. We are currently ahead of schedule to meet our plan of hiring 240 Cleveland based employees by 2020, with the majority of those being sales reps. Given our recent success, our strategy is to steadily to hire additional sales representatives throughout 2018 and continue to invest in marketing activities to increase consumer awareness as we believe this is still our most effective means to drive growth of the direct-to-consumer sales. In fact, we expect to release a new TV commercial to showcase the benefits of our portable oxygen concentrators in the second quarter. Further, we initiated a direct-to-consumer pricing trial in the second quarter of 2018 to ensure our products are optimally priced. We expect to provide an update on this trial on our next earnings call. First quarter of 2018 domestic business to business sales of $28 million was a record for us and exceeded our expectations, primarily due to continued success with our private label partner and traditional home medical equipment providers. While we are very proud of the success in the first quarter and remain optimistic within the domestic business-to-business channel, it is important to remember that this business can be lumpy quarter-to-quarter. While we believe the conversion to non-delivery technology is underway, we think this will take seven to 10 years due to the inherent challenges providers are facing both from…

Ali Bauerlein

Analyst

Thanks, Scott and good afternoon everyone. During my prepared remarks, I will review our first quarter of 2018 financial performance and then provide details on our increased 2018 guidance. As Scott noted, total revenue for the first quarter of 2018 was $79.1 million, representing 50.6% growth over the first quarter of 2017. Looking at each of our revenue streams and turning first to our sales revenue. Total sales revenue of $73.6 million represented 93.1% of total revenue in the first quarter of 2018, and reflected 60.1% growth over the same quarter of the prior year. Total units sold increased to 45,400 in Q1 2018, up 77.3% from 25,600 in Q1 2017. Direct-to-consumer sales for the first quarter of 2018 were a record $28.7 million, representing 67.8% growth over the first quarter of 2017, primarily due to increased sales representative headcount and increased marketing expenditures. Record domestic business-to-business sales of $28 million in Q1 2018 reflected 60.4% growth over Q1 2017 with strong demand from our private label partner and traditional HME providers as more and more providers are adopting portable oxygen concentrators instead of paying to service their oxygen paychecks. International business-to-business sales of $16.9 million in Q1 2018 increased 48% from Q1 2017 and which driven mostly by strong European volumes and favorable currency rates. We are proud of this result, especially since the first quarter of 2018 included sizeable unit orders from South Korea that did not repeat in the first quarter of 2018. Sales in Europe represented 89.5% of international sales in the first quarter of 2018, up from 73.2% in the first quarter of 2017. Average business-to-business selling prices declined for the same period in the prior year, primarily due to mix related to increased volume from our private label partners and secondarily associated with pricing…

Operator

Operator

We will now begin the question-and-answer session [Operator Instructions]. The first question comes from Roby Marcus with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Roby Marcus

Analyst

Maybe I can start with getting some more details at if you on what drove to be. The DTC growth we’ve seen over the past few quarters has been creeping up from 30%, to 40% to 50% year-over-year growth, now to 60%. But the one that really stood out was U.S. B2B, which capped up from the low to mid $20 million range up to $28 million in the first quarter. So can you give us a little more color on what exactly you’re seeing there in both U.S. B2B, but also if you could tough on B2C as well?

Scott Wilkinson

Analyst

On the B2B front, we had commented middle of last year that while a lot of the B2B players said they were trailing POCs, we said look they’ve gone down the path far enough, enough of the track record that we felt like really a conversion was underway even if some players didn’t even realize they were converting. You can only call it a trial so long. I think that’s exactly what we’re seeing, the reimbursement pressures on providers continues to force that conversion. We saw providers again and I’ve made this comment in the past, but it was true this time around really in all shapes and sizes continue to increase the purchase. So we continue to have some confidence that the conversion is underway. And as I’ve said in the past too, if you do the math and you say this is seven to 10-year conversion cycle then the rate of adoption has to increase somewhere along that timeline, or you just don’t get there in seven to 10 years. So we are seeing the volumes pick-up. We’re seeing a few new players to the game, the same old players buying a little bit more. It’s good news. What we like is that it’s fairly well diversified across the customers. So we’re pleased. But there is no real secret or [indiscernible] other than that people are progressing down that curve to convert their business. Now, as I said in my opening remarks, it’s still going to be lumpy and there are starts and stops. There is inherent barriers and hurdles for the B2B community to convert their business and some run into cash flow issues during a conversion or they hit a credit crunch. So we expect this will continue to be lumpy. We’re pleased with what we…

Roby Marcus

Analyst

And may be just a follow up, Ali, I look at the first quarter number and I look at guidance. You beat the Street by $16 million. You raised guidance by $12 million. You did 50% growth in the first quarter. And if I look at the midpoint of guidance, it implies 20% growth for the balance of the year. So maybe you could help talk about your philosophy on guidance and maybe what the discrepancy is from the very strong first quarter growth rates and what’s factored into the rest of guidance? Thanks.

Ali Bauerlein

Analyst

As we’ve said before and as Scott just said, we don’t want to get ahead of this market conversion. And we know that there are underlying fundamentals that make it difficult for the B2B community to continue to adopt POCs. And because of that, we just want to make sure that we’re cautious with the guidance that we put out there on the B2B side of the business. International obviously is a lumpy business. Q4 was pretty weak for us and Q1 obviously rebounded quite nicely. But just given the fact that that business can be driven by tenders and the timing of purchases again, we don’t want to get ahead of our European partners and their use of POCs. Obviously, there was an additional headwind on the rental side of the business as we’ve continued to focus the team on cash sales. You will see we do expect rentals to now decline, so we did factor that into the guidance as well. And so the direct-to-consumer sales, obviously, was fantastic start to the year. And we feel great about how that segment has been performing. But again, it’s down to how many people can we hire, particularly in Cleveland where the majority of the growth is coming and making sure that we put out achievable guidance.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Margaret Kaczor with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Margaret Kaczor

Analyst · William Blair. Please go ahead.

First from me on the DTC side. Can you give us any flavor for how quickly the reps are ramping relative to reps in the past? And as we have seen that maybe more reps were hired later in the year, which I think you guys just said and earlier than this year rather than the very early classes. Why shouldn’t we look at Q2 and continue to see a lot of the same growth as we saw in Q1, particularly as you launch the CTC TV commercial. And maybe I can follow up on that in the next question.

Scott Wilkinson

Analyst · William Blair. Please go ahead.

We’ve always measured the curve on our new sales reps and we’ve said it’s about a four to six month timeframe for them to get to the end of curve steady state in all of the locations where we hire new classes. We measure against that curve. So all the reps that we hire in a given class their first month we measure against what would be the normal month one, month two, three, four, et cetera. So you have pretty good data around that. I am pleased to say the folks in Cleveland are at or little better than the historical curve. I’ve also said in past couple of calls, we've invested pretty heavily in training, which has helped us to improve that on-boarding curve a little bit. So certainly we’re at least at par if not a little better on that four to six month end of curve journey. Now, your second question on the second quarter, you do have to remember that the comps in the second quarter are a little tougher than the first quarter comps. So that’s where we’ve landed where we did, that’s with respect to looking at the baseline and not all baselines are equal. So hopefully that makes sense to you.

Ali Bauerlein

Analyst · William Blair. Please go ahead.

Just to expand on that a little bit. I mean, particularly in the back half of 2017, we saw accelerating growth on that direct-to-consumer sales line. And we ended the year with four quarter of 2017 being up almost 58% compared to the fourth quarter of 2016. So the comps do get tougher for us throughout the year versus our traditional seasonality where the second and the third quarter are tougher. So the first quarter was certainly the easiest comp for us on the direct-to-consumer sales channel where growth in the previous year was only up about 28%.

Margaret Kaczor

Analyst · William Blair. Please go ahead.

And then you guys had talked about potentially running a DTC TV commercial yourself, and I know others have done the same. But what have you learned from them, how many geographies are you going launch those TV activities in? Anything in terms of how much spend and contribution from the activity that’s in guidance?

Scott Wilkinson

Analyst · William Blair. Please go ahead.

Margaret, we actually have always run our own direct-to-consumer commercial. So that’s no different. We are going to launch a new version of the commercial in the second quarter of this year. We've been running our own -- we tweak them to refresh them, sometimes you can wear out a commercial. So throughout our past really 10 year history, we always refresh the commercial every so often just to piece it different, just like we run in some different stations and different programming from time-to-time to keep it fresh. But that’s really what we've done and we’ll continue to do that. But you should see a new commercial here before the end of the second quarter that's what the plan is right now and that’s all done by us.

Margaret Kaczor

Analyst · William Blair. Please go ahead.

So the spend isn’t changing then?

Scott Wilkinson

Analyst · William Blair. Please go ahead.

Well, the spend will continue to ramp as we hire new people. So we’ve always matched our spend to our sales capacity. So as we hire more reps, you’ve got to have more leads or else you choke the reps off and starve them. So that goes back to that -- remember market penetration our best estimate that we use precious Medicare data in that roughly 10% range. So being a long way from saturation, we’ve shown that we can continue to add sales capacity and continue to increase the spend to drive more leads and keep those new sales reps fully loaded. So we’ll continue to do that. You’ll see the spend increase as we hire reps and as an aside, newer reps tend to queue up even more leads. They don’t really have a pipeline so they’ve got to generate a pipeline. So an existing rep in any given month they may work X number of leads that are already in their bucket and then Y number of new leads, brand new reps to come on board, it’s all new leads, you have to load them up and the spend tends to be a little higher to feed them until they get the steady state.

Ali Bauerlein

Analyst · William Blair. Please go ahead.

And just to clarify on the cost side, the cost of the commercial development get capitalized and then it will be amortized over the expected life of the commercial.

Margaret Kaczor

Analyst · William Blair. Please go ahead.

And then I’ll sneak one last one in here and let you guys scale. But on the B2B domestic side as you think about the quarter’s results, I know you touched on it. But how much of that do you think was market conversion versus share gains. And are you doing anything to target certainty any more than others perhaps, so you can end up driving more growth? Thanks.

Scott Wilkinson

Analyst · William Blair. Please go ahead.

Yes, as you know if you look at historical POC growth and again, we’ve used the Medicare data to estimate that. The annual POC growth has been in the high-teens. So while I don’t have any newer data, I am using the same precious data as 2016. I think with the growth rate that we saw that certainly should be higher than the market growth rate, so it would lead you to conclude that we have strengthened our share position in the quarter.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Danielle Antalffy with Leerink Partners. Please go ahead.

Danielle Antalffy

Analyst · Leerink Partners. Please go ahead.

Just to follow-up on the line of questioning around guidance, I just want to make sure I understand how we’re thinking about the back -- I guess back start of the year -- two-thirds of the year. And it looks like your guidance is implying something in the 20% growth range on average, but you just put up 51% growth quarter, your seasonally generally weaker quarter. So I appreciate the conservatism but I also want to make sure I am not missing any overlying dynamics like, for example, it looks like pricing maybe took a little bit of the step down this quarter. Is there something we should be thinking about as an impact, and as we move throughout the year there? And your competitor did say they were in a controlled roll out of their POC last week on their earnings call. So I just want to make sure I am understanding all the drivers of guidance for the rest of the year and particularly as you think about the B2C business and even back these reps you’re ramping a little faster. Why not get even more bullish, I guess is my question?

Ali Bauerlein

Analyst · Leerink Partners. Please go ahead.

So I’ll take that one, Danielle. Certainly, as we’ve seen overtime, we do have pricing pressure, particularly on the B2B side of the business. We expect that to continue with volume increases throughout 2018. So that is factored into guidance as it has been previously. And it really will come down to what level of volume increases are we seeing to justify the ASP declines that we expect in those areas. When we look at it really -- I mean it just comes down to this market is we do believe that they are in a conversion process. However, we do think that we don’t want to get out ahead of that, and we want to make sure that our guidance is very achievable. On the direct-to-consumer side certainly, we’re continuing to invest in the sales force and continuing to grow that team. We still expect 2018 to be an investment year for us, and how that investments have performed so far in expanding the sales team, that has performed very nicely. I just want to point you again to the fact that throughout the year, our comps get harder on the direct-to-consumer side of the business and that against the normal seasonality that we see in the business. So looking at Q2 versus Q3 and Q4, Q2 is an easier comp for us on the direct-to-consumer side than Q3 or Q4 versus our typical seasonality in the business. So certainly, I think that all those things should be factored into guidance and particularly on the direct-to-consumer side of the business.

Danielle Antalffy

Analyst · Leerink Partners. Please go ahead.

And then just another higher level longer term question, I mean B2B is growing very quickly. It feels like you mentioned these HMEs are converting. And I am just curious of how you’re looking about the long-term mix of the business between B2B and direct-to-consumer. And what that means for the price versus -- a price decline versus volume growth? And what’s your strategy to help support pricing if in fact B2B becomes a much -- as it’s been becoming a bigger piece of the business? Thanks so much.

Ali Bauerlein

Analyst · Leerink Partners. Please go ahead.

So when you look at that, while certainly B2B has a lower gross margin profile, it also has much lower operating expenses associated with it. So when we look at the market opportunity, we look to capture share both on the B2B side and the direct to consumer side, because we’re relatively agnostic on the bottom-line. What we have been doing though is continuing to invest in the B2C side, because we’re still very early in the market penetration curve, as Scott said earlier, 9% or so penetration in the last data as of the end of 2016. We still have a long ramp to go to continue to take share, both on the direct-to-consumer side, as well as the business to business side away from the tank-based business model. So our focus really is to make sure that we maintain a market leadership position, and that we continue to grow the market both on direct-to-consumer side and the B2B side and not to drive a specific mix in our business. Now, inherent in guidance in 2018 is that direct-to-consumer sales would be the fastest growing channel. So that would actually be a tailwind to gross margin expansion over the course of the year.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Mike Matson with Needham and Company. Please go ahead.

Mike Matson

Analyst · Needham and Company. Please go ahead.

Just given the level of growth that we saw in the quarter, I just want to ask about your production capacity and manufacturing side of things. If you were to sustain this type of growth, do you feel like you’ve got adequate capacity there to continue to meet demand?

Scott Wilkinson

Analyst · Needham and Company. Please go ahead.

If you recall last year, we engaged Foxconn as a manufacturing partner. So they are now producing our G3 products for European demand. And what that did is it offloaded considerable demand from our domestic facility at Richardson, Texas so that immediately freed up capacity of that site. And then as I mentioned in the opening, we have signed an additional lease for 23,000 toward fee increased footprint, it’s in Richardson, Texas, as well just around the corner from our current site. So that gives significant space for expansions. So certainly, over the next at least couple of few years, I’ll say, we’re in pretty good shape from a capacity standpoint. It is relatively easy for us to expand our capacities, probably more of a challenge if anything on the supply chain side not on the footprint side for manufacturing. So manufacturing sales are relatively easy to replicate and we’ve got a good job with our ops team of driving productivity increases year-over-year to increase our capacity as well. But the real work that you don’t see on the supply chain side and we’ve got a team all over that, because we don’t want to miss the opportunity if the market accelerates in growth. And as I said, estimating a seven to 10 year conversion, mathematically if you do see that come to fruition then there would be an adoption acceleration. So we’re prepared for that and that’s why we’re watching so closely.

Mike Matson

Analyst · Needham and Company. Please go ahead.

And then your sales gross margin was down as you noted, Ali. But I guess what I’m wondering is that we you split that into two parts, the B2B sales and then B2C sales, and look at those individually. Were those gross margins in each of those businesses stable or are those down independently? In other words, was this purely a mix issue or were the two separate businesses you’ve seen decline as well?

Ali Bauerlein

Analyst · Needham and Company. Please go ahead.

So when you look at the sales gross margin for the direct-to-consumer side of the business, ASP has been relatively flat year-over-year. So there actually with comps coming down, you see a slight expansion of that gross margin over time, because your ASP is flat. Now remember, we are doing a pricing trail in the second quarter in the direct-to-consumer channel. So that will determine what’s the optimal price for us going forward. But just looking at the first quarter, certainly, that direct-to-consumer sales gross margin performs nicely with COGS coming down overall and ASP being relatively flat. When we look at the B2B side, there is always mix even within B2B depending on the customers that buy. Obviously, our distributor, our private label partner has lower prices in order for them to sell on through the HME community. So mix between them and also other large HME providers versus the smaller HME providers that buy smaller quantities, and as a result have higher prices. Mix within that also is a contributing factor. So when we outline those impacts, the first was just the mix within the customer and then secondarily was overall price declines associated with the volume increase.

Mike Matson

Analyst · Needham and Company. Please go ahead.

And then were there any one-time factors that drove your revenue this quarter that won’t be repeated? I mean, I don't think you called anything out. But I guess just given the amount of upside or mixture that there’s not anything here that isn’t indicative of longer term demand I guess?

Ali Bauerlein

Analyst · Needham and Company. Please go ahead.

There were no one-time orders, like for example, the South Korean order that we had in the first quarter of 2017. There was no large international order like that where it was a new country. And certainly, we stopped providers continuing to adopt worldwide. But there was nothing that we would call one-time in nature or driven by a specific tender or a new market opportunity.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from J.P. McKim with Piper Jaffray. Please go ahead.

J.P. McKim

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please go ahead.

I wanted to start first just more broadly on DTC, and how do you think about that strategically going forward. Scott or Ali, do you feel that there is a real opportunity to accelerate the market growth from a volume standpoint if you do take maybe a boarder price cut? Or are you more or less looking at the DTC side maybe is there a premium given all the brand that you guys have built in the market?

Scott Wilkinson

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please go ahead.

As I said, the biggest barriers to conversion is really the fixed infrastructure that’s already in place with the providers that have driven a delivery model since really their existence. You’ve got -- to make this non-delivery model work you’ve got to phase the delivery structure out. And that takes time and it takes money. So reducing prices really doesn’t help grease the skits. The other issue as I mentioned is just credit line. So people run into crediting and cash flow constraints, I suppose you can argue that low price reduction helps that a little bit but you can’t reduce the price enough that it makes that go away. So no, I don’t see reducing prices would significantly increase the adoption in the HME community.

J.P. McKim

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please go ahead.

And then my second question is just on international. I think from what I heard is there was no real big tenders, you didn’t have South Korean order, it was just a broad based strong order from just your checking along. So is there -- so why haven’t we -- why can’t we call an inflection there. Has your visibility got better now that you have more of a direct presence with Foxconn and you’re and distributor you bought there last year? Do you have better visibility there, or is there any reason that that you can point to the call out that acceleration?

Scott Wilkinson

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please go ahead.

In the European market really international overall we should just look at it as one bucket. It is the channel where we are still the farthest probably end user. So we have limited visibility. It’s not a lot better than it’s been in the past. Really Foxconn doesn’t give us any better visibility just by shipping from one point versus Texas. It does improve our service significantly, and the customers are extremely happy what we’ve done with Foxconn, but it doesn’t improve our visibility. European markets are very fragmented. You’ve got different reimbursement in every country, some countries are tender driven, some are not. And that’s why we said the international sales are what we would call the lumpiest in most unpredictable bucket of all. We had a quarter end of the year that things were a little slow and then this quarter they jump ahead. If you look at it on average it levels out but that’s why we’re always very careful about making predictions on a market like that where we know inherently that sales are less predictable than anywhere else.

Operator

Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Scott Wilkinson for any closing remarks.

Scott Wilkinson

Analyst

I’d like to close with a few comments on our strategy for 2018. We expect to continue to seek ways to accelerate the global adoption of portable oxygen concentrators. We’re supporting providers worldwide to convert to a non-delivery model, increasing our direct-to-consumer investments in the United States and pursuing product registration in new and emerging markets. At the same time, we’re still focused on developing innovative auction concentrators to stay at the forefront of patient preference and further reduce our product costs as we gain additional scale. We’re excited about the future of oxygen therapy, what we see portable auction concentrators continuing to grow and becoming the standard-of-care for ambulatory patients in the next seven to 10 years. Thank you for your interest in Inogen.

Operator

Operator

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