Participants

Matt Gunter; Chief Communications Officer & IR; SelectQuote Inc

Tim Danker; CEO & Director; SelectQuote Inc

Ryan Clement; CFO; SelectQuote Inc

Ben Hendrix; Analyst; RBC Capital Markets

Pat McCann; Analyst; NOBLE Capital Markets

Presentation

Operator

Hello all and welcome to SelectQuote Fiscal Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) It's now my pleasure to introduce Matt Gunter, SelectQuote Investor Relations. Gunter, you may begin your conference.

Matt Gunter

Thank you, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to SelectQuote Fiscal Third Quarter Earnings Call. Before we begin our call, I would like to mention that on our website, we have provided a slide presentation to help guide our discussion after today's call. A replay will also be available on our website.
Joining me from the Company, I have our Chief Executive Officer, Tim Danker; and Chief Financial Officer, Ryan Clement. Following Tim and Ryan's comments today, we will have a question-and-answer session As referenced on slide 2, during this call, we will be discussing some non-GAAP financial measures. The most directly comparable GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of the differences between the GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures are available in our earnings release and investor presentation on our website.
And finally, a reminder that certain statements made today may be forward-looking statements. These statements are made based upon management's current expectations and beliefs concerning future events impacting the Company and therefore involve a number of uncertainties and risks, including but not limited to those described in our earnings release Form 10 Q for the period ended March 31st, 2024, and other filings with the SEC. Therefore, the actual results of operations or financial condition of the Company could differ materially from those expressed or implied in our forward-looking statements.
And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Tim Danker. Tim?

Tim Danker

Good morning, and thanks, everyone, for joining. It was an exciting quarter for SelectQuote across a number of fronts. And I'll begin today's call summarizing our accomplishments across three main categories. First, our Senior Medicare Advantage business continues to leverage the foundational changes we made more than two years ago. The business continues to drive strong policy production, stable and attractive unit economics. The quarter marks the ninth in a row that has overdelivered against our internal expectations. Specifically, we generated $204 million in revenue within our senior business at a 30% EBITDA margin. The result is one of our highest single revenue for NOEP. and SelectQuote history, which is a great accomplishment considering the conservatism built into our LTV assumptions over the past two years, delivering this top line performance at attractive margins despite modest year-over-year increases in operating and marketing expense is a testament to our focus on operating efficiency. Additionally, our success in health care services continued in the third quarter with better than expected membership growth yet again, our membership now exceeds 75,000, which is well beyond our forecast set at the beginning of the year. We are extremely pleased with the growth achieved in this segment but are even more excited by the embedded profit potential and immediate cash flow benefit. The business provides our overall company.
Third, as we've spoken about, we continue to advance down the path of improving our funding cost and overall leverage through the securitization of our receivables balance, which at quarter end stood at over $1 billion.
I'll provide a general overview of how a securitization structure would help improve returns and cash efficiently for SelectQuote in a minute. But we're excited about the progress we've made since our last call and look forward to sharing more information about the potential transaction when we can and some spike would has never been better positioned to continue executing on our goal of becoming a comprehensive health care services provider to a large and growing range of Americans. We're excited to see our operational improvements bear increasingly tangible results, given we expect to drive positive operating cash flow in fiscal 2024, which will compound in the years ahead. We believe 2024 will be remembered as an evolutionary milestone to ultimately deliver the returns. We know our model can generate for shareholders.
So if we turn to slide 4, let me give an update on the operating stability. We continue to see in our Senior Medicare Advantage business for the second straight year and a different type of in a selling season like what has maintained the cost and operating efficiency improvements at the core of our strategic redesign.
Our operating expense per policy remains nearly 30% below the levels from our 2021 vintage, driven primarily by the shift away from flex agents. Our core senior agents, as you will remember, are approximately two times more efficient compared to less tenured agents. We've maintained a strategy not just to overlay this population of agents, but to train them earlier and arming them with increasingly advanced tools. This clearly benefits like what's operating efficiency, but better yet the alignment with policyholders is where everyone wins. That is best evidenced by our stable persistency and LTV, having policyholders keep their policies, which is a win for them. Selectquote and our carrier partners, given our laser focus on high quality growth and liquid is also realize the efficiency benefits and our marketing cost per approved policy. On average, these costs are down more than 30% in each of the past two years compared to 2021. Again, we believe this strong performance is sustainable and scalable and a range of MA selling seasons, not because we have a crystal ball on policy features or competition. But instead because we are purposefully targeting the leads we pursue. This helps manage our marketing costs and improves the overall quality and throughput of the policies we sell.
Lastly, as we've noted in recent quarters, the process improvements we made in our Senior business, combined with the synergistic growth of our select Rx business, has made a meaningful difference in the revenue multiple we're driving on our customer acquisition costs for the third quarter, our revenue to cash again eclipsed four times, which is now more than double where it was two years ago.
On the next page, let me spend a few minutes on the dynamics of a potential securitization deal and why it is an attractive funding option for our business. Securitization could help improve this liquid balance sheet and three key ways. First the proceeds would allow us to repay considerable portion of our existing term loan. The second benefit would be the potential to extend maturities on our existing term loans beyond 2025. Given these two benefits, the aggregate debt load and maturity ladder for SelectQuote could be materially improved, and we believe there could be more opportunity to further improve our overall capitalization and cost of capital. That further improvement is the third step to improving our balance sheet, which would take place in the future through debt paydown and refinancing beyond the balance sheet benefits. There are operational benefits from a potential securitization. Specifically, securitization can accelerate cash flows for our Medicare Advantage business and drive better returns and cash efficiency, which are at the heart of our overall value proposition to shareholders.
On this slide, we've presented an illustration of how a potential securitization of new policy tranches could positively impact the cash flows of the single Medicare Advantage policy compared to our current model. As you can see, the key benefit would be the pull forward of our payback and the policy creation and securitization. We would anticipate a marked acceleration compared to our historical payback of just over two years. The upfront cash flows from this potential funding structure could further improve our returns on new policies to be clear, a securitization structure would not impact LTVs or our cost of solar policy, but instead simply delivers the cash returns sooner. In addition, while securitization would be structured as a loan to value below the summer cash flows, SelectQuote would maintain the policy and the residual value once the bonds have been repaid.
The final key benefit this cash efficiency would have for our model is a growing ability to self-fund our business with four securitizations. To be very clear, the use of securitization funding would not change our strategic imperative to prioritize profitability and returns over growth just because securitization would provide additional liquidity to grow. Ma policies are disciplined in how we would approach the AMI business would not change in parallel with that reduction we believe securitization funding could accelerate how SelectQuote leverages our holistic model to further differentiate and broaden our growth and profit opportunities with new value added services for Americans within a shifting healthcare ecosystem.
On the next page, I'll briefly speak to our consolidated results for the third quarter. As mentioned, we're very pleased with the stability in both policy growth and margin for our core senior business. Similarly, we again saw strong membership growth for our select Rx business and health care services, which increased over 12,000 this past quarter alone. As we've discussed in recent quarters, the rapid growth of our membership comes at near term dilution to our overall EBITDA margins, which you can see here on a year-over-year compare. That said, it's margin pressure we've been happy to incur based on the embedded economics that exist in our select Rx and broader healthcare services segments. To be clear, we remain confident that our Healthcare Services business has the ability to generate double digit EBITDA margins, which on the base of revenues we are producing becomes significant as the model matures.
Before I turn to Ryan, I'll conclude by reiterating my message that SelectQuote has never been better positioned with a strong operating foundation to pursue the large market and value creation opportunity that we know is ours to take with that, let me turn the call over to Ryan to detail our financial results and updated outlook for 2024. Ryan?

Ryan Clement

Thanks, and I'll begin my remarks with additional details on the strong results for SelectQuote Senior Medicare Advantage business.
On slide 7, as Tim noted, the key takeaway is the stability of our financial results this season compared to less stable and repeatable financial results were our primary aim when we redesigned our strategy two years ago and results like these continue to validate our strategy. We drove a strong oh eight with $204 million of revenue in the third quarter, representing double-digit growth compared to last year. As Tim noted, we had another successful quarter for profitability with a 30% EBITDA margin, we credit the operating efficiency and the resulting profitability to the higher mix of tenured agents, enhanced desktop tools to ensure best policy fit and more focused approach to lead targeting. Put simply, we believe SelectQuote approach in the market is fundamentally different, and our nine consecutive quarters of strong results is evidence of that.
If we flip to slide 8, let's review SelectQuote. So we pay through the lens of policies and LTV first week rule approved Medicare Advantage policies by 12% during the quarter. This was made possible through a blend of the strong close rates with our core agents as well as the focused lead sourcing we referenced before. This also outpaced overall industry growth, which is a testament to SelectQuote strong customer acquisition engine. As we spoke to you last quarter, the Medicare Advantage policy features were competitive this season and we grew policy count without sacrificing quality. This is all the more impressive when considering the strength of the market in 2023 and the comparisons we were up against. In fact, our LTV increased to $995 per policy, which is up 3% from a year ago and is now up 7% from the low recognized in fiscal 2022. The increase in LTV has been made possible by stable policyholder behavior, which we largely credit to our core agent mix and the resulting improvement in quality policy matching with our customers.
Turning to slide 9, I'll detail our Healthcare Services segment and select direct specifically, as Tim mentioned, growth remains robust and our platform surpassed expectations, again, focus on member growth and revenue. Specifically, our members grew to 75,000, which is 20% higher than a quarter ago. Similarly, revenue of $124 million in the third quarter grew rapidly driven both by new members but also by the maturation of members we have added over the course of the year. Third quarter revenue growth of 76% compared to a year ago is a significant increase and one that we are proud of. That said, we acknowledge a growing need to balance our growth with profitability and health care services. And I'd like to take a minute to give context both on our Q3 EBITDA results, but also on our near-term strategy for the segment as a whole. As you can see, our Healthcare Services EBITDA of $2 million remains muted primarily as a function of onboarding the over 12,000 members that signed up for select Rx this past quarter. This was the largest quarterly number increase on record the onboarding costs associated with these new members masked the stable and attractive margins we earn on prescription sales as new member onboarding moderates in the future. We maintain that our Healthcare Services business can generate double digit EBITDA margin.
Next, I'll briefly summarize our life Auto & Home segment, which also had a stable quarter for both revenue and adjusted EBITDA, which were $50 million and $7 million, respectively. Similar to prior quarters, the auto and home division's strong performance was once again driven primarily by a combination of strong agent productivity and higher industry wide frame. The Life division grew revenues by over 10%, fueled in particular by a strong quarter for the final expense business. As a reminder, these business lines continue to benefit SelectQuote overall cash efficiency.
Lastly, let me review our updated fiscal 24 outlook on Slide 11. As Tim mentioned, we are raising our revenue expectations to $1.25 billion to $1.3 billion, which at the midpoint represents growth of 27% year over year. This is the second consecutive quarter increasing our top line outlook and is primarily driven by the rapid adoption we have seen in our select Rx membership for select direct. Specifically, we would note that our fiscal fourth quarter is a seasonally slower period for member growth in AEP. or OE. While we still expect member growth into our fiscal year end, the pace will be modest compared to the past quarter. We also raised our outlook for adjusted EBITDA, which is now $100 million to $110 million at the midpoint. This represents growth of 41% year over year. As I had spoken to, we are happy to raise our profit outlook despite the additional onboarding expense driven by our rapid selector ex growth. For that, let me turn the call back to the operator to take your questions.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Ben Hendrix, RBC.

Ben Hendrix

Thank you very much and congratulations on the results. I wanted to get to more detail on Slide 5. The securitization and the pull forward of the payback period seems like very on compelling structure here. But just wondering kind of for this with now, it seems like your debt levels would be directly linked to sales in any given year now. Just wondering how you think about balance sheet management and your leverage profile of the Company going forward into this structure?

Ryan Clement

Thanks, Matt. Yes, yes. I mean, with respect to securitization, we do see it as a flexible structure where as we produce more policies we can we can securitize those policies and access the proceeds. And so as a result, it does create an environment where we can delever and pay down the term debt, but it also creates an environment where it is self-funding in nature. And so on a go-forward basis, we would expect to securitize policies as we produce them kind of on a perpetual basis.

Ben Hendrix

And I appreciate the commentary about being able to retain all your retail commissions. And that seems definitely like a positive. The promise is does this amplify on the downside in an event I know you guys have done a really good job of increasing the quality or commissions receivable and you know, and having a really strong confidence there. But could this Amplify any downside risk of negative tail revenue.

Ryan Clement

I mean, ultimately, the with respect to our cash flows and to the extent persistency were to come in worse than anticipated, we would not recognize those cash flows.
So I don't know that like the risk is amplified. It is obviously we are securitizing. And obviously, when you are securitizing policies, those policies are based off of actuarial studies and they're not and securitized at a loan to value that is 100%, but actually at a pretty significant reduction from 100%. So kind of there are our mechanism in place to de-risk the overall structure. We do believe that securitization is an attractive form of financing for the business for shareholders, and it makes a lot of sense Great, thank you.

Ben Hendrix

And just one last one on the regulatory environment, the Commission rules that we've seen come through from CMS. Just wanted to get your latest interpretation there and you know and how you how you believe it relates to your to your business lines.

Tim Danker

Good morning, Ben. This is Tim. Thanks for joining. Thanks for your question. Yes, our interpretation of the final rule really seems to dominate. There are different rules that apply to different participants in the industry. So specifically, SelectQuote were considered a third party marketing organization or TPMO.
And based upon the new language that came out, we believe it's CMS's intention to exclude TBMOs from the fee limitations related to broker comp. So we've been actively engaged with our carrier partners on this issue. They have reiterated the critical role we play in them, a distribution of the value that we provide beneficiaries and kind of underscored some of the differences in our model versus others. So we the bottom line of all this is we don't see this materially impacting our business.

Ben Hendrix

Thank you very much.

Tim Danker

Thanks.

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Pat McCann, NOBLE Capital Markets.

Pat McCann

Congrats on the quarter and thanks for taking my questions. My first question is about the on the pharmacy business. You mentioned during the presentation on the focus on on improving margins as we go forward. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about some of are some of the levers you pull to do that.

Tim Danker

Yes, I can start from a business standpoint that have Ryan kind of take it from a general economic standpoint, it's that book business, obviously that we don't book in the same way that we book our senior business and as a customer gets more tenure, they add more drug per customer or more scripts as we get to more of a full box, their churn actually reduces then the unit economics on the boxes actually get better and better. And I think we've seen that play out as we kind of made more money during, I'd say periods where we aren't growing quite as fast. And then like last quarter, we grew really, really quickly on the back of a PEA and you see the economics reduce just a little bit. But over time, that gets more and more stable and more and more profitable per box. And that's how we really see that that playing out our unit economics on the lifetime of a box have actually gotten significantly better because we've reduced our churn. We've increased the percentage that have full boxes and just gotten better operationally, I'd say the other area that we'll really focus on operationally is just as we got the economies of scale once we get to by scripts at a lower price.
And then two, more importantly, actually is the automation and efficiency we can gain within the facilities and factory itself. And we are hyper focused on that right now as we get bigger and bigger and we get more tenured. So that's why we have such confidence on where we're going from a economic standpoint. And I feel really, really good about where we are, but it's just the maturity of the business and ultimately as those customers play out.

Ryan Clement

Great. And then and then you have the healthcare side, good, and I was going to call out, obviously, we onboarded 12,000 plus customers, which was that we were incredibly pleased with and there is a short-term cost associated with that enrollment and onboarding. Our drug margins are strong and we believe that we're building a business with a lot of embedded value. This is a recurring business model. We recognize revenue as those drugs are being shipped out. So as Bob alluded to our customers mature more and more going out full boxes and out, we'll see the margin progression.

Tim Danker

And Pat, I might pile on the System One more thing, but one more thing, Pat, just to pile on here, we've grown the business to the point of cash flow generation have done that for four consecutive quarters. That was really a goal that we set out for the business kind of reach that inflection point?
We're definitely happy to take that can slip consumer demand. I mean, third quarter was very strong for us, but we're going to balance that with man in managing margins and profitability, we would expect and we'll provide more visibility and our fiscal 25 guide here in August, but just to double down on what Ron said. I mean, we do believe that on a long-term basis, we can progress margins in the low to mid 10s on a significant, as you can see a growing amount of revenue and and feel like we're building a lot of embedded profit potential and that business right now.

Pat McCann

Great. Thanks for all the information there. And then I guess I wanted to stay with health care services here for a second, just because I know that you're looking at ways to broaden your offerings there. And of course, the deselect Rx business is the key asset at this point. But I'm wondering, could you talk about any any areas you're looking at to expand that about segment of the business?

Ryan Clement

Yes, absolutely. We are constantly kind of on the look and are launching into some new areas that we're not going to share too much at this time. But most of them are all of them are very adjacent to our pharmacy business and focusing on complex multiple chronic customers that we feel like are very underserved today, especially more rural based. So we feel really strong about the research we've done and ultimately what we are doing as those what as to what those adjacent services are that they'll add not only a ton of value to the consumer, but also a ton of value to our carrier partners as we can drive costs down through better health care literacy, better connection, all of those things. And we we believe that those will also have strong impacts on retention just like we've seen in the Rx business. So we feel really good about kind of where we are. But more importantly, where we're going as we expand the things we can do for customers.

Tim Danker

Yes, I would just add to that, Pat. I mean, Bob's done a really good job leading this for the company, you can see the rapid growth in terms of Rx.
I think it underscores right. There's real consumer demand. We've got customers who have real needs for leveraging our core capabilities and customer acquisition, customer engagement and logistics, we think driving immediate value in health care.
So more to follow, as Bob said, but the great thing is we've got a lot of consumers that have a lot of underlying needs that we think that we can impact. We've got the data, the process and the engagement to be able to act on that so we think this is a great first chapter and many more to come.

Pat McCann

Great. And if I could just ask one more question of sort of a general question. If you're looking back at the annual enrollment period and the open enrollment period, though that we're coming out of and then with CMS rules and you're thinking about the upcoming AP. and OEP., but do you have any could you comment at all on sort of the shopping environment that were coming out of versus what you might expect?
We would go into and what implications that might have for your your performance going forward on the senior segment?

Ryan Clement

Yes, it was interesting, everybody or most people thought it would kind of be a soft environment last year and yet some carriers made some key investments that really helped and that created a really what we think a strong environment for us. And we believe that the same thing will kind of hold through this next year, even though there's a general kind of pullback and there are some profitability questions from carriers last time, we saw that happen and carrier stability from some of the main players that have been there for a long time kind of they took market share back while some carriers that grew pulled back a little bit, and that created a little bit more of a, I'd say, a higher close rate environment for us. So we feel really, really good about that and feel strong about where that will take us, even though we do think there'll be a general kind of pullback by some carriers that are our struggling a little bit on unit profitability in the short.

Pat McCann

Great. Thanks so much, guys. That's all I've got.

Tim Danker

Thank you, Pat.

Operator

Thank you. We have no further questions, so I'll turn the call back over to Tim Danker for any closing comments.

Tim Danker

Great. Well, thanks again to everyone for joining today, and I hope you can tell from our comments, we are very excited about the future for SelectQuote. We feel we are very well positioned to drive shareholder value, both immediately and the years ahead, both in our insurance distribution platform and healthcare service businesses.
So we'll look forward to sharing more in the quarter ahead as we start planning for our next fiscal year. We want to thank you again for your support and we look forward to talking to you soon. Have a good day.

Operator

Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.