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Earnings Call: Q2 2022

Aug 8, 2022

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon, and welcome to the Clover Health second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the prepared remarks. At that time, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Ryan Schmidt, investor relations for Clover Health. Please go ahead.

Ryan Schmidt
Investor Relations, Clover Health

Good afternoon, everyone. Joining me on our call today is Vivek Garipalli, our CEO, Andrew Toy, our President, and Mark Herbers, who served as our interim CFO during the second quarter. We will discuss the company's second quarter results and answer your questions. This call is being recorded. Before we get started, I would like to remind you that our second quarter earnings materials, including the release, are available on our website at cloverhealth.com. I'd also like to caution you that we may make forward-looking statements during today's call that are subject to risks and uncertainties, including expectations about future performance. Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from expectations are detailed in our SEC filings, including in the risk factors section of our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and in other SEC filings.

Information about non-GAAP financial measures referenced, including a reconciliation of those measures to GAAP measures, can be found in the earnings materials available on our website. With that, I will now turn the call over to Vivek.

Vivek Garipalli
CEO, Clover Health

Thanks, Ryan, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. We continue to build upon our strong start to the year, with second quarter results proving to be another positive step forward. We remain excited about the continued progress against our goals as well as the strategies we are laying out for 2023 and beyond. We believe that we can deliver above average industry growth and improve margins, all by means of enabling great primary care at scale via Clover Assistant. Let me now cover the highlights from the second quarter before handing it over to Andrew for a more in-depth discussion. Firstly, our Q2 revenue of $847 million was more than double our revenue in the second quarter of last year. Our total lives under Clover Management also nearly doubled year-over-year to over 255,000.

We accomplished this while simultaneously slowing the growth of operating expenses. Insurance MCR and non-insurance MCR improved versus the second quarter of 2021 to 92.1% and 106% respectively. Clover Assistant continues to be a differentiator, showing a materially improved insurance MCR for returning members whose PCPs use Clover Assistant versus those who don't. Finally, we've continued to strengthen our leadership team this past quarter and are excited to welcome Scott Wefler as our permanent CFO. Since he's only been with us for a couple of weeks, we spared him from being on today's call, but look forward to introducing him properly during the next set of earnings. In that same vein, I'd like to extend a heartfelt thank you to Mark and the entire Clover team.

He has been a trusted partner over the past year and provided us with a luxury of time to bring in an exceptional leader like Scott. Thank you, Mark. With that, let me turn the call over to Andrew.

Andrew Toy
President, Clover Health

Thanks, Vivek. I too am very pleased with our Q2 results, and I'm cautiously optimistic about the second half of the year. I'm excited to report year-over-year revenue growth of 105% and 99% growth in our lives under management. This highlights how the Medicare population values physician choice. Clover Assistant's ability to work beyond the confines of an HMO allows us to tap into previously ignored and underserved markets. This means we have access to a bigger, largely uncontested total addressable market. Further, our non-insurance beneficiary growth of 172% year-over-year illustrates our unique ability via Clover Assistant to support more doctors and therefore more patients in transitioning into value-based care. There's no question that by offering wide networks with high physician choice, we've proven our ability to grow rapidly.

We believe that this focus is differentiated and will remain differentiated even as Medicare Advantage plans continue to proliferate. That said, while we were so focused on growth in the past, fewer resources were dedicated to fine-tuning core operations, which now provides us with significant upside potential in a number of areas. This year, we've turned our attention to sustainability, specifically to reduce MCR and operating expenses, and we're proud of what we've been able to accomplish in the first half of the year. Let's take MCR. Our insurance MCR of 92.1% reaffirms that we can drive near term efficiencies while continuing to provide high quality care across a wide network. This is a result of systemic improvements to our internal operating processes over the year, which we expect to be the foundation of tighter, more predictable internal models going forward.

On the operating expense side, we see meaningful improvement in reducing OpEx as a percentage of revenues. With an emphasized focus on building a path to profitability, these efforts will be a priority for the organization throughout the remainder of the year and into the future. These efforts carry over to the non-insurance side. As one of the largest DCEs, we believe we are in a tremendous position to take the data learnings from last year to influence our go-to-market strategy for 2023. Our goal with ACO REACH is to maintain our leading position while moving toward having a strong, profitable program. Again, we are pleased with our Q2 results. That said, I think we can all agree that there's a lot of uncertainty in the world right now.

Despite these improvements and a lower COVID impact during the quarter, we are maintaining a healthy degree of conservatism in our expectations for the rest of the year. Now let's turn to Clover Assistant. As we focus on building a sustainable and efficient growth model, we believe Clover Assistant is a true differentiator. I've said it before, but we believe Clover Assistant has significant untapped potential, and we continue to invest heavily into the platform. We are enthusiastic about our CA accomplishments to date, including significant year-over-year growth in lives under Clover Assistant management, continued increased clinician use, and our rapid product iteration cycle. CA efficacy continues to improve, and there continues to be a material difference in MCR between members whose providers use Clover Assistant and those who do not.

To build on this momentum and manifest the product's full potential, we have a roadmap of new capabilities and features designed to further augment clinical value. I also want to reiterate Clover Assistant's capacity to bring more clinicians into value-based care on both the Medicare Advantage and the original Medicare side. Our goal from a CA product standpoint is to allow for total Medicare panel coverage with any given PCP, including those that have never participated in value-based care, and we continue to orient the business with this in mind. We are continually working on ways for clinicians to use CA for more of their Medicare panels, and we see a number of future opportunities to advance the reach of Clover Assistant.

Finally, I want to give a special shout-out to our compliance and operations teams as CMS recently issued its final report, and we received the best score that a plan can receive on a CMS program audit. I believe this result reflects the operational diligence we've developed at Clover, as well as the efforts of the stellar team that works hard every day to maintain our high standards. With that, I will now hand it to Mark for the financial update.

Mark Herbers
Interim CFO, Clover Health

Thanks, Andrew. We more than doubled our revenue year-over-year, delivering $847 million in revenue during the second quarter. Our outsized growth continues to be driven by strong year-over-year growth in lives on account of our differentiated ability to participate in both Medicare Advantage as well as original Medicare. Moving to medical expenses, our net medical claims incurred for the quarter were $859 million. Our GAAP insurance MCR was 92.1%, down approximately 1,900 basis points compared to the second quarter of 2021. This MCR improvement includes favorable prior period development and gives us confidence in our previously reported guidance ranges. As Andrew said, we are also remaining conservative with our expectations.

Our non-insurance MCR was 106%, down nearly 600 basis points year-over-year and in line with internal expectations, given seasonal trends as well as prior period development, largely due to a CMS rate adjustment. CMS benchmarks in the program do not currently take into account seasonality, so we consider quarterly fluctuation somewhat normal. Second quarter non-GAAP adjusted operating expenses were $75.4 million, representing 8.9% of total revenues, down 590 basis points year-over-year. This quarter's evidence that our initial efforts to decrease operating expenses as a percent of revenues have been successful by improving vendor management as well as moderating headcount. Our GAAP net loss for the quarter was $104.2 million. Our adjusted EBITDA loss for the second quarter was $87.5 million.

Note that our adjusted EBITDA excludes $27.7 million of non-cash premium deficiency reserve benefit, as that is not reflective of operating results. Our cash equivalents and investments totaled $682 million, with cash equivalents and investments at the parent company and unregulated subsidiaries of $440 million. We have 477 million common shares outstanding as of June 30, 2022. We see no immediate need to raise new capital, and as Andrew said, we are focused on meaningfully reducing our insurance and non-insurance MCRs while calibrating our business model for smart, sustainable growth. Finally, we are maintaining our previously guided ranges. Now let me turn the call over to Vivek for some closing comments.

Vivek Garipalli
CEO, Clover Health

Thank you, Mark. To close, I'm sure many of you saw the press release issued earlier today. As of January first of next year, I will transition the role of CEO to someone you all know very well, our president, Andrew Toy. I'll continue on with many existing responsibilities in the role of executive chairperson, working closely with Andrew to ensure a seamless transition and long-term collaborative relationship. I've always believed the right long-term leader for Clover would have a technology-first mindset. When I first met Andrew, I saw a unique strategist operating in the intersection of business and technology with the fastest learning speed of anyone I've ever met. He's a true founder in every sense of the word, having built companies from scratch. He has an abundance of grit needed to solve the hardest problems in healthcare.

Since joining us as CTO in 2018, he has been an integral part of Clover, and this transition is a culmination of a succession plan we've had in place since then. As for my role as executive chair, I'm not going anywhere. I will continue to remain the largest individual and institutional shareholder of Clover. I will continue to be active at the company well into the foreseeable future, just in a more strategic fashion. As CEO, Andrew will oversee all day-to-day operations and finances. I firmly believe this marks the beginning of a new chapter where we both play to our strengths and continue working closely together in Clover's mission to improve every life. With that, let's take some questions.

Operator

At this time, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. You may remove yourself from the queue by pressing the pound key. In the interest of time, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one quick follow-up. We'll take our first question from Richard Close with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Richard Close
Managing Director, Canaccord Genuity

Yeah, thanks for the questions. I had a couple questions on the direct contracting. Can you go over the number of lives that seem to decrease sequentially a little bit? Then second of all, on DC, you know, with respect to the reimbursement adjustment, I think you called that out in the non-insurance MCR. Can you talk a little bit about how that impacts any type of revenue guidance for non-insurance in the back half of the year?

Andrew Toy
President, Clover Health

Thanks, Richard. First of all, for the actual lives under management, what we are generally seeing is that in the ACO, in our DCE, we will generally see a decrease in lives due to mortality and people moving out of the program. That's not anything that's unexpected, obviously, but we generally see that. It's more mortality driven. Tell me if you see something different in the numbers you're looking at, though. For the second dimension, in terms of the rate adjustment, we've priced in a significant portion of this due to our own calculations.

I think that there have been a few other ACOs where the effect of the rate adjustment might have been more significant, to be honest, because the Q1 adjustment will have a little bit more fluctuation in those other ACOs. Our team has been careful in terms of calculating based upon trend from last year and this year to sort of smooth that out. We are maintaining and reiterating our general guidance views on this. We don't see a major change in the program.

Richard Close
Managing Director, Canaccord Genuity

With, on the MCR for the second quarter, was the true-up from the first quarter included in that? If so, like, to what degree?

Andrew Toy
President, Clover Health

Yeah, it was. There's two things in the second quarter. We had some prior period development that was actually inside that inside the second quarter that flowed from Q1, and that was due to the rate adjustments, the prospective rate adjustments guidance that came out. Again, that was generally smaller than the effect of some others that were reported. The second dimension that was in there that I want to make sure that we emphasize is that CMS does look at MCR for the ACO program on an annualized basis, not on a quarterly basis. We do expect seasonal fluctuations, and we see some of that seasonal fluctuation in the Q2 number as well.

Between the two of those, I think we're fairly comfortable that we're seeing what we expected within the ACO.

Richard Close
Managing Director, Canaccord Genuity

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Okay, we'll take our next question from Kevin Fischbeck with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Kevin Fischbeck
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Bank of America

Okay, great. Maybe stick with the DCE. Can you talk a little bit about your thoughts on the profitability and the growth outlook of that business? Your MLR is obviously better year-over-year, but still well above what a lot of the peers seem to be talking about. Can you give any update on kinda how you think about the trajectory in that business, but then also how you're thinking about the growth? I know in the past you talked about leveraging Clover into other ACO-type arrangements. Any thoughts there about how that's shaping up for next year?

Andrew Toy
President, Clover Health

Yeah. Thanks, Kevin. Respective to the MCR within the DCE, so we are, you know, one of the largest, as you all have seen, DCE ACOs out there, and it's been growing rapidly. I think that's a testament to our ability to work with a lot of systems, a lot of doctors who wanna come into value-based care, but haven't had that on-ramp that we can provide via our platform and via Clover Assistant. We've grown rapidly within there.

I think what you'll see us do is orient now towards, yes, still, looking at growth in the ACO, but having shown that there's a lot of appetite for this model, looking at the people who are participating in the ACO, looking at geographies more, because now that we have a few quarters of data under our belt, we can see how CMS and CMMI are looking at geographic trends versus national trends and adjusting who the participants within the ACO with a mind towards profitability of that particular program. So definitely a huge focus for us. We have a lot of data that we can use to make those decisions.

You'll see as we prepare for the second quarter of 2023, that we're balancing growth within that program, but now very much looking towards the participant dynamics, the geographic dynamics with MCR in mind as well. We feel like this is a very complementary part of our strategy and something that we can bring to a profitable business for sure.

Kevin Fischbeck
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Bank of America

Okay, great. Then any comment on, I mean, it sounds like you're saying conservatism in the back half of the year, but is there anything more specific about, you know, what looks like the results certainly on the MA side, at the very least, much better than, you know, the street was expecting? So any other color there besides just conservatism in the back half?

Andrew Toy
President, Clover Health

Yeah, absolutely. You know, the standard story here, with the current macro environment around the world, et cetera, it makes sense for us to look at the back half of the year. Even something like COVID, which we said in our remarks, does not significantly play right now in our data. It still exists, and the policies are still in place. We would love to see those policies sort of move on and be removed, in which case there's additional upside for us on the COVID side. To be clear on the downside, we don't know if there's another resurgence coming. We don't think so. We think vaccines are getting to a good place, but you never know. That conservatism is really coming into place because the overall uncertainty in the world, as I said earlier.

One thing I will point out is that we have focused very much on, during this period, working on our core operations. I also indicated that, which I think is helping a lot with the management on the MA side, and we think that we will continue to enjoy benefits there, going forward.

Kevin Fischbeck
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Bank of America

Okay, thanks.

Operator

We'll take our next question from Jason Cassella with Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Jason Cassella
Analyst, Citi

Great, thanks. Just a quick clarification. What was the total number of lives under Clover Assistant management in the quarter? Unless I missed it wasn't included in the press release.

Andrew Toy
President, Clover Health

Yes, that's correct. Actually in the past, we have actually looked at the lives under Clover Assistant Management, and we sort of shared those numbers. What we're actually looking at now here is that going forward, because there is actually some granular shifts in our quarter-to-quarter number on the ACO side, that causes some fluctuation in the overall CA management number. We aren't actually sharing that number because we think that it's not actually indicative of overall CA performance anymore because of potential fluctuations on the ACO side of people moving out of contracts or before the ACO. We will not be sharing that specific number, but that's the reason why.

Jason Cassella
Analyst, Citi

Okay. I guess there's a really quick follow-up to that. Could you give any context around the Clover Assistant penetration of your MA book at least? Any other clarity if it's improved quarter-over-quarter or year-over-year? Any kind of color around that for your MA books is particularly helpful.

Andrew Toy
President, Clover Health

Yeah, absolutely. We are actually continuing to grow that. We always want that number to be moving up and to the right. While we're not sharing the granular number, we don't see any concerns in that number. We continue to contract doctors. We see that penetration generally be a huge area of focus for us, and the total lives on the insurance side has been increasing.

Jason Cassella
Analyst, Citi

Okay, got it. I guess just as my follow-up question here, maybe just on the Medicare Advantage MLR. Can you just walk through some of the drivers of improvement there sequentially? You know, the COVID impacts were negligible, I guess, quarter to quarter. I was hoping you'd just parse out the better MLR maybe from lower utilization versus greater Clover Assistant penetration or any other considerations, just quarter to quarter MA MLR improvement. Thanks.

Andrew Toy
President, Clover Health

On the MA side you said, right? On the insurance, on the insurance side?

Jason Cassella
Analyst, Citi

Yes. Yes, on the insurance side.

Andrew Toy
President, Clover Health

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think the improvement there's a couple of different things. First of all, obviously, compared to last year, the COVID environment is significantly different. We all know that. Second of all, during the COVID period, we were very much working on improving Clover Assistant performance and our generalized coverage on the insurance side. I think you're seeing some of those benefits flow through to now where we don't have that overarching pandemic sitting on top of all of the results that we're seeing in the Medicare side. All of those things are improvements.

We're also generally focused on our operations on getting more and more data, and we've seen a lot of improvements there as well year-over-year, and that has flowed through to better Clover Assistant performance as well. Part of it is, reversion to the mean after, the COVID period. Part of it is absolutely I think we're seeing, the results of hard work during the COVID period flow through to this year.

Jason Cassella
Analyst, Citi

Got it. Okay. Thank you.

Operator

We'll take our next question from Gary Taylor with Cowen. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Gary Taylor
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Cowen

Hi, good afternoon. Just had a couple. Have you guys allocated or would you be willing to allocate on the PDR benefit, how much of that's been allocated to MA versus DCE?

Andrew Toy
President, Clover Health

Mark, do you agree with that on the PDR benefit?

Mark Herbers
Interim CFO, Clover Health

I'm sorry, I don't have that right at my fingertips, but we can get back to you.

Gary Taylor
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Cowen

Okay. The reported MLRs by segment do include that benefit, I'm pretty sure. Is that correct?

Mark Herbers
Interim CFO, Clover Health

That's correct.

Gary Taylor
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Cowen

On the DCE per member per month, it does look like you took, you know, a pretty substantial step down in the first quarter. I think you were only down about $10 sequentially. To your credit, I do think you look like you really start booking this more conservative. Can you tell us what the revenue adjustment was for the quarter on the retro trend?

Andrew Toy
President, Clover Health

We're not actually sharing our statistics. Yeah, we don't actually have that right now. We can look at those and whether or not we can share that. I don't think that's actually in our release, but we'll take that as a follow-up.

Gary Taylor
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Cowen

Last one would be, we'd heard some feedback that as CMS transitioned to ACO REACH and asked folks to reapply, that there was, you know, a really high percentage of applications that were denied. Can you talk about it? I know you answered Kevin a little bit. Is there anything else you can say about 2023 or just kinda how you feel about contract retention on the DCE side heading into 2023?

Andrew Toy
President, Clover Health

Yeah, absolutely. We feel pretty good overall as we look at about our movement from DCE this year, still a DCE, as you said, into the ACO program next year. Feeling good about that, feeling about our overall ACOs my ACOs migration. As I mentioned just now in the answer to a previous question, we are looking at the participation within the program. We've grown it really quickly. We see a lot of data now about where we're being successful and end up in a lot of different places. We're also seeing how that interacts with CMS rulings and the rulings that they've been going through. As we move from DCE into ACO, we've been giving a lot of feedback to CMS, so you'll see us adjust the mix.

We still wanna work from anywhere from small health systems to large health systems. We wanna be in as many geos as possible, but we are looking at tuning that mix going into 2023. Nothing to share right now. We still want to be strongly participating in this program, and we can do so in a really smart way, given how much data we have. More to come as we report on that.

Gary Taylor
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Cowen

Okay. Thanks, Andrew.

Andrew Toy
President, Clover Health

Yeah.

Operator

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question or have a follow-up question, please press star one on your touchtone phone, and we'll go next to Whit Mayo with SVB Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Whit Mayo
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, SVB Securities

Hey, thanks. Afternoon. I wanted to just hear you guys talk about how you're thinking about new county growth expectations. I know you press released something maybe a week or so ago. It doesn't seem like you're planning to move into as many new markets and counties perhaps as prior years. Seems like there's probably more of a focus in, you know, where you have a presence today. Just maybe strategically, I just wanted to sort of make sure I understand, you know, how you guys are thinking about that new market growth expectation for 2023.

Andrew Toy
President, Clover Health

Yeah. Thanks, Whit. As you said, we are very proud all of the results we've had growing in our markets, you know, our traditional markets in New Jersey and our newer markets that we're very happy with, like Georgia and South Carolina. While we've traditionally had a lot of expansion in terms of geography coverage, we are now allocating more resources to those areas where we're seeing significant penetration. We are getting to critical mass. We think that we can take a lot of share in those particular areas. Irrespective from growth, part of our passion for expanding has been to bring our models as many markets as possible. I talked about that on the ACO side.

For MA, it's all about getting that concentration for smart, sustainable growth, and that's why we're putting more resources into the specific markets that we're in right now. A little bit less expansion, as you noted. At Clover, I think you'll see that we're bringing the Clover Assistant model to a lot of geographies. We're just being smart about that blend between the ACO and the MA plans.

Whit Mayo
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, SVB Securities

Okay. No, that's helpful. My second question is just around the strategy that you guys have with brokers, field marketing organizations, distribution points in the marketplace. It seems like some of your peers are sort of refining how they're investing, how they partner. I didn't know if there's any change in your posture for 2023, anything that you'd call, you know, you would share to call out.

Andrew Toy
President, Clover Health

Yeah. I think that what we'll see is a couple different things that I would call out. We had less exposure to the e-broker market. Not no exposure, I've talked about this, but far less exposure than some of the other players in the space. I would say that we had talked about this, maybe a couple years ago, in the first few years of COVID, that that hurt us a little bit in our growth strategy, but actually, because we were not in the e-channel as strongly. That was because we really saw weakness and softness in the quality of leads and the quality of conversion coming from that market. I do think that you've seen other players who were perhaps overexposed to the e-broker market now seeing that they have to move from there into the more traditional line of brokerage market.

There's no change in our posture overall. We've always been strong on the individual broker market. We think our products are things that those brokers love to sell and that people love to see brought into the various MA markets. It's the other plans that perhaps are doing a little more in that space now because of their over-reliance on e-broker before.

Whit Mayo
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, SVB Securities

Okay. Thanks, guys.

Andrew Toy
President, Clover Health

Cool.

Operator

We'll take a follow-up from Richard Close with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Richard Close
Managing Director, Canaccord Genuity

Yeah, I had a couple follow-ups. Maybe on Whit's question. Do you think not expanding to as many counties does that, you know, negatively impact your growth at all? How should we think about, like, the member acquisition costs or CAC associated with just, you know, concentrating your efforts in new counties? Or existing counties, I should say.

Andrew Toy
President, Clover Health

Absolutely. I think in those new markets, and this is the same for both MA plans, as you know, the CAC is disproportionately high in the newer markets, in the newer expansion counties and the more recent expansion counties, because the fixed cost of building that brand, building the network posture, building the network brand, are all amortized over fewer lives, obviously. That does make acquisition in those areas more expensive. You have a different new member versus returning member mix, which does affect the MCR optics of those markets. We're in a good place where we think we can return to expanding on the MA side aggressively whenever we really like. We've proven that out.

We continue to be able to contract on the ACO side across the country because that's a very good program for that, to bring Clover Assistant to many more doctors. Then we can be, as you said, much more CAC efficient, really driving to high penetration within the markets we're already in. We actually like the fact that it makes us more efficient for smart growth within those markets.

Richard Close
Managing Director, Canaccord Genuity

Like, they impact the growth at all?

Andrew Toy
President, Clover Health

Sorry, can you repeat that? You broke up for a second for me.

Richard Close
Managing Director, Canaccord Genuity

Does it impact your ability to grow above average on the MA side by not expanding to as many counties?

Andrew Toy
President, Clover Health

No, I don't think so. We intend to maintain above industry average growth, and that's what we're looking at. Even as we look at becoming more efficient, looking at that CAC equation, looking at sustainability within the MCR, because as you know, new members do come generally with a higher MCR cost. All of those things, we think, when combined with our differentiated product, our wide network, still makes us very appealing, and we should be able to deliver good, strong growth. We're looking at being sustainable, we're looking at being about being smart, but I don't think the expansion counties negatively affect us in any way. I think it makes us more efficient to acquire those lives.

If you look at the total number of Medicare eligibles within the markets we're strongly playing in, there's a very, very high ceiling there. I don't think we're close to sort of saturating those particular markets.

Richard Close
Managing Director, Canaccord Genuity

Okay, thank you.

Operator

There are no further questions over the phone line. I will now turn the call over to Ryan Schmidt for any community questions.

Ryan Schmidt
Investor Relations, Clover Health

Thank you, operator. We'll get started with the community questions. First off, Andrew, how do you plan to achieve profitability?

Andrew Toy
President, Clover Health

Yeah. Thanks for that question. The path to profitability is a huge focus for us right now and requires a number of moving pieces to fall into place, but we're confident that we're well oriented to achieving that. Number one is getting on with our MCRs moving downwards and reducing MCRs. We have a lot of progress towards that, as we reported this quarter on both the MA side and on the ACO side. We've seen insurance MCR improvement year-over-year. Even though non-insurance MCR is seasonally affected, that's also improving year-over-year. That, when combined with looking intelligently about how we play in various geographies and regions, as we said, we can still deliver above industry average growth and bring MCR down, resulting in overall sustainability and moving towards profitability.

The second part is, of course, we're looking at controlling operating expense growth as a percentage of revenues. We're improving on that. We have a lot of efficiencies we can bring. As I said during my remarks, we've been so focused on growth a number of the past years. There are a number of places that we can optimize, tune, and there's, like, tremendous upside for us to be able to do that on the OpEx side as well. You'll see us really focusing there.

Ryan Schmidt
Investor Relations, Clover Health

Thank you. Our next question is how scalable and easily integrated is the Clover Assistant? Any ongoing challenges seen there?

Andrew Toy
President, Clover Health

Yeah. Very interestingly, the biggest factor we can see and the biggest question we're asked is providers coming to us and saying, "How can I use Clover Assistant to look after more of my Medicare panel? I understand why you want us to use this for your Clover members. I get that." Even being able to add the fee for service, original Medicare members, that's great for the providers who are doing that. We get asked all the time, how do we use it for more of their panel because, A, that simplifies their workloads. Love it. B, it's something whereby they can think about Clover Assistant really helping them manage multiple value-based care programs. We really like doing that. We think of Clover Assistant as a tool designed to make doctors' lives easier.

The more the panel we can cover, the better that's gonna be. More coming soon on that particular strategy and how we can help doctors with that. That's the number one question that we're asked, and that's something that we're very focused on.

Ryan Schmidt
Investor Relations, Clover Health

Thank you. Our final community question is what are the prospects of Clover Assistant being used as a SaaS product?

Andrew Toy
President, Clover Health

Yeah. As we look at the SaaS world, it is we have nothing to announce at this time. I've said that we wanna cover all the PCP Medicare panel, and SaaS is one business model we could use to get there. We, however, really do think that we're in the business of managing medical risk and helping providers manage that risk. Blending a SaaS-like approach along with a risk management approach is something I think Clover can uniquely do. I'm really excited to develop that more, and we'll talk about that in coming quarters. Thank you. Operator, we'll turn it back to you.

Operator

Okay. We did have a question in our queue up. We'll take our next question from Jonathan Yong with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead, sir. Your line is open.

Nick Sivanathan
Analyst, Credit Suisse

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. It's Nick Sivanathan on for Jonathan today. Just looking ahead, can you talk about how you're thinking about stars for payment year of 2024, especially with CMS starting to roll off some of its COVID flexibilities? Thanks.

Andrew Toy
President, Clover Health

Yeah, absolutely. On the stars front, I think that what we've seen is that it's quite an interesting challenging stars environment right now because of all the adjustments that were made during COVID. Then now CMS is rolling some of those back, like you said, cut points are moving around much more than they normally have been. We are seeing that environment. I think other plans are seeing that environment. That said, we always have guided that we would be looking for 3.5 stars coming out of the 2021 measurement year, and we are continuing to reiterate that particular guidance. It would be a great achievement for us in the current world if we were able to push through to that. We think that we can still do that.

We will have more to share in the coming few months.

Operator

All right. This concludes the Q&A portion of today's conference. I would now like to turn the call over to Vivek Garipalli for any additional and closing remarks.

Vivek Garipalli
CEO, Clover Health

Thanks, everyone. Andrew, really great job today. Just to close, while we feel good about where we are today, there's really great and hard work being done this year to drive further progress. Just to reiterate, enabling all of our accomplishments is the Clover system. It provides us the growing technology moat, making a meaningfully positive impact on health equity and advancing our mission to improve every life. Thank you all for joining us today.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's Clover Health second quarter 2022 earnings call and webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day.

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