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Earnings Call: Q1 2023

May 8, 2023

Operator

Greetings, welcome to the DocGo first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mike Cole, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Mike Cole
Director of Investor Relations, DocGo

Thank you, operator. Before turning the call over to management, I would like to make the following remarks concerning forward-looking statements. All statements in this conference call other than historical facts are forward-looking statements. The words anticipate, aim, believe, estimate, expect, intend, guidance, confidence, target, project, and other similar expressions are used to typically identify such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and may involve and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties and other factors that may affect DocGo's business, financial condition and other operating results. These include, but are not limited to, the risk factors and other qualifications contained in DocGo's annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports filed on Form 10-Q, and other reports and statements filed by DocGo with the SEC to which your attention is directed.

Actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. In addition, today's call contains references to non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are provided directly as part of this call or included in our earnings, which is posted on our website, docgo.com, as well as in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The information contained in this call is accurate as of only the date discussed. Investors should not assume the statements will remain relevant and operative at a later time. We undertake no obligation to update any information discussed in this call in the future. At this time, it is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Mr. Anthony Capone, CEO of DocGo. Anthony, please go ahead.

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

Thank you, Mike, and thank you all very much for joining us today. We had an extremely busy first quarter as we launched multiple new projects late in the quarter that came with challenging logistical timelines. I am pleased to report those launches have gone extremely well and we are ramping on or ahead of schedule. Demand for DocGo's services has never been greater, due primarily to the rapidly increasing need for population health services across the United States. During the first quarter, we generated $113 million of revenue, a decline year-over-year of 4%. However, to exclude mass COVID testing from that comparison, we grew revenues by 40% year-over-year.

We have put in place a great foundation for the future, and we expect recent project launches to drive significant sequential gains in both revenue and adjusted EBITDA in the coming quarters. With the first quarter in hand, we are reiterating our guidance of $500 million-$510 million in revenue and $45 million-$50 million in adjusted EBITDA for 2023. At this time, I'm going to hand it over to Lee Bienstock, our President and COO, to talk about some of our operational highlights during the quarter. Lee, please go ahead.

Lee Bienstock
President and COO, DocGo

Thank you, Anthony. We continue to see substantial growth in new contract RFP opportunities both in our mobile health and medical transportation segments. Since our last report on March 13, 2023, we have doubled the number of open RFPs, which collectively cover a total contract value of approximately $1.5 billion. The increase in RFPs is due to a larger number of opportunities in both existing and new geographies, as well as our improved internal review and submission capabilities. In particular, we continue to see a substantial amount of new RFP activity for mobile health services. DocGo has successfully transitioned away from a mass COVID testing-centric business to a mobile health business covering a wide range of clinical services.

Our current backlog, which includes contracts that have been awarded but not yet fully rolled out, currently totals approximately $205 million compared to $180 million that we announced on March 13th of this year. The recent increase in backlog is largely due to a multi-year municipal mobile health contract in addition to several smaller wins. In April, we announced a partnership with Fresenius Medical Care, the largest kidney dialysis company in the US, to offer remote patient monitoring, chronic care management, and mobile urgent care services. Fresenius and its affiliate nephrology practices manage a vast pool of 300,000 patients. We expect the initial enrollment to begin in May, with several markets rolling out aggressively in Q3.

We are very excited about this significant opportunity given the recurring nature of these revenue streams and ubiquitous application of these services to patients with chronic kidney disease. Based on the eight current CPT codes, we estimate the revenue potential per patient per month to be approximately $250. $100 of that amount is tied to RPM and the remaining $150 to CCM. In addition, this will become a self-referring mechanism. When monitored patients have abnormal vitals or are rapidly decompensating, DocGo will respond on-site with a mobile healthcare provider when prudent. We anticipate that gross margins for this RPM CCM offering, when fully implemented, will be above 50% with relatively low levels of associated SG&A and extremely low customer acquisition cost and a high customer lifetime value.

In the coming months, we will be working closely with Fresenius and its affiliate nephrology practices to identify and enroll qualified cohorts of patients into DocGo's RPM CCM program. Revenues associated with RPM and CCM are expected to become a significant contributing factor towards 2024 revenue growth, with the early impacts felt late in 2023. During the quarter, we also acquired CRMS, which stands for Cardiac Remote Monitoring Solutions. The cardiac segment is one of the fastest-growing subspecialties in RPM, and this gives us access to a pool of approximately 400,000 patients, which we can now enroll for RPM and CCM services. Previously, CRMS was focused on just the CIED market, which is the cardiac implanted electronic device market. Now under the DocGo umbrella, we can offer CCM services to this population as well.

This is a great example of how we can leverage DocGo's licensure, technology, and mobile health workforce to improve patient outcomes and lower cost to payers while expanding our revenue capture potential in the remote patient monitoring space. DocGo's RPM CCM strategy is intentionally focused on cardiology with CRMS and nephrology with Procinious, and we anticipate announcing strategic partners in endocrinology and pulmonology in the near future. Through both organic and inorganic means, we expect to be providing RPM and CCM services to over 50,000 patients by the end of 2023. While we're on the topic of chronic care management, it's critical to understand the strategic value between our municipal population health programs and our CCM programs.

In the last 12 months, 75% of the patients we have seen across just two programs, approximately 600,000 patients, either did not have a primary care provider or did not know who their primary care provider was. A large portion of these patients need someone to manage their care, and this is where DocGo comes in, managing care for the underserved populations of America. At this time, I'll pass it back to Anthony.

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

Thanks, Lee. Before we hand it over to Norm, I wanted to cover margins and our rapid normalization initiative. In January and February, a major customer asked us to accelerate the rollout of a large project due to the incumbent winding down faster than contractually specified. We were able to successfully launch on this accelerated timeline, which caused us to beat our revenue expectations, but it came at the expense of significantly depressed margins. As of March and subsequent to quarter end, we experienced a significant rebound as the costs abated. We are in a great position currently, and our margin expectations for the year remain unchanged. We simply had a greater decline than we originally expected in January and February as a result of this accelerated rollout. On a positive note, the rebound was stronger than expected as well, and margins are trending in the right direction.

With regard to our rapid normalization initiative, this is currently one of our most critical areas of focus. While we are early on in this process, as I mentioned above, in March and subsequent to quarter end, we experienced considerable company-wide cost reduction improvements, which we expect to support improved margins in Q2 and carry through the balance of the year. Minimizing the impact of staffing agency labor constitutes a significant portion of this effort. In just the last 60 days, we have seen our agency labor utilization rate drop from 52 to 41%, with continued improvement expected over the coming months. We have also seen a 40% decline in the number of rental vehicles utilized as we replace them with owned or leased units, which are about half the cost.

Lastly, the extremely high mobile health overtime rates, which we experienced in the fourth and early first quarter, are abating as we institute controls which are expected to drive that number toward a long-term expectation of 5% overtime usage from the recent peak of 17%. Currently, that overtime number resides at approximately 7%. Aside from our rapid normalization initiative, we are also seeing a loosening macro labor market, which is conducive to our growth and margin objectives as well. Collectively, we expect these measures to support our projected 37% gross margin exit rate for 2023. I will now hand it over to Norm Rosenberg, our CFO, to review the financials.

Norm Rosenberg
CFO, DocGo

Thank you, Anthony. Good afternoon. Total revenue for the first quarter of 2023 was $113 million compared to $117.9 million in the first quarter of 2022. Removing mass COVID testing revenues from both periods, recurring revenue increased by 40% year-over-year. Last year's first quarter included an estimated $38 million in mass COVID testing revenues, while testing revenues amounted to about $1 million in this year's first quarter, less than 1% of total revenues for the period. Mobile health revenue for the first quarter of 2023 was $72.9 million as compared to $90.1 million in the first quarter of 2022. Once again, excluding the estimated mass COVID testing revenue in both periods, mobile health revenues increased by 38%.

Medical transportation revenue increased significantly to $40.1 million in the first quarter of 2023, representing an increase of 44% from $27.8 million in the first quarter of 2022. Nearly every core transportation market witnessed year-over-year and sequential revenue growth, continuing the strong momentum from the second half of last year. We recorded a net loss of $3.9 million in Q1 2023, compared with net income of $9.4 million in the first quarter of 2022.

The net loss was partially driven by a large increase in non-cash stock compensation, which was about $7 million higher than in the prior year period and more than the total for all of 2022. An increase of more than $1 million in our insurance loss reserves and approximately $400,000 in non-recurring legal costs relating to exiting the California transportation market, as we discussed in our previous earnings release. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter of 2023 was a positive $5.6 million as compared to adjusted EBITDA of $13.6 million in Q1 of 2022. As usual, a reconciliation of net income to adjusted EBITDA has been included as a table in the earnings release.

Total gross margin percentage during the first quarter of 2023 amounted to 28.1% as compared to 33.9% for the same period of 2022, with stronger transportation segment gross margins outweighed by temporary weakness in mobile health gross margins. During the first quarter of 2023, gross margins from the mobile health segment were 27.7% compared to 37.3% for the first quarter of 2022. Margins were restrained by ongoing start-up costs for projects that were launched late in 2022 and early in 2023, as we discussed on our last earnings call, with the margin dampening effects continuing to provide an impact in January and February. Last year's first quarter mobile health gross margins were aided by the spike in COVID testing we witnessed in the first few weeks of the year.

Mobile health gross margins in March improved nicely, due in part to the rapid normalization project. As Anthony just discussed, the key performance indicators that we track on a daily basis are all pointing in a positive direction over the past 60 days, serving as a leading indicator for the gross margin improvement we are expecting in the second quarter. In the transportation segment, gross margins increased to 28.9% in Q1 2023, up from 22.7% in Q1 of 2022. This segment's margins continue to improve, aided by higher price realizations on trips, the ongoing shift towards higher margin leased hour business, and some easing of fuel prices. Looking ahead to our gross margin trend, we have continued to build on our progress in March with improved metrics through April and into May.

This trend certainly bolsters our confidence that we are on track to achieve sequential gross margin improvement through the year. We continue to make progress on integrating the six acquisitions we have made since mid-2022. As we do so, we expect to realize the margin improvements that we have targeted for each of these entities. Looking at operating costs, operating expenses as a percentage of total revenues amounted to 34% in the first quarter of 2023, compared with 25% in the first quarter of 2022. The key drivers of the increase in SG&A were depreciation, amortization, and stock compensation expense, which are both non-cash items.

Non-cash stock compensation expense, which we add back for the purposes of calculating adjusted EBITDA, was approximately $8.5 million in the first quarter of this year, compared to $1.4 million in the first quarter of 2022. Going forward, we expect that the quarterly stock compensation expense will track much more closely to the levels recorded in prior quarters. We would expect that overall operating expenses as a percentage of revenue will be below 30% going forward. Backing out depreciation of $3.6 million and the aforementioned stock compensation expense, SG&A amounted to 24% of total revenues in the first quarter of 2023, up a bit from 22% of total revenues on the same basis in last year's first quarter.

Over the remainder of 2023, we would expect SG&A expenses to decline as a % of revenues as we witness sequential revenue growth while holding the line on, or in some cases, decreasing our SG&A expenses in absolute $ terms. Turning now to the balance sheet. As of March 31st, 2023, our total cash and cash equivalents, including restricted cash, was $127.5 million, as compared to $164.1 million as of the end of 2022. The reduction in cash during the first quarter was due almost entirely to working capital factors, as accounts receivable increased by $24.7 million due to several factors, including the timing of payments from high credit-quality customers. There were also approximately eleven and a half million dollars in acquisition-related payments and about $2 million in capital expenditures.

Looking at cash flow from operations, our negative operating cash flow for the quarter of $23 million was entirely due to changes in operating assets and liabilities, also known as the working capital categories, primarily driven by a longer payment cycle from some of our larger municipal customers. This is purely timing related. These are some of our highest quality receivables. We would gladly trade longer payment terms for greater assurance of being paid in full, as we have up until now from these customers. Secondly, we feel that this becomes an actual competitive advantage for us when bidding on these large municipal deals. Unlike many of the providers with whom we are competing for these contracts, we have the balance sheet and the capital to undertake large-scale projects that require significant start-up costs before we receive our first payments for services rendered.

We have the liquidity to withstand temporarily negative cash cycle situation on these projects. In fact, over the second half of April and into May, we have experienced significant collections and cash inflows as our largest aged invoices are being paid. Most encouragingly, these recent collections have included primarily our most aged receivables, which will result in a better day sales outstanding or DSO for our AR portfolio as we come to the end of the second quarter. While this cycle leads to some large fluctuations in our cash balances from quarter to quarter, the balance sheet remains strong throughout the cash cycle.

Given the collections we have seen over the past 20 days or so, we expect that we will return to generating positive operating cash flow in the second quarter, as we have in each quarter since we went public up until this first quarter of 2023. Combined with our $90 million line of credit, which could potentially be expanded by an additional $50 million, we have the financial wherewithal to execute stock buybacks, acquisitions, and to invest in new business lines and projects without the need to raise any new capital. Turning to guidance, we are reiterating our revenue guidance for the year in the range of $500 million-$510 million.

We are encouraged by the first quarter's revenue performance, which was slightly higher than our internal forecasts, and by the increase in our backlog to $205 million from $180 million in just the last seven weeks. The guidance revenue range would represent year-over-year top line growth of about 14%-16% on a gross reported basis. Excluding the impact of mass COVID testing, the revenue growth rate is really in the 36%-40% annual range. We continue to expect that adjusted EBITDA will be in the range of $45 million-$50 million, with EBITDA margin acceleration expected as we go through the year. This concludes my remarks. At this time, I'd like to hand it back to Anthony.

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

Thanks, Norm. Before we jump into Q&A, I just wanted to briefly remind everybody that we will be having our Investor Day on June twentieth at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York. For interested parties, please reference our recent press release on this event and follow the registration link. Now, operator, please go ahead and open it up for Q&A.

Operator

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Your first question comes from Mike Latimore with Northland Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Mike Latimore
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Northland Capital Markets

Great. Thanks. Yeah. Good afternoon. Hi guys. The interesting that the RFP value doubled since March 13th, you know, fairly significantly. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Are there, you know, a couple of federal deals in there or is that mostly municipalities? You know, maybe a little more color on that would be great.

Lee Bienstock
President and COO, DocGo

Sure. Hi, Mike, it's Lee. The number of RFP submissions outstanding has actually doubled since we last reported that number. The total contract value has increased from $1.1 billion to $1.5 billion. Just to clarify that. We're seeing really an increase across the board from federal deals to local municipal deals. We continue to evaluate, RFP opportunities across the spectrum on the government side. Really it has included representation from the federal opportunities as well as the local and state, municipal opportunities.

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

I can add on with what Lee just said. There is a certainly a macro trend across the country in more and more mobile health contracts existing. RFPs being posted, RFIs, RFQs, they're more or less the same thing. There is a much larger growing need for population health, especially for the underserved communities. Not just underserved communities in more the classical sense of like a local homeless population, but also VA, Indian Health Service, maybe even these communities that once aren't as apparent. There's a growing need for those.

Mike Latimore
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Northland Capital Markets

Yeah. Got it. The mobile transport did very well again this quarter. Is that, is the current revenue level in mobile transport a good baseline you can build off of? Or was there some sort of added, you know, usage in there or something?

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

Yeah. A couple things. Something that we noted at the beginning of the quarter is that we still had a percentage of our... I think at the beginning of the year, it was closer to 40% of our ambulance contracts that were on a fee-for-service basis where we took risk on demand. We've been very successful in converting an increasing percentage of our revenue on the transport side to that leased hour model by which we have downside margin protection. That's a significant part of it, as well as trying to keep the, you know, SG&A on the transport segment, mostly flat. It's amortized over a greater revenue base. Norm, do you have anything to add on that?

Norm Rosenberg
CFO, DocGo

I would say the same thing. It's always been, as we've said, it's a little bit of a mix of organic and inorganic growth, but really it's a continuation of a trend that we've seen really since early 2022. You know, a lot of it is a matter of a little bit more focus, some other customers coming online. I think it is a pretty good base to build off of. Not much non-recurring in this quarter.

Mike Latimore
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Northland Capital Markets

Last. Okay, perfect. Just last, the comment about a goal of getting to 50,000 patients in RPM. I mean, just sort of a back of the envelope calculation would suggest that's, you know, probably well over a $100 million business then if you hit that number. I guess one, is that, is that right? Second, if you get to that 50,000, how are you thinking about organic versus inorganic growth?

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

Yeah, I mean, it's really, you know, all of the remote patient and remote device monitoring, which then leads to chronic care management, we're planning on it from two main areas. The bulk of it is gonna come from patients that are part of the cardiology practices that are already customers of CRMS, the company that we mentioned that we acquired very late at the end of Q1. They basically already provide what's called CIED, which is implantable devices. We are going to be able to offer to those cardiology practices, RPM, which is kind of a non-implantable device. For the existing ones, both on CIED and RPM, being able to give them chronic care management solutions, which is actually a larger reimbursement than both of those. That's it.

A smaller but still significant portion is gonna come from the deal with Fresenius that we announced. Those kind of our main focus is on cardiology and then secondary focus is on nephrology.

Operator

Next question, Ryan MacDonald with Needham. Please go ahead.

Matt Shea
Equity Research Analyst, Needham & Company

Hey, this is Matt Shea on for Ryan. Thanks for taking the question. Wanted to follow up on the RPM commentary. When we think about the 50,000 patient goal and the two partners that you guys have announced, or I suppose the one you acquired and the one you've announced with Fresenius, what kind of percentage of the population does 50,000 patients represent? Assuming this is a small part of the population today, how do you kinda see that opportunity today versus how can you scale to reach a bigger part of that population? Like, what does that total population with those partners look like in your mind?

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

We look at it very much as a, when you look at the provider, like the cardiologist and the nephrologist, what percentage of their patients that they see, meet medical need for these services. For a cardiology practice, on average, it's between 30% and 50% of the patients that are at a cardiology practice will receive value and meet the medical necessity for an RPM solution. Of those, you have chronic care management or PCM. Both of those, you're gonna have about half of that meet medical necessity for the management services. It kind of goes up in levels of complexity.

On the nephrology side, nearly all of the patients, it's very close to 100% of the patients have, you know, medical need to meet medical necessity for RPM and the vast majority for CCM. A patient that's, you know, in a nephrology practice or patient's being dialyzed usually doesn't just have kidney disease. They also have diabetes, oftentimes hypertension, and so they're polychronic, and thus, you know, management is really critical. That's why the nephrology practices have such a high percentage of the patients there. When we look at it and you wanna look at what's the addressable market, you can look at the stats on, you know, patients with cardiovascular issues as well as patients with kidney issues.

Kinda the conversion percentages I gave you is what we see for each one of the kind of clinics and providers.

Matt Shea
Equity Research Analyst, Needham & Company

Got it. That's helpful. When we think about scaling that RPM solution into other specialty areas that you're not in, you mentioned endocrinology and pulmonology, do you look at that as an organic expansion, or would that be something that you would need to partner with or acquire to get into that space? Or how do you look at adding other specialties to your RPM offering?

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

Yeah. I think those two are gonna come on the partnership side. you know, we have some, you know, exciting partnerships that will be announced. In general, DocGo's strategy of growth is one that we try to find synergies with other companies so that we can eliminate the customer acquisition cost. We'll find a partner. In this case, we already have the two partners. those partners already have access to patients that have these diseases, or multiple diseases, and they don't currently offer RPM, PCM or CCM or mobile urgent care services to this population. You say, "Okay, you already have a relationship with the patient, usually a very close, intimate relationship with the patient.

Can we now offer these increased value add services to them?" Both of those will be launched in partnership with two existing large players.

Operator

Next question, Richard Close with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.

John Pinney
Research Associate, Canaccord Genuity

Hi. This is John Pinney for Richard. Thanks for the question. The backlog added $25 million, sort of since last quarter. Is any of that, like, factored into guidance as of now, or is that more of a 2024 start story?

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

Yeah. It's a good question. Lee, why don't you take that one?

Lee Bienstock
President and COO, DocGo

Yeah, absolutely. Hi, John. The vast majority of those projects will launch towards the back half of this year and will ramp those significantly heading into 2024. Some of that revenue will come online, but the vast majority of it will be starting and ramping in 2023 as we head into 2024.

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

Worth noting that also those revenue streams also have a similar, you know, timeline on them. You're looking at that $200+ million over a 3-year period.

John Pinney
Research Associate, Canaccord Genuity

Short, short answer is it's not baked into guidance.

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

Right.

John Pinney
Research Associate, Canaccord Genuity

Okay, great. Thanks. Also, like, do you have any insight in as far as that backlog or anything you can provide us as far as what the breakdown would be for like mobile health versus transportation revenue?

Lee Bienstock
President and COO, DocGo

Yeah. The vast majority of the increase in the backlog are mobile health, new mobile health contracts. Almost all of the increase that you noted are mobile health contracts.

John Pinney
Research Associate, Canaccord Genuity

Okay, great. Thanks. Just one more question. For the rapid normalization, you say here that phase 1 is coming to completion at the end of July. That's what you're saying in the press release. That sort of implies like a phase 2. Is there any like detail you can provide there? Is there something that's gonna be like additional in that initiative coming in after July?

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

There will. The phase two will get the additional 300 basis points. I'll give more detail as to the very details of how that's achieved. We already have it, you know, quite planned out. Yes, there will be a phase two to get, you know, the entirety of that 600 basis point, margin that we, with some degree we give up. We're actually ahead of track on phase one right now.

John Pinney
Research Associate, Canaccord Genuity

Okay, great. Thanks so much.

Operator

Next question, Craig Jones with Stifel. Please go ahead.

Craig Jones
Equity Research Analyst, Stifel

Hey, thank you. I wanted to ask you on the margin side, one, as you think about sort of the ramp through the year for the margin expansion, will that be fairly linear?

Norm Rosenberg
CFO, DocGo

you know, hey, Craig, how you doing? I think that when we first planned it out, when we first started talking about it, obviously we modeled it out in a pretty linear fashion, but that's sort of not the way it's playing out, right? I think that you're gonna get the steeper piece of the curve in the earlier phases from here on out. Like, we had talked about how we saw some good rebound in March. We saw some pretty dramatic change in some of those KPI that are leading indicators for us on the margin as we head into Q2.

I would say that, you know, as far as the margin expansion that relates to the rapid normalization, I think that that's become a little bit more, I guess now at this point, front-end loaded the next couple of quarters than back-end loaded. The curve's a little bit steeper, which is a good thing when you're talking about the improving margin.

Speaker 12

Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Yeah, that's good to hear.

Norm Rosenberg
CFO, DocGo

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 12

No, go ahead.

Norm Rosenberg
CFO, DocGo

It's also not purely linear in the sense that, you know, if we were to look at the daily margin from here, on to the end of the year, it's not only gonna be up in one direction, right? It's gonna fluctuate a little bit based on different things that are going on, based on, you know, many different factors. That's why even though we look at this stuff on a daily basis, we do sometimes need to take a wider angle look at it and go out to, you know, a week, a month, or a quarter. The direction on a quarterly basis should be linearly increasing.

Speaker 12

Okay. Got it. It looks like, you know, as the mass COVID testing revenue has, you know, fallen off, that the margins have come down at the same time. Is there any way to size what the headwind in margins was as that revenue's rolled off?

Norm Rosenberg
CFO, DocGo

You know, we've talked about this a little bit in the past. It's a little bit tricky because when we look at the projects on a project-by-project basis or a project category by project category basis, in the mobile health projects that we're undertaking now have really the same margin profile, albeit, you know, broken into different pieces. They have the same kind of margin profile as would those projects that we were doing a year ago or more. I think where you get the impact is when we had those spikes in the mass COVID testing. We saw that in Q4 of 2021. We saw it at the beginning of Q1 of 2022, where you had a project where you're primarily getting paid on the basis of hourly wage.

You're getting paid by the hour for the employees that you're dedicating to the project or for the vehicles or whatever it might be. When you have a site that used to do 100 COVID tests in a day, and then all of a sudden that same site is doing 300 or 400 COVID tests in a day, that incremental piece comes at a very, very high margin. It was sort of a difficult comp for us both in Q4 and again here in Q1. Overall, that's not necessarily the case. As we've replaced margin, I'm sorry, as we've replaced that COVID revenue, over the long run, that revenue really should be coming in at about the same kind of margin that we had seen in the past.

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

Correct. When we bid on those new RFPs, which is that same backlog, we really have not changed the margin profile that we put into those new contracts.

Speaker 12

Okay. Got it. Thanks. That's all for me.

Operator

Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from Sarah James with Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead.

Sarah James
Managing Director and Equity Analyst – Healthcare Services and HCIT, Cantor Fitzgerald

Hi. Thank you. I wanted to unpack a little bit the comments about the startup costs which impacted gross margin. Can you tell us, was that the large New York contract, or should we think about that as being like a second wave of startup costs that we should model in for later on this year?

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

Yeah. Due to kind of the nature of the contentious relationship with the incumbent, we can't disclose the actual contract in question. To your general question, yes, it was to some degree unexpected because it was an accelerated launch timeline. More than just the normal startup costs, which we tend to plan for, and we've talked about that 600 basis points. In this case, we had to accelerate many months faster than we had anticipated purely because the incumbent of that contract decided to basically pull out and kind of void some of their contractual obligations.

Of course, as being, you know, a customer-first company, we stepped in and we over-delivered for the customer, which is why you see that our revenue actually kind of beat some of our expectations, but it did come with margin contraction.

Sarah James
Managing Director and Equity Analyst – Healthcare Services and HCIT, Cantor Fitzgerald

Okay. As you guys explore into the RPM, can you talk to us about how that might affect efficiency or, patients per day that you might be able to handle given that there's gonna be some more interaction or maybe longer visits at the home?

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

I don't think we have seen that the visits will necessarily be longer. We plan to in our Investor Day in June to give some really specifics around the average amount of at-home visits per patient per kind of period of time. You know, in that we'll try and help to build the model to say, if I have a patient who's a cardiology patient, what is the frequency by which they're gonna need a primary care intervention per year or a urgent care intervention per year or maybe an ambulance transport per year? What percentage of them are going to get managed versus just monitored? You know, we're well into the thick of it. You know, we have a fair number of patients on right now.

In that June meeting, we plan to kind of package it together and disclose as much data as we have to help you build a model. We're also gonna look at it, Sarah, from a unit economic standpoint. Not only has Anthony talked about what our, you know, estimated lifetime value or annual value of a patient would be, but also on an interaction-by-interaction basis. Like, what are the unit economics of that kind of thing? Also comparing it to the unit economics that we've seen out there, that are not comparable to ours.

Sarah James
Managing Director and Equity Analyst – Healthcare Services and HCIT, Cantor Fitzgerald

Great. Last question, if I could, on the Dollar General, Jeb, is there any updates, you can give us on how those locations are ramping up to be the volume, that you expected or that Dollar General was hoping to see?

Lee Bienstock
President and COO, DocGo

Sure. Hi, Sarah. It's Lee. The volume continues to increase, which we're excited about. I definitely think we are working on getting our marketing mix correct and our promotional mix correct. In addition, as Anthony mentioned, I believe on the last call, we're looking at other public-private partnership opportunities as well. You'll notice, in our release, we talked a bit about how some of the Dollar General locations will be serving as public health, population health locations, where underserved populations can receive services as well. We believe that those opportunities together will bring more access to people. Dollar General locations serve as a great location for that access, and we'll continue to look for opportunities to expand there as well.

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

It's worth noting the current, you know, the pilot that we have with Dollar General is a pilot with Dollar General, but it's also supported with funding from the State of Tennessee. It was already proving out what I said on the last earnings call, which was trying to bring together the municipal with the private, so the public and the private partnership, to solve this real healthcare need, which allows for DocGo to have more downside margin protection. That was the barrier that I mentioned where I said, you know, obviously everybody wants us to scale rapidly with this. It's been a, I think a, quite a success. DocGo doesn't do fee-for-service. We don't take risk on fee-for-service medicine, so we needed a model by which it allowed us to protect our downside margin.

Now that we have that with, you know, with the Dollar General pilot, the main purpose right now or the current phase of Dollar General is to prove out the relationship, determine can we scale this model by which we have a public-private partnership that has high demand and gives DocGo downside margin protection. That's where we're at right now.

Sarah James
Managing Director and Equity Analyst – Healthcare Services and HCIT, Cantor Fitzgerald

Very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Next question, Jeb Terry with Aberdeen Investment Management. Please go ahead.

Jeb Terry
President and Founder, Aberdeen Investment Management

Good afternoon, men.

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

Hello, Jeb.

Lee Bienstock
President and COO, DocGo

Yeah. Hey, Jeb.

Jeb Terry
President and Founder, Aberdeen Investment Management

Very, very, very exciting growth. I was very excited to see the activation with the State of Tennessee. Can you give us a little clarity on the your bullet regarding the 911 telemedicine program with the FDNY?

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

Yeah. The 911 program they have with FDNY telemedicine program to basically, it goes into the realm we call pre-hospital work. Pre-hospital work to try and lessen the amount of unnecessary visits that need to get transported to a hospital. It was an RFP that was put out through all of New York City with a lot of people bidding on it. It's something that will really help the community. Imagine that, you know, DocGo has the ability to respond in partnership with FDNY, with our mobile health providers, under the supervision of a hospital-based telehealth system. That, you know, kind of pairs together the municipality, the health system, and DocGo as the private provider in order to try and reduce the amount of ER admissions.

Jeb Terry
President and Founder, Aberdeen Investment Management

And, what kind of-

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

Just to give you an idea. Sorry. That was probably the question you were gonna ask.

Jeb Terry
President and Founder, Aberdeen Investment Management

Is that in all the boroughs or?

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

It is. Yep. It's across the entire city. To give you an idea of size, and don't quote me 'cause I'm not an expert on these stats, but FDNY does millions of transports a year.

Jeb Terry
President and Founder, Aberdeen Investment Management

Okay. Well, that's exciting.

Lee Bienstock
President and COO, DocGo

The goal is really. Yeah.

Jeb Terry
President and Founder, Aberdeen Investment Management

Go ahead.

Lee Bienstock
President and COO, DocGo

The goal is really can we help triage and address these calls that are coming in to make sure that it is indeed an emergency and someone does indeed need to go to the ED. If they don't, then helping provide services for them outside of the ED.

Jeb Terry
President and Founder, Aberdeen Investment Management

Got it. This could be a material bump to the transportation business, at least in addition to telemedicine services that you have actual people on the calls.

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

I don't know on the transportation side, because if they do need to get transported.

Jeb Terry
President and Founder, Aberdeen Investment Management

Okay.

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

FDNY will be the one who will likely transport them.

Jeb Terry
President and Founder, Aberdeen Investment Management

Okay.

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

This is really a mobile health opportunity, but a considerable one.

Jeb Terry
President and Founder, Aberdeen Investment Management

Okay. Okay. Understand. Perhaps a question for Lee. Given all the RFPs that, and the growth in those RFPs, and you had a considerable number going into that, I guess there would be quite a few that are reaching some degree of culmination. Should it be expected that there may be kind of a bulge, if you will, in awards or at least some outcome, here in the next number of weeks, I guess, as we go through the end of this quarter?

Lee Bienstock
President and COO, DocGo

The team is certainly looking forward to hearing back, I can tell you that, on a lot of these, on a lot of these opportunities. Absolutely, and we have heard back on a number of them. The way the process works is usually we will get provided with what's called an intent to award. This is when the process culminates in them reaching out to us and notifying us whether or not we are intended to award, and then we will enter into the contracting phase. In cases we have heard back on intents to award for strategic purposes, we don't announce every single contract we win. For competitive reasons, we don't announce every contract we win.

That being said, we have been notified on some of them, and we look forward to hearing back on others. Once they culminate in that contract being finalized, not just an intent to award, but a contract in place, you'll probably be hearing more and more about those.

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

Just so that you have some, Jeb, we, you know, we did win a large population health contract, the telehealth contract you mentioned, large employee health contract on the West Coast, as well as numerous, you know, significant federal government contracts among many others. You know, we have heard back. There's, you know, cases when we feel we can announce it without hurting either the contract itself or kind of strategic IP.

Lee Bienstock
President and COO, DocGo

Sure.

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

There have been a fair number we've heard back on, and our win rate has remained fairly consistent.

Jeb Terry
President and Founder, Aberdeen Investment Management

Therefore, in addition to the 50,000 RPM CCM patients that you feel like you'd be serving by the end of this year relative to TruCenta and the cardiac side, these awards would be additive to all that. Sounds like 2024 could be significant step function kinda growth from where we are today.

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

Yeah. The ones that I just mentioned and the ones that we've been awarded are not in, you know, in any guidance.

Jeb Terry
President and Founder, Aberdeen Investment Management

Understand. Perfect. Thank you very much, men.

Anthony Capone
CEO, DocGo

Thanks, Jeb.

Lee Bienstock
President and COO, DocGo

Thanks, Jeb.

Operator

Thank you. We've come to the end of the Q&A session. This does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and thank you for your participation.

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