All right. Good morning, everybody. This is our first session of the last day. I think possibly the same thing happened last year. So with me today is Karsten Voermann, CFO of GoodRx, and Ramin Nabiey , Chief Accounting Officer and I'm gonna kick it off to Karsten to do a quick safe harbor, and then we'll go into Q&A.
Perfect. Thank you, Stan, and thanks for having us as well. Just diving straight in, we want to remind everyone that today's fireside chat will contain forward-looking statements, and all statements that don't relate to matters of historical fact should be considered forward-looking statements, including statements regarding our plans, strategies, goals, objectives, market opportunity, and our anticipated financial performance. These statements aren't promises or guarantees, but involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other important factors, which may cause our actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. For additional information, please look at our risk factor section of our Form 10-K, as well as our updated Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2024.
We may also reference non-GAAP metrics, which are reconciled to the nearest GAAP metric in the company's earnings, press releases, and in our filings, and back to you, Stan.
Awesome. That was very nice. Okay, so I think it was last week, maybe it was two weeks ago, Eli Lilly announced a lower priced GLP-1, particularly targeting cash pay customers. I think you recently called out a program with Humira for a cash pay discount. Is it reasonable to expect Big Pharma is gonna do more of these type of deals, and are you positioned to capitalize on that?
Yeah, we're pretty excited about these cash pay deals for two reasons. One is that it represents a shift by pharma and a recognition by pharma that, particularly for medications that are often not on formulary, that going directly to consumers with attractive pricing is a great way to grow their market share and grow their revenue. So from that perspective, we've talked about the deals we've done with Sanofi on Lantus to provide a $34.99 price nationwide for that medication with Dexcom or on Dexcom devices, which again, are often not on formulary, but consumers really want. And there, too, we've been able to offer low cash pay pricing to the consumers, which helps the consumers, drives revenue for us, and drives revenue for Dexcom in that example.
So seeing more examples coming out over time of Big Pharma going into the cash-based space, as well as biosimilars entering into cash-based space, like the announcement we made with Boehringer Ingelheim last week, from our perspective, is super attractive. It supports our Manufacturer Solutions revenue line and these kinds of deals where pharma leverages us to both attract demand from our huge user base of 100 million plus prescription claims a year and many, many more users, on the one hand, and on the other hand, leverages our ability to actually put these programs into effect and implement them is something we are eager to capitalize on going forward. Absolutely.
Great, and I do wanna touch more on that in a bit, but, maybe if we can pivot a little bit to one of the more interesting and eye-catching developments, this year, which was the return of Kroger. So, obviously previously departed, that was a big thing for you. Key question here is: Why did it return? And how does the return signal the value proposition that you give to pharmacies, retail pharmacies?
Yeah. So to your point, Kroger came back to our network in May. They signed an agreement that kind of had them at more meaningful prices in the cloud of kind of other prices, effectively at market. And we think that signaled the value prop of direct contracting. You know, in this backdrop of pharmacy economic pressures that they're facing, it's really important that we can come to pharmacies and show that we can meet their business requirements, whether it's on the volume side, on the margin side. And for Kroger, this was just that. We kind of came to the table with them. We're able to work out an agreement that made sense for both parties, and we're, you know, working now to execute against that.
Is there like a game theory type of situation where if a retail pharmacy does not deal with you, they run the risk of losing foot traffic, and foot traffic is important, maybe not just for the selling, you know, drugs for them, but also people are shopping for milk and groceries, right?
Mm-hmm. Yeah, we think that's exactly what happened with Kroger. You know, we don't wanna put any numbers out there or quantify anything, but as far as Kroger goes, we believe that's the reason why they came back. There was a front of store, you know, or foot traffic reduction that they were seeing. We're the biggest name out there when it comes to prescription savings, and we drive significant traffic to pharmacies for that very reason. We believe Kroger kind of came back to the table and said, "Hey, let's, let's put a deal in place." And so far, in terms of the traction on that deal, just to kind of address that as well, we're seeing coupon views, which are kind of like a leading indicator to claims, right?
People coming to the site, looking up a drug, finding that pharmacy or Kroger, those are up significantly. We have yet to see kind of, you know, the filter through to claims quite yet because we're working to have the pharmacists be educated. There's been a couple of years where they effectively were told, "Hey, don't accept this." So there's an education and awareness process that is taking place, and that'll probably take, you know, on the order of quarters rather than years, so working through that, but as of now, the signs are pointing up, KPIs are looking good, and we're kind of excited about the progress.
... Okay, and Kroger is not in guidance for this year, right? So any business from there, that's not in guidance, is that correct?
So the incremental volume from Kroger associated with the new deal we signed is not in guidance for this year. That's correct. There's always been a little volume trickling through, but at very, very low levels relative to historical levels and relative to what we expect as we anticipate Kroger's grows back to being roughly proportionate in the GoodRx ecosystem and volume to the volumes it does, or the proportion of volume it does in the market as a whole.
Okay, and how should we-
Will take some time, as Ramin said.
Okay, you're saying it takes quarters. So in next year, do you think you get to, like, some kind of a runway, or is that going to take maybe a few more years?
I don't think it would take that long, Stan. I think it's a matter, like Ramin said, of consumers recognizing once again that it's a viable place to save money on prescriptions and shifting back over quarters, but not years. So would be surprised if we didn't get to sort of a steady state run rate in a few quarters on that. But very excited about it because it really, as Ramin said, validates the direct contracting strategy. And when you think about it, you know, we've talked in the past about our take rate being in the mid-teens, and given the amount of revenue Kroger at one time represented to us, we know that the amount of revenue we drove to them was a multiple of that, like five or six times larger.
So that's meaningful, and I think that's one of the reasons that they elected to work with us once again.
Okay. Some other developments in the past year, maybe a little bit more than a year, you've introduced member registrations.
Mm-hmm.
Are you seeing benefits from this in the sense that, you know, I guess going back to Kroger, when they left, you kind of lost the customers that were filling their scripts through Kroger. Are you, now that members are registering, able to steer customers? And maybe an example right now, this past quarter, Rite Aid is closing down their stores. How do registrations play into you being able to actually steer customers to new pharmacies?
Sure. I think the broad concept that registration support is contactability of users, period. And to take a step back into history for a second, when GoodRx was founded, our founding principles included being as frictionless as possible and making it really easy for consumers to save money on medications. They didn't have to register on our site. They didn't have to tell us much about themselves. They could literally just type in a drug name, save a bunch of money, which was great and frictionless. But I think what the lesson we learned when the Kroger issue occurred a few years ago, is that the flip side of that frictionlessness is that it's hard to be able to influence users going forward and support users by directing them to other pharmacies where they can continue to save.
So we elected after that point to introduce some gating, effectively, user gating, that requires users or encourages users to register and give us more information. And to your point, Stan, I think that's proven really valuable, not only in the context of things like a Rite Aid store closure, where that provides an opportunity to notify them of other pharmacies they may be able to still go to, to save, but more broadly, to do a bunch of other things that we'd never been able to do in the past, including incenting users to take the next action we want them to. So let's say they fill a script, and we believe that they have a second script they could be filling with GoodRx. We can put a point of sale discount in front of them and incent them to give us the second script.
Or in the case of users who register and look up various drug prices but aren't necessarily filling all those drugs, we can put an incentive in front of them to fill more of their basket with GoodRx there, too. So you've seen us in the past talk about point of sale incentives, as a means of shifting marketing dollars from traditional media to driving very specific actions. And the registration process, the greater user contactability or greater user intimacy broadly, is what allows that, as well as helps in situations like the Rite Aid store closure one.
Okay, that makes sense, and maybe just sticking with Kroger a little bit here. You've obviously leaned in heavily into direct contracting. Kroger is a direct contracting deal. I think you said maybe half of the drugs posted on your website, or 40% are based on direct contracting.
I think at our Investor Day, we talked about being over 20%, and it's continued to grow, we said as well since then. So it's now a significant minority of the relationships and volume that we have in place, and we're really pleased with that.
How active is your pipeline? Are you looking, you know, downstream at small mom-and-pop retail pharmacies? Are you looking... Where can we get more wins, potentially?
Yeah. I think the big focus is on top ten retailers, the top retailers. So far, we disclosed at our Investor Day that we've got seven of the 10 of them under direct contract or some form of direct contract, where we will contract either for some part of their book or the entire book of discount cash card claims. You know, the 20% we talked about, Karsten just mentioned, is growing, and we anticipate that to continue to grow, although we're gonna really defer to retailers as to where they wanna go in terms of the size of that. And so if they, you know, continue to lean into this, we're happy to go there. If they like the PBM-centric kind of mix as well, we're happy to do that as well. It's kind of just based on the needs of retailers.
So far it's been going well, but certainly wanna attack kind of the big fish before going to the long tail, so to speak.
... Okay, maybe let's shift to the Integrated Savings Program. So I think this year it's not a big contributor, right? I think maybe it's a 5% to revenue. What's your sense that PBMs are gonna really lean into this program next year? Any sense of pickup or momentum there?
Yeah. Well, so far we've heard pretty great feedback from PBMs, from plans, and employers as well. So, so far it's going quite well. We've seen that, you know, this being a seamless benefit that you can provide as part of a, a funded benefit design, seamless as a point-of-sale, has been something that's been received quite well, and for that reason, we've seen pickup and penetration into the PBMs plans, go quickly. And, I think it's on the order of now 60% penetration to the PBM lives we have so far. We have about two-thirds of the lives in the U.S. through the PBMs we have signed thus far, so it's going well.
I'd say another incremental upside we've kind of come to is, you know, we just announced as of Q2, a deal with MedImpact, in which we're working with them on, off formulary or non-covered medications, i.e., a wrap deal. And so that's something that, you know, is even more incremental upside and shows that PBMs are really taking this on, they're receptive, and they're looking for even more opportunities to kind of grow.
Okay. One of the things with the Integrated Savings Program is that it's the PBM that's the gatekeeper of this relationship to a certain extent. They decide which members are getting this benefit, to the extent that this benefit is utilized, what drugs go to you, which drugs don't. Is there anything that you can do to evangelize this program and maybe drive adoption? Or is it kind of like, if it makes sense, the PBMs will increase usage?
Yeah. We've talked a bit about our growth levers for this program. The one you just highlighted with PBMs, I think is first and foremost, we want to sign PBMs. They're kind of our go-to-market motion, right? They expand the program to their lives. We've got two of the big three in about 65% coverage there in terms of eligible lives. The second lever there would probably be in terms of actually penetrating into their lives basis, of which we've got about 60% that I mentioned earlier.
And in terms of the go-to-market there, we really just work with them to make sure that, you know, the marketing materials and, the awareness and education, is there, and they're able to kind of roll it out in a way that makes sense, and support them in ways, and we're finding ways to collaborate with them more deeply on that. And finally, you know, win rate. Win rate's pretty big. We've talked about, you know, we're seeing hundreds of millions of checks, price checks, so to speak, and have a low single-digit win % as of now. And so, you know, altering that even slightly can result in pretty significant, changes and/or increases in revenue.
So we've initially, in the initial phases, a lot of the focus was on the technical implementation, making sure the program was put in place in the right way, and ironing out the kinks. But now that we're past that initial phase and into the fully scaled phase of the programs, we've been able to partner with them quite deeply to understand, hey, where are pockets of claims maybe we can win, or where are areas that we can lean into more? And we've seen that they're quite receptive to work with us and partner with us in those ways. So, so far, so good. Yeah.
Okay. And part of your marketplace revenue, so this is the... We've been talking about the prescription transaction revenue. You have the subscription business as well. On the subscription business, it seems like the second quarter of this year is gonna be your trough quarter from a number standpoint, because you have the sunsetting of the Kroger Savings Club that's impacting that. Just broadly, how are you thinking about this segment, and what's the primary way that you win subscription clients?
Sure, so on the subscription side, I think you're right that Kroger Savings Club, the shuttering of that business, which was, for us, much lower price point and therefore not super meaningful to revenue, especially since we also had less control of it. Shuttering that business meant that our user counts have ramped down for a period of time. I think we're now in a place where, as we contemplate subscriptions, where we've also narrowed the aperture for our own subscription program to focus on users for whom it has the most value, so polychronic users, as an example of one of the dimensions or vectors, that help to generate, users with the best value proposition.
So I think you'll continue to see us keep a pretty narrow aperture around it, especially in light of some of the other savings tools that we've now put in place, including things like Ramin talked about around our Integrated Savings Program, and with PBMs and the work we're doing with Pharma Manufacturers directly. So I think this continues to be an important program to keep running for the right kinds of users, but we also realize it's not the right program for every user, hence the narrowing of the aperture.
You used a very interesting word that I've never heard before, polychronic. So many chronic-
Many prescriptions.
Yeah, many prescriptions. To me, that sounds like that's people on Medicare, right? They're older population, they tend to have comorbidities.
Yeah
... They take five, six-plus drugs that they take.
We see that also, yeah.
So it seems like that would be a huge part of that subscription base, presumably. And recently, I saw also, maybe a few weeks ago, maybe a few months ago, Amazon announced that their RxPass product is now allowing Medicare recipients to receive that, and RxPass, I believe, has, like, 60 popular drugs that for like $5 a month, you can get them for free, effectively, through Amazon. What are your thoughts on Amazon as a competitor?
Sure.
and on this product?
Sure. I think two comments to make on this one. The first comment to make is, yeah, we've seen Amazon test price elasticity in a variety of different ways over the years. Sometimes, to your point, almost giving away medication. And what's interesting about that is the volumes that we see them benefiting from as they do that have not been extraordinarily high. So particularly on generic medications, the mail and delivery component or proportion of scripts hasn't really been growing very much at all. And even as Amazon experimented over the years with a variety of different pricing mechanisms, that hasn't shifted significant volume either, and you folks can all see this in the IQVIA data, certainly where we see it.
And I think part of the reality for us is that the prescriptions that most Americans pick up have continued at the greatest level to be picked up through the brick-and-mortar channel. And that's one of the reasons we've continued to be an opportunity for those different brick-and-mortar pharmacies, as well as grocers, to sort of fend off incursion from other types of competitors by leveraging GoodRx to drive volume into their businesses. And so we see ourselves as an ally to those brick-and-mortar entities, particularly now that some of the pharmacies are in different levels of distress.
In your prescription transaction business, a lot of the people using GoodRx, they've been advised by their provider to say-
Yes.
Okay, you should take a look at GoodRx, and that's why they use it. Obviously, word of mouth, other factors as well, very important. Is that the same for the subscription business?
Yeah, I think on the prescriber referrals, they're absolutely critical to us. In fact, we've pivoted a significant portion of our marketing spend towards prescriber and healthcare provider-related marketing efforts altogether. One of the interesting things we found is that as we broke down deciles of prescribers, the deciles who refer GoodRx the most are incredibly valuable and have a multiple of the value to us of the ones who refer less. So being managing the prescriber base, which is sort of, in many ways, like a free sales force, and that was GoodRx's first source of marketing and evangelization, is really important. So totally agree with you on that point. On prescriber referrals to subscription versus to GoodRx, generally, I think that's more on us to convert the relevant folks into a subscription model. It goes back to your contactability question, too.
Now we're more able to do that. So from that perspective, the prescribers are more the evangelists who say, "Go use GoodRx," versus being the ones who specifically say which program to use GoodRx, in the context of. But we're very excited about the way our prescriber relationships are continuing to evolve and grow.
Okay. I do want to address your third revenue segment, Manufacturer Solutions.
Yes, exciting.
I think you're guiding to a 4Q exit run rate of 20%-30% top line growth for that business. Sounds like a lot of traction here. What's your pipeline of opportunities as we sit here today, and how active is your pipeline?
Sure, yeah. No, as we talked about in the very beginning question around big pharma and spending on, in the cash pay market, generally, that's exciting for us, and I think this line of business, generally, or this offering that we have in Manufacturer Solutions, is one that both historically and on a forward-looking basis, has grown more quickly than our prescriptions marketplace offering. Like, back in 2020, it was sub $20 million in revenue, and now it's grown materially. Like, last year was well over 4X that, so pleased with the performance so far, but effectively, we're also doubling down on it. Continuing to hire sellers into it, to continue to drive demand.
Continuing to partner with pharma to bring both more manufacturers, but more importantly, now that we have most of the big manufacturers, more medications into the program. And the most important and exciting thing, I think, that we see is our ability to drive point-of-sale discounts, which is a pretty unique offering for pharma manufacturers. Like earlier, when we were talking in the context of your Lilly Direct question, I had mentioned that these point-of-sale programs, whether it's Sanofi, Lantus, or Dexcom or whichever, that those are attractive to us because for pharma manufacturers, they drive revenue. They're also pay-as-you-go. So we've seen those programs left in sort of always-on state for our critical customers. And so as we've continued to sign more of them, at our investor day, we talked about having over 40 of these relationships established.
As we continue to sign more of them, we see that revenue is stacking like a layer cake because of the consistent nature of how manufacturers leave those programs in place, making them more attractive and more episodic spending, for example. So Manufacturer Solutions, big growth priority for us, and within Manufacturer Solutions, these point-of-sale discount relationships, as pharma pivots more and more to a direct-to-consumer model, also super attractive.
Yeah, one thing to add about those as well, that I think is quite exciting, is that there's a bit of a flywheel effect with our wrap programs that we talked about earlier, like the one we're doing with MedImpact, where we signed a deal with a brand, you know, XYZ brand, and it brings the price down significantly, as it normally does. You tie that in. We tie those all in with our wrap programs, which are effectively, you know, for brand drugs that are typically not covered. So you come into the point of sale with your insured card, that it'll route to that reduced point-of-sale brand price that we now have. So there's a bit of a synergistic flywheel there that is little known, but really exciting as well.
Okay, and if we think about that 20%-30% growth number, how much of that is just coming from existing programs where your clients are like, "We want to spend more money, we're seeing a lot of impact here," versus you're actually gaining traction with new accounts and new brands?
Got it. It's as you surmised, it's both. The important thing for us is that of this growth vectors for Manufacturer Solutions, which is more manufacturers, more brands, and more solutions per brand, right now, the more brands, now that we've penetrated into manufacturers, is a more important lever, and the more solutions per brand, is an important lever for us as well. So we see medications that used to only have one solution, say, a more advertising-oriented one, our platform shift and pivot towards ones where we have a deeper relationship, where we're either spanning not just from the awareness side, but into access, leveraging our own programs, like point-of-sale discounts or driving them into the manufacturer's own at-market-access related programs. So continuing to evolve down that path is one that we see is pretty important indeed.
Okay. If we think about your financial model, I think you have a very interesting income statement, where you have over 90% gross margin business effectively, and you're spending over 40% of your revenue on sales and marketing. So there's a very huge sales and marketing spend there. How are you allocating that reinvestment between your marketplace offerings versus manufacturer solutions? Let's start with that.
Yeah. So to your point, we spend a significant amount of our revenue on sales and marketing, and that's really to drive traffic to our pharmacies and driving these claims. I think the big tactics or the pushes that we've had in the past several quarters are on the HCP side and consumer side, specifically the high-value cohorts in each of those. So Karsten talked earlier about HCPs being a huge organic referral engine for us, and that's always been true from the beginning. But what we found, to Karsten's point earlier, is that when we deciled out those cohorts, there are some really, really valuable folks in there. And so we want to get in those offices.
We worked hard to get into there, to understand the offices, to understand the journeys that they have in there, and, you know, work to bring more awareness and education to GoodRx's materials, by whether it's mailing them, you know, materials, whether it's getting them into EHRs, whether it's, you know, working more deeply with them in different ways to get them into Provider Mode or otherwise. And so far it's, you know, worked out quite well for us. And then similarly, on the consumer side, these high-value polychronic folks are folks that we definitely want to ensure are continuing to be engaged, and we have ways to incentivize behaviors, whether it's a point-of-sale discount or a different incentive.
We can drive an incentive, you know, for the medication to incentivize the next action or to incentivize them to register or create an account, and that likewise has been a big focus of ours as well.
Okay. And maybe holistically, I think your philosophy has been to reinvest in the business, but recognize operating leverage as well.
Absolutely.
And be mindful of expanding your margins. Is there a scenario where you would contemplate hitting the gas more aggressively on reinvestment because you think the ROI is there? Or conversely, if you think from a competitive landscape, if you're pulling away from the competition, you could say, "Well, we could ease off with the gas more aggressively and recognize a lot more operating leverage than perhaps we could have in the past." What are your thoughts on that?
Yeah, I think, number one, you're quite right that we've intentionally focused on both driving EBITDA margin and driving EBITDA dollars, and increasing those, quite aggressively. We think, given the nature of our cost structure, sort of the low level of cost of revenue that we have relative to the OpEx stack and the generally fixed cost nature of the business, high flow through from revenue to EBITDA is an important metric for us. Both for us internally and for us to showcase externally as well. So, the hard focus and intense focus on EBITDA dollar growth and margin expansion, absolutely there.
In terms of spend more broadly, on the marketing side, yeah, we've traditionally, as you look back over quarters and years, we've traditionally grown faster than the fastest or one of the fastest-growing areas of prescriptions. Like, the cash pay segment has grown in excess of the growth rate, we believe, of the prescriptions market overall, and our share of that has also grown quite nicely. From that perspective, being a large relative market share player in this space gives us advantages in terms of how we can help retailers, as well as how we can help consumers.
So given that our paybacks today on marketing spend are relatively consistent with where they were in the sub eight-month payback window that we talked about, all the way back to the time of our IPO, we think we're still seeing nice returns on the marketing spend. So that makes us continue to wanna invest there as well. So we don't see us hitting the brakes on that by any means, but given the success we've had in growing, we continue to believe that the ramp down in marketing spend you've seen for a few quarters now as a percent on revenue, we continue to believe that that was the right answer, and that we don't need to pivot back to increasing that dramatically.
Okay. And another way to think about your very heavy sales and marketing spend is the nature of your business, to drive awareness in the marketplace, mind share with consumers and healthcare providers. If we think about it from a different perspective, from a competitive perspective, you're the largest fish in the pond, so to speak. Everybody else is pretty small. So when they look at you and the type of spend that you have, it's hard for them to kind of spend anywhere near where you're spending to drive that awareness. So what are your thoughts on the competitive landscape? And to the extent that, do you think you're pulling away from the competition because they can't really put up the type of advertising and marketing spend that you're doing? What are your thoughts on that?
Sure. We think it differentiates us, not just with consumers and healthcare providers, where we have incredibly high mind share in terms of awareness and incredibly high NPS. We think the incremental spend also differentiates us with respect to our, our pharmacy ecosystem, because if you're, if you're actually spending money to attract incremental claims and to drive those incremental claims to your partners, that's differentially value added to the partners, we believe. So from that perspective, really important. I think the other thing that's really important is that we have incremental ways to monetize users relative to other people, so that justifies a different level of spend than some others in the space might have. We, like, we were talking about before, we have our manufacturer solutions offering.
We have these Integrated Savings Programs offerings now, as well, which help bring in users in bigger chunky cohorts instead of one-on-one. So all of these things end up being complementary from the perspective of supporting our ability to drive healthy returns on the marketing spend, and from that perspective, it situates us in a position where we are able to continue to invest while still seeing ourselves, particularly with these additional revenue streams, like manufacturer solutions, drive more down to EBITDA dollars at the same time.
Okay, we have less than a minute left.
Okay.
Um-
We'll be quick.
One last question is: You think about it next year, for 2025, what are you most excited about in terms of your business? What should investors be thinking about?
Got it. I think, two areas. One is, continued growth in our Pharma Manufacturer Solutions offering, particularly around these point-of-sale deals that are hard for others to replicate, since we have the eyeballs to drive the demand, and we have the infrastructure to actually implement the deals, and provide the discount to consumers at pharmacy checkout, and number two, I think the ISP wrap program that Ramin was talking about, like, taking our ISP program to off-formulary medications, can be quite expensive for people. We see that as a very attractive opportunity as well.
Awesome. Right on the money.
Right on time.
All right. Well, thanks, everybody, for joining us. Thank you.
Very grateful to be here, Stan.
Thanks so much.
Always wonderful to be with you.
Thanks, Stam.
Thanks again.