Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Randall Stanicky - Goldman Sachs.
Randall Stanicky – Goldman Sachs
Carl, I appreciate your comments on the macro backdrop. Can you just maybe help us understand how the economy perhaps is impacting the physicians specifically and perhaps their decision to go with the Athena solution and then maybe if there is any impact on their interest in your clinical offering? Thanks.
Carl Bayers
Sure Randall, I think they are both rational and psychological questions people have about the market behavior. On the rational side, on the front-end when it comes to choosing a solution of your practice we are now advantaged compared to the standalone software solutions that require CapEx.
The bottom line is for a doctor practice, if they’re going to make an investment that money is coming out of their bonus pool or it’s going to be financed, and neither of those are attractive options in this climate; whereas, Athena which one of our analyst calls, a no money down solution is different. In that our job is to free cash out of your balance sheet, improve your cash flow on a sustained basis and required a very little upfront in terms of investments.
So, on the front-end, because we don’t have a negative that others do have, we were good comparatively, that’s the rational front-end piece. I think the psychological question people have, is do people just go into a bunker mentality, when they see their 401K go down and I think that really cuts both ways.
One the one hand some people might say, ?hey, I’ll just wimp along on whatever solution I have,? but because that’s not a rational solution, we think what’s more important is some people look at this as an opportunity to make a significant change in the interest of their financial position and so on balance we think that not only are we rationally more a better choice in the front-end in this climate, or any climate for that matter, but psychologically, we think that’s a net positive because people have a reason to focus on this.
So, on the front-end I think that’s the rational and the psychological. On the back-end its really about physician offers and volumes and as we noticed through Q3 looking at the data we have, we do not see a meaningful change and so in that sense patients logically will continue to seek healthcare and we don’t anticipate that changing, but we’ll be watching it very closely.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
