SelectQuote Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
November 4, 2024

Key Takeaways

  • SelectQuote delivered a 26% year-over-year revenue increase to $292 million in Q1 and improved adjusted EBITDA by nearly $10 million, driven by scale in Healthcare Services and a 4.6x revenue-to-CAC marketing efficiency.
  • Early results in the Medicare Advantage enrollment season exceeded expectations, thanks to record high tenured agent retention, improved close rates and productivity, all on a stable marketing budget.
  • The Healthcare Services segment, led by Select Rx, grew membership 64% year-over-year to over 86,000, marking a sixth consecutive profitable quarter and prompting capacity expansion.
  • A $100 million securitization of Medicare Advantage commissions receivable cut the cost of capital by over 500 basis points, extended debt maturities and used only 15% of receivables—implying over $400 million of further securitization capacity.
  • Full-year FY25 guidance was raised, with revenue now forecast at $1.425–1.525 billion and adjusted EBITDA at $100–130 million, reflecting Q1 outperformance and confidence in ongoing enrollment season results.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
SelectQuote Q1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

There are 9 speakers on the call.

Operator

Welcome to SelectQuote's First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session. It is now my pleasure to introduce Matt Gunter, SelectQuote Investor Relations. Mr.

Operator

Gunter, you may begin the conference.

Speaker 1

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to SelectQuote's fiscal Q1 earnings call. Before we begin our call, I would like to mention that on our website, we have provided a slide presentation to help guide our discussion. After today's call, a replay will also be available on our website. Joining me from the company, I have our Chief Executive Officer, Tim Danker and Chief Financial Officer, Ryan Clement.

Speaker 1

Following Tim and Ryan's comments today, we will have a question and answer session. As referenced on Slide 2, during this call, we will be discussing some non GAAP financial measures. The most directly comparable GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of the differences between the GAAP and non GAAP financial measures are available in our earnings release and investor presentation on our website. And finally, a reminder that certain statements made today may be forward looking statements. These statements are made based upon management's current expectations and beliefs concerning future events impacting the company and therefore involve a number of uncertainties and risks, including but not limited to those described in our earnings release, quarterly report on Form 10 Q for the period ended September 30, 2024 and other filings with the SEC.

Speaker 1

Therefore, the actual results of operations or financial condition of the company could differ materially from those expressed or implied in our forward looking statements. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Tim Danker. Tim?

Speaker 2

Thanks, Matt, and thank you all for joining today. I'll start with a high level thoughts on the upcoming year, a few early observations from AEP and an update on SelectQuote's position to add value to each of our stakeholders. As you saw from our press release, the year is off to a strong start and SelectQuote is executing very well in the ongoing AEP season. We are ahead of our original expectations and as a result increased our fiscal 2025 outlook on both the top and bottom line. Ryan will detail our financials later, but the headline is that SelectQuote prepared well for the Medicare Advantage season and continues to perform in our Healthcare Services segment.

Speaker 2

As you know, there's been a lot of commentary about Medicare Advantage and how insurance carriers have shifted benefits for the ongoing enrollment period. The predominant question is how changing policy features by carriers would impact industry origination volumes and throughput this season. We'll speak to the strength we've seen in our results in a minute, but the shifts this season are a good example of why our bespoke service model is so important. We employ highly trained agents and support them with significant data and technology to help achieve one goal, find the best Medicare Advantage policy or prescription medication service for each customer's unique set of needs. As we've said, we feel very good about our model in a wide range of Medicare Advantage selling seasons and our high touch approach is even more critical to both policyholders and carriers when decision factors are in flux.

Speaker 2

We think the ongoing season will validate that claim and based on our early reads, we expect to be highly successful again this year. So let me begin on Slide 3 with a brief overview of our quarter. It was a strong way to begin fiscal 2025 as we drove year over year revenue growth of 26% and minimized our adjusted EBITDA drag in what is traditionally SelectQuote's largest investment quarter as we ramp into AUP. In fact, our year over year EBITDA improved by nearly $10,000,000 driven by continued scale in our Healthcare Services business and the resulting efficiency of our marketing spend, which ended the quarter at a very strong revenue to CAC ratio of 4.6x. In all, our consolidated financial results for the Q1 were very healthy and provide a strong foundation for a successful year ahead.

Speaker 2

With that as a level set, let me speak to a few key things we are strategically focused on for both our senior distribution and healthcare services business. Beginning with senior, as I mentioned, we are very encouraged by what we have seen early in AEP relative to our initial expectations. First, regarding our most important asset, our agents. We had one of our highest retention years on record for our tenured agent workforce. This is important in 3 main ways for SelectQuote.

Speaker 2

First, we were able to spend more time on policy education and customer service considerations for this specific season instead of basic training. 2nd, our recruitment and training expenses were modest, which aided profitability for the fiscal Q1. And 3rd, we believe SelectQuote's competitive advantage likely widened headed into this AEP, driven by Medicare Advantage Plan benefit volatility, where the experience of our agents is all the more important for both our customers and our carrier partners. Another theme I'd highlight in the early days of AEP has been our model's consistent improvement in agent close rates and productivity. We've spoken at length about our strategic focus on unit level returns and prioritizing profitability and cash flow over growth.

Speaker 2

We have achieved that in the past 2 years with rigorous lead targeting and the use of more tenured agents, whose productivity is about twice that of non tenured agents. On that foundation, we continue to further improve productivity by adding data tools and technology specifically designed to benefit customer fit and experience. I bring it up again now because agent productivity is the most attractive lever we have to drive additional growth. As you know, we continue to improve our capital flexibility and have more to do. In the current season, the best way for SelectQuote to grow our senior business is higher throughput and season to date, the results have been very impressive.

Speaker 2

In fact, we've accomplished a high level of agent policy productivity on a relatively stable marketing budget. Put another way, our tenured agents are helping more seniors per lead than they have in the past. This is a very strong proof point for why the agent led SelectQuote model is built for all seasons. Before I detail the AAP season, let me also give an update on our Healthcare Services business and the strong performance of Select Rx. Our membership is now over 86,000, which is up 64% year over year.

Speaker 2

Despite the strong growth, we drove our 6th straight quarter of profitability for the business and we are in the process of expanding our capacity to serve customers even more efficiently in the future. If we turn the page, let me expand on the ongoing Medicare Advantage annual enrollment period. I'll speak to our strategy heading into the season and then review some initial observations we've had so far. I'll start with our agents. The only thing I'd add to my previous comments is that we continue to be impressed by the additional operating leverage that exists with our experienced agents.

Speaker 2

The outperformance of our agents and the positive impact we are seeing on close rates relative to expectations is the biggest factor for SelectQuote's operating performance so far this season. Moving to marketing, SelectQuote's strategy for the past 2 plus years has been one of highly targeted lead sourcing for policy origination. That approach has been successful and is even more critical for the ongoing AEP. As a result of our focus on driving cash flow to improve our balance sheet, we've assigned a high bar for the use of marketing dollars. Specifically, we've used early learnings about policy feature changes to develop specific targeted marketing campaigns, which are performing very well season to date.

Speaker 3

If we move to

Speaker 2

the 3rd column, we can review how SelectQuote's data and technology is being leveraged for the current AEP. The biggest change for the upcoming season has been the expansion of our AI tools to screen and prioritize calls as well as simplify and accelerate processes behind the scenes. This AEP has shown continued success in these tools, but also additional use cases that we will pursue in the future to drive additional value. Last but not least, the close partnership we have with our carrier partners proved critical to AAT given the shift in planned benefits. More than any other season, we've worked quickly to develop strategies to serve both existing policyholders that may seek a better policy fit.

Speaker 2

Similarly, we've been able to match our lead targeting with plan features to optimize fit for the end customer. While the ongoing season presents new challenges and opportunities, TechOne's model was purpose built to deliver in a range of selling environments. There is always an opportunity to improve and evolve all with complete alignment between our policyholders, carrier partners and our own financial returns. Moving to Slide 5, let's talk about the progress we're making to optimize our balance sheet. As we've noted last quarter, we believe SelectQuote's model and the market opportunity in front of us presents more growth potential than we are currently equipped to fund.

Speaker 2

We announced the first step in our recapitalization plan last month and with our initial Medicare Advantage commissions receivable securitization. Specifically, we raised $100,000,000 in proceeds through an investment grade rated transaction. In addition to the proceeds, the transaction accomplished 3 key things. First, we extended our term debt maturities by approximately 2 years and have the ability with subsequent pay downs to further extend the maturity by an additional year. 2nd, the initial securitization comes at a significantly improved cost of capital.

Speaker 2

On a like for like basis, the blended cost of our securitization is in excess of 500 basis points lower than our term debt rate, which equates to real cash interest expense savings of $5,000,000 per year. With the time provided by our maturity extension, we believe there are opportunities to further decrease our cost of capital whether through subsequent securitization or other financing options. 3rd and probably most underappreciated, the initial securitization only pledged roughly 15% of our receivables balance to generate $100,000,000 in proceeds. For illustration sake, the remaining roughly 85% of our receivables book would imply potential proceeds well in excess of $400,000,000 We feel very confident in the timeline and the available options we have to improve our balance sheet over the upcoming year. Additionally, we have significant assets and cash flows to pursue better funding both in terms of structure and rate.

Speaker 2

With that, let's turn to Slide 6 and I'll conclude with a brief overview of our priorities in the near term. In short, the message we've delivered has 2 parts. First, we have a highly efficient operating model that has produced a strong track record of consistent returns in a market with significant growth opportunity. The highlights of that model are shown here on the left side of the slide and it is our intention to continue to drive the same type of performance in the future. The second part of our story is that of a company with a limited ability to achieve its true growth potential given our leverage profile.

Speaker 2

As we just talked through, SelectQuote has taken initial step with our securitization, but we have much more to do. Our priority in 2025 is to eliminate the headwind our leverage creates and meaningfully improve our capital flexibility. As we show on the right of this slide, our plan is to work towards a target term debt leverage range of 2x to 3x. We'll share more in the coming quarters, but I'll end my comments by thanking our teams for their work and our shareholders for your support. We know there is a tremendous value opportunity as a leading enabler in the healthcare ecosystem and it's our job as a management team to make sure SelectQuote is armed with both the model and balance sheet to capitalize.

Speaker 2

With that, let me turn the call over to Ryan to discuss our financial results for the quarter. Ryan?

Speaker 3

Thanks, Tim. I'll start on Slide 7. As you heard, our Q1 consolidated revenue grew 26% to $292,000,000 The growth was primarily driven by our Select Rx business as the Q1 is seasonally slowest for senior distribution ahead of the Medicare Advantage selling season. The more impressive year over year improvement was in our consolidated EBITDA for the Q1, which improved by nearly $10,000,000 compared to last year, driven by our highly tenured agent force in senior and strong profitability in our Healthcare Services segment. On Slide 8, I'll briefly talk to the key performance indicators of our senior distribution business.

Speaker 3

As mentioned, approved policies were stable year over year in a seasonally slow quarter. This performance was ahead of the original volume expectations driven by close rates and agent productivity. The 7% improvement year over year in our Medicare Advantage LTVs to 8 12 was primarily driven by continued stable persistency and carrier mix. On the whole, the senior business is very well positioned to drive strong unit economics and consistent returns in the ongoing AEP season. Flipping to Slide 9, the early results of that consistency were displayed in our fiscal Q1.

Speaker 3

Revenue per senior was up modestly to $93,000,000 driven by strong LTVs, partially offset by lower policy volume. More importantly, adjusted EBITDA improved significantly to $8,000,000 This improvement in profitability is attributable to the fact that we hired fewer agents this season, which led to more efficient spending on recruiting, training and onboarding. While we would have preferred to hire a larger agent class given the strong economics we still see in the MA market, This operating leverage is a testament to our strategic redesign that took a significant amount of cost out of the business. Moving to our Healthcare Services business on Slide 10, we continue to see strong success across our member growth, revenue and profitability. As Tim noted, our Select Rx members now total over 86,000, which is a 64% increase compared to a year ago.

Speaker 3

Additionally, our membership grew 5% sequentially, which is slightly lower than the quarter over quarter growth last year. As we've noted in our 2025 forecast, we expect more modest growth in SelectRx members in the first half of fiscal twenty twenty five due to normal seasonal trends. Healthcare services drove revenue of $156,000,000 in the Q1 and adjusted EBITDA of $5,000,000 our highest quarter of profitability since launching the business. Looking ahead, we expect Healthcare Services profitability to temporarily step down in the Q2 in line with our expectations as we continue to invest in and prepare for the AEP and OEP season. In addition to this seasonal dynamic, we're also investing in our new state of the art OASA, Kansas facility, which we expect to come online in the first half of calendar twenty twenty five.

Speaker 3

These near term investments were contemplated in our original healthcare services guidance for the year. We still expect profitability to ramp in the second half and we are confident in our ability to deliver low to mid single digit margins for the full fiscal 2025. On Slide 11, as you'll recall, we rationalized the Auto and Home division and as a result are showing our life insurance distribution results here. The life business continues to perform with revenue of $39,000,000 up modestly year over year. More importantly, the business grew adjusted EBITDA by almost 14% and continues to drive stable margins.

Speaker 3

Now let's shift to our updated guidance for fiscal 2025 on Slide 12. We are increasing our ranges for both revenue and adjusted EBITDA to reflect the outperformance in the Q1 and our expectations for the rest of the full fiscal year. Revenue is now expected to be in the range of $1,425,000,000 to $1,525,000,000 up from the prior range of $1,400,000,000 to $1,500,000,000 driven by better than expected policy production within senior and continued growth in healthcare services. Adjusted EBITDA is now expected in the range of $100,000,000 to $130,000,000 up $10,000,000 at the midpoint from the previous range of $90,000,000 to $120,000,000 This is driven by our outperformance in the Q1 and our growing conviction around close rates, productivity and marketing efficiency during AUP. We are proud of our execution this quarter, both from an operational and a balance sheet perspective.

Speaker 3

The early reads on AUP are encouraging and we remain focused on executing on our 2025 plan. With that, I'll turn the call over to the operator to take your questions.

Operator

Our first question comes from the line of Ben Hendricks from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Speaker 4

Great. Thank you very much guys and congratulations on the quarter. Just a quick question on a couple of your comments. You noted spending more time on policy education, which makes sense kind of in the very dynamic AEP, a lot of changes in Medicare Advantage. And you also talk about agent productivity being higher.

Speaker 4

I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you're balancing the 2. It seems like we've heard folks talk about having to spend more time on the phone to deal with shopping as opposed to actually kind of closing transactions and that's been kind of a volume headwind. It seems like you guys are balancing that very, very well with productivity. Just wanted to kind of get some color on how you're approaching that? And then also how Select Rx fits into that dynamic?

Speaker 4

Thanks.

Speaker 2

Ben, good morning. This is Tim. Thanks for the great question. I'll start and maybe ask Bob Grant, our President, to speak as well. Again, as we indicated, we're very pleased with the start to AEP.

Speaker 2

I think we're seeing a very high level of consumer engagement, strong call volumes, while early, very good close rates, agent productivity, and that typically leads to enhanced marketing efficiency. It's certainly a different environment this year, and that was predicted. We're seeing changes with respect to plan benefits. There's been elevated levels of plan terminations, but it's absolutely what our model has been built on and it's finding that balance to your question of front end customer acquisition abilities as well as retention. So we've invested a lot in our retention process and I'll let Bob elaborate on that.

Speaker 2

Bob?

Speaker 5

Yes. And directly to the question, are we seeing agents kind of spend more time, which leads to less efficiency? We really aren't. We're seeing them spend, I guess, more time per call taken just given the fact that close rates are higher. So we always look at that balance, right?

Speaker 5

The worst years or years where talk time for customers up, but close rates are down. This is not one of those years. We're seeing increased efficiency through that. We're also seeing a big spike in our occupancy. And we did a lot of work on the technology side to ensure that we would get really, really high occupancy.

Speaker 5

And occupancy is kind of a percentage of time actually on the phone. We changed a lot of our routing technologies, those types of things. We're actually seeing increased consumption as well, which is why it's leading us to have outsized results so far. So not maybe seeing the same thing that others are saying about increased time, which is leading to less efficiency overall. We're actually seeing the opposite effect.

Speaker 5

I think that also then has to do with just our strategy of tenured agents not hiring a big summer class this summer. And those tenured folks really know how to deal with the complex environment that's there, which again is just leading to outsized results given kind of the disruption in the market. And then on the back end, to Tim's point on retention, we spend a ton of time and money on the technology that we have out there, education materials, those types of things, which have driven really, really strong results so far as far as consumer engagement, answer rates and everything associated that we really track on the retention side. So we feel really good about both right now, given where we are.

Speaker 4

Great. And then how does the sale of Select Rx kind of factor into that? Is that something that takes a little bit extra time that you have to budget in, in terms of the sales process? Or is that kind of seamless or separate after the initial, MA sale?

Speaker 5

That's a really good question. Just as it's completely separate. The way that we set it up, right, we wanted to have a completely separate opt in, totally separate kind of business model over there. So it's taking no extra time for the agents. We have staffed up a little bit on the CSA, which is on the Healthcare Select side of the house, which is leading to really, really good results there as well.

Speaker 5

So no, we're not really seeing any increased time for our sales agents with that. And we've also done some work to make sure that the no sales side, which is also a big funnel for us, has stayed really high as a percentage as well. So all those things are allowing us to really capitalize on the spend that we have and kind of the overall increase in consumption led to really good efficiency there. One thing to note too, we have gotten better at using off peak hours for all of these things. And the reason I highlight that is that's really I talk about that occupancy, where we're doing a lot of our kind of extra work, call it retention work and those types of things is in times where leads are not in abundance.

Speaker 5

And we really built our technology around that this year to make sure that we could go into the kind of later hours of early evening and be really efficient during those hours, which is driving our results even higher.

Speaker 4

Great. Thank you for that. And is there anything in the performance you saw, the trends you saw this past quarter and in your guidance that's making you think that or changing the way you're thinking about the time line for the next leg of your securitization?

Speaker 6

Brian?

Speaker 3

Yes. I'll take that one, Ben. And it's a great question. Obviously, really pleased with getting this 1st securitization across the finish line. It does provide it's the infrastructure in place and provides meaningful extension to return debt.

Speaker 3

And the collateral that was used, it's over collateralized, but it was actually a really small portion of the broader commission receivable balance that the business has. So we are excited about the opportunity to bring additional securitizations to market. All that being said, while the securitization market is active and open, it tends to slow down in late calendar Q4, which also happens to be our busy season with AEP. We would look forward to see a path to providing bringing the future securitization to market in the first half of calendar twenty twenty five.

Speaker 4

Great. Thanks for the color, guys.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of George Sutton from Craig Hallum. Your line is open.

Speaker 6

Thank you. Nice results. Tim, I wanted to bring two thoughts together, both of them competitive related. You mentioned in your press release that the benefit plans have shifted significantly, but increasingly seniors and carriers are turning to SelectQuote. And separately, in your prepared comments, you mentioned your competitive advantage has widened.

Speaker 6

I wondered if you can go into a little bit more detail on the significance of those statements.

Speaker 2

Yes. Good morning, George. Thanks for the question. Certainly, I think it's been noted there are circuit carriers that have highlighted their need to improve profitability. Some carriers really prioritizing member margins over membership, if you will.

Speaker 2

At the end of the day, I think they're all really care about quality distribution. And I think that is certainly something that we feel very passionate about, right? We're helping consumers certainly in dynamic times like this, helping the ability to help navigate some of the market complexity. We're certainly helping the carriers too. I think beyond just high quality distribution, we're one of the only distribution partners that has offerings like Select Rx from a pharmacy adherence perspective as well as our Select patient management, chronic care management and we think that that's very differentiated.

Speaker 2

We think there's two sides to the coin that we can help with both through high quality MA distribution as well as extending that value to consumers to carriers to the broader ecosystem.

Speaker 6

So I'm kind of stunned that politics hasn't come up at all in this call. We're engaged in a horrific season of politics until tomorrow, and that's been a big chunk of the AEP. So you seem to be very encouraged about what you've seen so far. I would have expected a little bit more caution based on slowness due to the political season. Can you just talk about that dynamic?

Speaker 6

And would you expect any extension of AEP?

Speaker 2

Yes. I'll make a few comments and then maybe I can ask Bill Grant to chime in from a marketing perspective. But again, we're very pleased with the results thus far. A lot of this is based upon 2 facts. 1, we had a very strong Q1.

Speaker 2

And secondly, we get increased visibility early on into AEP. That visibility is made us confident in the underlying dynamics that we're seeing in terms of strong call, lead availability, consumer engagement, close rates, agent productivity. We all feel like that has positioned us well for a strong AEP. Bill, do you want to talk a little bit about kind of marketing dynamics in some seasons, right, that has been something we've had to navigate?

Speaker 7

Yes, absolutely. So I think with some of the CMS regulation, right, that we supported around some of the TV advertising that happened starting really last AEP, you started to see a shift away from television, in kind of Medicare marketing. And certainly within our mix, we rely on it very, very little where it used to be a pretty significant size of the book. So I think that's important because television is by far the most affected by the political environment in terms of advertising. So you can't turn on the TV obviously without seeing different political ads this time of year and that space that's taken up by those ads.

Speaker 7

So I think because it was kind of an unintended consequence, I guess, that was positive, we started looking. And I think one of the benefits of our kind of wide funnel approach, we started seeing different or different opportunities and really got away from television. So certainly, I think that's been something that hasn't affected us. And then I think second and really important, we're as Tim mentioned, as we differentiate ourselves more and more, I think we're one of the few that's spending dollars and not pulling back, right? I mean, they're significantly pulling back.

Speaker 7

When you look at a lot of our competition, we have a lot of tailwind of folks that have either recently transacted or have dramatically pulled back in the environment. So I think overall, when you look at it, the good has certainly outweighed the bad even with some of the pressure that you might have within television or other that it's caused. We really haven't seen it and really optimistic about how things are playing out with AEP.

Speaker 6

Got you. Just a comment, I don't think you could turn anything on that doesn't cause you to see or hear political ads. So it really has, I think, crowded out everything else. But one other thing is, as we get into the latter part of the season, given that you have a reduced agent count relative to what you would have liked, what kind of mechanisms do you have if you start to see excess flows? Are there ways for you relative to your guidance to outperform expectations if the flows are much stronger?

Speaker 2

I'll make some initial comments and turn it over to Bob. We're definitely pleased with what we're seeing thus far and I think we are absolutely capturing efficiencies as we see them and I think those that have followed the story over the past 2 years. Our senior MA distribution team has done a really, really nice job when efficiencies present themselves to be able to capture those. Obviously, we talked last quarter about some of the capital constraints and what that meant for hiring going into this year. But we are with that said, we're working obviously to resolve the balance sheet and we're very pleased with what our embedded tenure agent force is doing as to incremental opportunities.

Speaker 2

I'll turn it over to Bob.

Speaker 5

Yes. I'd say really what it allows us to do is be pickier and lean on the marketing sources. As Bill said, we're wide funnel. We can really see kind of what's driving outsized results. And as we get later and later into the season, we can take advantage of that and lean into that.

Speaker 5

To Tim's point though, we can't necessarily make up the fact that we don't have the people there. It would be great to have an extra 4, 300, 400 people like we sometimes do. I'd say though that our close rates are a little bit higher because of not having those people because these people are all tenured. So it does allow us to take a different advantage of it and really, really see incremental policies with that. So if we do see an excess environment, I wouldn't necessarily say that allows us to take more leads, it allows us to take kind of better and lean on our better marketing sources.

Speaker 6

Great. Thanks guys. Appreciate

Speaker 2

it. Thank you, George.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Pat McCamp from NOBLE Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Speaker 8

Thanks for taking my question and congratulations on the quarter. My first question has to do with your use of technology. It certainly seems that with such a complex marketplace for Medicare Advantage policies that the use of technology could really help out the agents. And I guess I'm wondering since you did touch on it, if you could give any more color on what sort of technology enhancements you've made and how they bear on the consumer interactions with your agents?

Speaker 5

Yes, it's a great question. And what we have done is just continued to double down on agent led technology. And what I mean by that is the enhancements that we've made bring in more and more data to allow the agents to kind of intake a customer's needs faster and more efficiently. And then ultimately make recommendations using technology a lot better and then a lot more efficiently. And then on top of it, we have a lot of AI based and people based call monitoring that really allows us to more effectively coach and get everybody on the same page to have a little bit tighter mix of agents.

Speaker 5

This is the record number of level 1 agents we've ever had. We know exactly kind of who to pull off the phone and why and how to coach them and how to do those things, which has allowed us to be significantly more efficient. So a lot of what we do is right focused on just not having to necessarily gather word-of-mouth data. We can use third party data to kind of supplement and then ultimately validate stuff, but then also really focusing on who needs kind of what coaching and guidance and lean there, which is why we're seeing record high kind of consumption mix with close rates.

Speaker 8

Thanks. And then my next question was regarding the marketing spending. I guess I'm wondering if you could touch on how you optimize within the AEP period as far as your flexibility to see where the best ROI is coming and change your marketing strategy? Is that something that you're very flexible with? I know you said that you're having a nice return so far with your marketing strategy, but I'm wondering if you could touch a little bit on the flexibility of that within the AEP.

Speaker 7

Yes, absolutely. I can take that. So yes, we've kind of set up ourselves with our white funnel. So we have kind of max flexibility in terms of where we can focus of where we're seeing positive results. So we can look at and 0 in on where we're seeing those things.

Speaker 7

So we have a read pre AAP starting, right, where we get a pre look at the plans and try to understand where we might see outsized results. So like if we see an area where we believe it's going to have major disruption because there's a lot of planned terminations and we have a good solution, we'll weight that as the highest ranking, right, because by percentages, we think we might get somebody without planned termination and we have a very positive solution. So we'll look at each of those areas and target and then we'll adjust those based on what we're seeing in real time to understand where we want to spend our money. And obviously, I think that the results themselves will speak for themselves in terms of what we're seeing in terms of our high close rates that are basically allowing us to do more with less in terms of more or more with the same in terms of the results we're seeing there. So yes, great question.

Speaker 7

Absolutely can adjust in real time and what we set up over years has allowed us to be able to do that from source to area to whatever wherever we're seeing those positive results.

Speaker 3

Great. And if I could

Speaker 8

ask just one more question, it would be on the Healthcare Services side of the house. Given the prospect for you to continue to improve your balance sheet, but that of course being a priority. I'm wondering how that impacts how you view the potential for acquisitions in the Healthcare Services segment to bring an even more holistic approach to serving the consumer needs on the Healthcare side?

Speaker 2

Yes, great question, Pat. I think absolutely for us right now, you've heard us outline the priorities. We've done a great job on business execution. We plan to continue to do that. We've got a great business that needs some balance sheet improvement.

Speaker 2

We're really pleased with the $100,000,000 securitization, but we're going to be very, very focused on improving our balance sheet. We believe that, that provides the company a lot of opportunity to do exactly what we've done with Select Rx along with Select Patient Management, while those are early days. And so, we want to get through our current areas of focus, but we absolutely will keep our eye on additional opportunities to build out our healthcare ecosystem. We think we are in an extremely unique position with consumers that have lots of needs. We have strong very strong level of connectivity informed by self reported data that really enables us to capture additional opportunities.

Speaker 2

So look for us to sequence those as I kind of indicated there, but certainly part of our go forward plan.

Speaker 8

Great. I appreciate the color. That's all I got.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Pat.

Operator

Thank you. Seeing as there are no more questions in the queue, that concludes our question and answer session. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Tim Dank for closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Thank you again for joining us. I'll close by again noting our commitment to unlocking further growth and profit potential with SelectQuote. We believe we have the operating model, the talent and the asset base to be the leading information and service connectivity hub for the healthcare industry. We look forward to accelerating those efforts in the year ahead. Thank you all again and have a great week.

Operator

Thank you. The meeting is now concluded. Thank you for joining. Have a pleasant day. You may now disconnect.

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