Quest Diagnostics Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

AlphaStreet
Provided by AlphaStreet
January 30, 2025
Skip to Questions & Answers
Operator

Hello, welcome to the Quest Diagnostics Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2024 Conference Call. At the request of the company, this call is being recorded.

The entire contents of the call, including the presentation and question-and-answer session that will follow all the copyrighted property of Quest Diagnostics with all rights reserved. Any redistribution, retransmission or rebroadcast of this call-in any form without the written consent of Quest Diagnostics is strictly prohibited.

I'd now like to introduce Shawn Bevec, Vice-President of Investor Relations for Quest Diagnostics. Sir, please go-ahead.

Shawn Bevec
Vice President, Investor Relations at Quest Diagnostics

Thank you, and good morning. I'm joined by Jim Davis, our Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President; and Sam Samad, our Chief Financial Officer.

During this call, we may make forward-looking statements and will discuss non-GAAP measures. We provide a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to comparable GAAP measures in the tables to our earnings press release. Actual results may differ materially from those projected. Risks and uncertainties that may affect Quest Diagnostics' future results include, but are not limited to, those described in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and subsequently filed quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K.

For this call, references to reported EPS refer to reported diluted EPS and references to adjusted EPS refer to adjusted diluted EPS. Growth rates associated with our long-term outlook projections, including consolidated revenue growth, revenue growth from acquisitions, organic revenue growth and adjusted earnings growth are compound annual growth rates.

Now, here is Jim Davis.

James E. Davis
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Quest Diagnostics

Thanks, Shawn, and good morning, everyone. In the fourth quarter, we delivered impressive revenue growth of nearly 15%, including approximately 5% organic growth, while also improving our profitability. For the full-year, we drove revenue growth of close to 7%, including approximately 3% organic growth.

In 2024, our team completed eight acquisitions, including Life Labs in Canada and four hospital outreach lab businesses in the US. We also expanded our Advanced diagnostics menu and drove sustained double-digit growth in several clinical areas during the year.

In addition, we attracted new business across the physician, hospital and consumer channels, while also forming new relationships with health plans to extend our geographic reach. Our investments in automation and AI delivered improvements in quality, customer experience and productivity during the quarter and throughout all of 2024, which helped us deliver on our annual 3% Invigorate savings and productivity targets.

We also meaningfully improved employee retention as we strengthened our position as employer of choice. This morning, we provided guidance for 2025 that reflects our confidence in the core strength of our business, continuing robust utilization and the momentum from acquisitions we completed in 2024.

These dynamics position us favorably to accelerate revenue and earnings growth in 2025. Now I'll recap our strategy and discuss highlights from the fourth quarter. Then Sam will provide more detail on our financial results and talk about our financial guidance for 2025.

Our strategy to drive growth is focused on delivering solutions that meet the evolving needs of our core customers, physicians, hospitals and consumers. We enable growth across our customer channels through advanced diagnostics with an intense focus on faster-growing clinical areas, including brain health, advanced cardiometabolic and molecular genomics and oncology.

In addition, acquisitions are a key growth driver with an emphasis on accretive outreach purchases as well as other independent labs. Our strategy also includes driving operational improvements across the business with the strategic deployment of automation and AI to improve quality, service, efficiency and the workforce experience.

Here are a few key updates on the progress we have made in these areas in the fourth quarter of 2024. Please note that my following comments are focused primarily on our US operations. In Physician Lab Services, we delivered high single-digit revenue growth, driven primarily by strong organic growth and contributions from acquisitions in the US.

As a reminder, volumes from both hospital outreach and independent lab acquisitions originate in the physician offices. Last month, we closed our acquisition of the Outreach lab business of University Hospitals in Ohio and completed the transition of the business in January.

We expect to moderate our pace of acquisitions in 2025 as we focus on driving growth from productivity from transactions completed last year. In addition to acquisitions, other growth drivers in the quarter included new customer wins as well as growth among large physician groups and community health centers.

We also saw a step-up in functional medicine testing as more people take an interest in prevention and wellness. In the fourth quarter and full-year, we benefited from robust utilization compared to historical rates. We also continued to see strong volume and revenue growth from Medicare Advantage plans, which value our high-quality, low-cost testing for their narrow networks.

We are well-positioned to benefit from these dynamics as we expand access through our health-plan partnerships with Elevance Health and Centerra Health Plans, both of which took effect on January 1. Today, we have access to more than 90% of the in-network lives in the US.

First, in-hospital lab services, we grew revenues nearly 3% in the fourth quarter, primarily due to solid continued demand for reference testing complemented by growth in professional lab services. Hospitals continued to order a greater range of reference tests from our expanding advanced diagnostics menu rather than performing these tests in their own labs.

By referring testing to us, hospitals are freed from the pressures that come from performing specialized tests in-house such as hiring skilled lab personnel and investing in expensive lab testing equipment. In professional lab services, we completed three collaborations with health systems in Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

We expect to see modest contribution from these relationships in early 2025. Looking at 2025, we expect hospitals to continue to struggle with high wage and supply inflation, constrained access to capital and keeping up-to-date with laboratory innovation.

At the same time, patients and payers want greater value from lab services. Hospitals increasingly recognize that Quest can improve access to innovative and cost-efficient lab services through reference testing, lab management and outreach lab acquisitions.

In consumer initiated testing, our consumer-facing platform, questhealth.com grew total revenues nearly 50% in the fourth quarter and approximately 40% for the full-year to just over $60 million. Together with revenue from our channel partners, consumer initiated testing revenues grew to nearly $100 million in 2024. During the year, we also greatly expanded our Questhealth.com offering to include 135 different tests to provide a comprehensive platform for serving today's increasingly health-minded consumers.

In advanced Diagnostics, we experienced double-digit growth across several clinical areas in the fourth quarter, including in brain health, advanced cardiometabolic, autoimmune and women's health. We generated strong growth in brain health, health largely due to impressive demand for our AD blood tests for assessing Alzheimer's disease risk.

We will continue to explore opportunities to extend our portfolio with new biomarkers that can help providers better assess Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. We also generated strong growth in areas of advanced cardiometabolic and autoimmune testing, and we expect these patterns to continue in 2025. Our growth in women's health was driven largely by prenatal and hereditary genetic testing.

We were also pleased to see strong adoption of our self-collection option for testing of genital tract infections during the quarter. In molecular genomics and oncology, we spent much of last year developing and validating our Haystack MRD blood test to aid in the early detection of minimal residual disease from solid tumor cancers.

We also engaged with approximately 75 leading academic health systems and community oncology centers in our Haystack MRD early Experience program and are pleased with the favorable feedback we received. We are now transitioning these organizations to a commercial program and are focused on expanding utilization among medical oncologists.

Turning to operational excellence, our Invigorate program delivered our targeted 3% annual cost-savings and productivity improvements. Here are some examples of how we're improving operations. We pilot many of our automation and AI solutions at our laboratory in Clifton, New Jersey.

During the fourth quarter, we developed and implemented a proprietary system in that automates labeling and test tube preparation for tuberculosis testing, eliminating manual intervention and improving quality. In addition, we began testing and automated a sessioning solution that speeds requisition processing.

Also in Clifton, we deployed a third-party AI solution that enhances parasiteology screening by flagging likely positive specimens requiring closer human examination. We plan to roll-out these solutions to our other labs later in 2025. Improving workforce engagement remains a major priority, and I'm pleased that our retention rates significantly improved across multiple job categories in 2024.

Now before I turn it over to Sam, I want to thank our more than 55,000 Quest and Life Labs colleagues for delivering on our business imperatives last year. This amazing group of people is the engine behind our growth and the reason we entered 2025 strong, energized and ready to deliver on our purpose, working together to create a healthier world, one life at a time.

And now Sam will provide more details on our performance and 2025 guidance. Sam?

Sam Samad
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Quest Diagnostics

Thanks, Jim. In the fourth quarter, consolidated revenues were $2.62 billion, up 14.5% versus the prior year. Consolidated organic revenues grew by 4.8%. Revenues for Diagnostic Information services were up 15.1% compared to the prior year, reflecting the contributions from recent acquisitions, including Life Labs as well as growth in our key physician and hospital channels.

Total volume measured by the number of requisitions increased 13.9% versus the fourth quarter of 2023 with organic volume growing by 0.6%. During the quarter, weather negatively impacted volume by approximately 50 basis-points. Total revenue per requisition was up 0.2% versus the prior year, driven primarily by an increase in the number of tests per rec and favorable test mix, mostly offset by the impact of the LifeLabs acquisition, which carries a lower revenue per requisition.

On an organic basis, revenue per rec was up 3.3% in the quarter versus last year. Unit price reimbursement was relatively flat, consistent with our expectations. Reported operating income in the fourth quarter was $361 million or 13.8% of revenues compared to $267 million or 11.7% of revenues last year. On an adjusted basis, operating income was $409 million or 15.6% of revenues compared to $338 million or 14.8% of revenues last year.

The increase in adjusted operating income was due to strong organic revenue growth and the impact of recent acquisitions, partially offset by the impact of weather, wage increases and higher performance-based compensation. We estimate the impact of weather on operating margin to be approximately 30 basis-points. Reported EPS was $1.95 in the quarter compared to $1.70 a year-ago. Adjusted EPS was $2.23 versus $2.15 the prior year.

Adjusted EPS in the fourth quarter was impacted by higher interest expense and a higher tax-rate versus the prior year. We estimate the EPS impact of weather to be approximately $0.06 in the quarter. Cash from operations was $1.33 billion in the full-year 2024 versus $1.27 billion in the prior year.

Turning now to our full-year 2025 guidance. Revenues are expected to be between $10.7 billion and $10.85 billion. Reported EPS expected to be in a range of $8.34 to $8.59 and adjusted EPS to be in a range of $9.55 to $9.80. Cash from operations is expected to be approximately $1.45 billion and capital expenditures are expected to be approximately $500 million.

We have posted a presentation on the Investor Relations page of our website that includes an adjusted EPS bridge, which shows some of the key elements to bridge from our 2024 adjusted EPS to the 2025 adjusted EPS guidance we shared today. Our 2025 guidance reflects the following considerations.

Our revenue guidance assumes approximately 3% organic revenue growth with the remainder coming from the acquisitions closed in 2024. It does not assume any contribution from prospective M&A that could be completed in 2025. As you know, we absorbed the headwind last year related to the CrowdStrike IT outage, which we do not assume repeats in 2025.

We expect to begin generating revenue from the launch of our Haystack MRD test in 2025 and continue to anticipate that Haystack oncology will be slightly less dilutive versus the prior year. We are making investments in 2025 to modernize our IT infrastructure as well as to comply with FDA regulations of laboratory-developed tests that are scheduled to begin later this year.

Operating margin is expected to expand versus the prior year. We anticipate net interest expense to be approximately $275 million. Adjusted tax-rate is expected to be approximately 25% and our average share count for the full-year is expected to be approximately 114 million diluted shares outstanding.

With that, I will now turn it back to Jim.

James E. Davis
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Quest Diagnostics

Thanks, Sam. To summarize, we delivered strong consolidated and organic revenue growth in the fourth quarter and the full-year. We expanded our presence in important new geographies, including Canada through eight acquisitions and new health-plan relationships.

Our innovations in advanced diagnostics drove meaningful growth and Haystack MRD strengthens our position in molecular genomics and oncology. Given these business strengths and robust utilization, we expect to accelerate revenue and earnings growth this year. And now we'd be happy to take your questions. Operator?

Remove AdsSkip to Participants
Operator

Thank you. We will now open it up to questions. At the request of the company, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question. If you have additional questions, we ask that you please fall back into the queue. To be placed in the queue, please press star one from your phone. To withdraw, press star 2. Again, to ask a question, please press star one. Our first question will come from Kevin Caliendo with UBS. Your line is open, sir.

Kevin Caliendo
Analyst at UBS Group

Thank you. Thanks for getting me in so early. Appreciate it. Just a question on guidance and some of the assumptions that are in there. I appreciate the earnings bridge. I guess what I'm trying to understand a little bit is there's $20 million of additional investment spend for LDT and IT.

What else -- are there any other one-timers in there and specifically is, do you expect core margins, not sort of comping out some of the other things that have happened, but you said margins expect to expand. Does the guidance assume that just that core margins will expand ex all of the sort of one-timers that we had from last year or the accretion from deals and things happening.

I want to understand that in weather if there's any weather built-in from 1Q, whether it's the fires or the frozen that we had to deal with? Very long one question, but thanks.

Sam Samad
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Quest Diagnostics

Yeah, thanks, Kevin. This is Sam, and good morning. Let me just give some comments on guidance to address your question. First of all, the one-timers that you're asking about, they're all laid out in the bridge that we've included. There are no additional one-timers that you should be adding in or taking out.

The key things, I think from a positive standpoint that we talked about in addition to the organic revenue growth and the M&A contribution is a benefit-related to CrowdStrike, which obviously we don't expect to repeat in '25. And we've got some benefit in terms of the haystack reduced dilution, so some benefit year-over-year. But then from a -- an offset in terms of headwinds, we talked about the investments and we can share some more comments on that.

And it really relates to the FDA LDT compliance investments to get us in compliance with that and to build-up our regulatory capabilities. In addition to some investments in terms of modernizing our systems and our IT systems and the lab information systems, and we can talk some more about that.

Interest expense, we've talked about the fact that we had to fund the acquisitions that we took on, especially Life Labs, that represents a $0.50 headwind. And then there are some other headwinds that are laid out there. In terms of -- in terms of weather, we have not built any specific explicit assumption related to worse weather as a result of what we're seeing.

But obviously, we're monitoring Q1 and January closely because there have been some higher-than-expected weather disruptions, specifically the wildfires in California, specifically the freeze in the South and some of the snow that we've seen, also some lower temperatures in the Northeast and snow as well.

So there are some of these. In terms of operating margin, we are expecting operating margin expansion in terms of what we report. There's -- you don't have to normalize or make adjustments to get to expanded operating margins. We are expecting that our operating margin percentage, which finished at 15.6% in 2024 will expand in 2026 -- or in 2025, I should say.

James E. Davis
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Quest Diagnostics

Yeah. Hey, Kevin, let me just provide a little more color on the investments. So as Sam said, there's two-parts to it. One is in preparation for the FDA requirements. Now the first set of requirements go into effect on May 6 this year.

And notably, we have to stand-up a complaint handling unit and enable ourselves to report any what we call medical device reporting to the FDA. So that does require some investment. It requires some additional resources to do that. So in-part, that is what some of those investments are used for.

The second and more substantial piece is, look, as you all know, this is a digital enterprise that we operate today from order intake to our logistics systems to how we operate the labs to how we provide results through our MyQuest application and our entire billing system. We think about that as our entire order-to-cash spectrum of systems.

And while we have been making investments from time-to-time, we need to make some more substantial investments this year and next year. And the benefits from those investments are certainly going to help us improve operations and improve the entire customer experience.

So we're modernizing this IT infrastructure. We're going to migrate some of our current systems into cloud-based systems. And over-time, that's going to dramatically reduce the complexity. It's going to create more efficiencies between our labs and it's really, really going to improve the overall customer experience.

Ultimately, it's going to lower our IT costs and there's going to be a good ROI on these investments. We're going to lay this out more at our Investor Day on March 19, but that's really what that $0.20 is being used for.

Operator, the next question.

Operator

The next question will come from Patrick Donnelly of Citi. Your line is open.

Patrick Donnelly
Analyst at Smith Barney Citigroup

Hey guys, thank you for taking the questions. Sam, maybe one for you to start, just helpful to hear you talk about the margin expansion this year overall. Can you just talk about the cadence, anything to call-out as the year progresses? I know Life Labs starting lower-margin, it's heading to corporate average at some point.

So maybe just talk through that would be helpful. And then Jim, just quickly on utilization, obviously been elevated here. What have you seen as you exited 4Q into this year and just the assumptions on utilization as we work our way through '25? Thank you guys.

Sam Samad
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Quest Diagnostics

Yeah, thanks, Patrick. So on margin, so yes, again, let me reiterate, we are expecting margin expansion this year versus 2024. I think the components that you see in the bridge that we laid out in the guidance, organic revenue growth, approximately 3% at the midpoint.

That's basically assumed that a contribution margin that comes in at roughly about 40%. Then you have the acquired revenue growth, which is roughly, let's call it, $0.70 at the midpoint is basically a combination of Life Labs, which is the more significant piece because of the fact that we have three quarters in 2025 that we didn't have in 2024 or at least the better part of three quarters.

And that will come in at a margin rate, which is in the lower double-digits or in the low-double-digits, I should say. So below our corporate average. I think you mentioned it and you're right, Life Labs will start at a margin rate which is low-double-digits, will ramp-up over two to three years to get to our corporate average. But this year, it will be lower and it's a bit of a drag on the margin rate. But in terms of the other acquisitions, they come in at somewhere in the 35% to 40% contribution margin.

So all-in, that acquired revenue growth is probably coming in at the high-teens in terms of contribution margin. Now you asked about the cadence and I won't talk about margin rate, although it is -- it is a bit of a proxy in terms of how EPS will come in. But I think the best way to talk about cycling is really go back to our pre-COVID averages in terms of what the cycling was by quarter. And I'll just mention these just as a comparative point.

It doesn't necessarily mean that our cycling is going to be exactly that in 2025, but it's a good proxy and it's a good proxy for how margin rate also will be across the quarters. But in terms of contribution from EPS, I would say roughly 22.5% is what we used to see pre-COVID in the first-quarter, 26.5% in the second, 26% in the third and approximately 25% in the fourth.

Now, again, I'm not telling you this is what our cycling is in 2025, but it's directional and it's a good proxy for what you would expect close to cycling to be in 2025. So that's what we used to see pre-COVID.

James E. Davis
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Quest Diagnostics

Yeah. And then your question on utilization, look, we're pleased with the utilization coming out-of-the fourth quarter. We look at it in many ways and across many segments. In terms of overall rec volume, we did have a slight weather impact in the quarter because of the hurricane early in Q4. So that cost us probably 50 basis-points.

And then we've been getting out of certain capitated business arrangements in California that impacting -- it's just business we weren't making money on. So we walked away from that and that cost us a little volume. And but when we look at the volume in our core physician and hospital segment, the rec volume from those segments was very, very strong in the quarter.

Now, as Sam also mentioned, our rev per rec organically ex-LifeLabs was up 3.3% in the quarter. And as you know, there's a lot of things that go into that rev per rec calculation. The first thing we look at is price per test that was relatively flat in the quarter.

But the second and biggest driver of that rev per rec increase is test per rec and that was probably two-thirds of the increase in the overall organic rev per rec in the quarter. And so that's utilization as well. And what's driving it is some of the new tests that we've rolled-out, the brain health of AB-42 Forder, AB 4240 in the tau markers, our advanced cardiometabolic testing, we're seeing big increases in things like Lple A and APO-B.

Our autoimmune testing has been really propelling some of the test per rec growth. And then finally, I'd mentioned, we're seeing a nice uptick in volume from what we call functional health types of physicians. And as you probably know, they look at a lot of things and a lot of hormone testing and things like that.

So the trends on, the trends on volume in our core physician and hospital segment remain very, very strong.

Operator, next question?

Operator

The next question comes from Michael Cherny of Leerink Partners. Your line is open.

Michael Cherny
Analyst at Leerink Partners

Good morning. Congratulations on a great quarter. Maybe if I can just pull a little bit that thread there on Rev per rec. It's obviously a really strong year over the course of 2024. As you think about that dynamic heading into '25 and beyond, how much of the continued technological advancements are the drivers of this versus payer arrangements and marketing? And how should we think about this in terms of a long-term trajectory?

James E. Davis
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Quest Diagnostics

Okay. So again, let's fast-forward into 2025. We'll start with price, price per test. You know, at this point in the year, it could probably swing between plus or minus 30 basis-points, okay? There's still lots of contracts to negotiate as we go through the year.

And the one segment that has been experiencing some price pressure is the hospital segment, in particular, reference testing. I think we've indicated on the past calls during the entire COVID period from 2020 through 2023, hospitals really didn't go out to RFP for reference testing providers, right?

They were so busy with other things. So we're seeing an uptick in RFPs and there's still price pressure in that segment. So on par though, look, we think it's again within a range of plus or minus 25 to 30 basis-points. The test per rec, you know, we expect it to continue. We're still at the very early stages.

So when I talk about incredible test growth on things like Apob and LP little A in the brain health portfolio, the overall volume of these tests is still relatively low. So we still think there's significant growth in these segments left. Autoimmune disorders is another one. We're just seeing skyrocketing autoimmune disorders across the country.

So we expect those trends to continue. The last thing that goes into it is payer mix. And I didn't mention, but in the fourth quarter, we saw it all last year, our mix of Medicare, Medicare Advantage, that segment of our business has been growing faster than the rest of the business.

And so that is actually good business mix because they're generally heavier recs, they're more frequent recs. And as you know, many Medicare beneficiaries have comorbidities that just lead to more testing. So all of that is pretty favorable.

Sam Samad
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Quest Diagnostics

Maybe I can have just a couple of comments, Mike, from a financial standpoint. In terms of if you look at the, in Q4, it was up 3.3% organically. If you break that down between the components that Jim talked about, two-thirds of that is really a benefit from Tesper Rec, which has been increasing continuously over the last number of quarters.

And then the other third benefit is really a combination of payer mix and test mix. Test mix being some of the innovations that we have, payer mix is just driven-off of reimbursement and which payers were getting the contribution from the different payers.

You know the -- as we look towards 2025 or this year, Test Pirect will continue to improve, although our expectation is that it will slow in terms of the improvement. So that improvement, we don't expect it to be at the same pace that we've seen. I mean, we have -- we have been increasing quite substantially over a number of quarters and I wouldn't say we've peaked, but definitely that rate of improvement is not going to be at the same rate. So that's the only other comment that I would provide with regards to rev-req expectation in 2025.

James E. Davis
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Quest Diagnostics

Operator, next question, please.

Operator

The next question comes from Elizabeth Anderson of Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Elizabeth Anderson
Analyst at Evercore ISI

Hi, thanks for the question. This is Joanna [Phonetic] for Elizabeth. Maybe go back to that $0.20 IT investment for '25. I think you guys said that's most related to the LGT regulation. Is that expected to be a one-time investment or should we kind of we expect to repeat in '26 and beyond? Thanks.

James E. Davis
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Quest Diagnostics

Yeah. First, first we said on the $0.20, the majority of it will be on modernizing our IT infrastructure, but there is a portion in there that is for FDA readiness. Now it's difficult to tell what the future will be for that. As you know, there's a lawsuit in front of the courts right now that ACLA and other trade associations are brought and there'll be oral hearings on that on that lawsuit on February 19 and we expect the case to likely be settled by the end-of-the first-quarter or early second-quarter. So depending on the outcome of that, if the outcome supports the FDA position, then yes, there'll be some continued investments.

If the outcome favors our trade association, then those investments could certainly moderate. Now remember, outside of what we're doing on the core clinical business to get ready, we do have segments in Quest Diagnostics that already operate under 21 CFR part A20. These are segments that serve our pharmaceutical industry customers.

And so there'll continue to be some investments to improve those systems in readiness. But look, a lot of the future -- a lot of the future investments related to the FDA will depend on the court case.

Sam Samad
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Quest Diagnostics

And then the other part of that $0.20 that you referenced is the IT investments that we're going to make that Jim talked about earlier. Those investments will continue. We have investments to modernize our systems.

So we don't expect that to be just this year. However, we talked on the Q3 call about our long-term guide in terms of expecting high single-digit EPS over the long-term and that we still -- we reaffirm. So those investments will continue, but they're part of our long-term guide expectation.

James E. Davis
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Quest Diagnostics

Operator, next question, please.

Operator

The next question comes from Luke Sergott of Barclays. Your line is open.

Salem Salem
Analyst at Barclays

This is Salem on for Luke Sergat. Thanks for the questions. Just to start-off, could you guys provide a little more detail on what you expect the revenue contribution will be for the Outreach lab services business acquisition you guys had with University Hospitals?

And then assuming you'll get some benefit from the value-based contracts you have in-place with payers, first, what's like the typical rate you get on-top of your average reimbursement at the onset of these contracts? And how does that trend down in the next couple of years? And can we expect that kind of typical rate for this transaction.

Sam Samad
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Quest Diagnostics

Maybe I'll start with the University Hospital one and want to talk about value-based compensation or incentives in general. But in terms of University Hospital, we made this acquisition. We closed it at the end-of-the year. So right at the end of 2024, it's an acquisition of roughly $180 million. We don't usually provide you know, revenue per each of these outreach acquisitions. So we're not going to provide exactly what the revenue is, but I'll give you a couple of points here to consider.

You know, usually there is a certain valuation that we pay for those acquisitions, which is somewhere around 3.5 times of revenues. That doesn't mean that's what University Hospital is, but there's a certain valuation we pay for these outreach acquisitions. And this is a ballpark kind of number on average. And then the other piece that you need to consider is that this contribution from University Hospital is going to be in that acquired revenue growth bar that you see in the bridge that we have included on our website.

And so it's part of that $0.65 to $0.75 contribution in terms of EPS from acquisitions. Now as I said before, LifeLabs is a healthy portion of that. There's other carryover from outreach acquisitions that we made in '24 beyond just university, but that is included in that piece. And Jim, did you want to give any comments on value-based incentives?

James E. Davis
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Quest Diagnostics

Yeah. From time-to-time and we didn't really see any in the fourth quarter, but from time-to-time, we get value-based incentive payments that are tied to moving recs from expensive health systems into Quest Diagnostics. That generally helps the payer obviously.

And as importantly, it helps the employer and it helps the patient. And so some of those incentives come at a six-month period, some come after a 12-month period, look-back. So they're hard to predict. And you know, again, we call them out generally in our quarterly results when they do occur. Now the other way we do collect some of these incentives is when we make these outreach acquisitions, and as you know, some of these health systems are getting 2 times to 3x the rates that we're getting, over-time, our rates don't just migrate exactly to Quest Diagnostic rates.

They'll come down over a period of two to three years. And so there's what I call incremental pricing. So as we move it from a health system payer rate to a Quest Diagnostics payer rate. Sometimes those come as bonus payments and sometimes it's just part of the overall pricing.

Operator, next question.

Operator

The next question comes from Pito Chickering of Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Pito Chickering
Analyst at Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft

Hey, good morning guys and thanks for taking my question. Looking at the competitive environment, you expanded access in several states in 2025 with two payers that lost one state. How do you see the landscape shaping up in 2025? And do you see more RFPs coming up this year that could result in more turnover sort of next year? It's just been a couple of years since you've seen sort of as much volatility with states turnover.

James E. Davis
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Quest Diagnostics

Thanks so much. Yeah. So first of all, net-net, on all of the payer changes that it came about in 2024, we're better-off. So when we look at the lives that we picked-up through Elevance in Colorado, Nevada, Virginia, and we were not in-network with some of the plants in Georgia. When we look at the lives that we pick-up from Centerra and then we subtract the lives we lost in Alabama, we're better-off by well more than 1 million lives.

So our access in total has significantly improved as we enter 2025. In terms of agreements that we will negotiate here in 2025, look, as you know, the typical health-plan contract is somewhere between three and five years. So every year, we renew somewhere between 25% and 30% of health-plan arrangements. And this year will be in that typical range.

So more to come on that, but every year, we're renewing agreements in that magnitude and we're going to -- we're going to do it again this year.

Operator, next question, please.

Operator

The next question will come from David Westenberg of Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

David Westenberg
Analyst at Piper Sandler Companies

Hi, thank you for taking the question. So just on the acquisition and integration, I believe you completed my count is eight acquisitions in 2024, including big ones like LifeLab, had a lot of inorganic growth. How do you expect the -- those acquisitions to enhance the revenue stream?

And how should we think about as they lap the organic revenue growth? Would that actually accelerate? And just I'm thinking about puts and takes on integration speed, what exactly do you have to do this year given the amount of acquisitions you did in the last year and what would make you go back to a little bit more aggressive acquisitions just given the fact that there is a lot out there available to you? Sorry, that was long.

James E. Davis
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Quest Diagnostics

Yeah. Sure. So as Sam indicated in his comments, the 2025 revenue growth that is coming from acquisitions, carryover acquisitions is about 6%. And as you know, we only carry that growth through the date -- through the 12-month anniversary, okay? So we closed Life Labs in September of last year. It had five months of impact, four months of impact last year. And so we carry that through the first seven, eight months of this year.

So in total, it's about 6 percentage points of our growth in 2025 and more than two-thirds of that is life lapse, okay? So we feel-good about that. Now, yes, the team is hard at-work at integrating these acquisitions and yet the funnel of opportunities remains strong. So we'll continue to assess the opportunities. We're not backing away from any. If it fits our criteria of we have great payer access in that market.

If our share is very small in that market, then it becomes an attractive opportunity for us to look at. So while we have a lot of work to do to integrate what we've got on our plate, we're not going to be shy about picking things up and going after things that improve our market access.

Sam Samad
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Quest Diagnostics

Maybe I can add just a couple of quick comments, Dave. You know, you talked about sort of difficulty of integration and complexity of integration. And yes, there were a lot of acquisitions in 2024. Now remember, LifeLabs is more of a standalone entity that's in Canada, it's an established company. They have labs that are established. There's a lot of things that they can learn from us, but we can learn from them as well.

So I would say the integration is lighter there because they are already operating and we're not -- we're not looking to close labs or move them to our systems at this point. So that's an easier integration. And then you asked about sort of the cadence of M&A, what would it take to do more. Just keep in mind, I mean, we're not -- it's not that we're not doing any more M&A in '25.

We have not included in our guide any new M&A that has not been announced. But we do have in our capital plan, we have allocated certain capital for potential what we call tuck-in M&A. It's mostly focused on the hospital outreach lab acquisitions. So we will do more M&A because these are very attractive opportunities that scale very quickly and get to a healthy contribution margin.

So, I just want to make sure that people don't expect that we're not going to do any more M&A.

James E. Davis
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Quest Diagnostics

Operator, next question?

Operator

The next question comes from Andrew Brackmann of William Blair. Please go-ahead with your question.

Andrew Brackmann
Analyst at William Blair & Company, L.L.C.

Hi guys, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to ask on Haystack. First, can you maybe just sort of shed a little bit more light on any volume or reimbursement expectations for that asset in '25. But I guess also bigger-picture here and way more important than '25, as you're moving these customers to those commercial programs, how should we be thinking about any additional pull-through or halo effect that having this asset now in the commercial phase should allow on the oncology side of the business. Thanks.

James E. Davis
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Quest Diagnostics

Yeah. So thanks, Andrew. So look, we're pleased with the progress that we've made with Haystack. As we mentioned in the comments, we served over 70 customers on a non-revenue basis last year, a very, really nice mix of academic medical centers, community oncology. And so the emphasis right now is on moving those customers into full commercial arrangements.

Now what -- as we start, we're going to build. We're going to build Medicare, we're going to build Medicare Advantage. We expect denials to be high at the beginning, but you then fight those denials and you then begin the conversations with the appropriate MAC or the appropriate Medicare Advantage plan around the goodness of the test and why it is important for patients. And so we do expect, as Sam indicated, to get modest revenue from that business this year. Now you asked about other opportunities.

First, let me remind everyone, look, oncology is a $1 billion business for Quest Diagnostics today. That includes some of our screening assays that includes a very, very strong anatomical pathology business and it includes a very, very strong hematology business. So we actually expect to get pull-through of our MRD assay from the existing set of customers that we have and we're already seeing -- we're already seeing that pay-off.

We also have -- in addition to an MRD assay, we have a therapy planning assay, our TSO 500 assay. And so we expect to get some benefits in that segment of our business as well.

Operator, next question?

Operator

Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one at this time. The next question comes from Tyco Peterson of Jefferies. Your line is open.

Noah Kava
Analyst at Jefferies & Co.

Hey, this is Noah on for Tyco. Thanks for taking our call. I wanted to ask about preventative screening, particularly with the Braidwood case going on. I was wondering how big your exposure is to preventative screening and if you have any assumptions on potential impact if USPSCF was authority? Thanks.

James E. Davis
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Quest Diagnostics

I'm sorry. I mean you mentioned that Bradwell kits?

Noah Kava
Analyst at Jefferies & Co.

Case.

James E. Davis
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Quest Diagnostics

So for -- basically for that yeah, you were cutting out a little bit there. So I'm not -- I'm not familiar with the case, Sam, I think you are. Okay. So look, in general, there seems to be what I would call a shift in focus going on across the country. And that shift in focus from taking of spending all our time and effort on sickness and in curing disease to this shift towards what I would call prevention and wellness.

And in general, we actually think that's a -- it is a wonderful shift for the lab industry, right? We strongly believe it's tied to our purpose that lab testing should be used early, early and often in order to ensure somebody is not moving from one morbidity to another morbidity. And so we're excited by a lot of the work that's going on in functional medicine today because that focus is really on prevention and wellness. So we feel-good about that and we think those trends are going to help the lab industry.

Operator, next question, please.

Operator

The next question will come from Jack Meehan of Nephron Research. Your line is open.

Jack Meehan
Analyst at Nephron Healthcare Investment Research

Thank you and good morning. I wanted to get -- I'm not sure if this was addressed. I don't think it was, but latest thoughts on haystack. I know you talked about expecting to generate some initial revenue here. But can you talk about expectations for clinical data updates we might be able to expect this year and just progress in terms of getting Medicare payment for the test? Thank you.

James E. Davis
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Quest Diagnostics

Yeah. Thanks, Jack. So I did give a few brief comments, but just to, we went through this urban experience program for six to seven months during 2024. And so we gathered a lot of insights on our new assay. We gathered a lot of experience with close to my customers that touched academical -- academic medical centers as well as community oncology centers.

So we're now in the process of moving those customers to full commercial arrangements, which will include billing of Medicare and Medicare Advantage plants. Like any new test, you start the billing process, you expect some denials, you respond to those denials in a very thoughtful way and you engage with the appropriate MAC as well as the Medicare Advantage plans. And so look, we have a ton of experience with this, as you know.

Our broad reach into every Medicare Advantage plan in the country, our health-plan access, our relationships are all very positive. And so we will get revenue in this segment this year. So in terms of new clinical studies, all I would say is stay-tuned. Paystack for many, many years even prior to our ownership by Quest Diagnostics had funded many clinical trials, some of which are coming near an end and we'll be able to publish, I think, some great results this year.

Operator, next question.

Operator

The final question for today will come from Erin Wright of Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Erin Wright
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Great. Thanks. Just a bigger-picture question as we head into kind of 2025 and how you think about how it's progressing in terms of market-share gains versus underlying utilization, what's embedded in your expectations on that front? I know you talked a little bit about the underlying environment, but I particularly want to know because is it accelerating in terms of the market -- underlying market-share gains that you're seeing as well?

And then -- and then also, just lastly, if I can sneak one in there on PAMA, it's also regulatory environment. You spoke to LDT stuff, but any thoughts in terms of the change in-kind of administration and how you're viewing your visibility into that? Thanks.

James E. Davis
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Quest Diagnostics

Yeah. So let me start with the latter question on PAMA. So as you know, the rate cuts are did not go into place. So this was the fifth year that rates were left the same and we feel-good about that. I would actually say there's going to be renewed focus on PAMA reform this year. As you know, there's three committees that we generally work with. There's the Senate Finance Committee, the House and Means Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Those three committees are really charged with, you know, all things health-care in this country. So the committee -- in two of the three, there's new committee chair people. We know who they are. We've already had outreach to them. And I would say, look, there is strong bipartisan support to actually solve it this year. So we're excited about the opportunity to get a final solution to PAMA as we work throughout 2025.

I can tell you, it's the number-one priority of our Trade Association and we've been hard at-work since January 2 to get a solution in-place. Yeah. Utilization. Yeah. So on the market-share utilization question, look, I think in general for the independent labs that all independent labs are making progress from a market-share standpoint. What you see the outreach acquisitions that we've done is a -- is a sign that hospitals are less focused on gathering that work-in the communities and more focused on deploying their capital, their assets, their resources, their know-how to other parts of health system operations.

So I feel-good about our prospects. It was a share gain year. And again, I just think we're seeing health systems pay less attention to that outreach book of business than they have in the past, and I think that's great signs for Quest Diagnostics as well as the independent lab industry.

Any other questions, operator?

Operator

That was our final question for today, sir. Thank you for participating in Quest Diagnostics fourth quarter and full-year 2024 conference call.

James E. Davis
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Quest Diagnostics

Thanks, everyone. We appreciate you joining in and look-forward to seeing you all on March 19 at our Investor Day in New York City.

Operator

A transcript of prepared remarks on this call will be posted later today on Quest Diagnostics website at www.Questdiagnostics.com. A replay of the call may be accessed online at /investor or by phone at 866-360-8701 for domestic callers or 203-369-0179 for international callers. Telephone replays will be available from approximately 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time on January 30 to -- excuse me, 2025 until midnight Eastern Time, February 13 of 2025. Thank you and goodbye.

Corporate Executives
  • Shawn Bevec
    Vice President, Investor Relations
  • James E. Davis
    Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
  • Sam Samad
    Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Analysts

Alpha Street Logo

Transcript Sections

Remove Ads