When presenting at the 33rd Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco on January 14, Matus stuck to the numbers. She showed slides that pointed to athenahealth's aggressive business model. The quotes in the slideshow are from Matus' presentation.
"We succeed only if our clients succeed. We don't sell a license to software and walk away. We're a partner in the care experience with our client, which makes us unique."
"As exciting and innovating as we are, our growth pattern is actually kind of a little boring. It's just straight up, which we like. And, we intend to continue. So solid track record of continuous growth, and we intend to keep that in terms of how we invest and how we look at how to structure the company."
"We started out with Collector, as you know. This graphic just gives a little bit of demonstration in terms of how that growth has gone product by product over time. "Jon (athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush) showed the timelime in terms of how we iterated and developed and improved them. And, you can see the impact that that's had on the market for these products. We continue across all our lines of business."
"The market was huge. The first bubble represents what we had when we were, just basically, ambulatory Collector. That was the market – $30 to $35 billion. If we only stayed there we would have untapped huge opportunity for growth. With the advent of ACE, we moved to the middle bubble – $38 to $44 billion in opportunity – gain, tremendous headroom. But, with the announcement of the acquisition of Razor Insights today, we move to the final bubble – $80 to $95 billion. The market is huge. We have tremendous upside, and we intend to capture that."
"We know a tremendous focus has to be on hiring the best people, developing our talent and putting them in a position where they can serve our clients best. Forty-four percent of new hires actually come from referrals from existing employees. That's a strong culture. Our employees love it. They love what they do; they love serving clients, and they bring more people in. We are rock-solid focused on leadership development and onboarding people appropriately. Our culture is our most important asset."
"You can see our track record of what we've been able to do through the cloud for out clients. On average a 6 percent increase in collections. We decrease empty appointments. We have the highest meaningful use attestation rate of any service out there. We consistently reduce days in accounts receivable. And we have a very high EHR adoption rate."
"Last year, 74 percent of our sales represented what we call "the triple barrel" – Collector, Communicator and Clinicals on the retail said. That's a sign that what we have is working. More than ever they're buying the entire package. We expect to carry that over to the inpatient space as we add capability."
"We pay about 60 percent of the cost of first-year revenue to get a sale. We get a quick payback because that's such a low cost of acquisition."
There are plenty of critics and skeptics about athenahealth's stock rise (now at about $138) David Einhorn, president of Greenlight Capital, is chief among them. In May 2014, he characterized athenahealth as one of the "cool kid stocks," while he was presenting at 19th Annual Sohn Investment Conference. He predicted the stock, which was then trading at $125 would go down to $14. Einhorn's comment at the presentation was followed the next morning by an 8 percent tumble.
David Einhorn is president of Greenlight Capital, which he co-founded in January 1996. In May 2014, he characterized athenahealth as one of the "Cool kid stocks," while he was presenting at the 19th Annual Sohn Investment Conference. He predicted the stock, which was then trading at $125, would go down to $14. Einhorn's comment at the presentation was followed by an 8 percent tumble in the stock price soon after opening bell the next morning.
Piper Jaffrey analyst Sean Wieland wrote in his most recent brief on athenahealth stock that "ATHN remains a top pick for 2015." The company, he writes, had "beaten back the bear case on multiple fronts, achieved a significant milestone in their move into the inpatient setting, and continue to pursue the path of most disruption in a rapidly changing market."
