a. Demand
Teladoc guided to $541 million in revenue for the quarter and analysts were expecting $546.5 million. The company posted $554.2 million, beating its expectations by 2.4% and analyst estimates by 1.4%.
Teladoc posted 53.6 million U.S. paid members for Q4 2021 which was 1.1% ahead of its estimates. The company also facilitated 4.41 million total visits which was 10.3% ahead of its estimates. Total visits for the quarter would have been 4.2 million but the company received a 221,000 visit boost from an accounting change. Without this tailwind, the organization would have beaten its estimates by 2.4%.
NOTE: The company moved a large chunk of BetterHelp revenue from its domestic bucket to the international bucket. This messed with visit utilization rate and also per member per month (PMPM). If you’re seeing previous utilization and PMPM metrics change from previous reports to this one, that is why. For PMPM specifically, the company changed the disclosure to Average U.S. Revenue Per Member during the period.
This revenue growth includes an inorganic contribution — Teladoc delivered 32% organic growth.
b. Profitability
Teladoc guided to $72.5 million in adjusted EBITDA for the quarter and analysts were expecting $72 million. The firm generated $77.1 million in adjusted EBITDA, beating its estimates and analyst projections by 6.3% and 7.1% respectively.
Teladoc guided to a loss per share of $0.63 for the quarter and analysts expected a loss per share of $0.54. Teladoc lost $0.07 per share, beating its estimates by $0.56 and analyst expectations by $0.47. Note that the loss of $0.07 per share includes a stock based compensation and amortization charge of $0.67 in total as well as a $0.31 per share income tax benefit. When excluding all of these temporary impacts, we are left with earnings per share of $0.10. Note that I only excluded half of the Q4 stock based compensation charge to represent a rough estimate of what was M&A related vs. what part will be more recurring in nature.
Take the YoY net income margin improvement with a large grain of salt as it was powered by far less stock based compensation and amortization expenses associated with the Livongo purchase.
c. Guidance (using midpoints)
For 2022:
- Analysts were expecting $2.57 billion in 2022 sales. Teladoc guided to $2.60 billion, beating expectations by 1.2%.
- Analysts were looking for $352 million in adjusted EBITDA for 2022. Teladoc guided to $342.5 million, missing expectations by 2.7%
- This represents a 12.9%-13.4% margin and 90-140 bps expansion YoY on an apples to apples basis.
- Analysts were looking for a loss per share of $1.62 for 2022. Teladoc guided to a loss of $1.50, beating expectations by $0.12.
- Teladoc also expects 55 million U.S. Paid Members and 19.25 million total visits for all of 2022.