Maximus, Inc. (MMS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. We can go ahead and get started. Hello, everyone. I'm Adam Heussner, part of the healthcare technology and distribution team here at Credit Suisse. Thanks, everyone, for joining us. Next up, we have Bruce Caswell, President and CEO; and James Francis, Investor Relations from Maximus for a fireside chat conversation. By way of background, Maximus engages and improves the levels of productivity and efficiency of government-sponsored programs to enable citizens around the globe to successfully engage with their governments at all levels and across a variety of health and human services programs. Bruce joined Maximus in 2004 and has held several leadership positions over the years within the company and most recently assumed the role of CEO in 2018. I have some prepared questions, but if anyone from the audience wants to ask a question, please feel free to e-mail me at [email protected]. And I can ask on your behalf. Bruce, James, thanks a lot for participating and looking forward to the conversation.

But maybe to begin, Bruce, maybe just touch on the various areas within government do you sell into, what types of solutions you offer? And maybe just how the company has evolved over the years?

Sure. I'd be happy to. And thank you very much, and thank you to your colleagues for the opportunity today. So an important thing to think about with Maximus is that, we are a critical and essential partner to governments around the world in administering complex health and human services programs that benefit populations in need. We exclusively stay on the civilian side of things. We don't get involved in defense or intel community work. As a company. We will do work in the defense health area. So helping our soldiers and our veterans in particular, access benefits that they need. And we also are not in the direct delivery of health care, particularly in the United States. We have a little -- some exceptions I can talk about outside of the United States, but the U.S. is about 80% of our business. Because of the role we play, it's important that we maintain an independent and conflict-free status as a company. And that's critical because often we're making decisions and supporting decisions on behalf of government. So we can't see -- can't be seen as having a conflict of interest ultimately with payers or providers that could benefit from those decisions. To give you some examples of some of the programs we administer, in some ways, you don't need to look much further than the front pages in the newspaper in a good way or also the programs that you and probably your relatives rely on each day. At the federal level, we are the main company behind a program called 1-800 MEDICARE, which also supports the federal marketplace. So anyone calling Medicare with a question and picks up the phone calls that number. They're talking to a Maximus employee, helping to get that question resolved. And certainly, as the federal marketplace has ramped up in -- with open enrollment this year as well as with Medicare open enrollment. We've been hiring a lot of folks to support that program. We most recently concluded serving kind of a mission that goes all the way into the constitution in the United States, and that was the 2020 census. We provided all the customer contact center operations for the 2020 census, which included spinning up 10 operational sites and hiring more than 10,000 people to support that program. The state side of things, we're an integral component of Medicaid. And while you would not think of us in the same context as a managed care plan or an MCO organization, we're an upstream component of that entire process. So in many states, we help with the determination of eligibility for beneficiaries of Medicaid, where a final decision on eligibility is by statute required by a state employee. We're often the [indiscernible] in that process, where we collect information to help people complete their applications and prepare a case for ultimate eligibility determination. Then for probably roughly between 60 million and 70 million Americans on Medicaid, we help to make an informed selection of a health plan. That's a function called the enrollment broker, and we do it in 23 different states, serving tens of millions of Americans in that function. Those are just a few examples of some of the work we provide. Perhaps most exciting recently, we've completed 2 significant acquisitions, one that deepens our capabilities and technology in the federal marketplace, serving customers like the SEC. I know that's exciting to the investment community and the financial community. We are the company behind the EDGAR system. And we recently, in fact, announced the expansion of that program and a critical rebid win for us, supporting EDGAR and taking it into the next generation. But we also, earlier this year, completed a major acquisition of Veterans Evaluation Services or VES, which puts us as a leading provider of examination services for the VA -- for veterans that are qualifying for obviously necessary benefits to support them after their service. So while we can talk certainly more about the lines of business, generally, what you'll find common across our business is, number one, we have long-term contracts, the relationships that we develop go on for decades with our government customers. Number two, we have a high rebid win rate in our industry. It's not uncommon to win 90% to 95% of your rebids. Further, we've got, because of those characteristics, high visibility to our revenue on an annual basis. We often enter a fiscal year with visibility to 90% or more of our revenue for that year. And in many ways, the long-term demographics that drive demand in our business are not changing anytime soon. And that is governments have a fundamental obligation to support their citizens, with health care benefits and other needs that they have access to services and so forth, governments themselves are not seeking to take that work on. They work with private partners often to accomplish that work. And as industrialized nations and rising middle classes continue to evolve, the demand for these types of services is only going to increase. So with that as a bit of a background, I'll pause, and I'm happy to go in any direction you'd like with the next question.

That's perfect. That's a great overview. And just based on your comments there, combined with the quick stroll through your website, I think you do get a sense of how extensive your solutions are across governments, whether it be federal state, but can you just give us a sense of how diverse that is? I mean, from revenue concentration standpoint, is it -- I mean, are you even specifically tied to any specific contract? Or would you say everything is pretty diverse when you look at across all the different types of businesses across federal state, international, U.S. Maybe some color there would be helpful.

Sure. Why don't I give you a high level and then ask James to comment on concentration, which we do address in our federal filings. What I like about our business is that there's commonality across the segments that we operate in. And as you said, we report the company externally with the U.S. federal business, a U.S. services business, and that's really our state level business. And then our, what we call outside the U.S., which is really the best way to think about that is 3 Commonwealth countries, so Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom as kind of one part of that business and then what I'd call emerging markets, which we can go into more detail. But across all of those externally reported segments, the commonality you find is program administration, where we are that partner to government in helping them come up with the application of people, process and technology that enables them to implement public policy and operate a program that achieves specific outcomes that they're seeking as a government. So we're really the solution experts, the solution developers that can make a program, a reality for governments. Another commonality you would find is, increasingly, our portfolio, we've been shifting to try to add more work of a clinical nature to our portfolio. And while I can speak about other specific examples beyond just the veterans evaluations, work that I mentioned previously, we really blended that portfolio up. So in many instances, we've got many clinicians working for us hand-in-hand helping to assess individuals for specific needs for specific benefits. A good example would be, just as we do the veterans valuations here, in the United Kingdom, we have a very large contract with the Department for Work and Pensions, where we handle disability benefit determinations for the country, for the entire country. And so pre-pandemic, that was about 1 million benefit determinations a year. And again, we don't make a final determination, but we basically handle the assessment, prepare the case where then a government decision maker can make a final determination of benefit. We do that at scale with over 1,500 clinicians across 150 offices in the United Kingdom and pre-pandemic, we were seeing about 0.75 million cases face-to-face and 0.25 million paper based. You can imagine with COVID, we're now shifting more to a telephonic and maybe even video-based model in the future, which is an interesting point about how work is changing. But those are common elements that you'll see across our business. James, do you want to address kind of 80-20 rule or customer concentration?

Sure. 80/20 rule speaks to the fact that if you look at our top 20 contracts that represents 75% to 80% of our revenues. New York has, within recent years, been a top customer exceeding 10%, I think, in fiscal 2021, which we'll report actually next week. You'll see New York be a little bit down due to some impacts from COVID and then that should swing back up. New York is a great example of a customer, and Bruce mentioned this earlier about decades-long relationship. New York is a great example where we've been able to sell on more work and offer better solutions more solutions, conflict-free solutions for the customer. So we've been operating New York's enrollment broker since 1998, that contract. We still do that work today but as it undergone expansion, where we're doing now independent assessments of individuals with intellectual and development disabilities and families in need of behavioral health services. And then we've got a sister contract in New York, New York State of Health where we support the health plan marketplace, which has grown dramatically with the evolution of health care and the Affordable Care Act. So I mentioned that as a point of pride, with New York in general. And then just Bruce mentioned, just to cap off the revenue and customer mix, Bruce mentioned, 80% of revenues in the U.S., that's when you look to next year and you get full period contributions of the acquisitions you should think about U.S. Federal Services segment being a little bit closer to 50% of the business. Outside the U.S., we have a big UK Restart project ramping up. That should be about 20% of the business. And then the Delta a little bit more than 30% is going to be U.S. Services. So that's kind of the spectrum of the segments.

Got it. No, that's super helpful. And then I guess when you sell into these government services and the various programs that they offer. Can you just talk about some of the most important aspects that they look to you to make sure that our check the box when it comes like cybersecurity, for example, just given like where we are in terms of that, I guess, threat in terms of the data sensitivity that these government programs have, how important is that for you guys to make sure that everything is intact and ready to go once you're live with the customer?

Sure. It's very important. And our role, I want to be clear, is -- it differs from what you might consider a traditional technology company or a systems integrator role. So in many projects, We are combining technology that we bring to the table as part of the business process outsourcing contract with technology that government is providing that other vendors have implemented. And those source systems we'll often have a responsibility to access to pull data from or to provide data to, but we're not responsible for their ongoing security, right? So those source systems will be maintained in other government data centers or in the cloud, have other vendors maintaining them and so forth. So the perimeter, the boundary, if you will, of our security responsibilities begins with our systems and begins with the data that we have custody of while we use it. So we try to design programs so that we are not taking custody of sensitive data and having it for a long time, right? If we need access to it, we want it to be as limited duration as possible and ideally, deidentified before we can get it. In some instances, I will say the former CEO, Rich Montoni, our Vice Chairman, used to say, we should have a no-9s policy. In other words, like a 9-digit or social security numbers should be off limits. And there's a lot to be said for that. So we try to work with our customers to deidentify or munge data wherever possible so that we're not ever bringing that in. Now where we have to, cybersecurity is absolutely critical. And we've as a company really ramped up our skills over the last, I'd say, 3 to 5 years in that area with an excellent CISO and so forth. But it's something that you're -- you're never done with, right? You're always working to continue to improve and to be vigilant about. But really, the customers rely on us in many ways to develop and apply technology in ways that they may not be able to do themselves that can give them better insights to their programs and help them serve citizens more effectively. So more recently, some of the technologies that we're investing in include like natural language processing and artificial intelligence and so forth. So that when you're operating a large call center at scale, you can use natural language processing and AI, for example, to discern why citizens are calling about certain topics. What are the topics that are hot? What are the responses that they're being provided? How can we potentially deflect some of these calls and answer questions through social media and other channels to create much more of an omnichannel consumer experience and basically improve citizen satisfaction with the program? Increasingly, we've been able to use artificial intelligence as well to monitor call quality. And on one of our programs, we can effectively monitor nearly 100% the attributes of a call using AI. In other words, was the consumer greeted appropriately? Where they read appropriate disclosure statements? Was the call completed satisfactory to consumer -- for the consumer? So on and so forth, all using AI. It's absolutely fascinating. It used to be back in the day, right? We have people listening to samples of those calls and then providing corrections and so forth. Another good example of the technology that we deploy is in the back office where we have been just absolutely focused on robotic process automation, to take routine and mundane tasks that at times can be quite prone to human error, just off the table, replaced by bots that are able to execute those tasks. And that's driven meaningful savings to the bottom line and helped us expand margin in a number of programs.

That's very interesting. So earlier, you talked about how Maximus is the company behind the EDGAR database. It's behind the 1-800 MEDICARE. When we think about the mix of business, how much is it allocated to health care specifically versus what we would describe as just kind of like other government services?

Well, you can slice it a couple of different ways, starting with where we have kind of clinicians in the business, and that would be our assessments and appeals line of work. And that exists actually in all 3 segments. U.S. Services, U.S. Federal Services and outside the U.S. Next year, when we've got full period contributions from VES, which is an assessment type business. And you add up all those 3 pieces, it should be about 25% of the business of consolidated revenues. Then you can start adding in more programs under which we put them as program administration. This would be Medicaid-related programs, the eligibility and enrollment functions Bruce was talking about. On the federal side, Medicare support. Our largest contract is called contact center operations. for customer CMS, and that has 2 functions to it. Operating the 1-800 MEDICARE general contact support function as well as the second part is the U.S. federal based exchange. So with the Affordable Care Act, any state that didn't opt to build out the exchange could participate on the federal exchange. So we handle the contact centers related to that piece as well. So when you start bringing all that stuff in, you get up closer to 70%, 80% that would be health care. And then what's the rest of the business? Well, it's going to be the technology solutions piece that Bruce mentioned earlier. Workforce services or employment support is big. That's a large part of the outside the U.S. business segment. Doesn't really exist. We don't do a lot of support in United States in Employment Services. That business has just been brought down to a level meant to be operated at the local level and by nonprofits.

Got it. That makes a lot of sense. So you talked about these very, very long-term contracts that can go for decades. Did you also maybe just talk about some of the short-term stuff you guys do like -- is there anything that you've rolled out over the past 24 months per se, in relation to like COVID-19 specifically and helping governments address those types of issues in their response to helping people understand what they need to do in terms of vaccine, testing, maybe stuff like that. And anything you'd highlight there?

Yes. Absolutely. James, did you want to start?

I wanted to just go back to Adam's ending comment around decades long contracts. It's really our relationships that go back that long, procurement laws do require contracts to be bid at certain intervals. So you see various things. So we're coming up on the CCO rebid here, which is a maximum of 10 years in length. So that's that has to be rebid. Our average contract length I was just going to get in is that it is about 4 to 5 years when we strip out the short-term COVID response work, which has come in. And Bruce was just about to pick up, I think.

Yes. The -- interestingly, with the pandemic, a lot of customers were quickly overwhelmed, right, and needed support for certain functions. That began for us by doing contact tracing and disease investigation. And we took a slightly different approach than other companies. We brought -- we put together a team of epidemiological experts who effectively could help overlay the contact tracing and disease investigation contracts and provide supplemental staff to county level or state-based public health staff who are tremendously overwhelmed, right, at the beginning of the pandemic. That contact tracing and disease investigation then turned into supporting vaccine call centers, for example. And we were grateful to receive a contract to support the CDC back when the President was pushing for, I think it was 70% of Americans to be vaccinated by July 4. And so the phone number, that was up behind President, when you speak about it or the text message that you would text to and so forth was all reflective of work we were doing on behalf of our CDC customer behind the scenes, which was part of a broader contract called CDC Info, which was one of our major programs. And then as things have evolved, we've continued to support efforts to address vaccine hesitancy with our customers through our vaccine helplines. But we've also transitioned in many instances, to assist folks with unemployment insurance. It began with access to unemployment insurance benefit applications and helping support states with determinations of unemployment insurance benefit eligibility. But in many cases, now it's turning into a longer-term relationship to help kind of clean up the unemployment, the benefit roles. And also to provide kind of that level of service to the state that historically they haven't been able to achieve through their traditional delivery model, which often requires going to the legislature, getting authorization for a certain level of head count finding and hiring and keeping those head count on for a long time. Our model allows for searches and support and then diminishing support as needed. And because we deliver through a highly virtualized environment where many of our staff in many -- like 90% of our U.S. Services staff work from home presently. It allows for a very efficient and smooth access to the labor markets, hiring of individuals, training, application to a specific task and then decommissioning or moving on or moving them to other contracts. So it's a very -- It's very virtualized and flexible and fungible model, which is something that obviously many government customers don't have. So I think one of the things I'm most proud of coming out of the pandemic is, first of all, the fact that we were there at a time when a lot of customers, including the U.S. federal government, needed some support, and we were able to step up and work with them as a partner to provide it. But secondly, the pandemic opened new opportunities for us. So there were 37 states that sought private partners for support for unemployment administration and 17 of those states chose to work with us. And of those 17 states, those are 17 great new customers. And we've been able to convert a lot of that short-term work into longer-term work now with a number of those customers. So overall, it's -- I would just conclude by saying the flexibility of our business model and our delivery platform enabled us to quickly pivot the business to address those emergent needs.

Got it. Makes a lot of sense. Let me just touch on just the revenue model in general and how the -- how you sell in terms of a contracting approach across your various solutions and services. Maybe just like whether it be fixed pricing versus performance-based contracts? How does that work?

You'll see there's a joke we have with our auditors around here. Once you've seen one Maximus contract, you've seen one Maxim's contract. So we really have every different type in the portfolio, but there are some characteristics by segments. So U.S. Services Segment, those long relationships. We've gotten a lot of operational data. We've advocated for and customers have been receptive to performance-based contracting. That's a form of fixed price, but based upon some activity levels of fixed unit rate, PMPM, per call taken, per piece of paper process, that kind of thing, which helps as we can -- are able to drive efficiencies in the cost structure that does yield better margins and the operating history derisks it for us somewhat. When you see a procurement, you'll see different pricing scenarios cooked up by the customers. And a lot of times, they hire consultants to help them with that. U.S. Federal Services, you see more cost-plus work there. This is a type of structure that federal government customer is very comfortable in procuring with and administering. We do have some projects most notably, VES and VES acquisition, the new student loan business that has come in. Both of those are performance-based. So you see some mix -- a little bit of mix change there. You also see more T&M work in the U.S. Federal Services segment. The thing I mentioned driving better margins on performance-based work. The opposite is true for cost plus. You get less margin there, but you also get less risk. So any cost plus work when you see that in government contracting, think of mid- to high single digits. You won't see double-digit cost plus work. Outside the U.S., it swings back to performance-based. I mentioned a lot of outside the U.S. as Employment Services, a very common model that is used globally is to bill on a milestone basis. So when we attach with someone is the terminology of the U.K. government or the Australian government uses. And when we start a case with someone, that's the attachment we get paid. When we place someone, we get paid, when they sustain in a job for 3 months, we get paid for half a year, 1 year or so forth. So different variations to that, but that's generally how you think a performance-based contracting and employment services globally.

Got it. And that brings up a good segue into question I wanted to ask about that margin trend. And I guess what kind of goes into what you see across the business from a margin standpoint? And maybe let's just -- if you could talk about just some of the opportunities for margin expansion, and you've alluded to using artificial intelligence and natural language processing to analyze pretty much a whole population versus just a sample. So let me just talk about what you see as kind of the largest drivers for margin expansion moving forward? And then, I guess, maybe what are some puts and takes there as the government sees maybe your margins expanding? And as they look at the cost or cut cost, maybe later on, how does that work? And what are those conversations like?

I'm happy to touch on just quickly the way we look at margins and maybe go back and do a little history if Bruce wants to take the second part of that in a minute. We have a corporate target range of 10% to 15%, which is, that's operating income percent same as EBIT, which is fairly large, but it does -- we do want to account for the different contract mixes, which can change that. So when you -- if you go back and look at our financials fiscal year 2018, 2019, we had consolidated margins in the 11% to 12% range. Fiscal year 2020 was characterized by disruptions caused by the pandemic. We had a big write-down in outside the U.S. as the -- as prospects of us placing people in employment or diminished or unknown, so that forced to write down. And we had some disruption in the core programs as well. We have a very profitable activity embedded within our Medicaid contracts called redeterminations, which is reevaluating people for eligibility for Medicaid. That -- those redeterminations and the activity was paused -- has been paused throughout the pandemic. So just get to fiscal 2021, you start to see -- we're seeing better -- we're forecasting an improvement there, and that's caused by COVID work being a little bit more profitable. We've got some history operating it. But you also have VES and Attain acquisitions coming in. Those are -- due to the performance-based natures, do have better margins. VES being clinical in nature, even better margins there. So you see Federal which has been defined more as cost plus, you see Federal margins coming up from what they've been over the last couple of years. Obviously, it will be -- margins will be a function of the contract types and what mix is in there. we generally using our 10% to 15% bookends. We think of U.S. services as being towards the upper end of that. U.S. federal being towards the lower middle part of that, lower 1/3, let's call it. And then outside the U.S., it's been a rocky couple of years because there have been strong global economies, which have resulted in lower volumes due to those large-scale employment services program. So we didn't have really great margin contributions from that and then the pandemic hit and that affected our assessments contract in the U.K. And then the Employment Services business started picking up margins because we had a lot more volume in the system. But we've also done an investment, a deliberate investment in outside the U.S. in the form of start-ups. A Major U.K. mainstream Employment Services contract is coming online. Revenue recognition causes an upfront start-up loss in that contract flips, to being profitable in the back half of fiscal 2022. So when you put that all together, the margin profile for outside the U.S. has been a little bit more difficult. But we see -- once we see that U.K. restart program ramping and core programs, such as U.K., the assessment contract coming back online that really represents that segment kind of operating on all cylinders. Bruce, would you add anything?

I think it's fantastic, James, and I'll just punctuate the back end of the question in terms of what are the levers that really drive margin expansion. Yes, technology is certainly one of them, no doubt. And we're doing everything we can with our technology team to go out on scouting projects across the portfolio and really look at places where business processes can be rethought, reimagined, improved. I mean everything from -- we've got Lean Six Sigma teams in the organization that go out and do process improvement projects, but we also have a digital group that is expert at the development and deployment of robotic process automation and also just helping folks rethink how we can take labor out of the model and obviously engage consumers more effectively. So whether it's, I'd call it kind of digital 1.0 for us was better mobile apps, better websites, better call center capabilities, if you will. But digital 2.0 is going to be more fundamentally based on data. And making much more sophisticated use of the data that we have at our access while we are interacting with consumers so that we can apply techniques like cognitive computing techniques around artificial intelligence and machine learning to speed and streamline that consumer experience. Part of that, too, is when a consumer interacts with us, we want it to be a true kind of highly choreographed omnichannel experience. What does that really mean? It means that I could start an interaction in a call center and finish it with a text message. And throughout that process, there's kind of a chain of custody. I'm not having to reauthenticate every time. And the next person to work on my case is familiar with the procedures or the steps taken by the prior person, perhaps even in a different modality like the call center where it all began. So that -- it sounds, but the level of sophistication and choreography that it takes among systems behind the scenes is pretty amazing. So those are some examples of how technology can continue to help us stay ahead of the curve and take cost out. But the other really super important thing is when you're building a business and you're growing quickly, you obviously are always keeping an eye on SG&A as a percentage of revenue. And so we just -- we look at that carefully, and we want to be just super attended to not overbuilding SG&A and overhead as we continue to scale the company so that we can stay lean and stay nimble and be able to honestly have a highly variable cost model and structure so that if we see modulations in demand because in any 1 year, while we do have a high visibility to revenue, there are also certain contracts that are volume dependent. So for example, if we're providing support to FEMA in the hurricane season, and you've got a year that thankfully is light on hurricanes. Obviously, that's going to be a smaller contract this year than maybe it was in prior years. You got to make sure that you're not left then with bloated SG&A and overhead when that contract shrinks. So we really keep an eye on that. And that helps us achieve better margins. And the last thing I would tell you is in any business like this, you have to make sure that you're not operating in silos. So everything that we can do to create shared services that are leverageable across the business, across multiple platforms. So we're really kind of driving the highest utilization of our assets, whether those are human resources or whether they're IT systems, you want to have those assets highly utilized at every point in time possible. And in a shared services environment, like we operate, particularly with flexibility to have people work from home and so forth, that's much more achievable than it may have been historically around -- in the 4 walls of a call center.

That's great. That's very helpful. Just last 2 questions before we wrap up here. Just talk about the competitive landscape and how you guys see yourself differentiated. Maybe just talk about the -- what the barriers to entry are. Obviously, you talked about the long-standing relationships you have with a lot of entities across the U.S. So maybe just highlight some of the key differentiators you have relative to your peers. And I guess, how you think about the competitive landscape moving forward?

I'm happy to take the first part, Bruce.

Yes, go ahead, then I'll wrap it up, that would be great.

Yes. We don't have a -- in this hurts some interested shareholders and investors. We don't have actually a single competitor across all 3 segments. You got to look at it by segment. In U.S. Services with eligibility and enrollment broker work and assessment type work, you'll see is a name like Conduent, but then it quickly drops down into smaller even privately owned companies, Automated Health Systems, they're out of Pittsburgh, Faneuil, KePro, sometimes you'll see Deloitte in there. U.S. Federal Services, the big names then come back into focus Serco, General Dynamics IT, Cognizant Conduent, also that's in the BPO side of the U.S. Federal Services. But on the technology side, where you've got Attain, you'll see even the bigger names, IBM, Oracle, Leidos, Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton and that kind of thing. Outside the U.S., when we operate at scale, particularly in the U.K., you'll see Atos and Capita. You'll see Interserve. As you get into the outside to the health stuff, you'll see TELUS Health, other specialized nonprofits as well. But often an overlooked competitor in air quotes is actually the in-sourced labor workforce. Think about government and employees, doing the work as state employees that is actually well suited for us. So that's why Bruce was taking you through the unemployment insurance assistance. And why it was significant that we started doing that work during COVID and why we believe there are opportunities to continue doing that. Bruce, do you want to talk about barriers that we see?

One of the barriers to effectively taking on the programs that we administer is scale. I've had customers say a number of times to us that they love the services that we deliver and they feel confident when they buy Maximus because they know that we've got the depth of the bench and the resources needed to assist them if their needs change or if the project encounters challenges due to, I don't know, changing legislative requirements or operational challenges or what have you, we've got the teams and we've got the depth of bench to help our customers address those needs. So scale is important. I think another thing that's fairly unique about what we do is I think we're highly effective in translating very complicated public policy into operating models that can effectively deliver the outcomes that matter for our customers. That's a mouthful. But basically, taking something as complicated as the Affordable Care Act and figuring out how does an exchange need to operate? What should the consumer experience be in the health benefit exchange? And how do I work hand in glove with the technology provider in existing state systems and a call center operation and other channels, social media, mobile applications and so forth to make that as seamless as frictionless experience for consumers as possible? It's complicated work. And so being entrusted to be that, if you will, solution developer and translator from a public policy concept in the legislature to an operating model that can be delivered reliably and within a prescriptive budget is not for everyone. Another thing that I would, I guess, wrap by saying in terms of differentiators is that government contracting is itself a very unique industry. And there are commercial entities that have for years tried to kind of make that pivot into government services and government contracting. And I think that you really need to know what you're doing. There are perils along the way, if you get involved in the wrong types of contracts, you haven't done a good job of scoping them out and bidding them well and so forth. And so one of the things that I think we do quite well is we think about risk management and risk mitigation across multiple tiers in our business. And I think that we recognize you're never going to run a risk-free business, but we try to do 3 things. We try to get it right the first time. So we stay very close to our delivery organization and make sure that if we see issues, we identify them early and surround problems and fix them. And because we're always committed to quality as our #1 objective for our customers. The second thing we do is we try to make sure that we are providing an independent means of assessing risk and identifying that rapidly to management so that there are minimal surprises, if ever, ideally no surprise. And the third thing we try to do for our shareholders, of course, is make sure we're getting a reasonable return for the risk that we do choose to undertake. And so unlike some of the competitors that I've known in the marketplace who may bid something to win it and then figure out how to deliver it, that's something you never see from the Maximus.

Great. This has been super insightful. Bruce and James. Thanks a lot for participating in this year. Anything else that we didn't cover, which you wanted to call up before we sign off for today? Or I'll leave it to you guys if you want to highlight anything.

I would just come back to maybe one of the first points I made, which is that the long-term trends in our markets favor a business like Maximus. When a government grants and creates an entitlement of a new benefit program, whether it was Medicare or Medicaid or the Affordable Care Act, it's kind of a one-way ratchet wrench. It's very difficult for that ever to be taken away. And so we're a company that -- like I said, we're not involved in the defense and military and intelligence space, but there's an awful lot of major human challenges out there that are being solved by governments every day. And we're a key partner to government in doing that in a way that I think is quite lasting. So thank you.

Great. Well, with that, we'll wrap it up. But thanks, again for participating in this year at our conference. And for those who dialed in, Bruce Caswell; and James Francis from Maximus. Thanks again, guys.

Thanks, Adam.

Thank you, Adam. Thank you all. Take care. .