Oscar Health, Inc. (OSCR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

June 8, 2021

New York Stock Exchange US Financials Insurance conference_presentation 39 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#1

We're live, so you guys are all set to start.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#2

I think we may have dropped off, but I can kick it off and then once he joins, we can just go from there. But anyways, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Kevin Arman, and I help Bob Jones in covering health care services here at Goldman. We're very pleased to have Oscar with us, who's a fast-growing recent IPO in the managed care space. And so we're joined by Mario Schlosser, CEO; as well as Scott Blackley, CFO; and Cornelia Miller from IR. Thank you guys for joining.

Mario Schlosser

executive
#3

Great to be here. Thanks for having us.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#4

So I guess just to kick it off, I mean, I think top of mind probably for everyone in the managed care space is just what you guys are seeing on the utilization front. And so could you guys just, from a high level, give us a sense of where you guys are seeing utilization coming on both the COVID and non-COVID side and how that might compare to what you guys had baked into your guidance to start the year?

Richard Blackley

executive
#5

Yes. Great, hey well, thank you, and good morning. Look, I'm happy to talk a little bit about utilization, but before I jump right in there, let me just kind of pull up and just mention that our medical loss ratio and the trends that we've seen there over time is one of the proof points that really gives us confidence that our business model is working. And I would just point to the fact that since 2019, we've been able to grow direct premiums by around 70%. And during that same period, we've seen the MLR improving by around 300 basis points. So some really strong performance there. Our 2020 MLR was around 84.7%. And in 2021, we're expecting the MLR to be between 84.5% or 84% and 86%. And that looks kind of flattish if you look at the midpoint on a year-over-year basis. But if you normalize for the net favorable impact of COVID in 2020, we are expecting a continued strong improvement in our MLR trends in 2021. So if I just kind of pull up then and talk about what we're seeing, in utilization more specifically, our full year MLR guidance that I just talked about is reflective of our expectations that we would expect that COVID-related costs continue to be a headwind to MLR in 2021. We would think that utilization is going to be modestly favorable compared to a pre-COVID baseline. So going back to kind of 2019 before COVID, we still think that utilization is going to be modestly favorable to that baseline. And we're expecting that to play out over the full year. So we'll see that -- those trends kind of emerge over that time period. In Q1, what we saw is that we saw certainly elevated levels of COVID spend. Going into the year, early in January and February, we saw COVID costs that were pretty high, and comparable to fourth quarter levels. We saw that tapering off into March and we've seen that continue into the second quarter. In terms of non-COVID utilization, we've seen kind of the inverse trend. We've seen -- some of that deferred care is starting to show up in terms of higher non-COVID utilization in all the areas that you might expect. And I would anticipate that we will continue to see non-COVID utilization ticking up throughout the year. So net-net, we're expecting to have around 3 to 4 points of MLR headwind in 2021 from COVID. We're expecting that we will see that depressed utilization certainly is going to be picking up throughout the year. I would -- compared to what we were expecting, I would say that our COVID costs in the first quarter were slightly higher than what we had anticipated at the beginning of the year. Utilization was slightly -- non-COVID utilization was slightly lower. My expectation is that COVID-related costs are going to trend down a little bit faster than -- because they start at a higher point, they'll trend down a little bit faster than what we had expected. And then I think the utilization is going to pick up. So net-net, I think we're kind of back to where we started in terms of our expectations for the full year.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#6

Got it. That's helpful. And then maybe just to round out the discussion, is there anything you guys are seeing just within the exchange book versus maybe your Medicare small group book that you'd call out or relatively consistent across the 3 segments?

Mario Schlosser

executive
#7

I think it's relatively consistent. The biggest driver tends to be tends to be geographically driven. And we've consistently seen over the past 18 months that in geographies where you go and get the [indiscernible], you go back into lockdown. So you've got the downscale shifting, right? You have utilization coming down, the COVID costs going up. And I think that -- so that's been a bigger driver than the book itself.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#8

That makes sense.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#9

And Scott, it's Bob here. Just wanted to maybe dig in a little bit on the exchange marketplace. Clearly, there's been new entrants in recent years, including Oscar disruptive to that market. Some of the large MCOs obviously have made decisions to either reenter or plan on reentering next year and into new geographies. Could you maybe just give us your latest thoughts on the competitive environment? It seems from the outside looking in, clearly, it's become a more attractive end market recently and then obviously, therefore, probably a more intense competitive market along with that. So just wanted to get a sense of how you're viewing the competitive landscape and whether that poses any risk to how you were thinking about the growth algorithm even as recently as the time of the IPO.

Mario Schlosser

executive
#10

Yes, definitely. I mean -- so I am going to start very high level there. We started the company because we thought the health care markets will shift towards becoming more consumerized, and they will virtualize and digitize more and then scale every year, and we're going to go more on towards value-based care, not just in the MA market but also in the commercial markets, including the individual market as well. And I love the fact that the individual market is becoming this almost like proven ground for all these trends. You can individualize benefit design in a better way, you can individualize customer network design in better ways. And so any market that shifts towards, I'd say, the battlefield that we understand best, which is build a better experience, connect deeply with selected providers and run a great in-store experience for the member where you can save money because you know better what you're doing in the health care system. I think any market that shifts towards that battlefield is great. And so in our case, so it's going to start with the proof points we have, right? In the last couple of years already, the competitive density has been ratcheting up, and I think it's been pretty high already in the last 2 OEs, I would say it. When we have -- obviously, the market shrank for the most part in the last few years, and yet rates generally were flat or it came down overall. And against that kind of backdrop, we grew on average 57% per year since 2017. And as Scott mentioned, took 12 points of the MLR, and not just because of COVID, right? The MLR is again kind of at the midpoint of expectations this year would be flat from last year. So that double whammy of reducing costs while growing way past the market, I think we can -- we have just been able to show that we can do that. In the last OE, about 80% of nationwide members in the ACA were already in countries with at least 3 insurance companies. And obviously, markets like California, you have 10 insurance companies or whatever competing already. So that's already felt competitive and people bidding to get the business there. For us, the pricing season this year is essentially business as usual from that point of view. Now how do we think about this? What's the growth algorithm there? I pointed 2 different things there. One is we generally try to really use our brand position in the markets towards the members, towards the brokers and the providers to drive the conversation of, it's not all about the premium, it's about the total affordability of your health care. So don't just try to save $10 per month or whatever else in a premium -- on the premium side. If we look at are you getting cheaper drugs? Are you getting access to the right physicians? Are you getting free care, you stay within certain guidelines. That's how we've been building our plans. They often are very tailored to local market situations. And that's how we build plans like our Virtual Primary Care plan designs, which we were the first ones to have in the market, where if you pick an Oscar doctor or a doctor in the Oscar Medical Group, that care becomes free. But also the downstream care that the doctor recommends, get this drug, get this lab test, gets dynamically discounted as well. That's a very unique plan design that we can only build because we control the infrastructure and get the member experience, the private experience as well. And so that's been our conversation been putting into the market. And I think that was resonating really well because that 57% CAGR with a 12% reduction in MLR has come against the backdrop of us only being the cheapest in about 10% of the markets we are in. And yet we've been outgrowing the market there in a good way. So in that regard, I think let's shift the market more towards that in the conversation. I think anybody joining the market, hopefully, is the same. And we can then, I think, grow very nicely in the algorithm we have. So that's 1 big point I want to make. The others big point is our platform business. That's part of our growth strategy as well. And our platform is called +Oscar. And as the platform clients we have, and I know we'll talk about this, hopefully, later in the conversation as well, then the platform clients we already have often grew from actually the platform relationships we had on the narrow networks we built in the individual market already. And that's again where our algorithm stays the same. Grow our book of business move providers towards more value-based care, spin that out almost into a platform relationship where we can then also start growing within Medicare Advantage and other books of business.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#11

No, that makes sense, Mario. You talked about kind of tailoring the offering to the local geography. Obviously, the technology seems to be a huge attractive point for people. Some of your competitors have talked also about the importance of pricing to drive membership. I know you talked about not being the lowest price in the overwhelming majority of the markets that you're in. But how big a role does pricing play? I mean if you're landing in a new geography or you're in a new state or you're a smaller player in an area, like how important is it to price aggressively or price more competitively than maybe you would over time?

Mario Schlosser

executive
#12

Yes, I think it's a gating factor, that's how I would put it. So if you are priced outside of a certain range, it becomes more difficult to get market share. So if you're 5 points away from the lowest in the markets, the way the subsidization of the market works is that, that gets amplified from the purview of the member buying plan, and so then it's just harder to grow. Now that means when we look at markets we enter, we enter markets to begin with where we think we can actually get that pricing at that level. An important part of that certainly is provider relationships. Where, again, the offering we have in +Oscar on the platform side, and the way we think we need providers life easier by paying claims faster by [indiscernible] utilization and so on, that really helps there. And then I'll point you there to the fact that if we kind of trace our unit costs and going back again to 2017, so, we've taken about 5% or 10% out of our unit costs on a year-over-year basis because we build better networks because we create better relationships because we make them more strategic to the providers in the way we interact with them. Where we grow with provider partners into new geographies then our geographies, we already work with a particular system or physician group. And so that is an important ingredient. You've got -- just pricing lower is not -- is a recipe for just a hot MLR base here. And it's not going to be the game plan we've been running and -- I mean we went up, I'd say, 5 years ago, we've had our share of experiences there. And that's something we do anymore nowadays and haven't done for the past, I'd say, 3 years or so, and it's I think served us well. The final point I'd make is that I think the regulators have been intelligent about creating a competitive market where people don't take shortcuts. So in other words, you can show, in most markets, as an insurance company that you have a stable network that allows you to price competitively and you know what you do on the medical management side. They sort of like slip out that it might be pricing low and jack it up again in the next year. And I think that -- I don't expect that to be sort of like a feature of the markets that you can keep up for very long.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#13

That makes sense, makes sense. I guess, relatedly, you, as a company, have talked about becoming more focused on Silver plans over time. Any insight you can give us into consumer purchasing behavior as it relates to a bronze versus silver I guess especially in the context of the different subsidies that might exist within different marketplaces?

Mario Schlosser

executive
#14

Yes. So what happened in the bronze market is that a lot of that bronze [indiscernible] shifted into essentially $0 plans. And so a lot of folks who wanted to really pay no money for their for their plans ended up buying the bronze markets in the last 2 open [indiscernible], and I would claim that we were one of the first ones to realize that. So we created -- I think we were the first AC insurer that created a no-deductible bronze plan. And that was really a hot seller for the past 2 years. That's the easy one to copy for others, and I'm a big fan of like in technology markets, you get -- somebody does something smart. You've got to rebuild your infrastructure. So you can copy it into something smart. And so others follow through there, but we took that further to the first [indiscernible] Silver plan last year, and that grew again. And so we always think about benefit design in these kind of ways. And as the subsidization book goes up, it is just a very interesting dynamic every single year as to what you can do in terms of positioning the network and the benefit side to run in creative ways. And that is where I really think we shine because we have -- we can localize what we do because we can very quickly tune our benefit design very differently because we run the all internally, don't go through outside consultants or TPAs there or whatever. And I've been doing this, I think, quite creatively. And so when can you do this? And again, it's like this battlefield we talked about earlier that I want to shift towards. So I expect there to be a continuous upsell. And I don't think I'm saying too much here if I say that we've seen that upselling from bronze to silver since April 1, since the APTC advance premium tax credits raise has happened that came out of the out of the Biden care plan, if you will. Meaning now there are more affordable Silver plans as people are shifting up into those Silver plans and buying up internally, and we've seen this as well, and I expect that to continue throughout this year and going to next year in our guidance that we gave earlier, the revenue side included some of those effects already going in. I think the other thing I'd say is, what we generally see is the more engaged you are with your insurance -- with our insurance plan, our tools the higher the stickiness of the population. And I think therefore, it's a good thing for us to shift members into plan tiers where it's easier to utilize. And obviously, in silver, you get more bang for your buck because you have more subsidization also churn. And so that will generally, I think, shift people to the right tiers.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#15

Yes, no, I think that makes a ton of sense. And it kind of leads into a question that we had around retention. I think that by and large, the exchange market seems to have a lot of turnover year-to-year. For all the participants all the providers in there. Is there any kind of level of retention that Oscar targets? Have you seen any change in trend over the last few years as it relates to being able to retain your members year-to-year?

Mario Schlosser

executive
#16

Yes, we've continually seen a higher retention year-over-year in markets where we -- there are sometimes markets where somebody does something crazy, and we undercut some price. As I mentioned, if you fall out sort of 5% or whatever range, then it's harder to see people shift back and forth. But we generally are able to retain that. And then we performed -- we did well potentially. We want to be generally north of 80% or so. It's hard to see in the marketplace where others are. It isn't often reported really, and then it's hard to see how people report it. But we internally see improvements there what are driving growth from, say, year-by-year. And what we certainly also see is that we get about an 8% to 10% impact. In terms of retention, when people are engaged with, let's say, the consortium of Oscar or when they're done with the mobile app or Virtual Primary Care service, we saw a 11% impact for members who picked an Oscar Virtual Primary Care physician in these plan designs last year going into this year, for example, which is logical, right? Now there's even more additional reason, and the reason was a nice physician whose face you know, whose name you know, who knows your health history. Another reason to stick with Oscar basically besides the fact that we are just a great experience for you on the insurance side, we're now really providing that care for you in a very integrated way. And so that's going to, I think, be another boom for us in the years to come in binding people more closely to Oscar. The biggest chunk of churn in exchange markets is people leaving the market altogether. And that's obviously happening mostly throughout the year, people go into Medicaid, they go into an employer plan. And I think the more -- the bigger the exchange markets become, the more socialization there will be, I think -- and the less, hopefully, that will be the case out of us.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#17

No, that's helpful. I mean I'd just be curious just to round out this part of the discussion. Have you seen or do you track data that would actually indicate that your retention is better than some of the other peers that are competing in the markets that you're in? Like are the things you're doing and the tools you're providing having a real difference in the ability to retain members better than the others that you're competing with in these markets?

Mario Schlosser

executive
#18

Yes. If you're engaged, clearly, yes. If we -- on a nationwide basis, we generally think we're on par with some of the most kind of long-standing players in the markets on the Medicaid side. And so obviously, we're improving every year so...

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#19

Got it. Got it.

Mario Schlosser

executive
#20

And sorry, in that answer, Bob, I'd say there as well as -- what I do think -- it's hard at -- sort of like just implying the retention from net growth, right? And I would remind you again of the fact that when we get undercut by others in price, which includes those same players as mentioned, we clearly outgrow them. And so that also suggests on a net retention/goal basis, there, we are better and outperform the others in the market.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#21

Got it. Got it. That's helpful. Maybe moving on to just the growth side of the picture. I guess on geographic expansion, I think at the time of the IPO, Oscar was in around 18 states. Is there any detail you can give on just how you see that evolving over the next few years? And just from a higher level, how do you guys determine what states you might enter, what states you might stay out of? And even within the states you own, which ones you focused on maybe more intently than others?

Mario Schlosser

executive
#22

Yes, the first branch with a physician tree is actually a platform with insurance. Those overlap, right, we are in markets with both, but there are markets where we are content to be entirely on the platform side. In the markets where we basically say, look, this is a better market for us to be not competing in as an insurance brand, as an insurance company, but a market where we'd rather grow alongside somebody else we enable to grow. A provider that wants the health plan already exists, we are greenfield providers who's health plan we trade out of the box with a provider or a regional payer. We can convert them to our platform or add a plan design that we run for them. So there are markets where we will be content to just be in with that. That's the first branch I'd say, there. And that is actually somewhat of a new thing. In the past, we always sort of like went first with insurance and out of the platform behind it with network partners we already had move from there. And we have now a pipeline of players in markets that were already from the insurance side that want us to come in on the entirety of the platform side. And we are comfortable with that, and we're actually looking forward to that. So that's like the first branch. That overlaps and where the overlap is in the Medicare Advantage market very much so. I mentioned in the earnings call that we actually -- at the beginning of next year, we have somewhere north of 40,000 Medicare Advantage lives, that our own +Oscar platform already, that includes our own book of business, it includes the Health First MA book, a business that's an insurance company in Central Florida owned by 2 provider systems in terms of whatever happens in the health care provider system as well. It includes a bunch of your book of business, and there we just really like that growth path because if we grow in Medicare Advantage with a provider we just see really great access to members with interest in that and to brokers who like that and to providers who like this. And so for example, we were the fastest-growing MA HMO in the Bronx last year and the last AEP. And I think that, that really shows a nice thing of what we can do there. So MA and platform, I think lots of growth that we can still expect from existing markets and growth into new geographies really saying, "Hey, we can either go as the insurance company or as a platform company there", and that's already in the pipeline. On small employer, which is another platform release for us with Cigna, Cigna + Oscar small employer plan. We've been building this for 9 months, and we only launched in 5 states, and that's already -- we thought of putting rapid launch schedule in the early segments there as Cigna set a positive stimulus, and that's really at the very early stages of growing there. And so we think that's a market where you don't even have as much innovation otherwise in the markets. So we can do a ton of more work there and excited about some growing in both the geographies there in the membership base there. In finding individual, we talked about on the roadshow, we sort of like have certain bits of market share we can get through in years 1 or 2, and we can grow this kind of 15% plus there in the years that come. Sometimes it takes us a while, right? In the Phoenix markets, it was like when 2,000 members, 3,000, 4,000 members and then 15,000, 20,000 members in the third year, as we configure networks, as we figure out the right plan designs, as we build the distribution brand and membership brand as well in these markets. So there's a lot of markets we think we are in where we really have growth potential also because now the individual market itself is obviously growing to higher income level, some which brings people back into those markets who may have been on the sidelines for a couple of years with whom I think our offering also resonates very well. And so much more to do in all these markets from expansion and also partnership point of view.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#23

Mario, maybe just to pick up there. Obviously, the tech platform, the +Oscar platform is a -- was a big differentiator I think for Oscar relative to any other company that's trying to do what you're doing in these markets. You mentioned Cigna. Outside of Cigna, obviously, you had the Health First win as a client on the +Oscar platform, which I believe starts in 2022. Can you give us a sense of what exactly the platform provides to somebody like Health First? And how should we be thinking about the economics of these types of partnerships over time?

Mario Schlosser

executive
#24

Yes. At the core, whatever tool is -- health care has it's too expensive and it's too complicated. So it's like really from a member's point of view with a problem. And from a provider's point of view -- I mean providers know this, but from a provider's point of view, the health care system is too disjointed. They don't control the entire value chain in a given geography, typically. It's getting even more dispersed with some of our direct-to-consumer telemedicine companies or drug, whatever delivery and retail companies coming into the year. And so what +Oscar provides in a really simple way is the best way to value-based care with a really seamless instant member experience. And those 2 things together, you really can't get anywhere else in the market. I would argue and I think we're seeing to the market as well, you can sort of stitch together a TBA in the claim system with maybe a population health analytics solution and somewhere you have to find a CRM, somewhere maybe your EHR sort of like make a noise about how we need to use our capabilities as well. It's still pretty clunky in this joint that -- if you take all of this together. We are effectively the only completely comfortable to take full risk player in the markets that's selling its own end-to-end risk delivery payment stack, our own claims system, our own UM, our own pricing, our own pretty much everything, all the way to the member experience. And so that means that we can go to a Health First, the provider system and say, you've got to book a business and you've got a couple of dozen vendors that right now run this for you. You are overpaying for the admin and you're not getting the [indiscernible] next few ways because they joined us. And finally, if you'd like to do clever campaigns that key members out of our network of labs and that you can see our network leakage, for example, it's clunky or you got to call people up, you know. What we give you, we do that -- we give you the health in the box, and we basically get save a couple of points out of the admin ratio. We enable clever campaign use cases in a very nicely configurable way, that lets you test out what happens if I tell Scott to go to the wrong lab? Of 30% of our network lab reduction, not for Scott, but you get my point. [indiscernible] Scott. And so we, at the same time, can also create a member experience because the system then has that retention benefit we get from better alignment of the member with the mobile app and the website and the concierge team. And So the case of Health First, for example, it's our concierge logic, our concierge and customer service logic behind the scenes, 6 people in the concierge team, one of them is a nurse, that's what Oscar does. But it's really their people on those concierge teams. That's a very good example for the combination there. And as we're pushing data back into their EHRs who work with their providers closely in sharing that they are -- and connect with us very tightly there. And it really went from -- it's going on tens of thousands of members and MA members from order implementation in February or so to flipping this entire book of business over at 11 22. So it's even -- as far as system integrations go, that's a quick turnaround time in a way that I don't think you have if you so like convert existing payers or players to a new claim system, right? These are typically a couple of years worth of integrations. And so I think that goes to the fact that configuring a contract under Oscar isn't going in there with an [indiscernible], they can see shots and PDFs and whatever. It really lets you go in there, you take a couple of ops, push a button that simulates the cost, and it runs all the way through. So that is what it is, health in the box, value basically a great number of experience on the front end in a way that converts your system books or gives you new books that ship health systems to where you experience value-based care.

Richard Blackley

executive
#25

Bob, just to your other question on the economics, I think that these arrangements would typically have some upfront spend for us on just integrating the client into our infrastructure, quickly go to being generating incremental revenues for us and bottom-line performance in the second year as once we've got those costs behind us, the margins that we would expect over the course of that arrangement are going to be 20% plus. And certainly the -- as you just think about the amount of services that we provide, I think we could see March as -- that'll be higher than that depending on the nature of the service, exactly what we're bringing out of our platform and plugging in.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#26

Thanks for that. I mean look, I think on the surface, it seems like it would make a ton of sense for these health plans to obviously want to go down this path. So I guess the ultimate question is, what does the pipeline look like then? I mean is this something that's fairly robust? And I guess, Mario, based on your comments about the integration not necessarily being the lightest lift just given how intricate it sounds, how fast can you go in adding more +Oscar members to the platform?

Mario Schlosser

executive
#27

It's a robust pipeline. I actually like to start if there are any people on the call would like this. And I, in the first meeting, basically demo the product for an hour. I think it's one of the unique ways that we show this is really all -- we -- not slide -- not sort of like slideway or whatever else. We show the dashboards, my member experience, the provider experience, that we really provide this unique way, robust pipeline. We will announce deals as we go through them. And the channel, we think, we're working against there is about $230 billion or so plus in premium revenues on an annual basis. Because we're really, right now in the pipeline, have providers of exclusive health plans. We have providers who want to start health plans, and we have regional health plans who are not provider-owned, but realized they have, [ grown ] their own -- sorry. They've got to hold their own against the sort of like consumerization of health care and the increased sort of threats you get from mobile apps that refill your drugs and things like that. And I think that creates a space of fertile ground for us, because I do think, first, that when you've seen a bigger desire to get a [ waived ] fee-for-service to most value-based care, I think you've seen a bigger desire to go away from clunky-ness to want the best of payment experience. And in the health system we talk to now has absolutely realized that those 2 knobs, they've got to start turning much more aggressively. And I think in that conversation, we are very welcome in some robust pipeline, and we'll keep you posted as we'll have more ideas.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#28

Got it. Got it. I hope that wasn't a potential +Oscar client calling. Again, Mario, just to come back, you mentioned the Cigna partnership. Obviously, another big focus kind of big credibility builder obviously, to be partnered with a company the size of Cigna. You recently announced you've been expanding into more geographies with them through this partnership. Anything you can share as far as just how the partnership is going? What kind of led the decision to what seems like to be -- to go faster further? And I guess, ultimately, kind of where could this all end up with the relationship that you envision having with Cigna?

Mario Schlosser

executive
#29

Yes. I think -- so we're pleased with the rollout there. I mean, as I mentioned, 5 states already after maybe a couple of months in the market there and it's growing in those states. I think what I was -- so I'd say at a very high level, health is a $4 trillion-plus market. I mean we have -- we've fumbled in getting sets. We can't do this all by ourselves. We want to really have the right partners in the ecosystem on the provider side, on the insurer side as well. That's been a long lead up to +Oscar really, that thinking, that building of technology. I get impressed with Cigna because they have after, I think, in a good way, like a start-up there. This really went from announcements, which was about a year ago or so, February, March last year -- to January, February last year to an implementation, really, within that couple of months or time periods and now relaunching at states. We're clear, and that goes to show that they also have interest in interacting with innovative players, which kudos to them in that regard really. We've been able that rewire up very nicely. For example, we have a different PBM relationship, which helps the Oscar platform because we now know how to use the different PBMs, and obviously, we can use ESI. They are also in a differentiated capacity there, and it's obviously owned by Cigna there and great conversations there about other things we can do with them, with the ESI, for example and I think this is, therefore, a winning model. And -- but it's early the growth phase, and we're looking forward to the growing throughout this year. And then kind of -- typically small group grows the most in, really, the fourth quarter in a given year, and that's when we expect the biggest growth to then occur.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#30

Great. Well, we only have a couple of minutes left. So I thought maybe just, obviously, Oscar is still an evolving story for public market investors at least. If we look out a year from now, what do you think the market will better appreciate about Oscar's offering? Across the board kind of what they know today, time of IPO versus what they might understand better if we look out 12 months?

Mario Schlosser

executive
#31

Yes, I think that you better understand 3 things. One is that we are driving our insurance business towards profitability here. We said in the earnings call, 2023, we're going to breakeven the insurance business. And I think we have continuing proof points in going towards that place. I think the second thing they will understand better is that, that is because of the investments we have been making on the technology on the services side, that we can trace back our improvement in the combined ratio, the medical loss ratio, our performance in managing people's clinical care, the efficiency of our claims operations is one. We can trace it back to the investments we've been making there. And that means if people understand that, they can project this forward, and they can say, "I get it. These guys, there's more where that came from. They didn't just kind of plug in a couple of vendors and get to a loan ceiling. But it really is -- it's a lineup that keeps going up there in terms of performance." So understand that this is due to our tech platform. And the third thing they'll understand is that these proof points coming out of our insurance business will continue to help us and shift more and more towards +Oscar as well, and that we will have -- we may already have markets at the time where we were being as an insurance business. We have markets where we're being as a +Oscar business. And that we did know about that as both powerful ways to keep growing and at least feel each other as well. And that there's a big appreciation for the fact that, that is a -- that's a real desire in the markets to pay us for that and to help us grow with others in that. I think those are the 3 things. Braving controls business, that is because the platform and the platform itself is a business because we can keep selling and keep renting it out if you will. I think if we show that, then those are the proof points we talked about in the roadshow with the proof points we've been working toward since the beginning of time at Oscar. And you know what, if, every now and then, people don't understand something in how we break out the business, describe stuff, that's on us and we'll keep explaining it. Thank you for the forum you gave us to really explain it further. We're very confident there that we have the right plan and a coupled with nice people who explain it as well, as well. So if people want to know even more about us, that they can give us a ring.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#32

I appreciate that. I think that's all the time we have. But no, this has been great. Great, really appreciate the time, Mario, Scott and Cornelia. And definitely look forward to seeing the story evolve from here.

Mario Schlosser

executive
#33

Thanks as well, Bob. Be safe.

Richard Blackley

executive
#34

Thanks, Bob. Thanks, Kevin.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#35

Thanks.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#36

Thanks, everyone. Bye.

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