WELL Health Technologies Corp. (WELL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders of WELL Health Technologies Corp. My name is Hamed Shahbazi. I'm the Chairman of the company, and the Board of Directors of the company has delegated me the authority to lead the meeting of shareholders today. I now ask that the Annual General Meeting of the shareholders of the company come to order. I appoint Eva Fong, Chief Financial Officer of the company as Secretary of the meeting. For the purposes of this meeting, I appoint Jennifer Regan from Computershare as scrutineer of this meeting. I also appoint Pardeep Sangha, Investor Relations for the company as moderator of the virtual meeting. Finally, I appoint Atoussa Mahmoudpour Chief Legal Officer of the company to take conduct of and attend to the formalities of the meeting.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am Atoussa Mahmoudpour, Chief Legal Officer of the company. As this meeting is being held virtually via live webcast, we have determined it necessary to set out a few rules for the orderly conduct of the meeting. Voting on all matters will be conducted by electronic ballot using the Lumi virtual interface. Registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders will be asked to vote on each matter of business. If you have already voted by proxy, it is important that you do not vote again here unless you intend to change your initial vote. Questions in respect of a motion can be submitted by any registered shareholder or duly appointed proxy holder using the instant messaging service of the Lumi virtual interface. Please note that there will be a slight delay in the publication of the communications received. When asking a question, please indicate your name, which entity you will present, if any, and confirm that you are a registered shareholder or a duly appointed proxy holder. Questions will only be addressed during the question period at the end of the meeting, provided by questions regarding procedural matters or directly related to the motions before the meeting may be addressed during the meeting. For the purposes of the meeting today, Voting on all matters will be conducted by electronic ballot. Registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders will be asked to vote on each business item after the presentation of all business items. When you are asked to vote, you will receive a message on the virtual interface requesting you to register your votes. You will only have a certain amount of time to do so when the polls are open. We will now proceed with the formal portion of today's meeting. To expedite the formal part of the meeting, I have asked the Chairman to move all motions in advance, which he has now done. The purposes of today's meeting are set out in the management information circular of the company dated May 13, 2022. The notice calling this meeting, the management information circular and the form of proxy were mailed to shareholders on May 17, 2022, along with the audited consolidated financial statements of the company for the fiscal period ended December 31, 2021, and related MD&A to shareholders of the company who requested such statements and related MD&A. I will dispense with the reading of the notice of meeting. Copies of the management information circular and other meeting materials are available under the company's profile on the SEDAR website and the company's website. Our transfer agent, Jennifer Regan of company Computershare Investor Services, Inc., has attested to the proper mailing of the notice calling this meeting. Proof of service of such mailing has been provided by the company's transfer agent to me. I direct that a copy of such proof of service be annexed to the minutes of this meeting as is scheduled. The company's article states that a quorum for the transaction of business at a meeting of shareholders is one or more persons present or represented by proxy who are entitled to be present at the meeting. I have been advised a quorum of shareholders of the company is present, and therefore, the meeting is properly called and duly constituted for the transaction of business. I have received the scrutineer's report, and I direct that their formal report be annexed to the minutes of this meeting as is scheduled. As the first item of business on the agenda for today's meeting, I now present to the meeting the audited consolidated financial statements of the company for the fiscal period ended December 31, 2021, together with the auditor's report to the shareholders thereon. Copies of such documents have been mailed to the shareholders who requested such statements, and it is not proposed to read them at this meeting. As a reminder, registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders will be asked to vote on each business item after the presentation of all business items. After the presentation of all business items, I will pause for approximately 30 seconds to confirm that there are no questions on any matters before opening the voting polls. The first item of business today is to set the number of directors at 5. The next item of business in the election of Directors. The 5 directors to be elected by the shareholders of the company shall hold office until the close of business of the first Annual Meeting of Shareholders of the company following election or until their successors are elected or appointed. The Directors, Hamed Shahbazi, Tara McCarville, Kenneth Cawkell, John Kim and Thomas Liston have been nominated as directors for the ensuing year or until their successors are elected or appointed. Each of the persons nominated has confirmed that he or she is prepared to serve as a director. Since there are no other nominations, the Chairman has moved a motion to elect the directors. The next item of business is the appointment of auditors of the company for the ensuing year and to authorize the directors of the company to fix the remuneration of the auditors. The Audit Committee of the Board of Directors of the company has approved, subject to shareholder confirmation, the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, chartered professional accountants as the auditors of the company. The Chairman has moved a motion that PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP chartered professional accountants, be appointed auditors of the company until the next Annual Meeting of Shareholders and that the Board of Directors be authorized to fix their remuneration. That completes the motion for business to be conducted at this meeting. I will now wait approximately 30 seconds to confirm that there are no questions before proceeding to opening the poles. Will the moderator please confirm if there are any questions?

I confirm there are no questions related to the motions.

As mentioned, voting today will be conducted by electronic ballot. I will now take a moment to ask that the balloting be opened to registered holders and appointed proxy holders. The polls are now open. And at this point, all registered holders and proxy holders who have properly logged in with their control numbers or user name and wish to vote will be able to see on the screen all motions be brought forth at this meeting. As a reminder, if you have already voted by proxy, it is important that you do not vote at this meeting again unless you intend to change your initial vote. Please register your votes by accessing the voting page and select the 4 or withhold buttons, next to the resolution to set the number of directors at 5, next to the name of each proposed director and next to the resolution with respect to the appointment of PwC as the company's auditors. Once the electronic balloting closes, the voting page will disappear, and your votes will automatically be submitted. We will provide registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders approximately 1 more minute to complete the electronic ballots. [Voting]

Voting has now closed. I would ask the Scrutineer to compile the report regarding the results of voting on all business matters. The preliminary results show that all matters have been approved, subject to final tabulation by the scrutineer. Final results of voting will be promptly published on SEDAR and by news release. The formal items of business has set out in the notice of meeting have now been dealt with. The Chairman has moved a motion that this meeting is now terminated. As there is no further business to come before the meeting, and on behalf of the Chairman, I declare the formal part of the meeting to be concluded. I am pleased to hand over carriage of the meeting back to the Chairman who will now proceed with a corporate update, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session.

Thank you, Atoussa. Looking forward to providing shareholders with a corporate update. We also are excited to provide an update on our ESG program, which was press released earlier today, our first comprehensive ESG report and site was launched at esg.well.com. We look forward to sharing some of those details with you. I'll be joined by our Chief People Officer, Shane Sabatino. Could you please move the slide over to the -- Perfect. Thank you. WELL is a practitioner focused digital health care company. We're a unique company because we are the care providers for the care providers. We provide a platform, both a digital and operating platform that empowers health care providers with technology solutions but also just allows them to focus on the medicine and that care. We power their businesses. We run their facilities. We run their front office. We run their back office. And this is increasingly an incredibly relevant area of focus given the challenges -- I should say, the unprecedented challenges that doctors are facing. Next slide, please. A core part of our mandate and vision is digital transformation and modernization of the health care marketplace and supporting practitioners so that they can improve their digital delivery and augment their productivity, their economic output. And of course, their -- improve their patient outcomes. At the core of this is our virtual services platform that we, again, refer to as our practitioner-enablement platform, which covers a number of very important functions from electronic medical records and practice management to revenue cycle management and billing back office. We help practitioners protect their data with our cybersecurity solutions. We help them empower their patients with our patient portals. And of course, we power all aspects of virtual health delivery through our various different telehealth platforms and software capabilities. One of the very important innovations that WELL has pioneered here in Canada is developing, launching, commercializing and operating the country's first app marketplace for integrated EMR apps. And our apps.health marketplace has now seen numerous partners dozens of different applications and partners develop applications and integrate them and ensure that they are safe and secure for patients and providers and ensure that they are integrated and operating properly with our practice management tools. Those apps cover the gamut of digital patient engagement capabilities from online patient booking to e-referrals, to everything from e-prescribing to dashboards and messaging and reminders and of course, workflow automation. So a very important platform that WELL makes available to practitioners in a couple of ways. Next slide, please. What's unique about WELL is that we don't just sell a product to practitioners and hope all goes well. We do have an a la carte service offering that's actually only available in our Canadian market. We don't offer our a la carte offering in the United States. But in the Canadian market, where close to one out of every 4 physicians in the country use this platform are able to acquire our products and services on a SaaS and services basis and implement them in their patient services businesses. And this is a strong business for us and really has been successful in highlighting the impact and the high quality of software and capabilities that WELL brings to the marketplace. What's interesting and important though is that our a la carte capabilities, even though they are quite robust in terms of their offering and the number of practitioners that use them, only drive less than 10% of our overall revenue. More than 90% of our revenue is driven by our own practitioners in our own patient services businesses that essentially share a portion of their revenue with us for -- in exchange for WELL driving and improving their business is through the same platform. And so this is extremely important. This demonstrates that WELL's offerings are working. There's 2 ways to interact with us. You can either join us and have us do the work for you and run those facilities and help you focus on your medicine or you can run a business and use our tools and implement them to the best of your ability. If you look at the center of the screen here with our scale, again, the scale of physicians that we support is pretty substantial and are now delivering more than 1 million overall patient visits in our overall -- per quarter in our overall business. To our knowledge, and again, a portion of this is in Canada, but in our -- to our knowledge, we are -- the patient services deliver -- we deliver more patient visits in Canada than any other entity other than the government. So we're very, very pleased with the market leadership that we are demonstrating in the Canadian market. Our model is working, as you can tell by the revenue growth, the profitability, the conversion of that profitability of our adjusted EBITDA about $100 million is where we've indicated that we are approaching $100 million for the year in terms of our performance. Please note that, that converts to about $70 million in shareholder EBITDA and converts to about $44 million in adjusted free cash flow given the results we've put out to date. What's important to note too is that WELLs offerings are highly resilient and very sturdy, especially in a challenging world like we are in today, shareholders can feel confident that revenue is extremely sticky. We -- over 90% of our revenue is either truly recurring or highly reoccurring as part of the patient demand and the supply of physician resources that we have. And increasingly, shareholders should really consider WELL to be really a consolidation of health care resources with tech enablement. That's, I think, an important way and a very fair way to characterize WELL. And I think it's important to look at this, this way because health care practitioners, health care providers are a scarce resource. And WELL has consolidated a significant amount of this scarce resource and is empowering and improving the performance of this contingent. We're very pleased to have increased guidance in our last 2 reporting periods, and our last guidance increase has us increasing revenue for the year to be greater than $525 million. Next slide, please. Market leadership is a very important part of the WELL story and as shareholders, we hope that you take pride and recognize that WELL has achieved, your company has achieved significant market leadership across the country today. We are the largest owner-operator of outpatient medical clinics in the country. As I mentioned before, we deliver more omnichannel patient visits than any under entity other than the government. Our physical presence in the country extend currently to the 3 largest provinces that are responsible for more than 90% of the population. We look forward to getting into those other provinces as well. But we do have virtual presence across the entire country and do support patients from coast to coast. We lead the country in revenue cycle management and billing solutions for doctors, whether or not they're part of the immediate WELL patient services network. We lead the country in digital patient engagement. And I mentioned some of those different factors before. And eReferrals is one of those key areas of patient engagement that we like to call out, our Ocean platform is the leading platform in the country for delivering eReferrals. And we're very proud of that, and we believe that other provinces are going to be very seriously considering adding Ocean as the leader, which currently dominates the Ontario market. Our EMR ecosystem is considered top 3 as far as the number of practitioners that use it. But as far as our apps ecosystem, it's #1. As I mentioned, we have the only app marketplace in the country where app developers are able to integrate successfully and safely and securely interact with patient data with, of course, their consent and the practitioners consent. And we are a top 3 provider in telehealth solutions as well. There are other areas of industry leadership that we haven't noted here, but we believe this is important to note. I will note that in the United States, WELL has a leadership position as the leading provider of sedation and anesthesia services for routine colonoscopies. And that is an area of pride with our CRH division that is delivering incredible care and service to patients in a number of states across the United States. Next slide, please. Again, at the heart of our value proposition is helping physicians deliver better efficiency, better economic output, helping them become unburdened. The job of a health care practitioner is becoming more and more difficult, just like all of our jobs, especially with all of the friction that we're all feeling, given the challenges with supply chains and people and inflation. And healthcare has the added challenge that it has been lagging in its adoption of digital tools and technologies and modernization. It is perhaps the last major sector that has not really fully transformed and taken up those digital tools. And this was a main reason why I started the company several years ago. We're very proud and pleased to note that we are helping health care practitioners overcome some of these administrative burdens. Next slide, please. We have cataloged what happens when WELL's connected healthcare platform and our practitioner-able platform is used versus when it is not used. And what that specifically does to the practitioners time. And what it does is that it provides them with -- it gives them more time back to focus on patients, and that results in better economic output, more build hours. But it also results in more patients serviced and less frustrated ecosystem components and constituents. We're very pleased about this. And this is, again, at the heart and the core of our value proposition. Next slide, please. There are many different patient journeys that we power. But when you consider all the different capabilities that we have, both on the patient services side and the technology side, you can start to really imagine how we help health care practitioners collaborate around a patient concern provide team-based care, provide the tools that allow patients to navigate their bookings, their visits, their results being shared and ultimately getting to wellness. Next slide, please. WELL's segments -- broadly segments its revenue in 2 specific areas, one that we refer to as omnichannel patient services and the other is virtual services. The differentiating factor here is brick-and-mortar. In our omnichannel patient services business, we have both clicks and bricks. So -- and this is -- these are essentially all patient services businesses that include primary care, specialized care and diagnostics. On the virtual services side, this -- these are businesses that are either entirely digital or have a very small component of brick-and-mortar associated with them. So you'll see that all of our SaaS and services capabilities are here, including any of our patient services properties that, again, have very little exposure to brick-and-mortar. And so here, that would be areas like our Wisp, which is the property which is focused on women's health with their asynchronous care delivery platform in their products and services, our Circle Medical Group, which has been an incredible run with unprecedented growth and our Tia Health property here in Canada that is one of the leading providers of telehealth in the country. What's important to note here is that virtual services is growing a lot faster than omnichannel. They're both profitable. They're both growing, but omnichannel is probably growing in your mid-single-digit sort of growth rates, traditionally, although that growth has been increasing lately. And our virtual services group is growing at traditionally about 50% organic growth and now at greater than $100 million in revenue per year on a run rate basis. Of course, our omnichannel patient services business is a lot more profitable with operating EBITDA margins of greater than 25%. So we believe you have an excellent complement here. You have a fast growth, virtual services business that is profitable and very disciplined in terms of how we're running that -- those businesses and ensuring that we continue to take market share, that we continue to support patients and doctors. But at the same time, we are profitable. We're not loss-making similar to so many other fast growth digital health businesses. And of course, our omnichannel patient services business has a much higher substrate associated with it, a little bit lower growth but a very exciting area where we're integrating various different forms of care and driving improved patient outcomes. Next slide, please. Our U.S. business is -- as I mentioned before, we do not offer our a la carte platform in the United States, but we do host practitioners in our 3 properties. And again, as I mentioned before, if you zoom out there's one big idea at WELL. And that big idea is that we consolidate health care practitioners, and we have various different ways of allowing them to offer product services and service to patients. And so in the United States, 2 of our properties are Circle and Wisp that are, again, either purely digital or almost purely digital. Those businesses are growing very quickly with tremendous growth, especially if you consider that the revenue run rate at Circle at the time that we first made our investment was just over $5 million on an ARR basis, and we're now sort of nearing $50 million. So pretty incredible growth there. And since we acquired control of Wisp, we've also seen substantial growth and have not yet reached our 1-year milestone of owning that business. And of course, our CRH business has been a fantastic producer and continues to generate significant EBITDA for the company. Next slide, please. If you look at the company's performance on a yearly basis. Of course, you'll see substantial increases in overall growth rates as a result of not only our organic growth, but a substantial amount of inorganic growth over the last couple of years. Next slide, please. But what we're really quite proud of and I think as shareholders, you ought to be proud as well. It's not just our quantum growth in revenue and EBITDA but our growth on a per share basis. This is a slide that many management teams won't show you because they're growing their numerator, but they're growing their denominator faster. And this is our true north in terms of shareholder value proposition. We are very focused on making sure that we deliver revenue, EBITDA and free cash flow growth on a per share basis to shareholders. Next slide, please. Our growth continues. We recently raised some additional capital. We did this because we are entering into a period of, as I'm sure everyone is aware, macroeconomic uncertainty given the challenges with inflation. And we believe that there are going to be opportunities to pick up assets especially smaller assets as they decline in price, and we believe it's a fantastic opportunity for WELL to not only be able to pick some of those up and fill out some of its white space and various different markets and some specialty areas. And of course, raising that money also improved our defensive posture and being able to address anything that comes up over the next several months. And of course, a couple of years depending on how long we are in these challenging environments. Next slide, please. I would now like to ask Shane Sabatino, our Chief People Officer, to provide some feedback on our ESG launch today. I will say I'm very proud of the company's efforts here. This was a big effort that was contributed to by a significant number of people led by our Chief People Officer. And I think it really captures the essence of what WELL brings to the marketplace. And so over to you, Shane.

Thank you, Hamed. It is my pleasure to present our 2021 inaugural ESG report today. In the ESG report, you will find information about our relentless efforts to align our strategy, business units and resources in ways that enable us to continue delivering tremendous societal value to our stakeholders. The theme of the WELL ESG report is at the heart of healthcare. Next slide, please. I am so proud of the theme at the heart of healthcare. WELL Health is a company that not only provides care but also cares deeply about the ecosystem it supports that care extends to all that we do, including our environment, social and governance priorities and initiatives. People are at the heart of everything we do. Why I really like this theme is because we are right in the action, helping practitioners do what they do best, and that's care for their patients. Next slide, please. A little teaser slide about what's in the ESG report. So for those of you that are going to look at the report, here are some of the things that you can expect to see, some highlights are all around who we are, a word from our CEO. I really encourage you to look at the letter that Hamed put in the ESG report really fantastic, an overview of our ESG program, so the A to Z on our ESG, all of our activities, what we're committing to and then really talking about the foundation of what we're doing, which is disciplined governance and risk framework and then focusing in on 3 key priorities that I'll talk to in a few seconds. Next slide, please. For those of you that like numbers, a key component of any high-performing ESG report are numbers, KPIs, metrics and goals for the future. So check out our ESG report, and you will see many metrics that make WELL who we are and shows our commitment to the overall health ecosystem along with our scale and growth. A few of the numbers that I'd like to point to that I'm super proud about that shows that we're a dominant player in health care, over 2.6 million total omnichannel patient visits, 23 million patient profile supported in WELLS's EMRs, 2,000 practitioners supported by WELLS's platform. And to that I'm really proud about as a CPO is 70% of the senior executive team representing a visible minority. Also another key metric WELL is committed to achieving at least 33% female representation on its board by the end of 2022. Again, just a huge commitment to metrics goals and the future. Next slide, please. The last slide I'm going to talk about today. If you're thinking about a Kohl's note slide on WELL ESG, this is the one that you're going to want to focus on. And it really took a lot of time and effort and us reaching out to the market and looking at the rating agencies and looking at our competitors and looking at what our stakeholders and shareholders really wanted us to focus on, including our practitioners, patients and team members. So this is the framework of ESG all on one slide. The first priority, as Hamed said, something that is our key focus area is practitioner support and digital enablement, to improve health outcomes for patients by supporting the practitioner to provide timely, accessible and high-quality patient center continuous care. Priority 1 key focus for us. That's the practitioner. Secondly is the patient safeguarding patient data to safeguard the privacy and security of our patients' data while empowering them to leverage their health information. What I love about that priority is, yes, we're going to safeguard that data. But what we want to do, the future success of health in Canada, North America, the world is always going to be getting that health information in the hands of the patients, so they can control their data, they can see the reports on their data. They can track and traject their data and future health for the future. So it's really key that we get them their data. And then last, which, again, as a Chief People Officer that's near and dear to my heart, is a healthy place to work. Many of you have heard of a great place to work. Well, we wanted to take it to another level. Yes, it's a great place to work, but it needs to be a healthy place to work, to uphold the culture built on respect that reflects our diverse people and communities we serve, prioritizes health and well-being and empowers our people to be the best they can be. So if you look at the 3 priorities, you've got practitioner, you have patient and you have team members. And that's the caregivers as well. Yes, it's our WELL team members across the globe, but it's all of those caregivers, the physicians, the nurses, everybody that's helping. We want to make sure everybody is healthy. And then on the bottom, you'll see a foundation of disciplined governance and risk framework. We need to make sure we are maintaining strong oversight and discipline, including management of risk and compliance across our business activities. We need to make sure we're following rules, regulations, laws and governance. And that is all on one page our ESG framework and priorities. In closing, I just wanted to say this is just the start of our ESG journey. ESG is not a sprint but a marathon, not just checks on a check box and it is a journey that WELL is committed to for the right reasons. Please check out at the heart of Healthcare, our ESG report on the WELL Health website. Thank you for all of your time. Remember, you can do well by doing good. Thank you very much, and I'll pass it back to Hamed, who I must say, was critical in making this ESG report come to life, his involvement, his support his engagement was key. So I'd like to thank Hamed for that.

Thank you, Shane. Really appreciate that. If you could go back one slide, I just want to comment on a couple of things Shane said. Sorry, could you roll back one last, one slide please, thank you. I think what's really exciting about -- I mean, as a shareholder, if you're looking at this and you say, gosh, well, yes, ESG's fine but does it really matter? And I think what really matters -- I think everything that Shane said matters, but I think what's one of the major takeaways that hopefully shareholders take from this from this discussion and from our overall report is that there is incredible alignment between the heart of WELL's economic engine and its ESG priority. And I think this is something that doesn't always happen. That alignment doesn't always exist and it's somewhat manufactured. But if you really zoom out again, where I started with the big idea. The big idea around WELL is that we care for those care providers. And when I say we care for them, obviously, that's a nice soft word, but we are running their businesses for them. We are supporting them. We are configuring technology for them. We are doing their billing for them. We are driving their businesses forward. Consider the fact that over 90% of our revenue comes from practitioners practicing in a well-run patient services business. And so that support and digital enablement isn't just how we make money, it's how we change the world. It's how we drive societal value. happier practitioners, more successful practitioners equals a healthier patient base. And I cannot overstate the importance of the impact that your company is making in society today and something that we will continue to try to do every day and improve on -- with all our various goals and objectives. In any event -- next slide, please. We -- as I'm sure you're aware, we have a very strong management team. And I'd like to particularly recognize our Chief Medical Officer. We have a numerous sort of chief medical officers for various different businesses around -- on both sides of the border. But our overarching Chief Medical Officer that oversees our entire medical program is Dr. Frankel, who previously ran, I believe, the largest chain of medical clinics run by a physician in Canada. And so he's done a fantastic job. And of course, a number of us on the top row there, we used to work together in my previous startup and really I'd like to recognize all of our team. I will say that there are a lot of people that are not on this slide that contribute very meaningfully to the business. We have very strong management depth and bench strength across the business. Next slide, please. We do have a small and -- but very engaged, very valuable and very helpful board with lots of great industry knowledge and capital markets knowledge. And so as Shane indicated, we are committed to continuing to improve the diversity of the board and have committed to adding an additional member female member to the team. We're very excited about that and already have candidates that we're considering. Next slide, please. And these are just some key metrics in terms of our cap structure and the number of shares outstanding in our business. And we still have, again, quite strong insider ownership. Please note that Mr. Lee and the Horizons Group are not insiders, but for the purposes of demonstrating what close shareholders to the company, we're still roughly at that just over 1/4 of our shareholdings being held very closely to the business. Next slide, please. Just to wrap up, I hope that this update is helpful. I hope that you can see that we are at the heart of healthcare. We are helping the most important and scarce resource that drives the healthcare industry. Of the $300 billion that's spent here in Canada every year in healthcare, roughly 13% of that goes to healthcare practitioners. And so we're talking about roughly $40 billion of value that goes to those health care practitioners WELL is through its support and empowerment of those physicians, it is capturing part of that economic output and growing it and improving it. And so whether that be our -- reflected in our organic growth or disciplined capital allocation or positive cash flow, you can bet that we will continue to operate the business with growth in mind with profitability in mind, not trying to over rotate or focus on any one key metric. We've been committed to delivering on both of those matters, which I think is very important for the long-term success and viability and vitality of the company. And we're very pleased today to be able to round out why we are so relevant, why we matter. We're not just a consolidation of physician resources. We are a consolidation with real technology with real strategies, and we are helping healthcare practitioners care for their patients and improve their medical outcomes. And with that, I will end the presentation.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, a couple of housekeeping matters with regards to the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Hamed, we Have a question from David Kwan from TD Securities. Can you elaborate on any potential changes to primary care delivery and the various provinces you operate in? And maybe the ones you may expand into the future, in particular, given the ongoing doctor shortages, burnout clinic closures, et cetera.

Yes. Thanks, David, for the question. Well, as I mentioned earlier, as you're likely aware, these macroeconomic pressures are putting everyone under duress, and physicians are no different. They are under pressure unlike any other time, especially given the extremely fragmented nature of care delivery really all over the world, but especially here in Canada, which has fewer health systems and large networks of health providers. And so we believe that this is why WELL services and programs are incredibly so relevant today because those physicians need that support. And so remember, our big idea is that we are the ones who provide that care and support. And so Ontario did recently provide an increase with a 3% bump, I believe, about a quarter ago for primary care. We expect that more provinces will follow suit and provide bumps. Governments across the country are recognizing that their costs are increasing and physicians' revenue also needs to increase. So that's something that I think we're paying attention to. We've recently been in touch with the highest levels of different Ministry of Health leaders. And we've heard a recognition that more needs to be done to support health care providers during this difficult time. So we know that their burnouts, their burdens are not being sort of forgotten. And so again, I think that's -- it's important to note in terms of where we see the trajectory of that revenue.

We have a question from Daniel Rosenberg from Paradigm Capital. Can you comment on the organic growth in the business this year? Is it resulting from cross-selling products or independent businesses just performing well?

Daniel, thanks for the question. Our overall organic growth profile has been very strong. As you're probably aware, it's been elevated at over double-digit organic growth now for a number of quarters, which is definitely not something that you see with consolidators like WELL. And actually, in our case, it has been accelerating over the last couple of quarters pretty significantly. And most of this is due to our businesses just performing well and serving a strong patient demand that we're seeing out there. We are seeing some contributions from cross organizational synergies, but these are fairly light in comparison to the organic -- the true organic growth that's coming from core performance. And this is something that we focus on a lot. It is the product market fit that we have and how we are continuing to perform and deliver on our core mandates. But listen, the biggest evidence that we have that cross-selling and synergies are working is in our primary care program. Based on our review, and listen, we've looked at pretty much every primary care business across Canada. We don't know of another one that's operating as profitably and as well. And a lot of this is because of the cross-selling that we've -- and integration and synergies that we've marshaled and organized as a result of digital transformation as a result of integrating various different components of health from Allied Health to specialists. A small known fact is that a significant portion of our primary care network about 10% are actually specialists. So they're helping take on some of those referrals that are generated within the network so that we can provide better service and lower wait times. So that is working, and that's something that very likely you'll see us focus on even more.

Next question we have from Christian Sgro of Eight Capital. Any thoughts on the TELUS acquisition of LifeWorks. Is there any impact on the Canadian landscape or WELL's strategy?

Well, listen, first of all, I'll comment on WELL. Well is not very involved in employer-driven health care today. We have some small businesses there. So I don't think that there's very much impact at all to WELL. Overall, we feel that this was a very smart acquisition by TELUS, whom we regard as a very important player. And I think it's great, ultimately, for the industry, for customers and patients to see a fantastic ESG player like TELUS, demonstrate their ongoing commitment to the industry. So we see this as extremely positive, especially given the deal metrics that we saw yesterday. It just demonstrates how valuable and important this sector is.

We have a question from Mr. Meg Patel, private investor. How is WELL working on acquiring corporate customers in the U.S.? And how does the management plan to compete and gain share from big players like Teladoc? What do you plan to offer to both doctors and patients in order to give them a reason to stay with WELL's services?

Well, so WELL doesn't have a big corporate business in the United States. So that is an area where we're not competing. And for the reason that it's extremely competitive and it's not a channel that we're -- again, we've been very careful as to which channel we've gotten involved with. I will say that the key to continuing to be relevant and continue our growth and profitability in the United States, which has been really, really substantial is to deliver fantastic service and to keep practitioners happy. What we're seeing really on both sides of the borders, is continued patient demand. That's been fairly unrestricted and unyielding and that makes sense. I mean no matter what happens in the industry, no matter what happens with macroeconomic factors, you're always going to have patient demand. The key is can you supply high-quality services to those patients. And this is an area where our U.S. teams have been exemplary. I mean if you look at Circle Medical, they've grown the number of practitioners organically from probably a couple of dozen to now probably well over 150 health care practitioners in the last couple of years. That kind of growth is simply unprecedented or probably very few parallel examples of that kind of growth. And so they've done that because they have a very important mandate, health care practitioners want to be involved with them, they are able to service demand. They're able to do it in a competent way. We are members of all the key different -- agreements with all the key different payers in the United States, and we're delivering for patients.

Next question from Nick Agostino of Laurentian Bank. As a gauge of a potential recession, how has Q2 demand for noninsured out-of-pocket services been trending year-to-date and year-over-year? For instance, SleepWorks, Allied Health, Spring Medical, ExcelleMD, et cetera.

Nick, as I mentioned before, this is a bright spot for us. It's been contributing to organic growth. It's been contributing to profitability. I can report that demand continues to be excellent, and it continues to be a key driver for our growth and profitability. So we look forward to providing more details on that.

Next question Jerome Dubreuil from Desjardins. What can WELL do to withstand inflation. Can you comment on the company's pricing power in general and if a significant portion of cost is contracted?

Yes. Thanks, Jerome. Great question, given the backdrop out there. Listen, it all starts with great margins, great structural margins, which WELL has. We have 55% overall gross profit margin. So we're generating over $0.75 billion in gross profit. And a lot of that strong margin pressure, I mean, it exists on both sides of the border. We have strong margins on both sides. But our presence in the United States is really key as well given that it's the most lucrative and deep in terms of economic activity of all health care markets around the world. So having this sort of depth of business in the United States has really helped us keep great margins. And when you have great margins and you manage your costs and you optimize them well, that's a really important part of being able to keep strong growth and profitability. I will say we are obviously, spending a lot of time thinking about our growth within the context of pricing independence. And so -- and trying to also grow in areas where we have higher margin opportunities. So for example, as I mentioned in our primary care business, we're trying to do more with integrate other areas like Allied Health or bring in specialists so that we can service demand either with respect to those higher margins in the public care system or higher margins that are coming in from the Allied Healthcare area. The other thing is that we do have a small but growing executive health business and concierge health business. While we are committed wholeheartedly to the single player system and are the largest owner operators of the -- within the single-payer system, we also believe that it's important to continue to service that private market. And so that's an area where we continue to focus as well. And of course, we are also looking at continuing to get more performance from our synergies, whether they be through shared services or through cross collaboration between business units. Hopefully, that's helpful.

That's all the time we have today for questions. I want to thank those individuals for sending in their questions. And with that, I turn it back over to Mr. Chairman, Hamed Shahbazi.

Yes. Thank you so much, Pardeep, for those questions and for all the investors and analysts who engaged with us on this question. We truly appreciate your engagement and your support of the company. It means a lot to us. It's not lost on us every day, who we work for. Obviously, we're here to advance practitioners and their patients, but we also are here to make you proud and really make sure that we are creating the most value that results in really value creation over the long term. And so we thank you for attending, and I'm pleased to say that we have now concluded the WELL 2022 AGM.