InnovAge Holding (NASDAQ:INNV) released third-quarter financial results and hosted an earnings call on Tuesday. Read the complete transcript below.
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Summary
InnovAge Holding reported a solid third quarter with approximately $252 million in total revenue, a center level contribution margin of $61 million, and adjusted EBITDA of $30 million.
The company has raised its fiscal year 2026 guidance for revenue and adjusted EBITDA, expecting revenue between $950 million and $975 million, and adjusted EBITDA between $85 million and $90 million.
Strategic initiatives include investment in AI to enhance care coordination, a focus on quality and participant experience, and exploring growth opportunities through partnerships, acquisitions, and potential new programs.
The company is anticipating a more challenging rate environment for fiscal 2027 but remains confident in managing cost trends and sustaining operational efficiency.
Management emphasized the importance of reinvesting in quality and operational infrastructure, highlighting the interconnectedness of financial performance and quality care in their PACE model.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the InnovAge Holding 2026 fiscal third quarter earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press Star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising. Your hand is raised to withdraw your question. Please press star 11 again. Please be advised that this conference is being recorded. I would like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Ryan Kabuta. Please go ahead.
Ryan Kabuta
Thank you Operator Good afternoon and thank you all for joining the Innovage 2026 fiscal third quarter earnings call. With me today is Patrick Blair, CEO and Ben Adams, CFO. Today, after the market closed, we issued an earnings press release containing detailed information on on our fiscal third quarter results. You may access the release on the Investor Relations section of our company website, innovageholding.com for those listening to the rebroadcast of this call, we remind you that the remarks made herein are as of today, Tuesday, May 5, 2026 and have not been updated subsequent to this call. During our call we refer to certain non GAAP measures. A reconciliation of these measures to to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings press release posted on our website. We will also make statements that are considered forward looking, including those related to our 2026 fiscal year projections and guidance, future growth prospects and growth strategy, our clinical and operational value initiatives, the effects of recent legislation and federal budget cuts including Medicare and Medicaid rate pressures, seasonality of cost trends, the status of current and future legal proceedings and regulatory actions and other expectations. Listeners are cautioned that all of our forward looking statements involve certain assumptions that are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties that can cause our actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. We advise listeners to review the risk factors and other discussions included in our annual report on Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025 and any subsequent reports filed with the SEC, including our most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q. After the completion of our prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Patrick Blair.
Patrick Blair (CEO)
Patrick thank you Ryan and good afternoon everyone. I'd like to begin by thanking our Innovage colleagues, our participants and their families, our government partners and our investor community for your continued trust and support. The work our teams do every day to care for a very complex and vulnerable population is what drives our performance and I'm proud of the progress we're making and the consistency we're beginning to demonstrate. As an organization. We delivered a solid third quarter and continue to see steady momentum across the business. These results reflect stronger operating execution and the benefits of the investments we've made over the past few years to strengthen the platform. For the quarter, we reported approximately $252 million in total revenue, center level contribution margin of $61 million and adjusted EBITDA of $30 million. We ended the quarter serving approximately 8,050 participants in 6 states across 20 centers. Based on our year to date operating trends and financial performance, we are once again raising our fiscal year 2026 guidance for revenue and adjusted EBITDA. We now expect revenue in the range of 950 to 975 million dollars and adjusted EBITDA in the range of 85 million to 90 million. Overall, our performance continues to show steady year over year improvement across key operational and clinical metrics. Our performance this year has been supported by several in year factors that came in more favorably than we expected, including better than expected Medicaid rates and favorable Medicare risk scores and continued discipline across medical management. So as we think about our momentum, we believe it is real and increasingly durable. But we are also being thoughtful about our assumptions as we look ahead to fiscal 2027. Just as importantly, we view our improving financial performance as an enabler, not an endpoint. The progress we're making is allowing us to reinvest in the business in ways that we believe directly benefit participants and strengthen the model over the long term. That includes continued investment in our clinical teams and interdisciplinary model, advancing our technology platform, including early and closely monitored applications of AI, to improve care coordination and participant experience, and strengthening how we measure and manage quality. We are also investing in growth, including our new centers in Florida, which are still maturing from an operations and financial perspective. Given the complexity of the PACE population we serve, these long term investments are essential. Our goal is to deliver strong, sustainable performance while continuing to invest in the model and be a responsible partner to states and the federal government. In the PACE model, financial performance and quality are not separate, they are directly linked. When we improve quality, we see better participant outcomes, more consistent engagement, lower unnecessary utilization, and ultimately better fiscal management for our state and federal partners. We track a wide range of required quality and utilization metrics and these remain an important part of how we manage the business day to day. But we also recognize that many of these measures, while necessary, don't fully capture what matters most to our participants or to the full value of the model at its core, our focus is helping participants maintain their independence, remain the community for as long as possible, and receive care that is individualized and aligned with their goals. This includes supporting caregivers, coordinating care across the continuum, and intervening early before issues escalate. Over the past several years, we have made meaningful investments in our clinical teams, our CARE model, and our operational infrastructure to strengthen our ability to deliver on those outcomes. More recently, we have begun to invest more intentionally in how we measure them. We're in the early stages of developing a more comprehensive set of outcome oriented measures focused on areas like functional trajectory, the ability of participants to remain in the community, and further aligning care with participant goals. These are areas where we believe the PACE model delivers meaningful value. Our initial focus is on building the data processes and operational consistency required to measure these outcomes reliably. As the capabilities mature, we expect to incorporate them more formally into how we manage the business. We believe this is an important step not only in demonstrating the full value of the PACE model, but also in ensuring that our continued financial progress is clearly aligned with better outcomes for the participants we serve and the partners we support. AI is another area in which we are investing more heavily when we think about the objectives we share with our regulators. Improving participant experience, enhancing outcomes for a complex population, and doing so in a cost effective way. We believe AI with the appropriate oversight has the potential to be a meaningful enabler. While still early, the work we've done over the past several months increases our confidence that these capabilities can have a real impact on both the quality and efficiency of our model. Much of our clinical AI work is being led by Dr. Paul Taheri. Although Paul has only been with us a short time, he has quickly stepped in to help shape our approach, bring a strong focus on practical application, clinical rigor, and ensuring these tools are designed to support, not replace, clinical judgment. We're piloting a range of use cases designed to support our clinicians and to streamline operations in our clinical workflows. We're piloting AI tools, to help synthesize information across the participant record to support care planning and to identify potential risks such as medication interactions or avoidable acute events. The goal is to increase the quality of the care we provide for our participants and enable our teams to operate more effectively at the top of their license. We are also applying these capabilities to operational areas such as scheduling, transportation, and care coordination, where we see meaningful opportunity to reduce friction, improve the participant experience, and better utilize our existing capacity. One area we are particularly focused on is how we schedule and deliver services across our centers. Today there are structural inefficiencies that can lead to cancellations, unused capacity and administrative burden. We believe AI enabled scheduling and coordination can help address these challenges, allowing us to improve the experience to serve more participants within our existing footprint and to increase capacity over time. Importantly, we're approaching this work with discipline. We're testing, learning and measuring impact before scaling, and we're focused on use cases where we see clear alignment between improved outcomes, better participant experience, and more efficient operations over time. We believe these investments will further strengthen our platform and expand our ability to deliver high quality coordinated care at scale. Stepping Back One of the things these results and the progress we've made over the past several years now allow us to do is to take a more forward looking view on growth. Over the last four years, our focus has been on stabilizing and strengthening the platform, and as a result of that work, we're now beginning to generate more consistent earnings and cash flow which gives us greater strategic flexibility as we look ahead. That flexibility allows us to take a more proactive and thoughtful approach to growth. First, we continue to see meaningful opportunity within our existing footprint by filling our current centers, strengthening our sales capabilities, and expanding our reach through new channels and partnerships. At the same time, we're beginning to evaluate a broader set of potential growth alternatives that could allow us to expand our model to more seniors over time. These may include acquisitions, joint ventures, partnerships, or participation in new programs and demonstration models that align with our capabilities. Overall, we're entering the next phase as an organization, one that positions us well to expand access to our model and to serve more seniors who can benefit from it. Before I conclude, I'd like to spend a few minutes on the rate environment. As we know, this is an important area of focus for everyone. Ben will provide more detailed visibility into our fiscal 2027 outlook, including rates on our fourth quarter and fiscal year earnings call in early September. But given where we sit today, we thought it would be helpful to share some early perspective on how we're thinking about the environment, recognizing that our visibility is still evolving. Starting with Medicare, the final 2027 rate notice came in more favorable than initially proposed, particularly for Medicare Advantage plans. That improvement was driven in part by deferred changes to the V28 risk model transition, which had a more meaningful impact on MA than on pace. For pace, our rate setting framework and transition timeline are different, and given the complexity of the population we serve, the benefit from the Deferred changes to V28 is more limited. The net result is that we expect Medicare rates to increase approximately 1.5% to 2% in fiscal year 2027, which is more modest and increased than what will likely be experienced by MA plans. On the Medicaid side, we're beginning to see early indications from our state partners that budget pressures are increasing. That said, it's important to step back and view Medicaid rates and pace over a longer horizon. This has always been a program with some degree of year to year variability. There are periods where rates run ahead of cost trend and margins expand, and periods like the one we're planning for where cost trends may outpace rate growth and margins can tighten without other offsetting improvements. Over time, these dynamics tend to balance out rates, have kept pace with the underlying cost of caring for this population, and have supported appropriate and sustainable margins for operators who execute well at scale. We believe we're seeing normal cycle variability, not a change in the underlying economics of the model. Importantly, this is where the strength of our model matters. Because we are fully accountable for both the clinical and cost side of the equation, we can manage through periods like this and protect performance over time. So while we have benefited from a more favorable rate environment in fiscal 2026 and are planning for a more tempered environment in fiscal 2027, we remain confident in the durability of the model and our ability to execute through the cycle. As we approach the end of the fiscal year, we believe Innovage is operating from a position of strength. The work we've done over the past several years is translating into more consistent performance and a more disciplined, integrated operating model. We're focused on continuing to deliver strong, sustainable performance while investing in the model, supporting our participants, and being a responsible partner to the states and the federal government. With that, I'll turn it over to Ben to walk through our financial performance in more detail.
Ben Adams (CFO)
Thank you Patrick. Today I will provide some highlights from our third quarter fiscal year 2026 financial performance and insight into some of the trends we saw during the fiscal third quarter. Starting with census, we served approximately 8,050 participants across 20 centers and as of March 31, 2026, which represents growth of 6.9% compared to the third quarter of fiscal year 2025 and sequential quarter growth of 0.5%. We reported 24,060 member months in the third quarter, an increase of approximately 6.7% compared to the third quarter of Fiscal Year 2025 and an increase of approximately 0.4% over the second quarter of Fiscal Year 2026. Our third quarter census increase reflects normal seasonal growth resulting from the Medicare Advantage open enrollment period. Total revenues of $251.9 million increased 15.5% compared to $218.1 million in the third quarter of fiscal year 2025, driven by higher capitation rates and growth in member months. The capitation rate increase reflects annual Medicaid and Medicare rate increases and a lower revenue reserve, while member month growth was driven by enrollment expansion across our California, Colorado, and Florida centers compared to the second quarter of fiscal year 2026. Total revenues increased 5.1% primarily due to higher capitation rates driven by annual rate increases in California and Medicare, both effective January 1, 2026. We incurred $113.2 million of external provider cost in the third quarter of fiscal year 2026, representing an increase of 5% compared to the third quarter of fiscal year 2025. The year over year increase was driven by growth in member months partially offset by a reduction in cost per participant. Lower cost per participant was primarily attributable to reduced permanent nursing facility utilization and lower pharmacy expense following the transition to in house pharmacy services. These improvements were partially offset by annual rate increases for assisted living and permanent nursing facility services as well as higher assisted living utilization compared to the second quarter of fiscal year 2026. External provider costs increased 1.1% driven by modest growth in member months and a slight increase in cost per participant related to seasonal growth in the volume and cost of inpatient admissions. Cost of care, excluding depreciation and amortization was $77.7 million in the third quarter, an increase of 11.8% compared to the third quarter of fiscal year 2025. The year over year increase reflects growth in member months and higher cost per participant. The increase was primarily driven by a net increase in salaries, wages, and benefits due to higher wage rates, partially offset by reduced headcount, higher third party fees and shipping costs associated with in house pharmacy services, and higher contract services and fleet costs inclusive of contract transportation. Cost of care excluding depreciation and amortization increased 3.7% compared to the second quarter of fiscal year 2026, driven by higher salaries, wages and benefits associated with the annual reset of employee benefits and payroll taxes, as well as an increase in consulting expense partially offset by lower contract transportation central level contribution margin, which we define as total revenues, less external provider costs and cost of care excluding depreciation and amortization, which includes all medical and pharmacy costs with $61 million for the quarter compared to $40.7 million for the third quarter of fiscal year 2025. As a percentage of revenue, center level Contribution margin of 24.2% increased by approximately 550 basis points in the quarter compared to 18.7% compared to in the third quarter of fiscal year 2025. Compared to the second quarter of fiscal year 2026, center level contribution margin increased 15.5% from $52.8 million and as a percentage of revenue increased 220 basis points compared to 22% over the same period. Sales and marketing expenses of approximately $8.7 million increased 26.3% compared to the third quarter of fiscal year 2025, primarily driven by higher wage rates and increased marketing spend to support growth. Sales and marketing expenses increased by approximately 8.2% compared to the second quarter of fiscal year 2026, driven by sales, compensation and marketing spend. Timing. Corporate general and Administrative expenses of $76.5 million increased 98.3% compared to the third quarter of fiscal year 2025, primarily driven by an increase in litigation liability. Corporate general and Administrative expenses increased 187.6% compared to the second quarter of fiscal year 2026, primarily due to the litigation liability. Net loss was $29.9 million for the quarter compared to net loss of $11.1 million in the third quarter of fiscal year 2025. We reported a net loss of $0.22 per share and our weighted average share count was approximately 135.7 million shares for the quarter. On a fully diluted basis, Adjusted EBITDADA was $30.5 million for the quarter compared to $10.8 million in the third quarter of fiscal year 2025 and $22.2 million in the second quarter of 2026. Our adjusted EBITDADA margin was 12.1% for the quarter compared to 4.9% in the third quarter of fiscal Year 2025 and 9.2% in the second quarter of fiscal year 2026. We do not add back losses incurred by our de novo centers in the calculation of adjusted ebitda. De novo center losses are defined as net losses related to pre opening and startup ramp through the first 24 months of DE novo operations. Accordingly, this quarter's de novo losses do not include our Tampa and Crenshaw centers as both have progressed beyond the initial 24 month de novo period. For the third quarter, de novo losses were $1.8 million primarily related to our Orlando, Florida center. This compares to $3.5 million of de novo losses in the third quarter of fiscal year 2025 and $4.7 million of de novo losses in the second quarter of fiscal year 2026. Turning to our balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $95.5 million in cash and cash equivalents plus $43.1 million cash in short term investments. We had $69.4 million in total debt on the balance sheet, representing debt under our senior secured term loan, revolving credit facility and finance leases. For the third quarter, we recorded positive cash flow from operations of $18.1 million and had $3.6 million of capital expenditures. Building on the strong performance we delivered through the first nine months of fiscal 2026 and based on information available today, we are updating our full year revenue and adjusted EBITDADA outlook. All other guidance metrics remained unchanged. We expect our ending census for fiscal year 2026 to be between 7900 and 8100 participants and member months to be in the range of 92,900 to 95,700. We are now projecting total revenue for fiscal 2026 in the range of 950 million to $975 million. Adjusted EBITDADA is now projected to be in the range of of 85 million to $90 million and we anticipate that de novo losses for fiscal year 2026 will be in the 11.5 million to $13.5 million range. As we enter the final quarter of fiscal 2026 and begin planning for fiscal 2027, I'd like to share a few observations on where we stand today and how we're thinking about the year ahead. First, the business is performing well overall. Our sustained focus on quality, compliance and operational discipline has created a stronger and more resilient foundation over the past several years. We have meaningfully improved the consistency and predictability of the business and we now have better data and insight to inform care delivery and operational decision making. Second, as Patrick mentioned, we are beginning to see rate pressures emerge as we engage with our state Medicaid partners. While it remains early in the rate setting process, initial indications suggest rate increases in fiscal 2027 may be lower than what we have experienced historically. If this persists and when combined with a more modest Medicare rate environment, it could create top line pressure in fiscal 2027. That said, we view this as a near term dynamic rather than as a structural shift. Currently, we do not believe these conditions represent a new long term run rate and we expect the rate environment to normalize over time. Importantly, our improved cost discipline, operating visibility and focus on execution position us to manage through this period. In closing, we are pleased with the strong performance we delivered this quarter and year to date. The business is operating from a position of strength and our updated guidance reflects both our execution to date in our current assessment of the operating environment. As we continue to refine our operations, we are placing greater emphasis on the full participant experience and evaluating opportunities to enhance care delivery efficiency and outcomes over time. We remain committed to disciplined execution as we close out fiscal 2026 and we believe we are positioned to manage near term headwinds and to build long term value. Operator that concludes our prepared remarks. Please open the line for questions.
OPERATOR
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. If you have a question or a comment at this time, please press star one one on your telephone. If your question has been answered or if you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press star 11 again. We'll pause for a moment while we compile our Q and A roster. Our first question comes from Matthew Gilmore with KeyBanc. Your line is open.
Matthew Gilmore (Equity Analyst)
Hey, thanks for the question. Good afternoon. I guess I wanted to first follow up on the comments around 2027. Could you maybe first help with frame up sort of the change in the Medicaid rate increases that you've seen on a go forward basis versus maybe the rear view, just so we get a sense for the change in that dynamic. And then as a follow up to that, you know, one of the things we've been particularly encouraged by has been your ability to keep cost growth sort of almost flat for the last two years. So as you're thinking about the go forward, I was just curious about your confidence and able to, you know, maintain your cost growth at those levels which presumably would help with help with the dynamic for 2027 and maybe what you're doing to, you know, prepare the organization for what you think may be a more challenging rate environment next year?.
Patrick Blair (CEO)
Hey Matt, it's Patrick. Thanks for the question. You know, overall I'd say we don't have rates for fiscal year 27 yet. You know, we're just, I think, you know, navigating along with the states, you know, what is a pretty complex fiscal backdrop. I mean, states are seeing a complex factors, you know, with sort of post pandemic funding and broader budget pressures and they're having to rebalance across various healthcare priorities. So I think what we're doing is just trying to, you know, be transparent that it's going to be a different, you know, environment for rates than we have seen in the past. I mean, this is pretty typical of operating, you know, In a state partnered model, it's not, you know, new or unexpected. I think our approach has been, you know, and is currently, as we sort of head into the 27 rate setting, is just to stay very closely aligned, you know, with our state partners and continue to focus on delivering, you know, high quality care and outcomes and operate as efficiently as we can. We, one of the things we do here consistently with every state is just the belief in the PACE value proposition and how well aligned it is to what the states are trying to achieve. And caring for this really high needs population is something they take very seriously. So I think just overall we still know very little about 27, so I wanted to just make sure I shared that. But I think that's sort of how we. So, you know, in summary, we're kind of mindful of the broader environment, but we think we have the ability to navigate it just like we have in the past. Now that kind of probably takes me to your second point about, you know, our ability to manage sort of cost trends, you know, in an inflationary environment. We're still feeling, you know, very confident about that. And as I shared in my remarks, we have a lot of work underway right now that's AI supported. So I mentioned in some of the opening marks some of the clinical work we're doing. But we believe there is a lot of opportunity across our care model, to really empower our providers through better information to help them avoid unnecessary specialist referrals, avoid ER visits, unnecessary services, in some ways providing as much care as possible in our centers. I mentioned, I think scheduling,, it's another area where we're using AI to really understand the throughput of our centers and understand something as straightforward as the impact that cancellations have on our transportation, on our staffing. And we're learning a lot about our business and the drivers and AI is really supporting that. And we think there's a lot of capacity, we think there's manual workflows that we can work around. We think there's augmentations to our staffing models that we can pursue that will make us more efficient and deliver a better participant experience. So that's a long way of sort of saying that, you know, the rate environment is one where we're used to navigating it. We'll do that successfully. And we're working, you know, hard to define next year's OVIs operational value initiatives like the scheduling example and clinical value initiatives that we're doing to take clinical variation out of the system. We think there's real Opportunity to operate more efficiently, improve the patient experience, deliver better clinical outcomes, and do all of that in a very complex sort of fiscal backdrop for states. Ben, anything to.
Ben Adams (CFO)
I actually don't have anything to add. I think that was exactly what we're thinking about.
Matthew Gilmore (Equity Analyst)
Okay, great. That was really helpful. I appreciate it. And then as a follow up, I did want to ask about revenue performance on the quarters. Obviously a very strong quarter overall. But on the top line you had mentioned better Medicaid rates and also some favorability with RAF. I was hoping you could discuss the details of that a little bit better. And, and one point I wanted to get at or one thing I wanted to ask about was just the sustainability of the revenue upside you saw in the quarter. I guess I normally would think of RAF and Medicaid rates as sustainable in future quarters, but I just wanted to get your perspective on that dynamic.
Ben Adams (CFO)
Yeah, I guess. Well, you're right. We did start seeing in the back half of the year a increase in rates on the Medicaid side and a increase in risk scores. Right. So both of those things were positive starting in January and they rolled through the second half of the year. You know, if you think about sort of, you know, which states sort of kick in with their rates on January 1st, you know, California is an important one for us and we had a pretty good rate environment in California this year following on some difficult years in California. So that benefited us in the second half of the year. If you think about the risk scores, you're right. I think of those assuming we don't have a mix, a change in the mix of enrollment or some other mix in our population, that improvement in risk scores ought to be durable going forward in the future. But obviously you kind of got to watch it every, you know, as you go into the future, because they do might they do change a little bit. But you know, we're hoping for some durability there. And I think Patrick commented on the rate outlook a moment ago as it relates to Medicaid. So. So you can sort of factor some of those comments into how we're thinking about California for next year, which would be the next time it would renew in January.
Matthew Gilmore (Equity Analyst)
Okay, thanks a lot.
OPERATOR
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Jerry Ozzie with William Blair. Your line is open.
Jerry Ozzie (Equity Analyst)
Yeah. Hey guys, good evening and thanks for taking the questions. Appreciate all the color thus far. Patrick, I think you talked a little bit about sort of emphasize, the flexibility that you have now just based on the stable profile that You've reached here with the model in terms of the go-forward growth strategy. And I think you outlined a couple of different levers, whether that's M and A, joint ventures, partnerships. And then I think you even alluded to potentially some new programs or demonstrations. And so I was wondering if we could just dig into your thinking there a little bit further, maybe force rank some of those different options that are. That you have available to you as to what might be more realistic over the next handful of quarters. And I'd also love to press on the new programs or demonstration models, how you guys are thinking about that. And you know, what. What programs that seem. seem interesting to you?
Patrick Blair (CEO)
Well, thanks for the question. You know, I would start by just, you know, reminding folks that, you know, in many ways we think of ourselves as having kind of come out of the turnaround at the beginning of the calendar year. And now we're in a place where we're feeling and seeing a lot stronger operational, financial and sort of a compliance positioning and performance. And so we're beginning to devote, you know, more time to evaluating, you know, a range of options that, you know, that we could be. That we could pursue. You know, M&A is clearly one of them. There are a lot of PACE programs across the country. Many of them are very successful, some are not. And we've learned from an acquisition we did in California about 18 months ago that we have the ability to bolt on and smaller PACE programs that were maybe struggling to grow. You know, putting them on our platform, on our staffing model, in sort of, our sales model. You know, it really in some ways allows us to pursue a de risk de novo without the longer, you know, return on capital that a pure de novo can take. So, you know, understanding where those opportunities exist is something that, you know, we're spending a little time on. It's hard to handicap this early in the process. You know, where that exists. Obviously, some states have more attractive environments than others. And so that's also a layer that, you know, we put on that partnerships. You've seen some of the partnerships we've done in Florida and in California. We think there's. Those are hospital partnerships,. You know, we are seeing kind of the proof of concept play out in a positive way. There's still calibration that has to be done so that both entities are sort of,, you know, and participants are all sort of, benefiting in the appropriate ways. But we do see more opportunities to do hospital joint ventures that really help us extend our place in the community when it comes to PACE in general. I wouldn't want to overlook the opportunity from just basic policy modernization. There are opportunities that are not radical changes to sort of, the regulatory contours of the program, more like, you know, practical evolutions of the program that would allow us to expand faster. You know, something like simplifying enrollment, making it easier for seniors and families to choose pace. You know, we're working closely with our industry peers in our industry association to articulate those policy modernization opportunities that we see that could help the PACE program serve more seniors over time. And we're really pleased, I think, with the level of interest and curiosity that we see from CMS and CMMI and their openness to listen to what are the things that could change to really help PACE serve more seniors. So that's sort of, the policy horizon. Then. I think maybe the last element to your question was the notion of sort of these PACE inspired adjacencies. We are a big believer that the PACE model can be adapted to serve seniors who are not eligible for PACE today,, but could be eligible in the future. You know, these are. There are opportunities that we see there, some via demonstration, some just kind of de novo adjacent new product development that we could pursue. Our focus still is very much on growing our core PACE business. But as we are able to experience better operating performance and a more consistent model, we really believe strongly that PACE can serve a broader segment of the population. And we're kind of doing everything, you know, sort of in our power and working with our industry peers to make that case. And so over time, you know, we're hopeful that opportunities that are inspired by our core business and very close to our core business could present themselves and we'd love to pursue it.
Jerry Ozzie (Equity Analyst)
Okay, that's, that's really helpful. And then, you know, as a follow up, I really appreciate all the details you guys provided just regarding rate development, and your current view for 2027. You know, if I take a step back from a strategic perspective, you know, if we do find ourselves in an environment where rates are lagging medical cost trend, do you have a bias as it relates to striking the balance between maintaining your current growth levels versus maintaining profitability? I realize from your comments there are a number of initiatives in place that can sort of drive efficiencies. Maybe there isn't really a trade off in that way. But I guess I'd just be curious if you do a year like this with a more muted rate environment, how you think about that in one direction or the other.
Ben Adams (CFO)
Maybe I'll ask Ben to maybe share some initial thoughts and then I'll follow. Yeah, I'm sorry, I missed some of the question coming through. I couldn't figure out. What exactly is the question? Are you talking about. Are we talking about mitigants in a challenging rate environment? Exactly. Yeah. My thought was just, you know, as we think about potentially moving into this more challenging rate environment for 2027, you know, obviously you outlined a number of initiatives in place, but just kind of philosophically, do you approach your strategy with the mindset of pursuing growth as a priority or maintaining profitability? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, it's really interesting. Patrick talked a lot about quality in his prepared remarks. And I think where we are right now is we've gotten to a point where we're, you know, we've got some nice margins, we're generating cash flow, and we think one of the best things that we can do in a market that begins to slow down is not aside from looking at strategic things that Patrick talked about is invest very heavily in corporate quality in our business in our centers. And I think we all feel really strongly that the better experience we give to our participants, the more likely it is going to drive growth and good financial outcomes for us. So I think what you'll see going into this year is we'll spend a lot of time on improving the patient experience on efficiencies in our center at ways that we can be more intentional on our strategies going forward. So aside from the growth metrics that Patrick talked about before, this sort of reinvest into the business. The quality of the business,, I think, is going to be very important for the coming year. I don't know if that really answered your question. You know, there are other specific areas we'll look at in terms of operational value initiatives and clinical value initiatives like Patrick talked about. But it's sort of a mindset. It's very much driven towards, you know, quality is one of the drivers of growth.
Patrick Blair (CEO)
Ben, I might just add that I do feel that we still have opportunity to enhance our sort of sales and marketing model. We made great strides in the last couple of years, but under Mata Ray,, our leader of the sales marketing function, you know, we're really continuing to test and learn and try new things. We're adding new members to the team, we're exploring new channel partnerships, and so setting aside sort of rate, you know, we really are focused on as much, you know, new census gross enrollment as we can.
Patrick Blair (CEO)
You know, we can attract. And there's a lot of great work that's going on in that area. Ben mentioned the Participant experience. We are now at a place where we're spending a lot of time to really understand when people leave us. Why do they leave us? Did they have a particular encounter that was frustrating? Was there some friction or abrasion in, you know, their time with us? Were we slow to recover on a service issue? We're really digging into why people choose to leave. And, you know, that's another opportunity to drive growth is to reduce the number of people that decide to leave us. Some of the people, it's voluntary and they're making a conscious decision, but there's also involuntary voluntary disenrollment. So we are very focused on sort of the sales and enrollment side of the growth equation, as well as the participant experience, you know, keeping people with us longer, basically increasing tenure. I think that's a real bias of ours. And on the margin side, in some ways, we've pulled forward into two years what we thought was going to take three years from a margin perspective,. And now that we're at a place where we're achieving what we set out to and communicated in our investor day a few years ago, I think investing in growth while maintaining a consistent margin is probably more of a priority than expanding margins at this point, if that's helpful.
Jerry Ozzie (Equity Analyst)
Yeah, that's really helpful. I appreciate all the detail there.
OPERATOR
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Benjamin Rossi with JPMorgan. Your line is open.
Benjamin Rossi (Equity Analyst)
Hey, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. So, following up on your 2027 commentary, appreciate that you're planning to provide more details next quarter, but as you think about initial enrollment growth, what are your initial thoughts on your aggregate patient risk scores and new member acuity mix? It sounds as though, based on your Medicare rate assumptions, you're assuming acuity declined somewhat year over year. Is that a fair read?
Ben Adams (CFO)
No, I don't think so. I wouldn't read too much into it, I think. You know, we're going through the budgeting process right now, and, you know, our fiscal year ends June 30, so we're really getting into the meat of the budgeting process. I don't think we expect a material change in mix shift either in terms of our population, you know, independent assisted living or folks in nursing facilities, or a significant change in risk score mix. But we're sort of getting into that process right now. We'll have more to talk about it when we get through the budget process and we issue guidance in September.
Benjamin Rossi (Equity Analyst)
Okay, understood on that. This is a follow up on the your updated outlook suggests 4Q top line growth will decelerate a bit sequentially while EBIT growth will remain elevated. What do you assume gets better quarter over quarter as we go into the next quarter, either across PMPM trend or cost design? And is there anything discrete across revenue or cost that you'd call out within your progression during fiscal 4Q?
Ben Adams (CFO)
Thanks. No, I don't think so. I think that, you know, we've generally benefited, as we said before, from, you know, better rates in the back half of the year and also, you know, better risk scores. And I would expect those trends would kind of continue going into Q4. You know, if you think about how sort of the pattern of gross enrollment works and you can go back and look over the last couple of years, we usually have a pretty good, pretty steady Q4 in terms of gross enrollment growth. And I would think that we probably experienced something not too different from what
Benjamin Rossi (Equity Analyst)
we'd seen in prior years. Understood.
OPERATOR
Thanks for the call and I'm not showing any further questions at this time. And as such, this does conclude today's presentation. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful day.
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