OptimizeRx Corporation (NASDAQ:OPRX) Q3 2022 Earnings Conference Call November 8, 2022 4:30 PM ET

Company Participants

Will Febbo - Chief Executive Officer

Ed Stelmakh - Chief Financial and Operating Officer

Steve Silvestro - Chief Commercial Officer

Marion Odence-Ford - General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer

Andrew D’Silva - Senior Vice President, Corporate Finance

Conference Call Participants

Jared Haase - William Blair

Sean Dodge - RBC Capital Markets

David Grossman - Stifel

Joy Zhang - SVB Securities

Eric Martinuzzi - Lake Street Capital Markets

Marc Wiesenberger - B. Riley Securities

Operator

Good afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining OptimizeRx’s Third Quarter Fiscal 2022 Earnings Discussion. With us today is the Chief Executive Officer of OptimizeRx, Will Febbo. He is joined by company Chief Financial and Operating Officer, Ed Stelmakh; Chief Commercial Officer, Steve Silvestro; General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, Marion Odence-Ford; and Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance, Andrew D’Silva.

At the conclusion of today’s earnings call, I will provide some important cautions regarding the forward-looking statements made by management during today’s call. I would like to remind everyone that today’s call is being recorded and will be made available for replay via webcast only. Instructions are included in today’s press release and in the Investors section of the company’s website.

Now with that, I’d like to turn the call over to OptimizeRx CEO, William Febbo. Sir, please go ahead.

Will Febbo

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining our third quarter fiscal 2022 earnings call.

Our third quarter results were in line with our expectations, and as a result, we are maintaining our guidance for the year. We are optimistic that the macro headwinds outlined on our last call will begin to subside in 2023 and are seeing several positive signs. For example, the bandwidth issues at the FDA, which impacted novel new drug approvals this year, appear to be improving with the majority of vacant positions having been backfilled and the FDA increasing the rate of approvals over the last 2 months. Furthermore, while the great resignation increased average employee turnover across the life science industry, which resulted in substantial changes with key decision-makers, the rate of turnover appears to be solid and should eventually return to normalized levels.

Finally, we mentioned longer sales cycles tied to our shift towards participating in larger, more complex programs with our pharma clients. As a reminder, these AI-enabled, real-world evidence deals represent multimillion dollar per brand opportunities and offer OPRX significant scalability. The closing of these deals naturally takes longer to complete, given the increased number of stakeholders involved at the customer level. Despite these factors, we are seeing significant momentum off the midyear trough that we believe should materially benefit the company in 2023.