Healthequity Inc
NASDAQ:HQY
Earnings Call Analysis
Q4-2024 Analysis
Healthequity Inc
As an investor, understanding the trajectory of a company's financial health begins with its revenue and member growth. In fiscal '24, HealthEquity not only achieved a significant 16% increase in revenue, reaching the milestone of $1 billion, but also cemented its market position by growing its member base by 9% to 8.7 million HSA members. Such robust top-line growth is indicative of the company's expanding footprint in the health savings account (HSA) sector.
Delving deeper into HealthEquity's financials reveals a strategic edge. The company successfully channeled over 30% of HSA cash into enhanced rates, which, alongside a 13% rise in investing members and a notable 28% surge in invested assets, drove the total HSA assets to a substantial $25.2 billion. Moreover, the company observed a 5% overall account growth, marking the first organic Consumer-Directed Benefits (CDD) net growth since the onset of the pandemic.
HealthEquity has set its sights on doubling non-GAAP net income per share over the next three years, a goal it plans to achieve through strategic capital investments in its proprietary health accounts platform, supplemented by acquisitions such as BenefitWallet. Leveraging cloud and API technology, they aim to enhance user experiences, deepen partnerships, and improve member outcomes - all while ensuring the company's value proposition remains strong.
The fourth quarter painted a rosy picture for HealthEquity, with a 12% increase in revenue from the previous year. Although service revenue dipped marginally by 1%, custodial revenue compensated with a remarkable 35% climb to $105.4 million. This performance boosted the adjusted EBITDA for the quarter to $98.8 million - a 620 basis point improvement over the last fiscal year.
Reviewing the full fiscal year, HealthEquity reported a notable 65% increase in non-GAAP net income, reaching $195.5 million or $2.25 per diluted share, and an overall GAAP net income of $55.7 million or $0.64 per share. The company's focus on efficient operations is underscored by a 36% leap in adjusted EBITDA to $369.2 million, which represented 37% of the total fiscal year revenue.
As of January 31, 2024, HealthEquity boasted $404 million in cash, thanks to a healthy $243 million cash flow from operations throughout the fiscal year. With $875 million in debt, the company remains well-positioned for further growth, maintaining a $1 billion undrawn line of credit primed for strategic moves such as the purchase of the BenefitWallet HSA portfolio.
HealthEquity projects an optimistic future with its fiscal '25 guidance projecting further growth. The company anticipates revenue in the range of $1.14 billion to $1.16 billion, GAAP net income between $73 million and $88 million, and non-GAAP net income expected to fall between $247 million and $262 million, signaling progress towards doubling non-GAAP net income per share by fiscal '27. The expected adjusted EBITDA is set to be between $438 million and $458 million, reflecting the company's confidence in sustaining an upward trajectory.
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Hello, and welcome to the HealthEquity Fourth Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call to Richard Putnam. Please go ahead.
Thank you, MJ. Hello, everyone. Happy Vernel Equinox, and welcome to HealthEquity's Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year-end and 2024 earnings conference call. My name is Richard Putnam, Investor Relations for HealthEquity. And joining me today is Jon Kessler, President and CEO; and James Lucania, Executive Vice President and CFO; and Dr. Steve Neeleman, Vice Chair and Founder of the company. Before I turn the call over to John, I have a couple of reminders. First, a press release announcing the financial results for our full year and fourth quarter of fiscal 2024 was issued after the market closed this afternoon. These financial results include the contributions from our wholly owned subsidiaries and accounts they administer, but do not include any impact from BenefitWallet HSA portfolio acquisition. The press release includes definitions of certain non-GAAP financial measures that we will reference today. A copy of today's press release, including reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures with comparable GAAP measures and a recording of this webcast can be found on our Investor Relations website, which is ir.healthequity.com. Second, our comments and responses to your questions today reflect management's view as of today, March 19, 2024, and will contain forward-looking statements as defined by the SEC, including predictions, expectations, estimates or other information that might be considered forward-looking. There are many important factors relating to our business, which could affect the forward-looking statements made today. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause the actual results to differ materially from statements made here today. We caution against placing undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, and we also encourage you to review the discussion of these factors and other risks that may affect our future results or the market price of our stock as detailed in our latest annual report on Form 10-K and any subsequent periodic reports filed with the SEC. We assume no obligation to revise or update these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events. With that out of the way, let's turn the call over to Jon Kessler. Jon?
Thank you, Richard. Today is also a baseball's major -- in addition to being the vernal equinox is also a baseball opening day. It should be a national holiday. The good news is you do not need the permission of Major League Baseball to reproduce or account this call. You don't need anyone's permission. You can just do it. So with that, thank you for joining us. And since we just held our Investor Day, Jim and I are going to keep prepared remarks brief, and of course, Steve is here for Q&A. In fiscal '24, the team delivered double-digit year-over-year growth in revenue at 16% and reached the $1 billion in revenue milestone. Adjusted EBITDA grew more than twice as fast at 36%. And in sales, as we previously reported, new logo growth and network partner production drove a record Q4 and a strong year overall. Members and assets grew 9% and 14%, respectively, in fiscal '24, and the team opened 949,000 new HSAs from sales. HealthEquity ended the fiscal year with 8.7 million HSA members, in total. More than 30% of HSA cash is now in enhanced rates, investing members and invested assets grew 13% and 28%, respectively. Total HSA assets reached $25.2 billion and total accounts grew 5%, including from organic CDD net growth for the first time since the pandemic began. Now if you weren't at our Investor Day or if you were dazzled by the mountain views, listen up, management aims to continue strong top line growth and competitive outperformance while doubling non-GAAP net income per share from fiscal '24 levels over the next 3 years. To do this, we have focused capital investment on our proprietary health accounts platform and the ecosystem to which it connected, leveraging foundations in the cloud, in data science and an API technology to deliver remarkable experiences to deepen partnerships and to drive member outcomes we call those 3Ds. We further leverage our platform through opportunistic HSA portfolio acquisitions such as BenefitWallet, the transition of which we expect to complete in Q2. This 3-year strategy will, we believe, not only build shareholder value but also advanced HealthEquity's mission, which is to save and improve lives by empowering health care consumers. It's important stuff. Now to Jim to detail other important stuff, which is our Q4 and fiscal '24 performance and enhanced guidance for fiscal '25. Jim?
Thank you, Jon. First, I just want to thank all of you that joined us for our Investor Day last month, hope you found it informative. I'll briefly highlight fourth quarter fiscal year GAAP and non-GAAP financial results. As always, we provide a reconciliation of GAAP measures to non-GAAP measures in today's press release. As a reminder, the results presented here reflect the reclassifications of our income statement we described in an 8-K filed on February 21, both for fiscal '24 and the prior year for comparison. Fourth quarter revenue increased 12% year-over-year. Service revenue was $118.6 million, down 1% year-over-year, reflecting the final runoff of national emergency activity. Custodial revenue grew 35% to $105.4 million in the fourth quarter. The annualized interest rate yield on HSA cash was 268 basis points for the quarter. Interchange revenue grew 6% to $38.4 million. Gross profit as a percentage of revenue was 62% in the fourth quarter this year, up from 58% in the fourth quarter last year. Net income for the fourth quarter was $26.4 million or $0.30 per share on a GAAP EPS basis. Our non-GAAP net income was $55 million or $0.63 per share versus $0.37 per share last year. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $98.8 million and adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenue was 38%, a 620 basis point improvement over the same quarter last year. For the full fiscal year of 2024, revenue was $999.6 million, which Jon generously rounded up to $1 billion, up 16% compared to last year. GAAP net income was $55.7 million or $0.64 per diluted share, and non-GAAP net income was $195.5 million or $2.25 per diluted share, up 71% and 65%, respectively, compared to last year. Adjusted EBITDA was $369.2 million, up 36% from the prior year, resulting in adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenue of 37% for this fiscal year. Turning to the balance sheet. As of January 31, 2024, cash on hand was $404 million, boosted by $243 million of cash flow from operations for the full fiscal year. The company had $875 million of debt outstanding, net of issuance costs, we continue to have a $1 billion undrawn line of credit available. We anticipate using both cash and drawing on the line of credit over the next few months in connection with the closings of the BenefitWallet HSA portfolio acquisition. Today's fiscal '25 guidance reflects the carryforward of stronger-than-expected Q4 sales and efficiencies from the technology investments Jon mentioned, offset by slightly higher mix of investments versus cash in HSA assets. We expect revenue in a range between $1.14 billion and $1.16 billion, GAAP net income in the range of $73 million to $88 million or $0.83 to $0.99 per share. We expect non-GAAP net income to be between $247 million and $262 million or $2.79 and $2.96 per share based upon an estimated 89 million shares outstanding for the year. This is a big deposit towards our goal of doubling non-GAAP net income per share to our $4.50 goal by fiscal '27. Finally, we expect adjusted EBITDA to be between $438 million and $458 million. Our guidance reflects an expectation for an average yield on HSA cash of approximately 300 basis points for fiscal '25. As a reminder, we based custodial yield assumptions embedded in guidance on an analysis of forward-looking market indicators such as the secured overnight financing rate and mid-duration treasury forward curves. These are, of course, subject to change and not perfect predictors of future market conditions. As Jon mentioned, we ended fiscal '24 with about 30% of HSA cash and enhanced rates and expect that mix shift from basic rates to continue as over 80% of new deposits flow into enhanced rates. Our guidance also includes the expected impacts of the BenefitWallet HSA portfolio acquisition anticipated to be completed in multiple tranches by the end of Q2. Cost impacts include interest expense due to an increase in the amount of variable rate debt outstanding and drawdown of corporate cash to fund the acquisition and onboarding costs beyond normal seasonal costs to serve in Q1 and Q2. We expect full run rate benefit in Q3 and beyond. We assume a non-GAAP income tax rate of approximately 25% and a diluted share count of $89 million, including common share equivalents. Based on our current full year guidance, we project a GAAP tax rate for fiscal 2025 at about 28%. As we've done in recent reporting periods, our full fiscal '25 guidance includes a reconciliation of GAAP to the non-GAAP metrics provided in the earnings release and a definition of all such items is included at the end of the earnings release. In addition, while the amortization of acquired intangible assets is being excluded from non-GAAP net income, the revenue generated from those acquired intangible assets is included. With that, we know you have a number of questions. So let's go right to our operator for Q&A.
[Operator Instructions]. Today's first question comes from George Hill with Deutsche Bank.
Jon, I might be in full here because I think you guys called on me in the queue faster than I can type. When I look at the custodial revenue in my model for the quarter, it looks like it was down a touch sequentially while a lot of the KPIs that underpin that. [Technical Difficulty]. Yes. Again, I'm hoping I can be fast finger my model here. Could you just kind of like kind of break down what kind of like what linemetrics that drove the sequential decline in custodial revenue where given the company's strong performance in all the other KPIs, I would have expected that to be up.
Yes. So let me give a partial response and then ask Jim to late along. I believe, George, that one of the things that will be important for everyone this quarter to remember, is that we have as we outlined in an 8-K around our Investor Day and then discussed at Investor Day, we've made a few changes in how we -- in revenue classification within the 3 buckets of revenue on our income statement. And I believe that what you may be looking at is a little bit of an apples to oranges as a result of that because one of the things that we've done is, I think, appropriately so, given its growth is we're treating the revenue that we generate from the service of managing invested assets as what it is, which is a service. And conversely, a benefit of doing that is that now the custodial line is more purely 2 things. It's revenue generated from yield on HSA cash and revenue generated from yield on client health funds. And so that's a big piece of what you're describing, I believe. Jim, do you want to elaborate on that or on any other factors?
Yes. No, that's precisely what it's going to be and so you'll and for the benefit of everyone on the call, the details of the shifting components in the prior periods will be outlined in a footnote in the 10-K, which we'll hope to get on file as soon as possible in the next few days or so, hopefully.
Yes. And Jon, can you guys detail that, and I should kind of remember that as I was working my way through the model. And then I guess if I could just do a quick follow-up, [Technical Difficulty] on the enhanced rates product. I guess would just love any comments that you have about like the selling season as you push forward and continued demand around that.
Yes. We -- actually, Jim, do you want to comment on this?
Yes. Sorry, you broke up a little bit there, but the question was about progress of moving toward growing the enhanced rate mix. Yes.
Yes, that was it.
Yes, yes. So yes, I think what we've outlined, nothing's really changed in the strategy. So we're -- we'll get a little bit of a more of a step-function bump up in that percentage because of the upcoming benefit wallet placements. So getting a big slug of dollars that we can more than 80% place and enhance rates is the expectation. And then the same. And the organic growth in the business is also being contributed almost 80-plus percent into enhanced rates. So you're going to see that number come up, and we've shared our goal is in that same 3-year time frame where we're trying to double non-GAAP net income per share. We're also trying to increase the percentage or the mix of cash, HSA cash and enhance rates from 30% up to 60%. So will it be nice and even quarterly growth, no, but we'll -- that's the objective to get from 30 to 60 in the next 3 years.
The next question is from Stan Berenshteyn with Wells Fargo.
Maybe sticking with the enhanced rates. It looks like annuities are holding up a bit better than 5-year treasuries. Just curious, what kind of spread are you seeing over 5-year treasuries as you're locking in these enhanced products right now?
Jim?
Yes. Again, also at an Investor Day, we outlined our sort of average expected spread is 5-year T plus 75 basis points on average. So are some a little higher, some a little lower. But these spreads don't actually change, right? When we have a partner, we sort of negotiate the the formula. And so we're not shopping in the retail market each time we place these assets.
Okay. Helpful. And maybe for the follow-up. At the Investor Day, there was definitely some excitement over the chat-based communications that you're pushing forward with members. I'm just curious, what percentage of inbound member comes are text-based now? And how has that changed over same time last year?
Yes. Let me first say that I think the long-term vision is that Chad is just one mechanism for this kind of stuff. There's -- and by long term, I don't mean the Jetsons, I mean, over our strategic horizon here. The -- although I guess now the jestions would be in the past, I don't know. But -- so I'm going to answer your question in terms of both chat and other automated forms of handling calls. And so that number is still relatively low in terms of true automation ignoring just IVR type stuff. But low might be -- we're up to kind of 15% to 20%. And in addition, we've also, in the last couple of months here, rolled out a similar functionality for our client services center that handles inbounds from our clients as well as many of our brokers that we deal with. And which I frankly did not expect would be a big hit, but has been used rather aggressively. So -- and that number has increased from, let's say, roughly 1,000 basis points over the last year, so 10%. And we're going to try and drive it further and faster. And the keys to doing that in our view, are: one, is to continue to use the technology for what it's great at, which is improving the quality of the dialogue. And the main way we do that is by continuing to train the technology on actual experiences back with our VOC data as well as with the -- all of the data in our existing systems. The second way that we expand this is by, as I suggested a moment ago, expanding beyond the chat format. So we are -- we actually just went live in the last couple of days here with our sort of first iteration of work on the voice side. I wish I could explain the details of it, but I can't. I do know that it's using a wonderful product from our partner, Google, and Google is a customer of ours and also a great partner on this work, but -- and that it leverages our existing cloud infrastructure. But -- so we think this number can continue to grow. And the results, in our view, can be 3 things. One is obviously lower costs. But the second is not only a better experience for our members and clients, but actually a better experience for our agents who -- the agents that are part of this, ultimately, while it obviously reduces the total number, the agents who are there can be better paid and really use their skills. And then lastly, looked at from the perspective of our partner ecosystem, I think we mentioned this on a call -- on Investor Day, there are opportunities for both customization and personalization of messaging with items that are of interest to our partners. And that can be as simple as branding, but sometimes -- but I think more importantly, you can get to areas like doing more personalization of what you're talking about than any human could ever do. And so I feel great about the fact that we kind of stepped out on this a little bit before there was a buzzword called AI or truthfully or generative AI, at least or at least before I even knew it was generative AI. But we're in a great spot, and we're leveraging our partners at Microsoft on the infrastructure side. And then obviously, with this new data on the application side of Google and doing some really unique stuff.
The next question comes from Glen Santangelo with Jefferies.
Yes, listen, I -- obviously, a lot of good news to talk about on the custodial revenue side, but I was hoping we could maybe dig in a little bit to the service and interchange revenues, with service revenues being down a little bit relative to the account growth that you had last year. I'm kind of curious if you could talk about the pricing environment in terms of what you saw this selling season. Then on the interchange side, I don't know if there's anything related to Change Healthcare and that issue that may have impacted the quarter, and I'll stop there.
Jim, why don't you hit the first part of Glen's question, I'll hit the second one.
Yes. So on the service side, what you're seeing is a couple of things. So yes, certainly, the market competition remains the same, right? Nothing has changed there. So we face competition on large market RFPs, and we're going to continue to face a little bit of pricing headwinds on a per product average revenue per user on the service line. The other piece you're seeing is the end of the national emergency that like I mentioned in my comments. So you think of that as an FSA account that we have with a member that's open for several years because of the extension. You might have a '23 a '22 and '21 and a '20 year open. We count that as one account, but we're getting revenue for each of those years. So with all of those national emergency items coming to an end in Q4 you don't see the accounts go away, but the revenue per account does go away in that case. And then the last piece is just mix shift, right? HSA is a low service fee product relative to CDBs. So as we continue to grow HSAs faster than CDBs, we will see blended average revenue per total accounts come down. So you have sort of a multiple headwind there on price. Aside from all of the pricing impacts, service revenue does grow with accounts. So acknowledge that, that's a little more challenging to forecast. But that's -- we think of sort of service and interchange together as our service revenue streams. They do grow with accounts. The piece we call service has that little extra headwind of pricing pressure and mix shift.
Yes, I was -- with regard to the question on change, which I prefer to call often for reasons that should be obvious. But nonetheless, we'll use change here. We have not seen any -- on the revenue side, interchange flow side, we have not seen any impact in the first quarter thus far. We certainly took a look at particularly the last couple of days of February when this kind of started out. And so, so far, I think so good on that front. And -- but in addition, I will say that since a lot of the kind of public discourse and appropriately so here has been about the speed with which providers are getting paid and pharmacies are getting paid, and therefore, being able to get people access to medications and med services. We have not had any disruption in the payments that we issue, and that includes the fact that we utilize change as our partner for what we call virtual cards. So these are payments to physicians. The virtual card systems that changed were not impacted by this incident. And so we continue to be able to pay -- get our providers paid and get our members reimbursed and get our pharmacies paid, and that seems like a good thing. And maybe I'll just as long as you raise the topic, I'll say one other thing about it, which is that from a security perspective while Optum United change have not come forth with much clarity with regard to the sort of underlying vulnerability that was the source of this. We have -- there's been a lot of discussion in the intelligence community about -- in the cybertecommunity about what it might be. And I suppose one benefit of that is that it's identified a number of what would have otherwise been zero-day vulnerabilities, and our team has been very active in as those kind of come out in that world, and we monitor those through our own resources and third parties. As we monitor those items, we identify whether they are threat to their own systems. And if there are any threats with their own systems, we take action. But at the end of the day, it's yet another reminder of the fact that there's a reason why we spend more on cybersecurity than we do on marketing. It's both the right thing to do, and it's an appropriate thing to do. And if you're going to be a market leader, you're going to have to step up to that, particularly in an industry where you have both health and financial data in your systems.
The next question comes from Greg Peters with Raymond James.
I think this is a good segue. So you just were talking about cybersecurity and it's -- your focus on that, and it's been important. I wanted to pivot to credit risk, not only with your depository but also your enhanced yield partners. And the reason why is because you're seeing some continuing challenges inside some of the bank companies. And then secondly, there's this persistent concern about commercial real estate exposures. And when -- I'm just curious how you evaluate your partners, both on the depository enhanced yield in the context of these types of external risks that we read about? It seems like almost every day.
To start with that one, Josh? Look, yes, look, I mean, I think this is the purpose of our -- we have a custodial cash committee within the company and the Board also provides oversight of the activities of that custodial cash committee, right? This is what we do. We try to diversify the portfolio of partners that we work with, and we do monitor the activity of each of those partners. On the bank deposit side, we're not placing -- these deposits are not treated as mass deposits of health equity into the member bags. They're treated as many small deposits that are fully FDIC insured by the federal government. So they add up to $2,000 here and there adds up to a large deposit with the bank. And then on the insurance side, I think as we've talked about, right, we are at the start of this program working with highly rated the bluest the blue-chip insurance company partners here. And we are adding another criteria there of being a small percentage of their -- of any of our insurance partners' balance sheet, right? It's not just diversifying the dollars across our partners. We are trying to make sure that we're a very small part of the liabilities of said insurance company. But yes, I acknowledge that as we mix shift towards more insurance partner, our ability to risk manage becomes marginally heightened there as we don't have the FDIC pass-through.
That's all right. Jon, did you want to add anything? Or should I just plow into my follow-up question.
Plow ahead, sir.
All right. So BenefitWallet is the integration is underway. So again, when you're dealing with M&A and you guys have a track record of this, there's always surprises and interesting challenges. Has anything popped up on your radar that you want to call out that has been unusual so far? I know you've sort of identified the expectation of when we get -- expect to transfer everything over. But just curious if it's meeting plans or where there's been some deviations.
Yes. I think by and large, Greg, so far so good. As you know, and others may not, I know you do. But one of the things we did with this transaction is that we structured it such that we're not acquiring any technology systems or the like. And that has a number of benefits. First of all, it significantly reduces the possibility of surprises. But in addition, it also reduces things like temporary cybersecurity threat environments, those kind of things. And it's been a good model for us for smaller transactions. This will be the largest of -- not only -- in fact, this will be the largest HSA transfer, I believe, ever done, but certainly the largest of this type. And so so far, so good. What we will do is once the transaction is complete, as we do with other transactions, we'll give you a precise reporting of accounts, assets or precisely on work. But we'll give you a final tally of accounts and assets so that you're able to understand the distinction between organic and these kinds of acquisitions. There was -- if you look back, we talked about kind of where these numbers might end up, but also the agreement itself contemplates the possibility of them being slightly higher or slightly lower, depending on any number of factors. And so you'll be able to get a pretty clear view of how this thing ends up and that will be that. But so far, the team, Brad, Mike Reske, Kelly King and the whole team at HealthEquity as well as BenefitWallet, the conduit team there have done a great job of moving this thing forward and we're really excited about the fact that we now begin to welcome members as we've begun to do in the last couple of weeks as each of these tranches is getting the 10-K or 8-K I should say.
The next question comes from Sean Dodge with RBC Capital Markets.
Maybe just coming at the pricing service fee question in a little bit different way. If we look at revenue per customer, on one of the last calls, Jon, you talked about customer fields, so fields being fees per field. As yields have increased, how much pushback or skin, I guess, if you had to give up on the fee side, maybe kind of catalyze more by the higher yield and not necessarily from any change in the competitive landscape. Has there been -- I guess, has there been a meaningful shift there. And then over the longer run, should we think about average revenue per customer outside of cross-selling being pretty stable, where lower fees offset higher yields? Or do you think there's some kind of net gamer yields you don't necessarily have to give all of it back in fees? or some lower fees?
What your question suggest, Sean, is -- and it is an important observation is that there is some -- I'm an economist, so I'll say it this way. There is some cross elasticity between what's happening with yields and in particular, what's happening with the spot market, right, and pricing pressure. That's a natural thing, and it makes a lot of sense for -- from the perspective, particularly of larger customers. But I actually think when you look at it, I've been somewhat underwhelmed, I'll say, by the extent to which there has been that kind of competitive pricing pressure. I think the bigger issue is that is 2 issues. One is that -- and as it relates to this year and one is more generally is that is the pace of, for lack of a better term, mix shift as Jim put it earlier, and that mix shift being towards HSA, which in terms of total revenue per customer is awesome. Right, our total margin per customer, however you want to think about it's awesome per account. But if I focus solely on service revenues, right, it's a little bit of a downer because HSAs tend to have the lowest monthly fees. And then there are a few other things. Now you've got the fees from investments in there. But they're going to be lower service fees, whereas conversely, for example, the highest service fee per account product is commuter, right, fantastic and as well as Cobra, right? But I don't think anyone would say that COBRA is a big margin maker, right? So -- and it's because you don't have a bunch of other revenue sources there. And so I think that's really the biggest factor. And so as you model this, I mean, there should be some correlation between the pace of relative growth of HSA versus the rest of our business in terms of accounts, right? And the pressure that you might see on these -- for lack of a better term, unit services. Second point is that I think now more unique to this year is that as we reported, we did very, very well with -- relative to our expectations this year with our new logo business and particularly with our enterprise. And of course, enterprise where you get new logos is where you're going to be most competitive, particularly when those logos are coming with existing assets. And so the fact that we did well on assets, right, is in part reflected your -- the sort of other side of that coin is that you're going to be more competitive on your HSA fees for that business. So that's a thing that's worth considering in particular for this year, but it doesn't move the needle that much. I don't know. I mean, expressed on a service fee for total account basis, maybe it's moved the needle 0.5%, I don't know. And then the last point I'd make is a little bit into our strategic planning horizon, so thinking about beyond fiscal '25, it is very much our goal or a goal of ours to grow the noncustodial line. Remember, we think about service revenue as inclusive of interchange. And the reason we break out interchange from the rest of service revenue is just that it's big, it's material, right? But if you look at that line as a whole or for that matter, exclude interchange, if you want to, right, our goal is very much to see that line grow. And the way that's going to happen is several fold. The first is, as we talked about at the Investor Day, it's going to be about the growth of incremental services, right, as we talked about, both new and then turning that CDD growth from -- okay, now it's a -- we've got it to the place where notwithstanding the national emergency type stuff. It's a blast, maybe it's on. I don't know. It's at least a black zero, but it's not a [indiscernibe] number, that will be helpful, but also incremental services around data analytics and the like that we talked about at Investor Day. So over time, we do want this thing to grow. We're never going to shy away from the fact that the custodial businesses, the component of revenue is and should be a growth engine for the business, particularly as balances continue to grow and that we're able -- we've been able to and I think we're going to continue to be able to make it both more productive and less cyclical, but it's not like we're forgetting about the service revenue. We're going to try and grow this over time.
The next question is from Allen Lutz with Bank of America.
Sorry, are we going to see Sean tomorrow we're going to hear from Jon. I think we are. Is that my imagination?
That's your immagination.
Well, we should be. We should be. I'm sorry, Jon.
I guess for Jon or Jim here, the technology and development spend has increased pretty dramatically over the past 2 years. But if you look at this past quarter, it was flat year-over-year. And at Investor Day, you talked about a lot of the investments you're making in digital CBB cards, cost transparency, cybersecurity. So I guess as we think about this fourth quarter number here and we think about what's embedded in the fiscal 2025 guidance, do you expect the technology and development spend to be more flattish? Or is that going to kind of continue the growth trajectory it has over the past 24 months.
Yes, fire away.
Yes, sure. I can take that. Yes. So no, you should definitely not assume that the second debt spend is going to be flat. I think what we've talked about in the past and Jon has talked about before my time here is that we're reaching -- we were reaching the peak last fiscal year of the spending as a percentage of revenue. So we're a little above 22% kind of 22-ish now. So we should start seeing more efficiency. But no, we're going to continue to invest. We're going to continue to invest in the business. So the idea is efficiency at the margin level, not trying to flatten the raw dollars of tech and dev spend.
The next question comes from Stephanie Davis with Barclays.
Maybe MJ didn't put me on because she knows how sticky guys are answering all my questions. I think [indiscernible].
You got us to Miami, my hometown. Stephanie got us to within like literally my hometown of well, I guess, in my case, Miami Beach, which is where we were. So that was -- we were like 50 blocks or something from where I was on can't do better than that.
Congrats on the quarter, but [indiscernible] I have a question. When I think about your recent Investor Day versus the last Investor Day you had, there was way less CDB talk. And I'm looking at your CDB line, and we're actually seeing account growth they got this year. So I love a little bit of a look back on how that industrial logic of marrying HSAs and CDBs played out. And when we think about the future, do you think we get to the same level of accounts we saw during the wage transaction? Or where does this -- where does that line go?
I really appreciate that question, actually. I mean, [indiscernible] but this one Yes, I do. Because you noticed something that as we kind of looked at Investor Day and things like -- sometimes things just happen as you go through it and you don't quite notice them, and this is one of them. And so here's my thought. First, the core logic was not -- we are going to -- like we have leg 1 and now we're going to have leg 2 like that sort of thing. It was that acquiring the CDB business at scale gave us the opportunity to grow our HSA business in 2 ways: one, by playing on more fields and two, by -- that we weren't able to play on before; and two, of course, by giving us clients to cross-sell to. And all evidence is that, that happened. And the easiest way to see that is that when you look at HSA at either gross HSA openings or net adds, whatever you want to look at, right, when you look at our sales numbers, right, notwithstanding the fact that the HSA market is still growing by the same amount year-over-year instead of capturing roughly 20% of that growth as we were prewaged, right? Now we're capturing -- and we'll see -- I noted that Stephanie put out there, we're going to have our market announcement like 5 minutes before this earnings call. So I'm guessing maybe they listen to the earnings call and they use some of this information and like a couple of weeks, they have their thing, but they're wonderful people and I shouldn't tease that way. But let's say, from an account perspective, we're capturing 1/3 of the market and maybe in the aggregate, 30%. And so like it works. That having been said, I think we -- what I would have would have been did say at the time of the transaction having at least some amount of expertise in that business was that the CDB business itself was extraordinarily steady. And it turned out it wasn't. And it wasn't primarily as a result of -- and I don't want to be cheeky about it. I mean it's primarily as a result of -- I don't want to duck responsibility, but it's primarily the result of Pandemic. And even at the outset of the pandemic, as you'll recall, we didn't anticipate the level of unsteadiness of that business. And so obviously, there's a commuter component that people talk about. But in addition to that, there's the fact that the dependent care, which is part of the FSA piece, we kind of disappeared for a while and is still well below its prior levels. And then thanks to some of the recovery legislation, right? We got the sort of a brief blip in COBRA that then went away. And then in addition to that, we've got the fact that the ACA marketplaces are subsidized, and that subsidy appears like it's going to continue. And so actual COBRA relative to -- which is a portion of COBRA revenues kind of came down. And so like that's a lot of movement that we were not anticipating having to deal with. And so as we look at it going forward, what we want to be doing, as I said in an earlier answer is we want to be growing the CDB business. We want to be taking market share. And since the business as a whole is I'm going to put commuter side, whatever, let's assume it's kind of where it is, right? But broadly seeking, it's only going to grow at the way of workforce, which is like what percent -- we want to be growing at a quicker number, that means we're taking market share, right? And I think we're well positioned to do that. We have more scale than anyone else. We're actually investing in the product because as a result of all of our investments, 2 examples being we are -- have -- and these are not future examples. They have already happened. We are rolling out -- we're in the midst of rolling out, we've got halfway through our chip cards and like people say chip card, what's a big deal. Well, let's -- so far, no one else has done something where we have a sack card that is also a chip card that will actually also be available on mobile wallet. What does that mean? It means that you can have 2 or 3 of our products on the same card and there doesn't even have to be a card, right? Now it's also not easy because it turns out that unlike regular chip cards, there's not as much standardization as the Mastercard and Visa people think there is out there in the retail world, and so there's some bumpiness there. But it's a great product. Second example is through the use of AI, we've got to a place where you can take, as you saw at Investor Day, take a picture of a receipt from public, can have whatever on there. We can tell you what it is, and we can approve it right then. And that's the biggest pin point with the largest of the CDB products, which is the FSA. So I think it's reasonable to believe that we can get to a place where we're at single-digit growth in that product. And -- so that's the plan. We'll also look -- Stephanie, we will continue to look carefully at what do we need to own, what do we not need to own. But it's always going to be in the context at least as far as I'm concerned, it's going to be in the context of strengthening our core business. Everything we talked about at Investor Day in terms of new product, the health payment account product we talked about, which is a form of smoothing deductible costs for people who don't -- who do but also don't have the benefits of HSAs. It's always going to be in service of 2 things. One is our core product, which is our custodial accounts and the second is the mission of helping people -- helping empower consumers and in doing so and saving them -- really saving and improving lives when we listen to what people say. So that being the case, that's how we -- that's kind of the framework through which we look at it. And I think that's a reasonable view of what you should be expecting from us over time. I would very much have expected to and liked to have gotten to that place quicker than we have. It's easy for me to blame the pandemic, but we have some responsibility for that, too, including myself.
No, that's helpful. It kind of shows it's more -- it's nothing you're not focusing on just that's not an area of innovation as much, which is more kind of the focus for the forward.
What I think is if you look at -- for us -- let me say it this way, a piece of -- in order to achieve the 3-year target that we laid out, this is one of the things that in all likelihood that we're going to achieve. That is to say to go back to, I think it was Alan's question, I could be wrong, if I am, I apologize. But regarding service revenue, one of the things we're going to have to achieve to get there is we're going to have to grow that service revenue. We can grow service revenue by innovating new products and innovating and by growing our CDB space, and we can innovate within the CDB space similar. And given that, again, I don't think the hurdle is like super high, but I do think it's probably fair that it's also true that at the margin, these are not as profitable products, right? So is it always going to be the first thing on a priority list? No. That's fair.
Can I sneak one for Jim? Or is this -- I mean that was a long answer. That most have happened [indiscernible].
Sure. Go for it.
All right. Let me annoy you with this one. So you've given us a ton of clarity in our custodial revenue. So if I look at the incremental EBITDA dollars in your guidance compared to your incremental custodial profit, there is a pretty big build in that even compared to prior years which doesn't really square with the whole shifting of R&D dollars as opposed to like adding new headcount. So is there anything beyond conservatism to call out there about why there would be maybe a lower conversion rate.
So maybe a little more clarity because I didn't give you guidance on custodial profit dollars.
But you have given us clarity on the custolial AUM, how it trends? You've given us clarity on what graduating and [indiscernible].
Let me stop you there Stephanie. I think one factor that is important to consider in this whole discussion is the other element of custodial, which is the CHF. In CHF world, right, custodial revenue from CHF is going to decline this year, right? Well that's because per if -- depending on what one believes, but for the forward SOFR curve kind of playing a oldforward curve that CNBC talked about all day, we're going to have lower short rates later in the year. And that hasn't occurred yet, obviously, but that's reflected in our guide and so forth. So that's the one area in which that short cash area is the one area where you'll see sensitivity. I think that's -- I'm guessing that, that is the biggest source of the variance that you're describing.
The next question comes from David Larsen with BTIG.
Congratulations on the quarter. Can you talk a little bit about your Care Coordination software solution? I think it's really interesting how you can compare prices at different providers and hospitals for different procedures that ties in perfectly with like the needs that high-deductible account members might have. I think it ties in great with what health plans are trying to accomplish. How many plans is that deployed to, please? And just any thoughts on like the uptake rate of it and the impact you could have on total cost trend.
So let me say first, and we tried to make this distinction at Investor Day. This item is still in beta. So it's a deployment today, it's very limited. And I would describe it more as a feature in my mind than a product. And the reason I say this is that, that business follows. There are people who've tried to build businesses out of this, as you will know. And for the most part, they have failed. And if -- and certainly, in the public markets, they have not done well. And the way we've approached it is the view that you can get 80% of the benefit with 20% of the stuff now that you have the benefits of ML for the business logic and generative AI for the U.S. to some extent. And so that's what we're really trying to do. And we're going to try and do this across multiple applications. And we're not -- I wouldn't -- I don't really think of it as a unique threat to the businesses that are in that space. They're going to face that threat one way or the other, right? And so our approach is to partner. So this -- for example, I mean this solution is, as we said at Investor Day, it's not -- it's us being able to access some of that logic through APIs and the like and then also access some of the ML and AI services to kind of make it as good as we can. So I guess I'll just say, one, this is something that's in beta. Two, I would look at it as principally as a source of support for competitive differentiation versus it's going to be in the near term, its own revenue line. We will, I think, ultimately have some kind of a broad analytics and services business that we'll talk about more, and we began to talk about it at Investor Day, but it's early for that. And so I think the way I'd look at it is exactly as you said, which is it's -- I think it's just it's a good strong feature, and it's an ability to deliver something that people want in a way that's easier for them to consume and that's ultimately less expensive than it's been delivered in the past, which is means then made more available. To your -- the last part of your question, David, about sort of the impact on broader health care trend. Here's my view. And again, I will say as someone who's been part of and observed the battles about all of the massive -- all the ways that people have that are supposedly going to bend trend, which, for the most part, haven't done swap over the years. Here's an interesting fact. When -- and I'm sorry for the long answer, but we did keep the earlier comments short in the prepared remarks. When you -- if you look at health care as a percentage of U.S. GDP in 2010, it was 17.2%, and the projection was that by now, it would be 24%. It's still '17. Nobody talked about that, but it's true. What happened? What changed? It's not -- I mean the Affordable Care Act did a bunch of good things in my view. But it did not do much to bend the cost curve. That was not for the objective. It enhanced access. The biggest change that's occurred over that period of time has been 2 things. One is the incremental involvement of consumers in health care. And the second is the reduction in cost of many of the everyday type pharmaceuticals and procedures that we do in part because consumers are involved in part because of all of the push towards generics and the like, even as obviously, there are certain drugs that are expensive. And so the way I look at it is, it's not that any of these tools per se bends the trend, it's that they all make the involvement of consumers more effective. And that, in the whole is what has a positive effect on the trend among other things. right? And so that's the way we look at it. And when I look at our clients who have been most effective and tried the hardest to utilize tools effectively over the course of not 1 year or 2 years, but 5 years or 10 years or in the case of, I think, about one client that we've had now for 17 years. It's not like special and it doesn't have only a young population, all that kind of stuff, that high-tech type situation. They've been successful at holding health care inflation to CPI and not just when CPI was 6%, right, or 8.4%, whatever it wasn't last year. And so you can do this. And it's not going to be the magic that heals all of health care, but it's absolutely part of the toolbox. And our job is to -- we didn't create this tool, but we can sharpen it. And in doing so, we sharpen every other tool, whether that tool is wellness program, transparency type stuff, telemedicine, whatever it may be, generics. What we do sharpens every one of those tools, and that's how we help bend the trend, which ultimately makes health care more affordable and by helping people understand it, make some better news. I feel like Richard is getting really mad at me now. He's getting mad. Answer way too long.
The next question comes from Mark Marcon with Baird.
We got some really long questions. I'm just caring. So just relative to BenefitWallet, any updates that you can provide there just in terms of the way of what you expect, Conduent had a call. Is there any reason why you shouldn't be able to achieve the same level of profitability or the same interest rates on the funds that they've achieved? Is there anything structurally different? Or is there any portion of the benefit wallet portfolio that isn't coming over to you?
So I think I can give a short answer to this one. To the last part of your question, yes, the answer is -- well, there are 2 parts. One is the non-HSA component of the business so that they have some FSAs and the like, and they are not part of this transaction. and they will continue to be managed by Conduent's broader human resources outsourcing business. And then secondly, of course, as in all transactions, there will be some attrition, both in the midst of the transaction and some that minor shortly thereafter. But that -- we'll try to account for that, and we certainly have tried to account there in our thinking. As to the first part of your question, I do think it's important to note, and I have to admit I have not looked at the transcript of conduits call, but I know that the executive team there is very entertaining. So I'm guessing it was more fun than ours. But I would note that like many of our competitors, the way that Conduent or let me say it this way, genericized. Many of our competitors, the way that they -- their strategy for deployment of funds is that they are deployed in banks and importantly, they are deployed at short rates. So that means much more variability. And so if you look at fiscal, let's say, or I say, calendar '23, like that was an awesome strategy in calendar '23. And it continues to be an awesome strategy, right, until it isn't, it would have been a very, very difficult strategy in, let's say, calendar '20. So as you know, we deploy on the ladder and we've taken a number of steps to kind of make sure that's a smooth as possible. So that will be different. I would not -- I don't know what Conduent said off the top of my head with regard to this, but you should think about us as deploying these assets in accordance with the latter and process that Jim has described at [indiscernible].
The next question is from Jack Wallace with Guggenheim.
I'll keep this quick. Jim I think this one is going to be directed at you. Just wanted to get a high-level puts and takes net of any of the reclassifications of it looks to be about a 50 basis point lift of the EBITDA guide for the year. Just wondering if that's mostly some of the benefits from the technology investments that Jon mentioned earlier, if there's anything else we should be thinking about.
Yes. No, nothing huge, right? What we're trying to do is roll in the -- being a little bit ahead on sales, a little bit ahead on accounts and trying to factor in the comment that I made during the discussion about when markets are good, you see a little bit of shift towards investment from cash and just small adjustments down the cost line. So yes, 50 basis points I want to call within the rounding error there, but just providing you a little more precision and with more perfect information here.
This concludes our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the call back over to Jon Kessler for closing remarks.
An hour and 5 minutes, not bad. Thanks, everyone, for joining us. We will be releasing our 10-K shortly, working hard to get that done for you, recognizing that there are some changes this year, and I'm sure it will be a real page turn. So thanks all very much.
Thank you all.
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines, and have a nice day.