Participants

Jessica Batt; Vice President, ESG; Maximus Inc

Bruce Caswell; President, Chief Executive Officer, Director; Maximus Inc

David Mutryn; Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer; Maximus Inc

Charlie Strausser; Analyst; CJS security

Presentation

Operator

Greetings and welcome to the Maximus fiscal 2025 1st quarter conference call at this time. (Operator instructions)
It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Jessica Batt, Vice President of Investor Relations and ESG for Maximus. Thank you, Mrs. Jessica Batt. You may begin.

Jessica Batt

Good morning and thanks for joining us with me. Today is Bruce Caswell President and CEO, David Mutryn CFO, and James Francis Vice President of Investor Relations. I'd like to remind everyone that a number of statements being made today will be forward-looking in nature.
Please remember that such statements are only predictions, actual events and results may differ materially as a result of risks we face including those discussed in item one a of our most recent forms10-Q and 10-K.
We encourage you to review the information contained in our recent filings with the SEC and our earnings press release. The company does not assume any obligation to revise or update these forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances except as required by law.
Today's presentation also contains non-gap financial information management uses this information internally to analyze results and believes it may be informative to investors in identifying trends gauging the quality of our financial performance and providing meaningful period to period comparisons for a reconciliation of the non-gap measures presented.
Please see the company's most recent forms 10-Q and 10-K and with that, I'll hand the call over to Bruce Caswell.

Bruce Caswell

Thanks Jessica Batt and Good morning, we have strong first quarter results to share with you today. And I'll offer my perspective on maximus favorable position in government services as we navigate the first weeks of the new administration.
But first, I'd like to recap the highly positive developments for the business that have occurred since our November 21st year end call.
I'll start with the two large recompete that we faced. In What I believe was the best outcome, The government withdrew the attempted early recompete of our CMS contact center operations or CCO contract, also known as the1800 Medicare and federal marketplace contract.
We objected to the basis for the recompete and took our case first to the government accountability Office and subsequently to the court of federal claims. Following the election. In late November, the government canceled the procurement thereby clearing the way for our current contract to continue operating which we expect it to through 2031 using the available option periods.
Then as announced last month, we were successfully re-awarded the successor contracts for our VA medical disability examination or MDE work. These two-year contracts began on January 1st and enabled our support of the VBA and the veteran community to continue uninterrupted.
Next, we completed the divestiture of our employment services businesses in Australia and South Korea that resided in the outside the US segment.
We had previously committed to reshaping this area of the business and are pleased to have worked again with a recognized provider who has proven to be an excellent home for our employees.
This recent divestiture achieves an important goal of reducing volatility and is expected to improve profitability in the segment through fiscal year 2025 and beyond.
Finally, as announced in mid December, the board of directors authorized an increase of $200 million to our share repurchase program. When we go to David for financial results, he will share the latest activity on that front.
I'd like to turn now to how Maximus is uniquely positioned to continue being a proven value-added partner to government. This speaks to both our current book of business as well as new opportunities that may lie ahead during the transition period, we've witnessed the durability of our core business as well as early insights as to the priorities of the new administration to which we believe we are well equipped to respond.
While we predominantly serve the federal civilian side of government, and its related state administered benefit programs. Our durable portfolio is tied to well established entitlement programs and others requiring mandatory spending that have broad bipartisan support. Medicare and veterans disability benefits are prime examples, and we witnessed recent events that demonstrate their criticality to government.
One was the recent hiring freeze on federal civilian employees which exempted positions related to the distribution of benefits under Medicare veterans benefits and Social Security.
Separately, the Office of Management and Budget instituted a temporary pause of agency grant loan and other financial assistance programs.
While the funding freeze was ultimately rescinded, OMB had already clarified that programs providing direct benefits to Americans including mandatory programs like Medicaid and Medicare were explicitly excluded
In a fast-moving policy environment that can introduce uncertainty and ambiguity for some companies. We believe our track record has demonstrated that our core business across major federal and state programs has desirable characteristics that contribute to its resilience.
Looking beyond the core benefit program areas. I've mentioned our earned reputation as an efficient and accountable service provider in our view positions us well to respond to the evolving needs of our customers and priorities of the new administration.
One area receiving ongoing attention of course, is the Department of government efficiency or Doge.
As you know, the Doge now resides in the renamed United States Doge Service or USDS previously known as the United States Digital Service.
The Legacy USDS was established in the Executive office of the President in 2014 to bring top tier technical talent to partner with federal agencies to among other objectives, improve critical government services.
The executive order establishing and implementing the doge updates this objective in its stated purpose to include modernizing federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.
In our view, recognizing that we are still in the early innings, the importance of technology modernization to the administration and capabilities needed to achieve the USDS software modernization initiative goals are well aligned with the demonstrated experience of Maximus in the areas of software development, network infrastructure and it systems.
finally turning to the state level and our US services business much has been written about potential changes to reduce the level of federal Medicaid spending through levers ranging from FMP reductions to per person spending caps or block grants.
Many states in turn are developing contingency plans that for some include accessing reserves and for others may include examining eligibility requirements while it's too early to know which if any proposed policy changes will proceed. I'll offer two observations on the dynamics that characterize our Medicaid business.
First, changes requiring consumer engagement such as steps to verify eligibility generally increase our volumes. Most of our state contracts are based on the volume of activity we perform rather than a flat rate per member per month, and second in many of our largest states, we also administer state-based exchanges in which consumers may become enrolled when no longer eligible for Medicaid. Meaning our engagement with those consumers is sustained.
We anticipate states will take varying approaches in addressing potential Medicaid policy changes and the opportunity to work collaboratively with them to apply our deep experience to tailor solutions to their different needs and desired outcomes.
Let's turn to awards and I'll share two recent wins that provide further evidence of our execution our 3 to 5 year strategy.
First, we are pleased to have been selected by the Federal Reserve System to provide technology enabled contact center services through our recently announced Total Experience Management or TM solution.
The Federal Reserve Board of Governors were in need of modernized contact center operations including self service capabilities all to be delivered, meeting strict data privacy requirements in an ASC compliant and fed ramped environment. Total contract value of the award is $76 million over nine years with options and is reported in our unsigned award balance at December 31, 2024, RTX solution leverages data insights and cost effectively enables federal agencies to reach citizens through a multichannel secure cloud-based platform through potential shared services agreements. It is anticipated that other agencies including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the National Credit Union Administration could benefit from TXN in the future.
I'm also excited to announce a recent win at the National Energy Technology Laboratory or NETL part of the Federal Department of Energy valued at $123 million total contract value with a five-year performance period.
Maximus will provide expanded professional it services to meet the business and research needs of the NETL in areas including high performance computing AIML development and ongoing operations and maintenance delivered by our technology consulting services or TCS team. Our services reflect strong core capabilities in enterprise it infrastructure, cyber, data management and AIML.
I'am proud of our TCS team who is exceptionally qualified to support the modernization operation and maintenance of NETL complex portfolio of enterprise, cyber and research infrastructure.
Let's go to awards reporting and the pipeline in the first quarter of fiscal year, 2025 signed awards totaled $2.1 billion of total contract value. Further at December 31, there were $410 million worth of contracts that had been awarded but not yet signed.
These awards translate into a book to bill of approximately 0.7 times using our standard reporting for the trailing 12-month period or about 1.5 times when measured in the quarter. This represents a healthy step up from our book to bill at September 30th and tracks to our expectations for an improved metric in this fiscal year.
A key driver this quarter was the successful recompete for the MD contracts demonstrating Rebid award activity picking up again after lower Rebid volumes in preceding periods as we approach the midway point of the second quarter, I'm pleased that we're continuing to see awards flow and thus far solicitations tracking to expected schedules.
We maintain our slightly cautious approach to forecasting this year while also being optimistic about our deal flow.
Our total pipeline of sales opportunities at December 31, was $41.4 billion compared to $54.3 billion reported at September 30.
The prior period pipeline figure had included the early Rebid of the CCO and recompete for the MDE contracts. So, the reduction is largely driven by the successes discussed at the start of my remarks.
The current pipeline is comprised of approximately $2.5 billion in proposals pending $1.5 billion in proposals in preparation and $37.5 billion in opportunities tracking of our current pipeline, approximately 57% represents new work. Additionally, 63% of the $41.4 billion total pipeline is attributable to our US federal services segment.
We are continuing to focus on the US federal sector where we believe technology modernization and cost-effective program administration using private sector partners will remain a priority while maintaining a balanced mix of federal and state opportunities.
This approach aims to ensure a responsibly diversified portfolio and well managed exposure across the segments.
Over the past few years. We've communicated ways in which our company culture has evolved, leading to greater organizational agility and a heightened ability to innovate. As an example, the Maximus Forward initiative has been a positive forum to challenge established structures and processes, promote more efficient operations and provide for reinvestment in the business to address priorities from talent acquisition and development to technology and innovation.
Reflecting the goals of Maximus forward, our Chief Digital and Information Officer Derek Pledger established an AI and data accelerator group to advance our AI capabilities, providing the necessary resources frameworks and infrastructure to harness the full potential of AI across our operations.
The AI and Data Accelerator is designed to speed up the development and deployment of AI driven solutions from pilots to scale while ensuring they adhere to our governance principles. Central to our strategy is our commitment to responsible AI development and use while taking steps to help ensure that our AI solutions are implemented ethically transparently and with accountability to government guidelines and regulations.
In this spirit, I'm excited to announce our inaugural investment via Maximus Ventures, our corporate venture capital function, we will be partnering with a company that is developing human in the loop AI capabilities specific to clinical assessment services.
Our objective is to support our clinicians in a manner that allows for fully auditable, timely effective and quality health assessments and evaluations. We've structured an investment that is designed to drive increased financial performance on our existing clinical programs while bringing differentiating technology to our government clients.
We believe our unique positioning with federal and state governments makes us an attractive partner for innovative health technology companies and start-ups wishing to access these large markets where contract vehicles, relationships and the complex nature of government contracting are challenging for outsiders.
In addition to driving efficiency in our service delivery, Maximus is also focused on helping government gain access to proven safe and ethical new technologies through its venture investments.
Before I turn the call over to David Mutryn, I'd like to congratulate our teams on an excellent start to the fiscal year with our CCO and VIMDE contracts now secure and fueled by a strong start to new contract wins.
Our teams are focused on consistent operational execution while supporting our clients as policy priorities continue to evolve. While we like many of our peers continue to face unknowns and the risks they represent overall, we believe the balance tilts toward opportunity and with that, I'll turn the call over to David Mutryn.

David Mutryn

Thanks Bruce Caswell and good morning, we're pleased to start fiscal 2025 with strong first quarter results and an improvement to our full year earnings guidance. We're delivering them from a strengthened position after successfully securing favorable outcomes on the two key rebids.
We also completed the divestiture of our employment services businesses in Australia and South Korea, thus reducing volatility in the outside the US segment and providing a lift to the segment's profitability.
In addition, we significantly increased our pace of share repurchases in the quarter from our fiscal year start on October 1, through last week, we have deployed approximately $290 million through share repurchases enabled by our strong balance sheet. And consistent with our capital deployment strategy.
Let's turn to quarterly results where Maximus reported revenue of $1.40 billion for the first quarter of fiscal year, 2025 which represents 5.7% year over year growth or 6.3% on an organic basis.
The US federal services segment was the primary driver of growth in the quarter. With the outside the US segment also posting strong double digit organic growth adjusted EBITDA margin was 11.2% and adjusted EPS was $1 and $0.61 for the quarter, which compares to 10.6% and $1 and $0.34 respectively for the prior year period.
The outside the US divestiture was completed in the first quarter. And as a result of the transaction, we incurred divestiture charges of about $38 million. The majority of this about $21 million results from foreign exchange losses that had accumulated over decades related to Australia.
These had been recorded in other comprehensive income, but the transaction event requires them to move to the income statement. There is no cash impact related to this shift. These divestiture charges also caused a higher effective tax rate to be recognized in the quarter. The divestiture charges and the related tax rate impact which together make up $0.64 per share are excluded from our adjusted EPS and adjusted EBITDA metrics, consistent with our methodology.
I'll now move to results for each of our segments.
For the US federal services segment revenue increased 15.3% to $781 million which was all organic revenue growth stemmed from multiple areas throughout the segment including clinical assessments, some outsized volumes on other clinical programs, as well as customer service type programs.
The operating income margin for the segment in the first quarter of fiscal 2025 was 12.7%. As compared to 10.2% in the prior year period. The outsized volumes in certain smaller clinical programs helped bolster this quarter's margin and are not expected to carry through the remainder of the year at these levels.
For the US services segment revenue decreased 7.7% to $452 million. The prior year period, which had outsized growth at the time benefited from strong performance across the Medicaid related portfolio, most of which were excess volumes from the now completed unwinding exercise.
The segment's operating income margin this quarter was 9.0% and compares to 13.5% for the prior year period. A portion of the margin GAAP stems from the prior year period's enhanced profitability from the excess volumes. The other portion is some seasonality that was contemplated in our full year outlook. For the segment which is unchanged in our updated guidance.
Turning to the outside the US segment revenue increased 6.0% year over year to $170 million for the quarter. Organic growth was 10.7% and driven by strength in flagship contracts in the UK such as the new functional assessment services contract. The segment generated $8.1 million of profit which is a 4.8% margin compared to an operating loss of $0.1 million in the prior year period. Following the divestitures of predominantly employment services contracts that we have completed in the last two years. We are now seeing a notable reduction of volatility in the segment. We will continue to evaluate this segment's performance though we believe that the shaping actions requiring prioritization have now been completed.
Turning to cash flow items, cash used in operating activities was $80 million and free cash flow was an outflow of $103 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2024 1st quarter, negative cash flows reflected expected seasonality around timing of payments that we tend to have in this quarter which I noted on our November call, our day sales outstanding were 62 days during the quarter. We significantly increased the pace of share repurchases buying back approximately 3.1 million shares for $237 million. This increase is consistent with our stated capital allocation approach which features opportunistic share repurchases enabled by our strong balance sheet. Since quarter end through January 31, we repurchased an additional 686,000 shares for $53 million leaving approximately $85 million remaining under the current $200 million board of directors' authorization.
We ended the first quarter with total debt of $1.40 billion and our net debt to EBITDA ratio increased from 1.4 last quarter to 1.8 times this quarter. Primarily as a result of the share repurchase activity.
As a reminder, this ratio is our debt net of allowed cash to adjusted EBITDA for the last 12 months. As calculated in accordance with our credit agreement, we remain below our stated target net leverage range of 2 to 3 times adjusted EBITDA.
Our capital deployment priorities have not changed, and we continue to seek acquisitions that can accelerate future organic growth. Meanwhile, we continue to pay a dividend that increases with earnings over time and maintain an opportunistic share repurchase program which has been consuming a larger portion of our capital deployed over the last few months.
I'll finish with 2025 updated guidance where our implied organic growth rate is increasing, and we are raising both earnings and free cash flow projections on the revenue side. Our updated guidance is $5.2 billion to $5.35 billion. Crosswalking from formal guidance in November, $100 million was removed for the completed outside the US divestiture, which means other areas of the business including Q1 results have increased guidance by $25 million.
This translates to a 50-basis point bump to the implied full year organic growth rate versus last fiscal year on the earnings side for fiscal year 2025. Our full year adjusted EBITDA margin guide improves by 20 basis points to 11.2%. And our adjusted EPS guide increases by $0.20 to range between $5 and $0.90 and $6 and $0.20 per share.
Free cash flow guidance increases by $10 million to $355 to $385 million. There are several drivers to the increased guidance. Number one, our Q1 results were strong and ahead of internal expectations. This was evident in the US federal margin of 12.7% in the quarter.
Number two, the divestiture and outside the US at the time of announcement in December, we noted the transaction was estimated to be slightly accretive which is now baked into the full year forecast. And number three, the higher levels of share repurchase activity especially in the first quarter of this year is providing a benefit to our full year adjusted EPS.
It's worth noting that our forecast for the remaining three quarters of fiscal 2025 remains largely intact and reflects a continuation of a more cautious approach, which was our objective. When we laid out initial guidance for the year, I'll touch on segment margin assumptions. We expect the US federal segment to deliver a full year margin of around 11.5% for fiscal 2025 reflecting more typical performance. After a strong first quarter, the US services segment remains on track to deliver a full year margin of around 11% reflecting improvement for the remaining quarters after the lower first quarter margin, which as I mentioned was largely expected for the outside the US segment. We expect 3% to 5% for the full year. As we noted on our divestiture announcement, this is a 200-basis point increase from initial guidance. And while the actions we've taken are still fresh. I'm pleased to see us tracking to our committed 3% to 7% margin range for this segment.
Other updated assumptions for fiscal 2025 would be an updated interest expense of approximately $75 million resulting from greater borrowings tied to higher repurchase activities. Our full year tax rate is now expected to range between 28% and 29%. As a reminder, the higher first quarter rate was tied to the divestiture related charges and not an indicator of the three remaining quarters which are expected to be in the 25.5% to 26% range. Finally, on a full year basis, the weighted average shares are expected to be about 58 million shares.
We continue to track favorably to our 10% to 13% adjusted EBITDA near term margin expectations that I shared on the November call. Today's guidance for fiscal 2025 is approximately 11.2% and our goal beyond 2025 is ongoing incremental improvement to move into the upper half of that range. We believe there is cause for optimism with the business, firmly rooted and essential bipartisan programs, a healthy pipeline of opportunities and a reputation for solving challenges for government customers through the efficient delivery of quality programs often at scale.
And with that, we will open the line for Q&A operator.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. (Operator instructions)
Our first question comes from the line of Charlie Strausser with CJS security. Please proceed with your question.

Charlie Strausser

Hi, good morning.

Bruce Caswell

Good morning, Charlie Strausser.

Charlie Strausser

Bruce Caswell. If you could, you maybe talk about the strength in Q1, very, very strong quarter. You know, well ahead of our expectations, was there any, we'll pull forward from, in that performance, I should say.

Bruce Caswell

Yeah, it's a good question and David Mutryn will give you some more details on that.

David Mutryn

Yeah, thanks Charlie Strausser. Just to put it in the context of the annual guidance as well. Maybe it would be helpful to kind of roughly quantify some of the changes in the full year guidance. So you know, I said the forecast for Q2 to Q4 is largely intact.
The share repurchase is if you look at the change in share count, the higher interest and combine that with a slightly higher tax rate that gives you about 10% improvement to the full year earnings. So kind of below the line and then the other two drivers I mentioned which were the Q1 over performance as well as some accretion from the divestiture actually drive a little bit more than $0.10. So altogether that would be a little bit over $0.20 given we're only one quarter in and still maintaining a disciplined approach. We decided to keep the earnings guidance raise at the $0.20 level. And as we said on the last call, we have intentionally kind of de-risked the forecast for any potential impact of procurement timing. So now less than 2% of our revenue midpoint is coming from new work. So Q1, it was less of a pull into Q1 but just wanted to put the Q1 over performance into the context as it relates to the full year guidance. Is that helpful?

Charlie Strausser

Yeah, definitely. And you know, maybe talk a little bit too about, your confidence in the guidance, kind of making some of that into your, your thought process.

David Mutryn

Yeah, I think confidence remains high. When we give guidance, we're careful to not lean forward too much. And I think you're used to having that thinking around it. I think the new business assumption I mentioned is probably the clearest and most precise kind of evidence I can show that we're being careful about the environment and making sure we've got good visibility.

Charlie Strausser

Great Thanks, and Bruce Caswell, given the headlines from the new administration, obviously, you probably have some smaller pockets of your portfolio that are not tied to durable programs where you might have opportunities to risk, maybe talk about that and give us a little more color on that front.

Bruce Caswell

Yeah, Charlie, it's a good question. Thank you. And I think you've hit an important point that these are would be small pockets. We've really, as you can imagine, looked very closely at the portfolio kind of across all of our federal customer areas on a contract by contract basis.
And as we have done that, we've, the process we've looked at is to say, look what's the core function that's being performed here. And if for example, there were to be a structural change at a department level, where would that core function have to go to continue? Because in our view, the programs themselves are not going to go away and the basic functions of providing service and managing portfolios, for example, on behalf of the government have to continue to be performed.
And so we've looked at, where that might go in the future if necessary and would be ready to adjust if we needed to. But fundamentally, we really haven't seen many pockets that would be if in fact any pockets that would be directly impacted by any of the executive orders.
It's worth also saying that we've been pleased to see continued deal flow in the pipeline. I'd be happy to go into more detail on that. But, compared to other Presidential transitions or the last Presidential transition, it's really normal course presently from a deal flow standpoint.

Charlie Strausser

Yeah, I was going to ask you too about, last time when Trump was, first, put into office, it took him, quite a while to, find the right appointees, et cetera. It seems like he, has kind of hit the ground running here and you know, that, helped you, with your, your pipeline in terms of, going after our, our P and rps being let out that a slow down in that, that, sales cycle if you will.

Bruce Caswell

Let me give you a little more context on that. So, we're not seeing any real direct impacts presently on deals that we're watching in the pipeline, particularly in the health and the defense and the homeland security areas in some individual agencies within that group, as you might expect are temporarily pausing new acquisitions to ensure that they're aligned with administrative administration priorities.
And that's a very common thing for them to do during a period of transition kind of as expected. And we bake that into our expectations in terms of new work for the year and so forth. On the civilian side of the business is a slightly different dynamic.
We're seeing some customers turn to extensions and bridges on existing contracts to get work through and get it programmed and accommodate delays in other procurement vehicles.
So, that of course, is a great position to in when you're an incumbent because you're picking up work with very low or no cost of sales on existing vehicles. It's less of a great position to be in when you're waiting for procurement to come out.
And I'm pleased that from a civilian perspective, I feel like we've been more on the beneficial side of that. Another point I would make is that many of the govcon companies as you well know, are dependent on government wide acquisition vehicles or G wax government wide acquisition contracts. And we really haven't seen any material delay in the acquisition schedules for those.
So that gives you a sense of the lay of the land. I want to note however, that there are some other variables that everybody is watching. One is the FY25 appropriations process that could impact the timing of new contracts across the community represent actually new spending and would obviously go above the funding that would be available through a continuing resolution.
So already we've seen talk about what will happen on March 14th when the current cr expires, will we see another cr will that carry us through the remainder of the fiscal year? In some instances, if we're maintaining the current funding levels, that could keep new contracts from being funded with new money.
We're also cautiously watching the OPM deferred resignation and voluntary early retirement authority or vera process for the potential impacts on government procurement staff.
You know, we've talked about this before Charlie, but government procurement teams and contract shops have been stretched for a number of years in some agencies and we want to obviously consider and as an industry consider how resignations and retirements could exacerbate that issue.
So that's why I think David put it. Well, when he said, we're maintaining a disciplined view of the remainder of FY25 and that we've got less than 2% of our FY25 revenue coming from anticipated pipeline conversions.
Hope that helps.

Charlie Strausser

Yeah, definitely. Thank you very much Bruce Caswell. And David, if you, maybe if we could talk a little bit more about segment margins, you know, what are kind of the assumptions you're making into, your kind of stated goals there and, are there any kind of, drivers, kind of key drivers or impediments to achieving those goals?

David Mutryn

I'll start with us services. The US services margin Q1 was a bit lower than what we expect for the year as a backdrop. As you recall last year in 24 US services had higher than normal margins as a result of the extra volumes from the Medicaid unwind. So we have tough year over year comps for the first three quarters there.
And then recall in Q4 of last year, us services delivered a more typical margin of 11% which again is what we're guiding to for the full year. Despite the first quarter being at 9% the dip in Q1 was largely anticipated. A component of that was really the impact of open enrollment on that segment, especially this year.
We were prudent in how we staffed our contracts there that are typically paid on either a volume based or more of a fixed price basis, especially given there's been a lot of change in that population. So we largely anticipated that when we gave the guidance back in November and we still expect that segment to come in around 11% for the full year.
For us, federal margin was a little bit higher in Q1 than our guidance of 11%. And again, as I said, there were some smaller clinical programs that really over delivered in the quarter, just given higher volume coming through that we are not currently anticipating that level of volume continuing at such a high level. So that explains what we see there, that outside the US pleased that it's at 3 to 5% and should be more stable as a result of the shaping we've done.

Charlie Strausser

Great. And one housekeeping question for you, David tax rate was a little higher in the quarter and your tax rate guidance is a little bit higher as well. You know what's driving that?

David Mutryn

So the first thing is the impact of the divestiture related charges.
So those are non tax deductible. Therefore, the Q1 rate is very high which we've adjusted out of our adjusted EPS numbers. Even apart from the divestiture related impact.
I said in my commentary, the tax rate in Q3 and Q4 should be in the 25.5 to 20 6% range, which is just a tad higher than the 25% range. We said last quarter. So there's just a small upward impact there with no single driver once you normalize for the divestiture impact.

Charlie Strausser

Great. Thank you very much for taking my questions.

Bruce Caswell

Thanks Charlie.

Operator

Thank you, our next question comes from the line of (Brian Justa with Raymond James). Please proceed with your question.

Hey, good morning. Really nice job on the quarter and the execution.
I wanted to Bruce Caswell, kind of peel into some of the commentary you had around Medicaid. Appreciated that color. I think it makes it's pretty intuitive that you get incremental volume for more consumer engagement or, or changes in the program.
But I thought it was really interesting your discussion around running the state-based exchanges as well and picking up incremental volume as perhaps populations decline in Medicaid. We, we've had the Medicaid chip population peak at about $94 million. we're now under $80million. Can you maybe talk about that relationship and what you've seen over the last 12 months?

Bruce Caswell

Sure, Brian and good morning and thanks for the question.
So to give it some context at the national level, we just ended the 2024 open enrollment period. Total health plan selections made during open enrollment were $21.4 million and that's at the federal marketplace and also includes the state-based exchanges. So, the $21.4 million is a $5.1 million increase over 2023 or 31% increase across the entire system.
Interestingly, there was a 41% increase in new consumers signing up for plans. So, the dynamic that you're referencing is borne out in the data as people are transitioning from after all the recertification process and redetermination process in Medicaid.
It's clear that individuals are traversing over to the exchange business. And as I said, we are fortunate that in instances we're operating state based exchanges or really a single entity that could include the Medicaid work as well as a basic health plan as well as an exchange alternative for consumers.
And also, of course, through the work that we do on the 100 Medicare or federal marketplace contract, we're picking up enrollment activity related to federal marketplace states.
So as reported by CMS just to drill into some of the numbers New York who is a big customer of ours saw open enrollment plan selection during this period increased 35% from 2023 to 2024. So individuals clearly moving from one coverage area to another, all of that.
It's important to note in the context, however, that it's a very fluid policy environment. So as you're, I'm sure very well aware there was a final rule on streamlining that was issued by CMS that affects Medicaid chip and basic health plans.
And that came out in March of 2024. There are a number of states that are challenging requirements of that rule and with things like for example, continuous eligibility requirements and so forth and that could overall further affect enrollments going forward in chip programs and in some instances, maybe cause more individuals to need to need to make a plan selection in a product other than Medicaid or Chip. And the last thing I'd say is that still hanging out there, of course, are the subsidies that were provided through the American rescue plan and the Inflation Reduction Act.
Those subsidies have enabled consumers with higher income levels to get coverage including about a million and a half consumers that reported income over 400% of the federal poverty level this last open enrollment period. So again, the sustaining those subsidies would be critical to keeping those enrollment levels where we're seeing them. I hope that helps.

That great answer. I appreciate all the, all the data that it was embedded in that. Thank you. In order to, to talk about the veteran assessment business, it looks like inventories are drawing down slower. In other words, there's, there's a lot more kind of ongoing activity on this.
Can you maybe just talk about your outlook for that in terms of, of growth as we think about it and it in your guidance and, and maybe this really nice new contract renewal that you had, how we think about the particulars of how that might impact the business as well.

Bruce Caswell

Yes, I'll start and then I'll hand it off to David for some more color. You're right. The claims inventory that the VBA reports came down from a peak of what appears to be about $1.1 million down to about 953,000 and is kind of stabilized at that level. So there continues to be an awful lot of work to be done and we continue to, to have our fair share of that work.
And we're very pleased with the performance of the team and the volumes that they're handling in what is a complicated program and complex choreography. If you will, between the work we do with the veterans and the clinicians and so forth and the va so David can comment on kind of our volume expectations that are embedded in our guidance for the full year.
But I'll just say, as we've said on prior calls, we're very focused on continuing to improve the veteran experience and ensure that we can increase our ability to handle these volumes and what might be further volumes in the future.
But more importantly to ensure that we're maintaining quality and that we're meeting the handle time requirements within the contract. So we are making a significant investment in technology to support that program that we expect to be coming online more fully. I would say toward the end of this fiscal year. So with that said, I'll hand it off to David Mutryn to talk a little bit about what's embedded in our guidance.

David Mutryn

Yeah, I think in short, our view and expectation for volume hasn't changed much over the last couple of quarters. Obviously, we had a big step up in volume as did the other vendors over the past two years. And from here, what we see is more stability. Certainly, we see the volume sustaining at the current level, but more a steady to modest growth level rather than another step up.

Great, thanks. Maybe just a couple other real quick ones. Housekeeping. Can you maybe comment on the loan servicing you have with the Department of Education and student loans and maybe just talk about all the noise around the headlines that are seemingly coming out on a daily basis.

Bruce Caswell

Yeah, I appreciate the question. And I would just say, in our view, that's a perfect example of what I spoke to a little bit earlier, which is that the core function, which is managing a portfolio of federally direct lent student loans that are we've now been through return to repayment and we're in kind of full operational mode that's going to need to continue one way or another.
I would have to say that, there are obviously all the borrowers out there are going to need continuity of service regardless of ultimately where that function lands in government.
And there has been some speculation as to other agencies that have similar financial management functions as part of their remit that where a portfolio like that could go and continue to be serviced. But we don't feel that that would in any way change the contracting model that government is using to service those loans.
So we'll just continue to support our customer and we're pleased to continue to handle the portfolio that I will say has grown over time as a reflection of our high customer satisfaction scores and the confidence that the customers expressed in the work that we're doing and we'll let the other decisions related to department structures and so forth, be handled, at the political level.

Appreciate that and then just, just final one, David probably for you help us a little bit on the rhythm of the free cash flow. You've got a lot of free cash to generate in the, in the next over the next three quarters. Is it a linear progression, are there any kind of considerations to take on a quarter by quarter basis? And, and maybe really just a little bit of help on how we shape that?

David Mutryn

Yeah, I mean, Q1, I guess as I highlighted the timing of certain payments that we expected. If you look at our cash flow statement for Q1, you can see a cash outflow related to accrued comp and benefits. So that has to do with our annual incentive payments as well as just the timing of payroll, which we anticipated.
And then even though our DSOS were only up one day, you can still see a use of cash on accounts receivable. That's really just revenue being quite high in December, especially during open enrollment. So that tied up a little more in A.
So, we do expect both of those to be Q1 specific for the rest of the year. Nothing really to highlight. I think we'll continue to see strong cash flows come in over the next three quarters. It's sometimes even difficult with collections coming in right at the end of a month to pick which quarter among the three. So there's nothing else unusual. I'd call that.

Understood. Thanks so much guys.

Bruce Caswell

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. And this concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your line at this time. Thank you for your participation.