Benefitfocus (BNFT) Lowers FY20 Guidance

Benefitfocus, Inc. (NASDAQ: BNFT), the technology platform driving rapid innovation for employers and health plans, announces a series of actions to address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on its business and ecosystem. The company has taken significant steps to protect its employees, customers and business partners, reduce its underlying expenses, enhance its financial flexibility and maintain its liquidity profile.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on our global economy,” said Ray August, president and CEO of Benefitfocus. “We are taking decisive actions to maintain Benefitfocus’ financial strength during a prolonged period of uncertainty so we can continue to advance our mission of improving lives with benefits. We have moved swiftly in the last two months to provide the tools and resources needed to help guide and support clients through this pandemic.”

Benefitfocus’ ecosystem is among the largest in the benefits industry and over 150,000 employers, as well as more than 25 million consumers who continue to rely on Benefitfocus products, services and innovation. “We remain uniquely positioned to continue to serve all participants in our ecosystem, August continued. Particularly given a new economic reality of increasing healthcare costs, the importance of the Benefitfocus offering has become more essential.”

Benefitfocus is streamlining expenses and redirecting resources to increase automation, improve efficiencies and continue innovating. The actions announced today are expected to enhance profitability, preserve cash and allow the company to scale to serve a larger number of consumers in need, in addition to the employers, health plans and partners it works with today.

Stephen Swad, chief financial officer of Benefitfocus said, “We had a strong start to 2020 and significant momentum for the first two months of the year, which began to decelerate in March due to the growing magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite these challenges, we ended the first quarter with a strong cash balance of approximately $115 million. In the first quarter of 2020, adjusted EBITDA is expected to be above the high-end of our guidance and we expect to report an increase in net benefit eligible lives. However, we expect our first quarter revenue to fall short of our previous quarterly guidance, primarily from lower than expected professional services revenue.”

Swad continued, “We are increasing our full-year 2020 Adjusted EBITDA and Free Cash Flow outlook, excluding the impact of restructuring charges, while lowering our previous full year 2020 revenue guidance. This is primarily due to aggressively managing our costs against the likelihood of lower professional services demand, potential decline in software revenue from lower customer employee counts, and the potential for weaker adoption of certain voluntary benefits.”

The company plans to provide a more detailed business update on its upcoming earnings conference call on May 6, 2020.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Benefitfocus has taken the following actions to ensure the safety and well-being of its employees and customers, contain costs and further preserve its liquidity profile:

Caring for and supporting employees and customers:

• Implemented a mandatory work-from-home policy, beginning March 19, to ensure the safety and well-being of employees;
• Established the Benefitfocus Together Fund to financially support the company’s own at-risk employees and their families;
• Introduced the COVID-19 Resource Center and, subsequently, the Community Resource Center, which provide business continuity planning resources and support tools for employer customers; and,
• Introduced benefitplace.com to offer affordable individual and family health plan alternatives, and other benefits to support the well-being of displaced workers.

Strengthening expense management and liquidity profile:

The company has taken the following expense-related actions until conditions stabilize:

• Implemented executive compensation reductions including reducing the take home pay for the CEO to zero and a 20% salary reduction for the executive leadership team;
• Implemented reduction in take home pay for the Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors to zero and a 25% reduction in equity compensation for all other Board members;
• Eliminated all non-essential expenses including travel and third-party vendors;
• Suspended merit increases and promotions;
• Reduced global resources; and,
• Suspended 401(k) company match.

In addition, the company has suspended hiring for all open positions except critical roles and is reducing immediately its U.S. workforce by approximately 17% or 250 employees. The company expects to take a restructuring charge in Q2 which will include a cash charge of approximately $5 million relating to these activities.

Preliminary Financial Results for the First Quarter Ended March 31, 2020

The unaudited financial results and selected operating metrics included in this press release for the first quarter ended March 31, 2020 are preliminary estimates based on currently available information. As of the date of this press release, the company has not completed its financial statement close process for the quarter. The final results from its closing process may vary from preliminary estimates.

Based on current information, for the first quarter 2020, Benefitfocus expects to report the following:

• Total revenue of approximately $66 million, compared to initial range of $67.5 million to $69.5 million.
• Adjusted EBITDA of approximately $4 million, above the initial range of $0.5 million to $2.5 million.
• The company consumed approximately $11 million of Free Cash Flow in the quarter.

GAAP net loss is expected to be approximately $11 million for the first quarter 2020.

Updated Full Year 2020 Guidance

Based on current information, Benefitfocus is updating full year 2020 guidance as follows:

• Total revenue of approximately $250 million to $270 million, compared to initial range of $310 million to $320 million.
• Adjusted EBITDA of approximately $25 million to $35 million, above the initial range of $22 million to $27 million.
• The company expects to consume $10 million to $20 million of Free Cash Flow for the full year which incorporates estimates for increased working capital due to COVID-19. This compares to the initial range of $15 million to $20 million of Free Cash Flow usage.

(*Consensus sees FY revenue of $310.17 million)

Adjusted EBITDA and Free Cash Flow guidance excludes the impact of restructuring charges.

Management has not reconciled forward-looking Adjusted EBITDA and Free Cash Flow to their most directly comparable GAAP measure of GAAP net loss and GAAP operating income. This is because we cannot predict with reasonable certainty the ultimate outcome of the various necessary GAAP components of such reconciliations, including, for example, those related to compensation, acquisition transactions and integration, or others that may arise during the year, without unreasonable effort. These components and other factors could materially impact the amount of the future directly comparable GAAP measures, which may differ significantly from their non-GAAP counterparts.

Conference Call and Webcast
Benefitfocus will host a conference call to discuss the company’s financial results and Q2 and Full Year 2020 business outlook on May 6, 2020, at 5:00 p.m. ET. To access this call, dial (877) 407-9208 (domestic) or (201) 493-6784 (international). A live webcast of the conference call will be available on the Investor Relations page of the company’s website at http://investor.benefitfocus.com/. After the conference call, a replay will be available until May 13, 2020, and can be accessed by dialing (844) 512-2921 (domestic) or (412) 317-6671 (international) with passcode 13703064.

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