Performant Posts Smaller Net Loss During Third Quarter, Points to Large Contracts That Will Start Paying Off in 4Q

Performant Financial Corp. lost less money in the third quarter of 2018, compared with the same amount a year ago, according to the company, which released its quarterly financial statements on Friday. A drop of $8 million in student loan revenue was nearly offset by an increase of nearly $5 million in healthcare-related revenue, the company reported.

Overall, Performant posted a net loss of $7.6 million for the third quarter, compared with a net loss of $7.9 million during the same quarter last year. Total revenue for the quarter was $27.6 million, down from $29.7 million during the same period last year.

The company has made “large” investments in ramping up a number of new contracts that the company expects will “revenues starting in earnest” during the last quarter of 2018, Lisa Im, Performant’s chief executive officer, said in a statement accompanying the financial results.

“Our business has continued to trend in a positive direction, highlighted by our healthcare revenue growth in the third quarter of nearly 200% compared to last year,” Im said. “We are happy to report that as of October we have implemented all of our large contracts which we anticipated during 2018. However, during the third quarter, we also experienced an outsized number of delays that can happen when working on large contracts which rely on external processes versus internal execution. Some examples of external delay factors are customers receiving approval from their serviced clients, businesses requiring internal buy in from all divisions, and payers wanting time to ramp up their internal staff to handle our claim volumes.”

Student loan revenue during the third quarter was $11.9 million, down $7.9 million from a year ago, while healthcare revenue was $7.5 million, up from $2.6 million a year ago, the company announced.