Too darn busy last week to get my usual 3-5 posts up…things are calming down this week so expect to see posts in your inbox.
Followup on One Call; after the Debtwire article about OCCM debtholders organizing to prepare for a “potential liquidity event and expected covenant violation…” I was inundated with nonsense from anonymous writers accusing me of bias…this continued last week. [reminder – I reserve the right to know who is commenting]
A couple people told me OCCM owner Apax had offered $50 million to OCCM management, who turned it down.
Sorry, that’s just not credible; let’s walk thru the logic here.
- Private equity firms such as Apax don’t have a pot of money to write checks from. All Apax’ funds are from investors, and Apax has to get investors’ approval before using any of their funds.
- To do this, A) Apax would have to restructure the entire transaction, giving stock to B) investors who think sending money to a company that will likely be owned by creditors is a great idea.
- There’s no way OCCM management would “turn down” a cash infusion. As Debtwire reported, “cash flow has been limited by high capex needs as a result of its effort to migrate users under a single system” (Debtwire is referring to Polaris’ development cost).
- OCCM has a line of credit-type load that, according to Debtwire,
“had USD 50m drawn at 31 March” out of a total available amount of $56.6 million….so, One Call had only $6.6 million available AND was paying interest on the $50 million it had already borrowed.
Ergo, if management HAD been offered $50 million in cash, they would’ve been delighted to accept it. For the reasons enumerated above, I very much doubt that offer was made. If you know otherwise, I’m all ears.
To my critics, reporting facts isn’t “biased”, Debtwire isn’t biased, and neither are financial statements. For non-believers, One Call has to report its second quarter results within 45 days of the end of the quarter. That’s a month from today.
It is possible, if not probable, that the debt investors will see the numbers before mid-August. If the numbers are consistent with Debtwire’s reporting, there may well be a “covenant violation.”
Update – One Call CEO Rone Baldwin provided a financial update this morning; he states:
One Call is in full compliance with all debt covenants for the second quarter of 2019 and expects to be compliant for the remainder of 2019, based on the full-year guidance that it intends to provide to investors in its second quarter conference call.
Will keep you posted.
Want to know how medical prices affect worker outcomes? Then WCRI’s upcoming webinar featuring Bogdan Savych PhD is a must.
Worker mis-classification – the usually-intentional is coming under increasing scrutiny, with the latest moves coming from the Garden State. Gov. Phil Murphy released a report which, according to Business Insurance, indicated “employee misclassification, which has grown 40% over the past decade…in 2018 alone 12,315 workers in New Jersey were misclassified as independent contractors.”
Finally, I heard from several folks about my York-Sedgwick post suggesting that my statement “a highly profitable managed care unit built by former leader Doug Markham” was inaccurate.
Fair point.
In my haste I failed to give credit to the many other people who built that business. Markham led Wellcomp prior to – and after – York’s acquisition of MCMC. The businesses were run separately for a time, then “combined” in a move that resulted in Markham running the new entity entitled CareWorks.
Mike Lindberg and his colleagues at MCMC – acquired by York – built a thriving managed care business that served, and continues to serve, a big list of customers. MCMC was kinda/sorta “combined” with York’s internal managed care entity under Markham when Mike Lindberg departed; I won’t get into the drama that surrounded that move. MCMC was a big chunk, if not the larger piece, of York’s managed care entity.
BJ Dougherty, Lisa Oskoui, Larry Brinton, Steve Junker are some of the professionals whose contributions made MCMC a successful company. (apologies in advance to those folks I failed to name)
Joe, thank you so much for acknowledging Mike Lindberg and his amazing contribution to this organization. As someone who has worked for Mike many times over the past 20 years, I can say he is an amazing leader. I would also like to mention that there were many wonderful professionals within the MCMC organization whose contribution made the business so successful. This business was highly entrepreneurial and dedicated to providing strategic solutions to our clients.
I agree with what you said about OCCM but to say you are not biased when you work for Medrisk is just as silly as turning down 50 million dollars. Staying honest to your readers and yourself is a good way to earn trust.
Hello Adam, and thanks for your comment. It’s a pleasure to hear from someone professional enough to criticize while identifying themselves. I thank you for that.
To be clear, Medrisk has been a consulting client for over a decade, but I am not an employee: my role is purely advisory.
Sorry but I don’t follow your comment on bias. On the one hand you state that you agree with “what I said” about OCCM, then you say I’m biased. What does my relationship with Medrisk have to do with the facts surrounding OCCM? As I said in the post, reporting facts isn’t “biased”.
As for staying honest on my blog, I’ve been doing this for over 15 years, have over 5000 subscribers, and have earned the trust of the ones that are objective. I’ve done that by always disclosing my client relationships, by having an opinion on key issues, and by backing up my views with facts, data, and logic.
Again, thanks for agreeing with the facts about OCCM.
cheers Joe
Hey Joe! Great insight as usual. Keep them coming. I do have a question though. As I reviewed the comment section (which has now been closed) I noticed that you replied to someone saying:”unless you are an African American with Alzheimer’s, your website is fake”. Now, one would argue that the statement could be deemed inappropriate and demeaning. Especially considering that the topic at hand was One Call’s financial debacle. Care to expound?
D – thanks very much for the comment and question. I’m going to post your comment and my response. Appreciate you calling me out on this.
Joe