使用警語:中文譯文來源為 Google 翻譯,僅供參考,實際內容請以英文原文為主
Operator
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the HealthStream fourth-quarter 2010 earnings call.
At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session with instructions following at that time. (Operator Instructions). As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.
Now I would like to turn the call over to Robert A. Frist, Chairman and CEO. Please begin sir.
Robert A. Frist - Chairman, CEO
Good morning and welcome to our fourth-quarter and full-year 2010 earnings conference call. Also in the room with me are Gerry Hayden, Senior Vice President and CFO, and Mollie Condra, Associate Vice President of Communications, Research and Investor Relations. Gerry, would you read the forward-looking statement please?
Gerry Hayden - SVP, CFO
Certainly Bobby. Good morning everyone.
This conference call will contain forward-looking statements regarding future events and the future performance of HealthStream that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Information concerning these risks and other factors that could cause results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements are contained in the Company's filings with the SEC, including Forms 10-K and 10-Q.
Robert A. Frist - Chairman, CEO
Thank you Gerry. I'm excited to speak to our strong performance in the fourth quarter and full year of 2010. I'm going to cover some operational highlights after Gerry highlights the financials for the full year.
2010 has been a year of significant progress. When we compare it to the prior year, operating income increased 38%, while topline revenues increased 15%. Moreover, we set records with contracting 377,000 new subscribers to our platform in 2010, which is a 50% increase over 2009.
Going forward, I feel we're very well capitalized for growing the Company with a cash investment balance of $23.6 million and an untapped line of credit at $15 million and no long-term debt. So as we look forward to the report of year-end and full year, I'd like to first turn it over to Gerry Hayden for a more detailed look at the numbers.
Gerry Hayden - SVP, CFO
Thank you Bobby. I'll try to make four or five highlight point and then I'll also be around for questions toward the end.
The first point is leverage. This is the third consecutive year we've had our operating income grow faster than our revenue. In 2010, you saw a 50% revenue growth rate, operating income at 38% growth over the prior year. By most accounts, that's a good year, but I think it's important to emphasize that the core business did more than just produce that leverage growth. It absorbed all of the operating expenses of our SimVentures initiative for this year. Those expenses are about $400,000 for the year, so if you would add those back, you'll find our core business performing even better than the 38%. So we feel very good about that base business.
The research rebound, as I call it, with a strong learning group (inaudible), it would be easy to overlook how well the research group did the second half of the year. If you look back to June 30, 2010, the year-to-date growth rate for revenue was almost flat. We finished the year with a growth at 7% for the full year in research, the fourth quarter at 17%. The strong second-half performance shows how the investments in our sales force over the last several years and the strong support the whole research team has given that salesforce has proved -- it turned into concrete results during 2010.
One accounting matter, so to speak, about income tax accounting. I think you all saw a fluctuation in the income tax rate for the fourth quarter. The full year is at 41%. Most importantly, our net operating losses for our income tax, cash income tax, remain intact, $25 million remaining for federal and $20 million for state. So some of the volatility in the income tax rate was book only. The primary driver of that was our estimate for stock option expense for book income tax accounting, and we sorted that out and will be -- we believe we will have a 41% or so effective tax rate going forward.
The balance sheet once again follows the operations. The cash balance has grown to $23.6 million from $21.4 million at the end of September 30. The days and receivables have dropped by 3 days to 58 days from 61 days at September 30. So, our cash plus our unused line of credit really we think puts us in a good position for growth opportunities in 2011 and beyond.
We also issued our 2011 guidance with this fourth-quarter earnings release. And we, first of all, we see our -- we expect our revenues to grow at a rate greater than 2010, once again that range between 15% and 19%. One of the important underlying dynamics to that is we estimate that 89% of our 2011 revenues are already under contract and on the books, so we think we have a very strong base heading into 2011 on our revenue.
Operating income, we look to see that grow between 15% to 19% for 2011 as well. Finally, capital expenditures we expect to be about $6 million for the full year.
Robert A. Frist - Chairman, CEO
Thank you Gerry. I'd like to speak to some of the strong operational performance of our teams that underlie the 2010 financial performance and get me excited as we move forward into 2011.
First, we just look at the pure transactional growth on our platform overall. It's interesting to note that over 22 million course completions were completed in 2010. This is over a 10% increase over the prior year, and of course a record in our history. So, the 22 million course completions was driven by over 41 million logins to our platform, which is a 20% increase over the prior year. A derivative statistic on that which I find interesting is that represents over 2.5 billion page loads of content, which is a 30% increase over the prior year. So, the technology platform underlying this growing business is strong and dynamic and serving up tremendous amounts of learning services and content and educational programs to our customer base.
At the same time, support cost for that level of volume remains -- is leveraged. And we continue to maintain very high scores. After the completion of a customer service call, we deliver several hundred customer satisfaction surveys each week. Our score on those surveys is now at a 96% satisfaction rate, and that's up from the prior year a few percentage points. So what we see is our ability to service and support this platform and our service teams are doing a fantastic job supporting this growing and stable platform.
Behind that, we have our sales performance. When I look at the fourth quarter alone and the execution of implementing the sales pipeline, we contracted over 94,000 subscribers in the fourth quarter while implementing 76,000. So both the sales team and then the implementation operational teams are performing very, very strongly. Of course, that downstream translates into revenue.
So -- and as you all know, our historical rates, our goals and targets have been to sign up between 20,000 and 50,000 net new subscribers. Obviously, when you look at our quarter and full-year numbers, we've been exceeding our goal, our goal of signing up 20,000 to 50,000 net new subscribers each quarter this year. In fact, if you look at full-year numbers, we implemented 276,000 new subscribers -- that's a 14% increase over the prior year -- and contracted, this is our sales organization now continuing to gain market share, 377,000 new subscribers, which is 50% over the prior year.
The strong, stable platform supported by the strong customer service teams and well-oiled implementation teams that are bringing more people onto the platform has resulted in strong renewal rates. When you look at it on a subscriber basis in the quarter of 99% and the full year of 100%, it's hard to do much better than that. And so we've been impressed with our customer retention, which helps in our basic subscription model. It's really strong to have renewal rates that high. It helps have a strong base coming into the year. As Gerry mentioned, almost 89% of revenues are under contract for 2011, as we enter 2011, from contracts generated in 2010. So we enter with that strong base.
When you look at research, as Gerry mentioned, the research rebound, we've been very pleased to see the 17% increase in research revenues in the fourth quarter, so obviously a steady uptick throughout the year in our sales performance. Operational execution of delivering our research product categories ending the year at 70% was a very rewarding way to close out the year. That supported with good satisfaction, we see customers adding research services. About 58 of them did that, and over 30 renewed their contracts. So we are excited to see those results.
When we turn to the qualitative aspects of the year and the quarter, I couldn't be more excited than to tell you some of the accomplishments during these last several months and early into the new year 2011. In fact, in January, at the International Meeting for Simulation in healthcare in New Orleans with over 2500 thought leaders from across the globe in attendance, HealthStream and Laerdal Medical announced through our joint venture, SimVentures, a global launch of SimCenter. SimCenter is an innovative simulation management platform designed for healthcare institutions to manage their simulation initiatives.
We announced that there are going to be four components to this new initiative of Laerdal Medical and HealthStream. The SimStore and SimDeveloper were announced and demonstrated at the conference with SimStore expected to begin generating revenues in the month of April of this year. So, we are very excited to have the SimStore, the first announced product of the SimVentures, both demonstrated at the conference and expecting revenue generation in April of this year.
Right behind that SimDeveloper is the toolkit to allow people to produce and deliver yet more content into the store or sale. That toolkit was announced along with a very exciting group of initial and exclusive developer relationships to build content for these new applications.
We still look forward in the second half of the year to announcing the SimManager and SimView product lines, which are the third and fourth components of the SimVentures initiative. Those are well underway in their progress and the investments we are making to get those ready and bring them to market as well.
Finally, I'll close out by saying that we intend to relaunch our customer summit this year. As you recall, last year, the summit was flooded out here in middle Tennessee, and the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Complex has been completely restored and our event is now scheduled for May 2 through the 5th here in Nashville at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel. Already, we have over 500 paid registrants on the way to Nashville or scheduled to come to Nashville, and we have some exciting themes we will be covering at this conference, including our foray into the simulation market with Laerdal and the SimVentures announcements. Other new product announcements are expected. Again, over 30 exhibition booths and 150 educational sessions with already 500 registrants and growing signed up to attend. We plan to have a special session for investors at this conference, so we hope you'll mark your calendars and contacts Mollie Condra, who is here with me, to schedule your time to attend this conference, meet our customers in person, and learn more about new products we plan to bring to market. So I'd like to encourage you to come and see the growing face of our product set and meet and greet our customers at our customer summit in May of this year.
At this time, I'd like to turn it over for questions, and so I'd like to ask the operator to open the lines for questions.
Operator
(Operator Instructions). Matt Hewitt, Craig-Hallum.
Matt Hewitt - Analyst
Congratulations, gentlemen and Mollie, on a fantastic finish to the year. A couple of questions here. First, on the research business, as you commented, it finished very strong in the fourth quarter. Obviously, with your guidance for next year, you're expecting that to continue to grow or rebound again. I'm wondering at what point, or have you already seen signs that some of the additional surveys beyond the patient surveys, when will that business start to pick up? Have you seen that already and what are your expectations for 2011?
Robert A. Frist - Chairman, CEO
We have a lot of exciting things coming in the new year that -- we are glad to have such a strong base of predictable revenue, meaning approximately 89% already under contract for the year. However, there are so many exciting pieces moving around that we are investing in that are a little hard to guide on, but we've put them all into our guidance, of course. One of them is the growing nature of the research business that we are broadening the definition to include assessments. By assessments, we mean broader categories of workforce assessments, competency assessments of the workforce.
One of the products we are excited about that we did announce last year that we expect to see launched this year is the NRP-based exams that will be launched exclusively through our network that are a form of assessment. So by definition, the research business is expanding its horizon beyond the four core products into new ones. If you look back in our old press releases, you'll see that NRP exams we expect to launch by the midpoint of this year and generate revenues through that exclusive exam service through our learning platform.
So many points of note there. One, research is no longer about just the four survey instruments historically that we've reported on. It's now an assessment business, and you'll see new types of assessments launching. Number two, the first and most exciting one is this prior announcement of the NRP exams exclusively delivered through our learning platform architecture, so we are leveraging our technology. Again, back to my initial point in this whole section, research is expanding its horizons with new product launches while we have a series of new products lined up for this year that would fit the research category, but we call them assessment tools.
Matt Hewitt - Analyst
Very good. Another question here on the SimVentures -- you mentioned that you've obviously got products launching here or upcoming in April. What kind of metrics or color can you provide as far as what are your expectations for SimVentures on a revenue standpoint for 2011? Obviously, you've been investing for the past year or so. When will we start to see and what kind of numbers should we anticipate from that business?
Robert A. Frist - Chairman, CEO
So what we have done is there are so many new elements to our revenue stream this year, the NRP exam that I just mentioned, the SimVentures SimStore product launch in April, the competency center which is a growing product line inside of our company, that we have folded the ups and downs, ins and outs of all those new products into our over-arching guidance which we've provided you, and chosen -- because of the volatility and the nature of new product launches and essentially there are at least three that I just named, we kind of put those together and tried to smooth out our estimates on them and put them all into the over-arching guidance which we've just provided to you.
So in all three cases, all of these exciting new and growing products, we have folded their guidance into the over-arching guidance, which will result in revenue growth rates exceeding the prior year. But given the uncertainties around the exact timing of revenue recognition, the rate of adoption on these three new ones that I've mentioned, we've tried to smooth out our estimates for all three of them and fold them into our over-arching growth rate, which is why you are seeing our growth rate projection for next year above the growth rates of this year, but without providing specific guidance to each product.
As the year unfolds and we get more clarity on these newer elements, we will try to provide increased color on each of the three that I just mentioned after the first- and second-quarter earnings. But at this point, we are not providing point level guidance on these three new products. Frankly, it's because they are new and exciting and just a little bit hard to forecast, which is so exciting about our business model that 89% is known coming into the year that allows us to make these investments and invest behind them to see what kind of growth rates they will generate.
Matt Hewitt - Analyst
Fair enough. One more here quick and then I'll jump back into queue. The learning side, another strong quarter there with customer additions. I'm wondering if you could provide a little bit of color on the types of customers or was there any one or two large customers in the quarter, or was it pretty diversified?
Robert A. Frist - Chairman, CEO
It was a very nice diversification across the sales pipeline. We are seeing growth in the uptake of content products, particularly excited, as I have been the last few years, about the continued growth and uptick in the content product that we partnered with Laerdal on, the BLS, ACLS and PALS products, which provide a new method of complying or earning your American Heart Certification for those needs.
On the core platform, the subscriber base is coming to us in lots of ways. As people enter the platform through subscribing to the learning center, the connect platform, the offering center, the competency center, we continue to add subscribers across the platform. But it is well diversified, not coming from any one segment. All sectors of the sales team from new field sales, large account development, and the market development, the telesales group organization, all showed the strong improvements in their small, medium and large hospital market space.
Matt Hewitt - Analyst
Great work. I'll jump back into queue.
Operator
Andrew Sloane, Avondale Partners.
Andrew Sloane - Analyst
Thank you. Congratulations on the quarter gentlemen. I have just a question on the Learning segment expectations for 2011 of 16% to 20% growth. I guess, in the press release, it mentioned that the SimCenter is going to be rolled into the Learning segment. How much -- or what are the -- I'm mean, trying to talk about the guidance in another way. Is it a conservative estimate for the growth of the SimCenter since it's a new business of the 16% to 20%?
Robert A. Frist - Chairman, CEO
The growth expectations for several new Learning products, including SimCenter and competency center based on internal management expectations, have been smooth and added to the base growth rate of the core Learning business, which has its own projections. So at this point, again, we don't have any specific product level guidance to provide. We are confident that the total of all of those things will push us beyond the growth rates of last year. The exact mix, again, the timing of SimStore is April, and the timing of NRP exam I believe is around that timeframe as well. But as you know, one month here and there makes a difference in those forecasts, so we decided to take all of the new products and put them together, boost our overall revenue growth rate, and provide details probably in the following quarters about which products are delivering to plan, kind of adjusting for some ups and downs.
So I don't mean to be evasive. It's really an exciting time, while we have several new products coming. But as you know, with new products, there are uncertainties. So, we've just folded them into our total guidance.
Andrew Sloane - Analyst
On the cash management with now over $1 in cash per share, do you have any immediate plans for the use of the cash?
Robert A. Frist - Chairman, CEO
Well, we've announced this for some time and haven't executed, but we do have a banker engaged and an active pipeline of M&A activity that is under development. We have been careful in our evaluation of those opportunities over the last few years and have not brought one to close, but that activity and pipeline continues as we continue our search for business lines that will complement our overall business. So, my report to you at this time is, while the cash is accumulating, we are working on investing it wisely in new product development, sales organization growth, and trying to develop a pipeline of M&A activity as well. So, we'll just report on those things as they develop throughout the year, but I would let you know that the programs are all active.
Andrew Sloane - Analyst
Great, thank you.
Operator
Vincent Colicchio, Noble Financial.
Vincent Colicchio - Analyst
Nice quarter guys. Just a couple of questions for you. Bobby, your subscriber renewals based on contract value declined in the quarter. Can you give us some more color on that and what your expectations are going forward?
Robert A. Frist - Chairman, CEO
I can. Our largest customer by subscribers number account renewed early, which was a very good thing. Receipts and financial concessions for a multi-year agreement we put into place and incentives for early renewal. We were excited to secure the renewal, again our largest customer by number of subscribers and under multi-year terms, but it did have a bit of an impact on the dollar value of renewals. Although you can see and you should note that the actual financial impact has been in our numbers for two full quarters already, meaning the contractors renewed early, the pricing was provided at that time. So during the third and fourth quarters, the financial impact is already in our numbers. It's just the reporting and the calculations for that renewal didn't hit until now, as our policy is to calculate renewals based on the quarter in which they were up for renewal, which would have been late in the fourth quarter or in the fourth quarter.
So two things to note. One, the impacts of that have already been in the last several quarters of financial reporting. Two, I am very pleased with the overall outcome. If you factor out that single renewal, pricing has maintained its strength across hundreds of other renewals. We have strong assumptions in our model next year for continued strong renewals.
Vincent Colicchio - Analyst
How many competency center clients did the Company have at the end of the quarter? I think you've been talking about that every quarter in recent calls.
Robert A. Frist - Chairman, CEO
We have, and we are moving away from that. We did add several contracts during the quarter, but we are moving away from the details because we, again, we decided to glom these new product categories into one and report on them as they get more material overall in the financials. As we move forward in the year, we see which ones develop into more meaningful products. So at this time, we're going to refrain from that guidance and wait and see how the year plays out.
The new product categories this year, I will say that we very nearly achieved our sales goals and quotas for the competency center last year. Several million dollars in new order value was achieved on the competency center and we did add several contracts in the fourth quarter. So as we look ahead, the competency center, the SimCenter products with Laerdal, the NRP exam, are three exciting new but somewhat unknown products that we look forward to reporting on as we move forward in the year.
Vincent Colicchio - Analyst
Last question -- it looks like, per your guidance, that you wouldn't have the same amount -- the degree of leverage next year as you did this year. Can you talk to the incremental investments that you'll be making and what it relates to? I assume new products.
Robert A. Frist - Chairman, CEO
Yes. So the three that I've just mentioned, again, continued investment in those. We are very excited about that. We continue to invest in our sales organization, which we do at the beginning of every year, actually towards the end of last year. We continue to add to the sales organization. We feel we still have room to grow and more opportunity to cover, so we always tend to strengthen the sales organization in the fourth quarter and early into the new year to tee up for our sales meetings, which occur in January. So really investment across the board. We're using the revenue strength and the growth in projections there to spread investments out across three or four key product bets, again which I've mentioned, and new relationships, and then into the core business. So you see sales force strengthening, a slightly stronger marketing budget.
I should mention the revitalization of Summit. If you think about it historically, it is a several hundred thousand dollar a year investment, and we didn't have that last year, so you see the bring-back of Summit, which we couldn't be more excited about. But it does add some expense to the marketing budget for the year. So, those are some of the categories. We think they are wise investments and very supported by the growing revenue forecast for the year.
Vincent Colicchio - Analyst
Thank you. Nice quarter.
Operator
(Operator Instructions). Walter Ramsley, Walrus Partners.
Walter Ramsley - Analyst
Congratulations, Bobby, Gerry, on another terrific quarter. I've got a couple of follow-up questions. I guess I'll start with Gerry on the tax situation. I gather the Company didn't pay any taxes, so you didn't actually apply an R&D credit during the quarter. But did you actually get one and put it away for the future?
Gerry Hayden - SVP, CFO
Yes, we always look at all of the different ways, both federal and state, to capture any kind of tax credits or hiring credits. Those would go into the call it the backlog of NOL or tax benefits. But we do that for every state we are in, including -- well, Tennessee being the biggest one obviously, but also Maryland. So yes, we did do that.
Walter Ramsley - Analyst
So can you give us an idea of what that -- what it amounted to if you had been paying taxes, I mean what the real tax rate might've been?
Gerry Hayden - SVP, CFO
That would be roughly the 41% if we had been paying taxes. If you think about 34% or so federal tax rate, roughly a 4% effective state tax rate, and then the 3% would be permanent differences between the book and tax bases of different tax assets or tax liabilities.
Walter Ramsley - Analyst
Okay.
Gerry Hayden - SVP, CFO
That's how it builds up.
Walter Ramsley - Analyst
Okay. The expense for the stock option expenses, the 123Rs, do you take a tax effect on that, or do you just deduct the whole thing from net income?
Gerry Hayden - SVP, CFO
That was a question that arose. I'll (inaudible) go too much into detail, I'll avoid a lot of detail. The long and short, there's a different accounting treatment between the federal income tax benefit of stock option exercises and the book accounting when you have your deferred tax allowances like we had until 2009. (inaudible) the best way to do it to account for those exercises in 2010 and the estimates around their impact, the difference between the two methods of accounting is what cause fluctuations. But we've got that figured out now and will be more stable in that 41%, 42% range going forward.
Walter Ramsley - Analyst
Okay. Getting back to the business, the number of contracted subscribers was up 18% for the year. Can you just kind of clarify that a little bit as to whether that was basically from the hospitals, or you got it out of some of the newer markets you are penetrating, and whether the market as a whole is expanding, or the whole thing kind of derived from bigger market share and penetration of some of those newer opportunities?
Robert A. Frist - Chairman, CEO
Yes. First, I think the number of net new subscribers we added was up 50% over the prior year, 377,000. So maybe you are talking about the absolute movement. I'm not sure. So we did add 377,000 net new subscribers under contract.
Now, to answer your question, though, the vast majority of that came from growth in market share in the core business of the acute care market space, and so we continued to gain market share and market position in the acute care space. The other verticals that we've been looking at and I would say experimenting the acceptance of products, maybe even building some new content products like the home health market where we launched the home health library early in the year, have some traction, but they are not what's driving these growth rates. It's gains in market share in the core market. We focused on the acute care market.
Walter Ramsley - Analyst
Okay. So your competitors, have they begun to make any moves to try to contain the damage you're doing to them, or what kind of response are you seeing?
Robert A. Frist - Chairman, CEO
Well, the competitors are fairly diverse, and many of them, for example, are focused on multi-industries. So I am not sure how much they either notice or pay attention to what we are doing in our focused niche. So if you take other learning platform companies, they tend to sell into, say, Fortune 500 companies, into six or eight different verticals. Even when they define the healthcare vertical, they include things like pharmaceutical and medical device. So I don't know how they view our gains in this segment. We are very excited about them because the way our model is built, adding subscribers adds future revenue per subscriber with the content selling.
So we think about our model a little different than, say, just a pure enterprise software company. So sure, we see new competitors and the same old guard coming, but we continue to make gains and feel confident about our market position.
Walter Ramsley - Analyst
Okay. Then just finally, does the Company itself have any large renewals coming up. Alternatively, I guess are there any competitive big opportunities that are also in the near future?
Robert A. Frist - Chairman, CEO
If you think about our core model, our average contract stands are approximately three years. We've seen improvements in the length of those terms lately, signing longer-term agreements. So roughly a third of our base comes up every year, if you think of it over a three-year average. So yes, we are constantly in the renewal process, and historically had very strong renewal rates in excess of 90% in the last 16 quarters. So that -- the renewal cadence is constant and steady. One, our largest customer on the Learning side did renew late in the second quarter of last year, so we are excited to get that under a multi-year term. But constant, we are under a constant renewal model.
Walter Ramsley - Analyst
Okay. So there is no big kahuna in the near future?
Robert A. Frist - Chairman, CEO
The largest has already --
Walter Ramsley - Analyst
Already got them. Okay, thanks. Congratulations. Looks like everything is going really well.
Operator
David Zelman, Zelman & Associates.
David Zelman - Analyst
Gentlemen, you guys are doing a nice job. Can you talk a little bit longer out on what a targeted income statement of margin would be? I may be wrong with my perception on your base business where most of your activity is. It sort of should be a fixed cost spend and variable cost widening because you keep getting more and more people on an already existing platform. Obviously, it's understandable you're investing in these new verticals to continue to drive growth. Once we get there, is there a longer-term margin story here because you're guiding flat earnings growth with the same sort of -- not flat, but the same sort of revenue growth and earnings growth. So maybe I am thinking about your business wrongly in that there should be some nice margin expansion once you cross whatever magic point of revenue you need to get there.
Robert A. Frist - Chairman, CEO
I think you have some good observations, and you hear all of the announcements of new product development investments and sales organization growth. And so right now, we are doing what we think is wise of reinvesting that, but maintaining both revenue and operating income growth in the 15% to 19% range. So we are very pleased to be able to do all that while having improvements over prior year of 15% to 19%.
But I think you have some good observations. We have improved customer service leverage and improved operating leverage per subscriber on the platform.
One thing to note though is, as content selling grows in our platform, the gross margins are lower than the actual subscriber platform margins. So, you see a little bit of downward pressure on the gross margin lines because content selling is doing so well. We pay royalties higher on content than we have costs on the platform. So you might watch for that in your modeling. But nonetheless, it is all a very positive thing. I think you've identified the trends correctly.
David Zelman - Analyst
Right. In my business, we are actually a sell-side research provider, I'm contacting you as an individual investor that's owned your stock for a while. But it's a nice business to sell the same research over and over again to new clients and continue to get paid for what's already inherent core competencies. So I'm [guessing] that should be something down the road for you guys as well. But anyways, keep up the good work. You guys are doing an excellent job.
Operator
Nick Halen, Sidoti & Co.
Matt Hewitt, Craig Hallum.
Matt Hewitt - Analyst
Just a couple of follow-up questions. First of all, given your dominance of the acute care market, I'm wondering how your Hospital Direct product has performed over the past year, whether or not you have been able to add new clients there, and what kind of traction you expect to get as you progress into this year?
Robert A. Frist - Chairman, CEO
That would [set] another product category that was new several years ago. I would say that product has been stable, meaning we have been able to renew the bulk of the customers. We need some more improvements in the technology to maybe improve its growth rate, but it's been a stable product for us, about $1 million a year in revenue on the Hospital Direct platform, so that's exciting.
We hope to get some more growth out in the future. We think a core tenet of our business model in the coming years is to leverage the subscriber base that we have and the breadth of penetration we have into new products. Hospital Direct is one of those products that does in fact leverage it, meaning device companies leverage our access to deliver their product training support through our network. So it hadn't been a huge grower for us. It is a contributor, and it's been stable the last 24 months, meaning the key accounts continue to renew and deliver their product training and support through the platform.
Matt Hewitt - Analyst
Then just a question on the CapEx. $6 million would be about double what you spent this past year, which was already double from the year before that. I'm just curious. Where are you investing those dollars?
Robert A. Frist - Chairman, CEO
Certainly, I've mentioned three or four key product categories that have some capitalization involved. We have -- we are in the midst of consolidating offices and expanding offices in Laurel and in Nashville, so we'll see some capital go into expanding and consolidating offices and refreshing offices. So we have some of that. So, we are excited to be able to improve our research and development budgets, expand to accommodate our growing workforce, but while also gaining some expense efficiencies on the consolidation of offices. So, there is a little more capital being put to work, but I'm excited about it because I think it's capital associated with growth.
Matt Hewitt - Analyst
Fair enough. Thank you.
Operator
I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call over to management for any closing remarks.
Robert A. Frist - Chairman, CEO
Thank you. We look forward to seeing you and would like to remind you the May 2 through 5th the investor segment of our summit here in Nashville, Tennessee, inviting all investors to reach out to Mollie Condra and schedule some time to meet our customers in person. Thank you, and look forward to the next report.
Operator
Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes the program. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful day.