Medifast Inc (MED) 2013 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Greetings, and welcome to the Medifast Incorporated Third Quarter 2013 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Katie Turner, for opening remarks. Thank you, Ms. Turner; you may now begin.

Good afternoon. Welcome to Medifast's Third Quarter 2013 Earnings Conference Call. On the call with me today are Michael MacDonald, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Meg Sheetz, President, Chief Operating Officer; and Timothy Robinson, Chief Financial Officer.

By now, everyone should have access to the earnings release for the period ending September 30, 2031, that went out this afternoon at approximately 4.05 p.m. Eastern Time. If you have not received the release, it's available on the Investor Relations portion of Medifast's website at www.medifastnow.com. This call is being webcast and a replay will be available on the Company's website.

Before we begin, we'd like to remind everyone that prepared remarks contain forward-looking statements and management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions. The words believe, expect, anticipate, and other similar expressions generally identify forward-looking statements. These statements do not guarantee future performance and therefore, undue reliance should not be placed on them. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking statement. Medifast assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking projections that may be made in today's release or on the call today. All forward-looking statements contained herein speak only as of the date of today's call.

And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Medifast's Chairman and CEO, Michael MacDonald.

Thank you, Katie. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. On today's call I will provide you with an update on our strategic initiatives and discuss areas of our business where we continue to work on generating efficiencies to improve Medifast's future growth and long-term profitability.

Tim will review the financial results for the third quarter in more detail and discuss the full-year 2013 revenue and EPS outlook. I will then provide closing remarks and we'll open up the call to take your questions.

In the third quarter, we remained very focused on reaching our profit objectives for 2013. I am pleased to report earnings of $0.41 per share, in line with our guidance, which was in the range of $0.38 to $0.42 per diluted share. This result was achieved despite a challenging consumer spending environment in which our sales for the quarter fell below expectations.

During the third quarter, we closely controlled spending while monitoring our strategies to attract new clients and increase retention. We will continue to be disciplined to find the right balance to achieve growth and profitability across our Take Shape for Life, Medifast Direct, Medifast Weight Control Centers, and Wholesale Physician Sales channels.

I will provide an update on each of them for you today. Before we do that, I want to reiterate that our team has a comprehensive multi-year plan in place that we started when I joined the Company, and we are continuing to refine the operational and strategic initiatives with a constant goal in mind -- to drive profitable sales growth and prudently manage our cost and expense structure to maximize Medifast's earnings potential and cash flow generation long term.

While the economic headwinds have impacted our business in the last few quarters, we believe we have taken the steps to ensure Medifast is well positioned to realize long-term profitable growth across each of our sales channels.

Specifically, we believe over the next few years that greater improvements should flow through our business as we implement plans to address the following strategic initiatives.

Building a tool through increased client and coach acquisition and retention in Take Shape for Life.

Essentially making it easier for coaches to share our story while balancing our product offerings to attract new clients and retain existing clients as they transition to long-term healthy living.

Constantly evaluating correlations between our revenue and marketing initiatives at our Medifast Direct Sales channel.

Remaining flexible to enable prompt adjustments to promotional campaigns and advertising initiatives that move the key acquisition, retention, and conversion levers.

Expanding our franchisee relationships with both existing and new partners while we execute the sale of our corporate Medifast Weight Control centers and transition them to the franchise model.

And finally, gaining a stronger contribution of revenue from our international expansion with Medix throughout Mexico and South America and launching our products and programs in new geographies like Canada.

I will now take a few moments to discuss our third quarter results across our multiple sales channels in a little more detail.

Revenue in the direct sales channel Take Shape for Life increased 1% to $56.2 million in the third quarter of 2013. We ended the third quarter with approximately 11,700 active health coaches, an increase of 8% as compared to the same period last year. The average revenue per health coach per month for the quarter decreased slightly to $1,530, compared to $1,630 in the third quarter of 2012.

In the quarter, we had the pleasure of hosting many of you at our Take Shape for Life annual convention in Nashville. We had record attendance of 3,140 attendees and focused on new product introductions and tools for client and coach acquisition.

In addition, we educated our health coaches further about the improved fully integrated compensation plan that began phasing in during September. We continue to be pleased with the implementation acceptance of this plan and the behavior it will drive in creating long-term growth and profitability in Take Shape for Life.

In September, we hosted Take Shape for Life's first-ever Business Achievement Summit. This exclusive event provided our health coaches with an internet training experience that allowed individual business wins.

Also, on September 12, Medifast health coaches across the country took part in the first-ever Discover Your Optimal Health Day. Here at Owings Mills, in our corporate offices, we hosted one of 250 walks that took place across the United States. We believe that this monumental event was extremely beneficial in raising awareness for Take Shape for Life, and also continuing to position Take Shape for Life as a key player in helping people create a healthy, active lifestyle. We look forward to participating in this annual event in the future.

In addition, we recently hosted our annual Sundance Leadership event for established Take Shape for Life leaders. At this event, leaders are taught skills to help develop their own businesses and techniques to help grow the team of health coaches they mentor. We believe that Take Shape for Life is well positioned for growth in health coach and client acquisition and retention.

As briefly (ph) mentioned, Dr. Wayne's book tour for Discover Your Optimal Health was a tremendous success. The tour concluded this quarter, and we are pleased to see his book on multiple best-seller lists, including the New York Times and USA Today. Most importantly, we're proud of the tremendous impact this book will have in helping individuals choose health, particularly around the Take Shape for Life trilogy, Mind, Body, and Finances.

Last quarter, we shared the impressive Medifast brand awareness gain from 25% to 40% achieved as a result of our (inaudible) head brand campaign investment. Now the football season is underway, we are once again excited to partner with Notre Dame to promote the weight loss and long-term health benefits of Medifast to a national audience with one of the most iconic sports brands. This integrated campaign includes Medifast branding on Notre Dame's official athletic website, in-game radio advertisements during football broadcasts, as well as print and television coverage. We look forward to this partnership as an exciting opportunity to increase Medifast's brand awareness, reaching a large national audience.

The Medifast Direct channel revenue decreased 19% to $17.2 million (sic; see press release, $17.1 million). We closely monitor our key ecommerce trends, including unique visitors, conversion rate, average order value, and order volume, along with many other key metrics.

As a result of our ongoing analysis, we adjusted our spending while we reevaluated the effectiveness of our approach. In the third quarter, we believed that additional marketing spend would be less effective in light of the above trends as well as consumer spending behavior. We implemented several new strategic initiatives to increase our customer acquisition during the quarter, including our new home page, community page, weight loss transition maintenance page, and our expanded blog.

We expect to implement several other initiatives in the fourth quarter to position us well for the new diet season in January. These initiatives include the launch of our mobile-friendly site, incremental customer acquisition and loyalty offers, and improved tools to follow up with visitors while they evaluate their weight-loss alternatives.

While our total Company advertising spend decreased 26% to $5.5 million versus the third quarter of 2012, our total Company revenue-to-spend ratio improved to 15.8 to 1 versus 12.3 to 1 in the third quarter of 2012, which highlights our focus on spending efficiency. More importantly, we were able to identify close correlations between the various spending elements and key metrics.

In Medifast Direct in particular, we had a lot of new and returning visitor ratios and how they aligned with our digital advertising mix. Likewise, we saw the impact of our new direct response television advertising and corresponding traffic patterns. At we enter the fourth quarter, we continue to spend conservatively while we implement plans to re-engage spend in 2014 to drive growth in this channel.

Additionally, the significant upgrades to our website, which I mentioned earlier, align well with our incremental email marketing capabilities and the ongoing engagement with customers established across our technology platforms.

We are confident the deep enhancements will continue to improve the user experience and will both attract new customers to discover Medifast products and offer compelling content to keep existing customers longer.

The talent of our employees is clearly one of the strengths behind our success at Medifast. We continue to invest in the development of our team while making adjustments where necessary to ensure we have people positioned for success.

During the quarter, we realigned to strengthen our organizational capabilities to adapt to our current and future strategic plans. We strengthened key positions and functions such as marketing and financing while creating incremental roles to drive our product development and clinical research capabilities.

We remain committed to expanding and improving our meal replacement line, along with other healthy and nutritious products. During the third quarter, we launched several new products, including our new Blueberry Muffin Soft Bake, which was the first fruit soft bake added to our popular line. We also saw great demand for our newly launched Cookie Dough and Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Chewy Bars, which have already been customer favorites, as well as our new Fruit Smoothie category, comprised of Triple Berry and Pineapple Mango flavors.

As we move into 2014, we are planning to launch more new product categories, which will bring incremental sales opportunities across our channels. These new products, combined with the introduction of new program technologies, will help support long-term maintenance and healthy living habits.

In the third quarter, the Medifast Weight Control Centers and Wholesale Physicians channel revenue decreased 7%, to $13.2 million. Despite these sales results, we (inaudible) realized $140,000 profit improvement as compared to the third quarter of 2012.

The Company experienced sales declines in its corporate centers, partially offset by growth in its franchise business. Same-store sales for corporate centers opened greater than one year decreased 18% as compared to the third quarter of 2012. This was consistent with expectations, in part due to the plan to sell certain corporate centers and subsequently convert them to the franchise model.

We ended the third quarter with a total of 83 corporate locations, all of which are in a comparable store base, and 36 franchise locations. We closed three centers this past quarter upon lease expiration.

Last quarter, we announced our intent to sell existing corporate centers and transition them to the franchise model over the next 12 to 18 months. This will allow the Company to optimize franchise performance, heighten focus on franchise location expansion with both existing and new franchise partners, and provide a strong foundation for future growth and profitability. We will update you in the future as we have actual transactions to report.

We continue to make good progress on the international front with Medix. In September, I was thrilled to attend the grand opening of the first international Medifast Weight Control center in Mexico City. The center will be the first of approximately 30 centers that Medix plans to open over the next several years.

Our partnership with Medix provides Medifast with the opportunity to expand distribution of our products through Mexico, Central America, and South America. We recently made our first shipment into Colombia. We expect to initiate our expansion into Canada within the next few months.

We continue to explore ways to grow the Medifast brand internationally to help fight obesity on a global basis. Our objective is to find opportunities to enter new markets with a low capital investment and a focus on increased profitability.

In October, we were thrilled once again to be named one of Forbes Magazine's Best Small Companies in America. We are truly honored to be recognized in this prestigious list, ranking No. 16 this year. This is our fourth consecutive year on this list and speaks to the strength of the overall Medifast business model.

We thank all of our stakeholders for their support. We know that consistent performance is a team effort from many individuals.

In summary, we will continue to focus on improving our operations and managing our investments appropriately. Our team continues to focus on profitability for the remainder of 2013, while we prepare our brands to drive profitable growth in 2014 in all distribution channels. We are working hard to bring a number of product and program expansion opportunities to market in adjacent categories and continue to explore partnerships to leverage our product development and manufacturing capabilities, including both branded and private-label partnerships. When combined, these activities create great optimism about our future prospects and our ability to grow.

I would now like to turn the call over to Tim Robinson, our Chief Financial Officer, to review our third quarter 2000 (ph) financial results in more detail and provide you with an outlook for the remainder of 2013.

Thanks, Mike. I'll now review our financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2013, in more detail. For third quarter, net revenue decreased 5% to $86.5 million from net revenue of $91 million in the third quarter of the prior year.

The Take Shape for Life sales channel accounted for 65% of total revenue, Medifast Direct accounted for 19.8%; Medifast Weight Control Centers and Wholesale Physicians accounted for 15.2% of total revenue.

Gross profit for third quarter of 2013 decreased 5% to $64.9 million, compared to $68.3 million in the third quarter of the prior year. Gross profit margin decreased 10 basis points to 75% versus 75.1% in the third quarter of 2012. The small decrease in gross profit margin during the quarter was primarily a result of higher shipping costs.

Selling, general, and administrative expense in the third quarter of 2013 was $57.5 million, versus $59.4 million in the third quarter last year, a decrease of $1.9 million. As a percentage of net revenue, selling, general, and administrative expenses increased 120 basis points, to 66.5% versus 65.3%.

Take Shape for Life commissions expense, which is variable based on product sales, decreased by approximately $400,000 as Take Shape for Life sales grew 1% compared to the third quarter of 2012.

Sales and marketing expense decreased by $2.3 million in the third quarter as compared to third quarter last year.

Operating income was $7.3 million, or 8.5% of net revenue, compared to $8.9 million, or 9.8% of net revenue, in the third quarter of 2012.

Our effective tax rate was 28%, compared to 19.7% in the third quarter of 2012. The increase in the effective tax rate was primarily the result of the state tax restructuring that took place in the third quarter of 2012, which helped us take advantage of state apportionment methodology.

Third quarter net income was $5.7 million, or $0.41 per diluted share, based on approximately 13.9 million shares outstanding, compared to net income of $7.2 million, or $0.52 per diluted share, for the comparable quarter last year.

The Company's balance sheet remains strong with stockholder's equity of $111.3 million and working capital of $76.3 million as of September 30, 2013.

Cash, cash equivalents, and investment securities for the third quarter increased $22 million to $82 million, compared to $60 million at December 31, 2012.

As we communicated last quarter, the Company paid off the remaining value of the outstanding long-term notes, and remains free of interest-bearing debt.

Now I'll review our guidance briefly. We expect full-year 2013 net revenue to increase 0.9% to 2.3%, or in the range of $360 million to $365 million. While revenue guidance has been adjusted from the original annual estimates, our guidance for earnings per diluted share remains within our original estimates and as we enter the last quarter of the year, is narrowed to $1.70 to $1.75 per share. We believe that this is a testament to the operational improvements and strategic initiatives Mike spoke about to improve our overall long-term profitability.

Our guidance includes our expectation that the effective tax rate will be in the range of 33% to 34% for the year.

That concludes our financial overview. Now I'd like to turn the call back over to our Chairman and CEO, Mike MacDonald.

Thanks, Tim. We believe our multi-channel weight loss and weight management business model allows us to benefit from an overall more diversified go-to-market approach. In closing, we are pleased with our team's consistent ability to focus on delivering the profit in 2013.

Going forward, we remain intently focused on managing the controllable aspects of our business model, introducing initiatives to drive sales across our vertically integrated business model, and delivering increased earnings and cash flow generation. Our Medifast team continues to be optimistic about the long-term growth prospects and we continue to execute our strategic plan.

We appreciate your interest in Medifast. And with that overview, Tim, Meg, and I are available to take your questions. Operator?

(Operator Instructions) Scott Van Winkle, Cannacord Genuity.

Hi; thanks. Good afternoon, guys.

How are you doing, Scott; how are you?

Good, good. Hey, a quick question -- two easy ones. Why was the tax rate lower? I didn't catch that, if you said it.

And then second, what was the other income -- what was it, $360,000 or something -- in the quarter?

Yes. Scott, the tax rate really was 2012. We went through a major tax restructuring in 2012, which basically took a lot of our earnings out of the state of Maryland and apportioned it amongst other states. So we were mostly single-state tax in the past. So by spreading it out, basically all that income -- a lot of that income -- goes to other states which don't necessarily have income tax. So it lowered our effective tax rate. So that was really why. And a lot of that work was done in the third quarter of last year, so you'll see a little bit of a roller coaster last year in our tax rate between the third and the fourth quarter.

Then this year -- our typical tax rate is in the 34% to 35%. This year, as we filed our final tax returns for last year, we had a true-up, where the actual tax now is going to be based on that newer methodology. So our rate came down to 28% this year, which was really just that catch-up, kind of a true-up from last year's final return and then an adjustment to our accruals for the first, second, and third quarter this year with the lower rates.

So going forward into fourth quarter, we'll return back to normal rates in the neighborhood of 34% to 35%.

Tim, if I look at -- and this is not all that significant. But the year-to-date tax rate -- and I may be calculating it wrong because I'm looking at my model rather than your GAP results -- the year-to-date tax rate looks like it's 31% and it jumps up in Q4. Is that right?

It'll jump back up a little bit in Q4. So our rate's going to be -- on a full-year base it's going to be somewhere -- we estimate it at 33% to 34% range, probably on the lower side of that, when we finish up the fourth quarter.

Okay, cool. And then, the other income? Is that from the investments?

Yes. So we have some invested income that rolls into other income. Our investment portfolio is a little bit bigger than it was a year ago. And the third quarter of last year, other income was extraordinarily low, not typical. So for a year-over-year comparison, it was a little bit hard.

If you look at our third quarter, we're a little higher than our prior quarters, but kind of in line with the first couple of quarters of last year. So it's really a year-over-year comparison; it's nothing that abnormal.

Yes. And a lot of people interested in your buy-back activity, or opportunity to buy back. So are the investment securities on your balance sheet -- are they liquid? I mean, is all of that kind of a war chest, so to speak, that you could spend near term if you wanted to in share repurchases?

Yes, absolutely.

Okay, great. And then, a couple of kind of business questions. It's always the question of spending versus sales -- kind of the chicken or the egg question of which comes first. The advertising spend being down, it sounds like that's a reflection of the market environment -- you pulled back when you saw spending. How should we think about which one preceded which? Kind of the environment or the (multiple speakers)?

Here's what happened. It was really the environment, Scott. We went out and we looked at -- example, our clinic owners. And they spend, as you know, significantly higher amounts than even we do. And they were having less effectivity attracting new customers. By the way, similar to us in that clinic business.

So basically we spent a lot of time talking to them and then looking at our own activity before we made any decisions. And by the way, even on Med Direct, after we had cut spending we put $1 million back in just to see. Even though the number was low, we might have even cut more; we put more money back in, being that we wanted to just see what was happening in the market. And we saw less efficiency from the spending than we would have liked.

So we basically made the decision to say, let's really focus on optimizing the profitability and then move back more in Med Direct to our 3-to-1 philosophy that we've always had in January. So we just wanted to make sure. Because we really saw consumer spending, some of the tax law changes and the government furlough as having an impact on our revenue because you saw we went from 8% in the first quarter in '4.

And by the way, when you look at us, over all we're going to be up for the full year where our two biggest competitors are down 14% and down 6%. So I think we've managed to be positive, at least, for the full year. And what we see is a much more difficult environment, but do it in a way where we can still make the EPS guidance that we gave in the beginning of the year and improve our cash flow.

So that was really sort of the decisions. But it really was looking at the market very intently first before we did any cuts.

Yes. Yes, everybody sees the Weight Watchers a little soft there; I don't think anybody's too focused on the Med Direct in near term. I guess the two questions I would have are (1) kind of what's planned for '14 -- is there's something bigger, better, bolder, etc., etc., etc., on the Med Direct side where you can spend against a program?

And then second -- and these are two very unrelated questions; I apologize, and then I'll yield the floor -- is on the Take Shape for Life. Obviously, what we're all focused on is the majority of your revenue. I'd love to hear some commentary about the revenue per health coach and maybe what the trends are there, what you expect. I mean, you saw a pickup in coach growth so we'd expect productivity to fall a little bit. But now we're kind of two quarters into that.

Yes, let me talk about -- I'll hit Take Shape for Life first. Take Shape for Life, we anticipate on the full year, growing about 7%. By the way, if you compared us to Herbalife and some of the other people with multi-level in the US revenue growth, pretty consistent. And being on the board of DSA, the average DSA company's growing at 4%. So Take Shape for Life is really going to have a decent year related to the DSA space.

What hurt us, really, was one month. We had a terrible month in the month of August, Scott, in Take Shape for Life. So the one month really was low relative to what Take Shape for Life normally does. And what we -- there could be different causals to that but we had our big convention in July. We think we had a lot of people out of the field in the month of August, whether it was extending their trips, being away. But for some reason, we really had an anomaly in August that we felt was significant. It came back in September and improved from where we were.

But that was probably the biggest hit that we took from a Take Shape for Life standpoint. Because we were fairly confident we'd see about 10% growth for the year and we saw that hit happen, and we see them growing about 7%. So Meg, why don't you add any color to that that you --?

Yes. We are seeing -- particularly with the new integrated compensation plan launch, we are seeing more people increasing in rank. So people are moving through the ranks faster than they were in previous months, which is a good sign for the future. So we are happy with the September. August, as Mike said, was an anomaly.

Yes. We also grandfathered a lot of these people, Scott, on the compensation. So we're not getting any negatives on the compensation plan from the network but we did see a very poor month in August.

Yes. Meg, do you think there's any potential kind of short-term disruption associated with the new compensation plan that you would have seen in August?

The only thing -- if you asked the field what their response would be to August, they would say that to some degree, they were working on structuring their teams for success. We don't feel like there's any major business interruption.

We really do feel -- we had 12 events this year compared to three that we typically have, most of those events falling in the third quarter. So we certainly will not repeat that next year and the field agrees with that. So again, we feel like we may have taken them out of the field and that may have been more impactful than even the comp plan itself.

Got you. And then, on the Med Direct. As you know, we're one month into November -- what the plans are, what the new program is going into the diet season Gen 1?

We have a lot of different programs. On the Med Direct site, we're working very closely to refine the things that are going on in Med Direct. But let me tell you -- we have significant plans for a new maintenance line, technology, snacks, lean and green meals, beverage mixes, condiments, supplements. So we're going to have the most extensive launch of products next year, Scott, in the history of Medifast.

And we've been working a lot of these different areas and we see great opportunity there. And what we're going to do is really -- as we launch our new products, we'll combine an investor day with a product launch and an overview of all these things early in the year, we're going to do that. Probably up in New York.

Thank you very much.

John San Marco, Janney Capital Markets.

Thanks. Hi, guys.

Hey, John, how are you?

Good, thank you. You referenced the key metrics that you were monitoring that motivated you to pull back on the Medifast Direct marketing during the quarter. Can you highlight some of those metrics that maybe were materially different than what you had expected, and thoughts on what's driving that?

Well, John, one thing I think we looked at, and I think it was something -- if I had to look at the year over again, we spent about $8 million in branding in the beginning of the year. And I think that it helped us; it raised our brand awareness from 20% to 40%. So it was a time we needed to make investment.

But if I could have anticipated the economic slowdown, I probably would have done demand generation from the start of the year, with a close rates on that brand advertising bringing people to close -- brand advertising isn't as good as demand generation advertising. So we spent a lot in the first half of the year on that and I think that didn't give us as much spending flexibility as you'd like to have had in the second half of the year, given we wanted to make sure we achieved our aggressive profit growth targets.

So I think we tried to balance the two of them and we're working with -- and I think that was one of the big issues, was the closure. We talked about that in the first half of the year.

But even with the demand generation, we've seen the closure rate being more difficult than we have in the past. So that's clearly a question.

And we have held our pricing and our margins and all those kind of things. And by the way, thank God we did because we got very positive results. What we would have lost in volume we made up for in pricing and margin in terms of the profitability of the Company. So we had to make some tough decisions and that's really what we were doing.

And we're working very hard right now, working on improving our Internet site, working on mobile applications -- a lot of technology things -- to get ready for the diet season to ensure, as we re-engage heavy spending. But you can be assured, though, the heavy spending will be more demand generation-type spending as we move into the diet season than -- Obviously, there'll still be branding. But we want to make sure that we're focusing on generating orders on the website and not just building our brand.

Okay, thank you. And then, I'm sorry -- I missed, or didn't fully understand, your comments on the month of August. It sounds like it was sort of extraordinarily weak relative to July and September. What are your thoughts on what drove that, again?

Basically in August we had a couple of things happen. Obviously, we have our convention for Take Shape for Life late in July, which initiates country-wide travel at that time. But we had about 12 events this year, quite a few of them falling into the third quarter, that typically at Take Shape for Life we have about three events a year. So that was significantly different. We will not repeat that for next year; we'll go back to having our three events that we sponsor as corporate next year.

So we did have an anomaly in August. We felt like between the travel and then the field kind of rearranging their teams to get ready for the integrated compensation plan launch September 1, that that's probably why there was an anomaly in August. But we recovered in September and haven't heard, really, anything other than they're happy to be growing and moving forward. We're actually seeing more people rise through the ranks and that's a good sign for the future.

Got it; thank you. And just to be clear, when you say events, you're talking about typical training and motivational events you hold?

This past year we did a five-city tour to increase the white space -- to decrease the white space on the map and get (inaudible) out there. Certainly that effort did work, but it did take a significant number of field leaders in specific areas, which to us is probably not the most effective use of their time. So we'll rethink that and restrategize that moving forward.

Okay, thanks.

Sure, thanks.

Kurt Frederick, Wedbush.

Hey, Kurt.

Hi. Sorry, I was on mute. A question on the depreciation expense. I think you closed three centers during three centers during the quarter -- as far as what depreciation is going to be going forward?

Well, depreciation on those three centers is not that significant, just on three centers. Total asset value of the centers are not that great. They also were at the end of the lease so a lot of the assets were already fully depreciated. So it's just those three centers; I wouldn't say it's anything material.

Within the MWCC operation, there's, I guess, one relatively significant amortization expense, which fully amortized off in the third quarter, which has about roughly a $30,000 per month expense that will disappear after September. So that's a real positive but that was an intangible amortization from years ago. That's one positive.

Okay. Are there any other centers planned for closure?

We're evaluating that, Kurt, as to the centers that we need to close, and we'll be announcing, as soon as we close, some of the sales of the centers when we close them. And then we'd also decide if we need to shut any down.

Okay. And then, on Medix -- what does that have in total contribution into sales at this point?

I don't have the exact number for Medix, but we expect the contribution to improve quite a bit between now and next year. So -- example, they've opened their first center in Mexico City in a really nice area. They're opening a second and they're looking at other opportunities to expand their clinic business. So we feel very comfortable.

They're getting better. Remember, they're a pharmaceutical company that was used to selling pharmaceuticals through doctors, and that takes a while to do that. We went through years and years and years trying to use just doctors to grow Medifast.

So they're moving quickly to the clinic model. They're also doing corporate wellness with executives in Mexico and expanding into the corporate areas. So we feel very comfortable that as we move forward the next couple of years, the revenue will get meaningful. But remember, they're not a GE -- it's a company that's like a Medifast in Mexico, and it takes time to get moving.

But we feel good about the progress they're making. In fact, they'll be here this weekend in Owings Mills to work with us further on their strategies.

I think the best way to categorize Medix at this point is this year was the year of them organizing structure, getting the food approved in multiple countries, and establishing an organization there to manage the clinic model that Mike said they weren't used to. So I think that the revenue contributions really this year are light. But the revenue will come through the clinics. So as they expand, that's where we see the revenue growth coming from.

What markets are they operating in right now?

They're in Mexico right now and they've opened Colombia and they're opening Argentina. So they're going to be in Mexico, Colombia, Argentina; they're the first three. But the good news, they're also paying the expense to enter those markets.

Okay, that's all I have. Thank you.

(Operator Instructions) Michael Halen, Sidoti and Company.

Good afternoon. Can you talk about how many franchise units you expect will be opened in the fourth quarter?

Franchise units in the fourth quarter -- five. There's supposed to be five that are going to open and they're basically ones in the South, the Southeast United States.

Okay, great. And I think you mentioned that ad spending was $5.5 million in the quarter, and you may have mentioned it, but if you did, I missed it. What was ad spending in the year-ago period?

What's that?

What was the ad spending in the year-ago period -- in the third quarter of 2012?

Tim, you can (multiple speakers)

One other thing, Mike. On the franchise agreements, we have signed three development agreements with our three top franchisees -- multi-year agreements that will be executed as we move to the end of this year; those five are part of that. So five will go in this year and then more will go in the first quarter of next year.

And how many units does that cover?

I think we're probably looking at probably nine units in the first quarter. It's a total of about 14 between the beginning of the year --

And you said that will be and also. So five in the fourth quarter this year and nine more units -- did you say in the first quarter next year?

First quarter next year. Yes, that's the plan that we have so far.

Okay, great. And Tim, did you have that number in the third quarter of '12?

Yes, total advertising in the third quarter of '12 was about -- add a few lines here because it's not just advertising. Advertising by itself was about $7 million, just (inaudible) the lines that --

Okay, thanks.

Scott Van Winkle, Canaccord Genuity.

Hi, guys. Did I hear some commentary about clinic profitability? And if I did, could you repeat it?

The question was about depreciation expense. We closed three clinics at lease expiration and so the question was, was there a significant depreciation associated with those clinics? And the answer is no. Specifically with those closures, there is not.

In a total clinic model, though, there was some amortization of some intangibles dating back years that ended in the third quarter of this year, and that was in the neighborhood of $30,000 per month. So in the aggregate, there is an improvement going forward of about $30,000 a month, but not specifically associated with the three clinic closures.

Got you. No, I was thinking in the prepared remarks -- something about improvement in clinic profitability. But anyway, could --

Oh yes, we've had improvement in the profitability for sure. So there's a slight improvement in profitability quarter over quarter even on the reduced sales. Our Company clinics' same-store sales have declined, our franchise business is up, and that combined segment profitability is up.

Got you. I can certainly get it out of Q when the Q comes, but do you have any figures available as far as the contribution you report out in the Q for the clinic business relative to last year?

Yes. I believe -- and I'll pull it real quickly. I believe profitability improvement was in the business about $140,000.

$140,000. And when we think about -- a lot of investors have kind of done the math. Say okay, you sell your Company-owned clinics, end up selling product, you get the gross margin on the product sales, the franchise fee, etc., yadda, yadda, yadda.

I'm wondering -- when you do your segment analysis, what kind of cost accounting is there as far as -- when I look at your Qs and Ks and I look at the profitability of the clinic sector, how do I think about the gross profit you get from manufacturing the products sold to clinics? What I guess I'm getting at is, if I look at the Company-owned clinics, are they less profitable than it looks in that segment analysis if I consider you getting maybe a 50% gross margin on selling products to those clinics? Do you get where I'm going with that?

Yes. So in the Company-owned clinics, their cost of goods is equal to manufactured costs; there's no stepped-up cost to them. So their margins in the Company-owned clinics are very high, basically a retail price versus manufactured standard cost. As well as they have revenues in there that are associated with services that we provide, counseling services, which essentially come in at 100% margin in that line.

So we have a very high gross profit margin, but we carry very high SG&A in our Company-owned clinics. In a franchise model, we don't carry any SG&A, really, but our margin in that model, depending -- we have scale depending on volume, anywhere from the 40% to 50% gross profit margin range, but carry no SG&A with that. So the franchise model tends to -- it does have a higher contribution margin to profit than the Company-owned clinic models because the net between the higher margin and the SG&A of the Company clinics is a much smaller contribution than the franchise.

Thank you, Tim.

Yes.

Michael Halen, Sidoti and Company.

Hi. If you could just update us about what you're looking to do with the cash, I'd appreciate it.

Did you say cash, Mike?

Yes.

We've said, I know, on a number of other calls that this was really the year for us to kind of evaluate numbers to see the options as far as how we're going to grow the Company vertically and otherwise. So we have gone through that process this year.

At this point, nothing new to report in that. We've also been asked the question about stock buy-back and we continue to kind of stay the course with that. We do intend to do a share repurchase this year. So that's really the update on cash at this point.

Great. Thanks, Tim.

(Operator Instructions) There are no further questions in queue at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to management for closing comments.

We appreciate your support of Medifast and your participation in today's call. We look forward to providing you with an update on our business when we report results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2013. And also, as I mentioned, when we set up an investor day product presentation in New York. Thank you very much.

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and thank you for your participation.