Files Definitive Proxy Materials and Mails
Letter to Stockholders
AREX’s Unqualified Slate of Nominees Risks
Detracting from the Talent Currently on the Board
Urges Stockholders to Vote “FOR” Only Enhabit’s
Nine Nominees on the YELLOW Proxy Card
Enhabit, Inc. (NYSE: EHAB) (“Enhabit” or the “Company”), a
leading home health and hospice provider, today announced that it
has filed definitive proxy materials with the Securities and
Exchange Commission in connection with its upcoming 2024 annual
meeting of stockholders (the “2024 Annual Meeting”) scheduled for
July 25, 2024. Stockholders of record as of the close of business
on June 5, 2024, are entitled to vote at the 2024 Annual
Meeting.
In connection with the filing of its definitive proxy statement,
Enhabit is mailing a letter to stockholders. Enhabit’s definitive
proxy materials and other materials regarding the Board of
Directors’ recommendation for the 2024 Annual Meeting can be found
at investors.ehab.com.
The full text of the letter follows:
Dear Fellow Stockholder,
At our upcoming 2024 Annual Meeting of Stockholders (“Annual
Meeting”), you will have an important decision to make about the
future of Enhabit Home Health & Hospice (“Enhabit” or the
“Company”) – whether our Board should be replaced and control of
Enhabit handed to one of our stockholders, AREX Capital Management,
LP (together with its affiliates, “AREX”).
Your current Board unanimously believes the answer to this
question is emphatically, no. Allow us to explain. Previously a
subsidiary of Encompass Health Corporation (“Encompass”), Enhabit
has been a public company for just seven full quarters. Neither our
financial results nor our stock performance has satisfied
expectations during this period and certainly have not met the
standard your Board has set for Enhabit. This is due to a variety
of factors, including the structure and condition of our Company at
the time of the spin-off, as well as industry headwinds that were
exacerbated due to our business mix. We also experienced a few
operational missteps, which did not meet the high standards we have
set for ourselves.
But that is the past. Looking forward, the Company is focused on
improving our execution in areas that we directly control beyond
business mix and market conditions. As demonstrated by our
financial performance at the end of 2023 and beginning of 2024, the
Board and management team have taken the necessary steps to evolve
Enhabit into a stronger, more resilient post-spin public company,
well-positioned for growth, including:
- Standing up a public company despite challenging structural
circumstances, including enhancing our standalone financial control
environment;
- Executing a well-designed Board refreshment program that
included the appointment of two new directors pursuant to an
agreement with stockholders;
- Undertaking a comprehensive nine-month review process to
evaluate all strategic alternatives for the Company, including a
potential sale; and
- Most importantly, executing on its strategic plan to stabilize
the business amidst significant industry headwinds.
Despite our demonstrable progress and current trajectory, AREX
has initiated a proxy contest to replace the majority of the Board
with a seven-candidate slate that has largely outdated experience
and numerous other flaws. Most prominently, none of the six
independent candidates have any board experience at a NYSE- or
NASDAQ-listed company. Furthermore, if AREX takes control of the
Company, their stated intent is to institute a “Transformation
Committee,” which will presumably operate as a shadow management
team, to implement a yet-to-be-disclosed strategic plan – this is
not the recipe for success.
We have engaged with AREX extensively since our infancy as a
public company and have accommodated their requests for discussions
with both management and members of the Board. To date, AREX has
not indicated any willingness to entertain a reasonable settlement
offer that does not include delivering to AREX control of the
Board. The Company remains open to a constructive resolution of the
proxy contest in a manner that does not destabilize the
business.
AREX’s public statements contain numerous mischaracterizations,
cherry-picked time periods and misleading assertions, which we will
address in future communications. However, we wholeheartedly agree
with AREX on the following:
“The only thing that
matters now is setting the Company on a path that will
unlock Enhabit’s substantial value for
all stockholders.”
And we believe the current Board is the superior choice to do
so. We urge you to protect the value of your investment by voting
the YELLOW proxy card “FOR” ONLY Enhabit’s nine highly qualified
nominees – Jeffrey W. Bolton, Tina L. Brown-Stevenson, Charles M.
Elson, Erin P. Hoeflinger, Barbara A. Jacobsmeyer, Susan A. La
Monica, Stuart M. McGuigan, Gregory S. Rush and Barry P.
Schochet.
ENHABIT’S BOARD AND MANAGEMENT TEAM HAVE
NAVIGATED A CHALLENGING ENVIRONMENT AND STABILIZED THE
BUSINESS
Enhabit has faced a series of headwinds since it separated from
Encompass in July 2022, which impacted the Company’s ability to
accurately forecast its performance.
- Spinning out with levels of debt notably higher than many of
Enhabit’s peers, which has inhibited its ability to make
opportunistic acquisitions.
- A rapid acceleration of Medicare beneficiaries’ moving from
Medicare to Medicare Advantage across the industry affected the
Company more than its peer companies due to Enhabit’s relatively
high mix of Medicare business and low number of Medicare Advantage
payor contracts at favorable rates at the time of the spin, leading
to a disproportionate decline in adjusted EBITDA as the mix of
business normalized.
- High interest rate environment, which further limited Enhabit’s
ability to be acquisitive and increased its cost of debt.
- Inflationary wage trends and labor market shortage, which
created capacity constraints, limiting growth and increasing
Enhabit’s cost per visit.
Against this challenging backdrop, the Board and management team
have executed a multi-faceted strategy in our home health and
hospice businesses to strengthen Enhabit’s foundation,
including:
- Stabilizing Medicare admissions as a
percentage of total home health revenue. Enhabit’s
traditional Medicare mix of home health revenue is at approximately
60% and now in line with peers. While we still have work to do in
this area, we expect this to result in improved performance. For
example, while year-over-year Medicare admissions declined 11.4% in
the first quarter of 2024, we experienced a Medicare admission
increase of 3.4% sequentially.
- Improving our Medicare Advantage
rate. As we shift business to our payor innovation
contracts, we are driving higher revenue per visit. We have driven
steady increases in our non-Medicare revenue per visit, from
approximately $136 in FY 2022, to approximately $140 in FY 2023, to
approximately $145 in the first quarter of 2024. These improvements
are a result of our payor innovation process, which began in the
summer of 2022. Notably, in Q1 2023, only 6% of non-Medicare visits
were covered by payor innovation contracts at improved rates. In Q1
2024, that figure was 38%. In addition, admissions in our
historically lower paying contracts declined from 42% of total
admissions in Q1 2023 to 29% in Q1 2024.
- Growing our payor network. Since
the spin-off in July 2022, we have secured 64 new agreements, two
of which are new national agreements. Our pipeline includes 30
potential new agreements, along with 28 historic agreements that
are being re-negotiated.
- Increasing hospice admissions and
census. We stabilized the clinical work force and are now
focused on business development to drive admissions and census
growth. Since the spin-off in July 2022, we have grown hospice
revenue by approximately 3% and admissions by approximately 7%,
outpacing our closest peer.
- Bolstering our talent pool. In
2023, we eliminated all hospice and home health nursing contract
labor, which is traditionally more expensive driving lower overall
profitability. In Q1 2024, Enhabit’s full-time nursing candidate
pool increased over 30% year-over-year and resulted in the addition
of 151 net new full-time nurses.
- Delivering consistently excellent care to
our patients. Our success is a competitive advantage in
negotiations with payors. In 2023:
- Enhabit's 30-day hospital readmission rate was 20.5% lower than
the 2022 national average.
- Enhabit’s Quality of Patient Care star rating was 16.7% better
than the national average.
- Enhabit is 52.3% better than the national average in hospice
visits by a RN or medical social worker in two of the last three
days of the patient’s life.
ENHABIT IS POISED TO DRIVE GROWTH AND VALUE
CREATION
With Enhabit on more solid footing, we can now leverage our
business stability to drive growth. Our priorities
include:
Home Health. We are increasing clinical staffing,
enhancing ability to accept new payors and aligning clinical
resource utilization with patient needs.
- We continue to increase net full-time nursing and therapy
headcount to support home health growth.
- Our payor innovation team is contracting with new payors. This
positions us to accept more patients and be a preferred provider to
referral sources. We have two new national payor agreements in
place as of January 1, 2024, which positions us much better than we
were at the beginning of 2023.
- We are utilizing analytics and clinical management software,
such as Medalogix Pulse, to optimize our care plans without
compromising our industry leading outcomes.
Hospice. We are growing census through improved staffing
capacity, increasing use of analytics to drive high-quality care
and focusing on efficiencies in the referral to admission
process.
- We have no capacity constraints in our hospice locations,
enabling us to take referrals that our business development team
sources for us.
- Enhabit has implemented a case management staffing model that
continues to improve recruitment and retention of hospice staff
while eliminating all contract nursing and staffing constraints.
Now that we have sufficient clinical staffing, we are focused on
recruiting additional business development team members to increase
referrals.
- Enhabit has successfully reallocated certain hospice resources
to form centralized admission departments. The sole focus of these
departments is to improve our ability to respond quickly to
referral sources.
- The Company also leverages both internally developed tools as
well as third-party software to reduce our cost per visit, enhance
our productivity and optimize the use of our nursing and therapy
staff.
De Novos. We are making investments through our de novo
strategy focused on staffing and hiring the clinical team to build
patient census and aim to achieve 10 de novo locations per year
which will allow us to enter new markets.
- De novos present attractive economics, with an initial
investment of approximately $250,000 to $350,000, allowing Enhabit
to capitalize on growth opportunities in overlapping
geographies.
- Enhabit’s operational and sales teams have been focused on
ramping up referrals and admission growth in the eight existing de
novo locations that opened in 2023.
- The Company added resources to our integration team to support
our de novo strategy.
- We have opened three thus far in 2024. De novos that have
reached their one-year anniversary are generally at or ahead of
plan.
People. Through our employee-first culture, we undertake
significant efforts to ensure our clinical and support staff
receive the education, training, support and recognition necessary
to provide the highest quality care in the most cost-effective
manner.
- With our demonstrated success in nursing hires, we can now turn
some talent acquisition resources to recruiting additional
therapists that will allow us to grow volumes.
- The success of our human capital management strategy is
evidenced by acknowledgement in many industry and national
workforce awards, including the recently announced 2024 Top
Workplaces USA award issued by Energage,1 and results from our
employee engagement survey that show active engagement by employees
beyond the national average.
ENHABIT’S REFRESHED, HIGHLY QUALIFIED BOARD
IS FIT FOR PURPOSE AND SUPERIOR TO THE AREX PROPOSED
NOMINEES
As Enhabit continues to mature as a public company, the Board is
ensuring that it has the right mix of skills along with a balanced
mix of tenures to help drive Enhabit’s next phase of growth.
Today, the Company’s Board consists of 13 directors, 12 of whom
are independent directors, including five transitional directors
who previously served on the Encompass board. The Company believes
the historical knowledge of the business and public company board
experience provided by the transitional directors was invaluable as
we navigated obstacles and headwinds during our transition to a
standalone public company. Most spin-off companies have legacy
directors for this reason. As part of our well-designed, previously
disclosed Board refreshment plan, four of the five transitional
directors will step down from the Board at the Annual Meeting.
Importantly, the skillsets and expertise of the Company’s
directors up for re-election at the Annual Meeting are strongly
aligned with the opportunities we see ahead. As AREX aptly
highlighted, Charles Elson, the sole former Encompass director
remaining on Enhabit’s Board, stated, “The skills-based
composition of a corporate board is critically important to proper
board function…a wide range of talents that are tailored to the
business of the corporation is vital to effective management
monitoring.”2 Mr. Elson had Enhabit’s Board in mind when he
made this statement in August 2023.
The eight independent Enhabit
Board nominees include:
- Directors with ample experience serving on public company
boards;
- Six directors who have overseen Enhabit through a period of
instability and positioned the Company for growth and stockholder
value creation;
- Two directors with executive-level expertise at two large
payors that have distinct but complementary operations; this
experience is invaluable as Enhabit’s payor innovation strategy
continues to expand;
- A Chief Human Resources Officer for a publicly traded
organization with nearly 20,000 employees whose perspective gained
over ten years in this role pertains specifically to the Company’s
efforts to improve recruitment and retention across our locations
in the U.S., as well as to implement executive compensation
programs designed to create value for stockholders, and broader
human capital management objectives;
- A former Chief Administrative Officer and Chief Financial
Officer in a leading health services company with over 20 years of
leadership experience and strong accounting acumen that is
necessary considering the Company’s recently enhanced financial
controls;
- A director identified and selected by a stockholder of the
Company that has a proven track record navigating industry cycles
as a senior executive;
- A former Chief Information Officer at the U.S. Department of
State, Johnson & Johnson and CVS Caremark with over three
decades of Information Technology expertise, and a former Senior
Vice President of Health System Analytics and Decision Support with
significant experience in health system analytics and data, both of
which have proved critical as we build out our analytics
capabilities;
- A Certified Public Accountant with more than 30 years of
experience and significant M&A expertise gleaned from serving
as Chief Financial Officer at two public companies prior to their
respective sales to private equity; and
- A renowned corporate governance expert (who has been quoted by
AREX), with prior service as a director nominee of shareholder
activists.
If elected, this Board, whose skillsets align greatly with the
strategic initiatives of the Company, intends to oversee a
management team poised to grow the business and enhance value for
all stockholders.
Compare this experience with the seven AREX proposed nominees and the vast disparity
in quality is readily apparent:
- Seven nominees with only a combined four years of public
company experience – one at a discount retail company that filed
for bankruptcy and another at a holding company not registered with
the SEC;
- Nominees whose healthcare experience is either tangential to
home health and hospice operations and payor relationships,
unproven because of short track records, or dated with limited
relevance because of today’s Medicare Advantage marketplace
dynamics;
- Candidates whose “payor” experience is at convenors (a
third-party administrator working and coordinating with payors and
providers), and not actually at payors;
- No candidates with extensive experience in leveraging
analytics, which is a core initiative;
- No candidate with extensive experience in implementing
executive compensation policies and programs, ESG initiatives, or
IT/cybersecurity infrastructure; and
- Lack of candidates with the requisite accounting and internal
control experience or compensation expertise to form properly
functioning Audit and Human Capital Committees – qualities that are
critical for any board to effectively oversee internal controls and
communicate with auditors and design executive compensation plans
to ensure alignment with management and stockholders.
If elected, AREX intends to form a “Transformation Committee.”
In addition to concerns about the AREX nominees’ experience and
ability to effectively oversee the Company, we believe it will take
months for them to get up to speed.
ENHABIT’S INDEPENDENT BOARD OVERSAW A ROBUST
STRATEGIC REVIEW PROCESS: THE BOARD HAS DEMONSTRATED THAT IT IS
OPEN TO ALL OPPORTUNITIES TO MAXIMIZE STOCKHOLDER VALUE
Your Board actively seeks and carefully evaluates stockholder
input on an ongoing basis. To that end, at the urging of AREX and
other stockholders, the Board oversaw a robust strategic review
process which included a potential sale of the Company. The process
involved 38 potential counterparties, including strategic buyers
and financial sponsors – with certain parties expressing varying
degrees of interest; however, due to a variety of factors
(including macro and industry headwinds), none submitted formal
offers despite the Board’s extensive efforts.
The Board remains open to all opportunities to maximize
stockholder value and will continue to take actions that best
position Enhabit for the future, whether operating as a standalone
entity or as part of a larger platform.
PROTECT THE VALUE OF YOUR INVESTMENT IN
ENHABIT: VOTE THE YELLOW PROXY CARD TODAY
We strongly urge stockholders to vote for the entire slate of
nine highly qualified and experienced Enhabit director
nominees. Your vote is extremely important, no matter how many
shares you own. Please use the enclosed YELLOW proxy card to
vote ONLY FOR Enhabit’s nine nominees today.
You can elect our nominees by signing, dating and returning the
YELLOW proxy card in the postage-paid envelope included in
your proxy materials.
DISCARD the white proxy card you receive from AREX. If you
mistakenly voted using the white proxy card, you may cancel that
vote by simply voting again using Enhabit’s YELLOW proxy
card – only your latest-dated vote will count.
Thank you for your continued support of and investment in
Enhabit.
Sincerely, The Enhabit Board of Directors
If you have questions or need assistance voting
your shares, please contact:
MacKenzie Partners, Inc.
Toll-Free: 1-800-322-2885
Or
Email: Enhabit@MacKenziePartners.com
About Enhabit Home Health & Hospice
Enhabit Home Health & Hospice (Enhabit, Inc.) is a leading
national home health and hospice provider working to expand what’s
possible for patient care in the home. Enhabit's team of clinicians
supports patients and their families where they are most
comfortable, with a nationwide footprint spanning 255 home health
locations and 112 hospice locations across 34 states. Enhabit
leverages advanced technology and compassionate teams to deliver
extraordinary patient care. For more information, visit
ehab.com.
Forward-Looking
Statements
Statements contained in this press release which are not
historical facts are forward-looking statements within the meaning
of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All
forward-looking information speaks only as of the date hereof, and
Enhabit undertakes no duty to publicly update or revise such
forward-looking information, whether as a result of new
information, future events, or otherwise. Such forward-looking
statements are based upon current information and involve a number
of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control.
Actual events or results may differ materially from those
anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of a
variety of factors. While it is impossible to identify all such
factors, factors which could cause actual events or results to
differ materially from our present expectations include, but are
not limited to, our ability to execute on our strategic plans,
regulatory and other developments impacting the markets for our
services, changes in reimbursement rates, general economic
conditions, changes in the episodic versus non-episodic mix of our
payers, the case mix of our patients, and payment methodologies,
our ability to attract and retain key management personnel and
health care professionals, potential disruptions or breaches of our
or our vendors’, payors’, and other contract counterparties’
information systems, the outcome of litigation, our ability to
successfully complete and integrate de novo locations,
acquisitions, investments, and joint ventures, our ability to
successfully integrate technology in our operations, our ability to
control costs, particularly labor and employee benefit costs, and
impacts resulting from the announcement of the conclusion of the
strategic review process. Additional information regarding risks
and factors that could cause actual results to differ materially
from those expressed or implied by any forward-looking statement in
this press release are described in reports filed with the SEC,
including our Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent Quarterly
Reports on Form 10-Q, copies of which are available on the
Company’s website at http://investors.ehab.com and free of charge
through the website maintained by the SEC at www.sec.gov. We urge
you to consider all of the risks, uncertainties and factors
identified above or discussed in such reports carefully in
evaluating the forward-looking statements in this press
release.
Important Additional Information and
Where to Find It
The Company has filed a definitive proxy statement on Schedule
14A and other documents with the SEC in connection with its
solicitation of proxies from the Company’s stockholders for the
Company’s 2024 annual meeting of stockholders. THE COMPANY’S
STOCKHOLDERS ARE STRONGLY ENCOURAGED TO READ THE COMPANY’S
DEFINITIVE PROXY STATEMENT (INCLUDING ANY AMENDMENTS OR SUPPLEMENTS
THERETO), THE ACCOMPANYING YELLOW PROXY CARD, AND ALL OTHER DOCUMENTS
FILED OR TO BE FILED WITH THE SEC CAREFULLY AND IN THEIR ENTIRETY
BECAUSE THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION. Investors and
stockholders may obtain a copy of the definitive proxy statement,
an accompanying YELLOW proxy
card, any amendments or supplements to the definitive proxy
statement and other documents filed by the Company with the SEC at
no charge at the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. Copies will also be
available at no charge by clicking the “SEC Filings” link in the
“Investors” section of the Company’s website,
http://investors.ehab.com, or by contacting
InvestorRelations@ehab.com as soon as reasonably practicable after
such materials are electronically filed with, or furnished to, the
SEC.
1
https://investors.ehab.com/news/news-details/2024/Enhabit-Home-Health--Hospice-Named-a-Winner-of-the-2024-Top-Workplaces-USA-Award/default.aspx
2 Elson, C. (2023, August 9). Editor’s Note: Planes, Trains and
Corporate Governance. Directors & Boards.
View source
version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240609113187/en/
Investor relations Crissy Carlisle
investorrelations@ehab.com 469-860-6061
Media Erin Volbeda media@ehab.com 972-338-5141
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