RE:Any News? In an exchange with IR I received this clarification:
The PR issued on November 9th allowed for a time extension until this Friday, November 16th (I thought it was the 19th). My guess is there will be another PR late today or tomorrow explaining that the auditor has not yet had sufficient time to make conclusions and another extension will be forthcoming. I don't know how the exchange(s) will view that.
Here's what I think:
Nobilis deals almost entirely with insurers. Private, non-insured treatments make up less than 3% of their revenue (that might not be exact, but it's in or about there).
The fact that they're having trouble collecting would be an indicator that the Insurers are questioning either the procedures, or billing codes complimentary to procedures (like tests, drugs, monitoring, length of stay, etc.) or the amounts that are being attributed to these.
Does this mean Nobilis might have been over billing? Not necessarily. Does it mean insurers are looking for ways to weasel out of paying? Not necessarily. My guess is that it might be somewhere in the middle.
Either way, it is almost a certainty that a provision for bad debt will be required. Whether or not some or all of that (beyond the traditional amounts we've seen in the past) will be recovered is what I will be most interested in when the eventual results come out. A provision is one thing - admitting you will not be getting paid is another.
The conference call should be quite a show this time around.
adamchess wrote: Up today - what gives?