Inspire Veterinary Partners Issues Corporate Update Letter to Shareholders

Rhea-AI Summary

Inspire Veterinary Partners (NASDAQ:IVP) has issued a corporate update highlighting its 2024 performance and 2025 outlook. The company has regained Nasdaq compliance for both bid price and shareholder equity requirements. Despite facing market challenges in 2024, IVP implemented several operational improvements, including:

- Enhanced systems integration across accounting, practice management, and KPI reporting
- Improved clinical recruiting and talent selection processes
- Strengthened relationships with major suppliers
- Debt reduction initiatives while maintaining growth focus
- Development of an ESOP equity plan for launch in 2025

The company maintains a differentiated approach in veterinary medicine, offering competitive benefits and flexible employment structures for veterinarians, including no non-compete restrictions and no negative earnings accruals. Looking ahead, IVP plans to focus on core business growth, M&A opportunities, and new vertical expansion while maintaining conservative forecasting and valuation approaches.

Positive

• Regained full Nasdaq compliance for both bid price and shareholder equity requirements
• Successfully implemented company-wide integration of accounting and management systems
• Reduced both long-term and short-term debt
• Developed innovative ESOP equity plan for launch in 2025
• Improved operational efficiency and cost management

Negative

• Disappointing public company performance in 2024
• Faced challenging market conditions affecting growth
• Experienced difficulties in lending and capital markets

Insights

Corporate Strategy Analyst

The shareholder letter reveals a strategic pivot focused on operational efficiency and sustainable growth, marked by several key developments that position IVP for potential market expansion. The company's achievement of Nasdaq compliance removes a significant overhang and demonstrates management's ability to address regulatory challenges while maintaining operational focus.

The implementation of integrated cloud-based management systems and KPI reporting tools represents a significant operational advancement. This infrastructure investment is particularly strategic as it creates a scalable platform for future acquisitions, potentially reducing integration costs and accelerating revenue synergies from M&A activities. The standardization of systems across all clinics should drive operational efficiencies and improve margin performance over time.

The planned ESOP program, a first in veterinary medicine, combined with the enhanced benefits package, addresses one of the industry's most pressing challenges: talent retention. This innovative approach to employee ownership could provide IVP with a competitive advantage in recruitment and retention, particularly significant given the sector's ongoing labor constraints and rising wage pressures.

The company's approach to debt management and cost control while maintaining investment in growth initiatives suggests a balanced financial strategy. The elimination of unnecessary facilities and careful headcount management, combined with improved supplier relationships, indicates potential for margin expansion through operational leverage.

IVP's decision to avoid non-compete restrictions for associate doctors and negative earnings accruals represents a differentiated approach in the veterinary services market. This strategy could prove particularly valuable as the industry continues to consolidate and competition for veterinary talent intensifies.

However, the letter's emphasis on conservative forecasting and realistic value models suggests management anticipates continued market challenges in 2025. The focus on measurable returns and careful scaling indicates a more disciplined approach to growth, which could result in slower but more sustainable expansion compared to competitors.

VIRGINIA BEACH, VA / ACCESS Newswire / February 12, 2025 / Inspire Veterinary Partners, Inc. (Nasdaq:IVP) ("Inspire" or the "Company"), an owner and provider of pet health care services throughout the U.S.,today issued a letter to stockholders from Kimball Carr, the Chief Executive Officer of Inspire.

Dear Shareholders,

As 2024 has drawn to a close and Inspire Veterinary Partners pursues its growth plans for 2025 and beyond, I'd like to share some detail on how the team at Inspire has been engaged toward achieving our goals.

The opportunity to become a publicly traded veterinary company provided us with additional capabilities to fuel growth and to attract and retain talented employees. It also brings a new set of obligations and responsibilities that must be navigated, often requiring adjustment and reassessment of strategy and processes. In 2024, market forces, the challenges of lending and capital markets and the trends within our veterinary medicine industry were all factors that impacted our performance and tested our management team. This set of circumstances required us to look internally and devise and implement initiatives that would enable us to prosper in this environment and position us better for future growth.

The result of our collective work has made us stronger - with systems, tools and teams built for growth. We invested over this past year while we also paying down debt and addressing excess costs. We brought new levels of efficiency to our operations at every level, and we upgraded leadership on a wide variety of fronts. In doing all the above, we've remained acutely aware that our performance as a public company in 2024 was disappointing. Market conditions were not ideal for small and microcap listed companies, but despite the outside factors which IVP faced, we take full accountability for growing our company in ways which provide benefit for our clients and team as well as value for our shareholders. That said, as of February 2025, we are informed by Nasdaq that we have also regained our bid price compliance, adding that to the shareholder equity compliance which we regained in late 2024. The resolution of these issues makes us fully compliant with Nasdaq.

While this past year has had its share of frustrations, our team and I have been engaged every single day on improvements, advancements and the right investments which we believe will bring the growth we all desire.

Operations Excellence

• IVP has built our framework with an immense focus on the balance between the belief that we ‘can't save our way to success' - meaning, we must grow to succeed - and, avoiding fallacy that all problems go away by ‘throwing money at them'. To achieve this balance, we have scrutinized our labor spend at all levels, been cautious in headcount adds and managing costs closely by eliminating dependance on unnecessary facilities or offices.

• Within the veterinary channel, the decades-long growth of our industry exploded further during the pandemic era. In the period afterward, we have seen a variety of dynamics. These conditions impacted worker engagement, the costs of supplies and services and the climate within which we seek to purchase existing businesses to add to our portfolio. Related to our core/comp business and our business development arm, we have:

  • Implemented new strategies and tools that are bringing in new clients, filling our schedules more effectively and bringing our clinics to better productivity.

  • Completed companywide integrations across accounting platforms, practice management software and key performance indicator (KPI) reporting systems. This work over the last year has made IVP a fully integrated company with remote view and cloud-based management of every system we use. These rollouts allow decentralized management and provide a framework for all our clinics to work under the same systems and reporting tools so that we have consistency in the growth measures we implement across our portfolio. We believe the result of all of this will be faster improvement and easier integration of each new business unit we acquire.

  • We invested in improved unit managers and built new job leveling programs which allow our leaders to progress in their careers with IVP.

  • We've added experienced clinical recruiting leadership and, as a result, rebuilt our entire talent selection process, resulting in measurable gains in our onboarding of much-needed clinical talent when compared to one year ago.

  • We've onboarded experienced business development leadership and re-engineered our M&A workflow to evaluate new acquisition targets more efficiently and with far more market data than previously available.

  • Finally, we enhanced our relationships with major suppliers and service providers in the veterinary space, providing IVP the ability to begin to use its size toward economies that come with our growing scale.

• All these innovations and workstreams have been a benefit to our costs, revenue and overall operations. They also represent only a portion of the agility IVP has demonstrated in the past year - a year in which we believe our company faired far better than some other providers in the veterinary space which had their own challenges.

Treasury Management

• IVP continues to operate via a ‘lean management while building for growth' mindset and, as such, we have paid down balances on both long- and short-term debt while being judicious about how and when we take capital into the company.

• Our work toward more efficient capital strategies, well-prepared audit processes and improved operations has contributed positively toward efficiency and allowed us to find savings across a variety of expense categories.

Differentiated Approach

• Over the past two years, the team at IVP has designed, approved and prepared an ESOP equity plan which will be the framework for our goal of shared ownership with all team members. We expect to launch this program in 2025, becoming the first of its kind in veterinary medicine and positioning IVP as an employer of choice in our sector.

• Having committed to taking great care of our professionals early on our journey, in the last year we further enhanced our total compensation and benefits plans, seeking to include health, vision, dental, well-being, retirement and other compensation offerings that we believe are superior to many other companies in the veterinary channel. By building one of the most robust models in veterinary medicine, we look forward to adding shared equity as the final piece of a suite of rewards aimed at recognizing and rewarding our team members.

• And, we've remained true to respecting clinical professionals in our sector via customized employment structures. We have achieved this through our commitment to no negative earnings accruals for veterinarians, no non-compete restrictions for associate doctors and the ability for us to build models which work for doctors and the ways in which they want to practice veterinary medicine.

Looking Ahead

In 2025 and the years beyond, our team is focused on the growth of Inspire's core business, within our M&A strategy and for new verticals and business models which we are actively evaluating. We are a young company, but we've built leaders and systems for the future - with a rock-solid devotion to scaling thoughtfully. As such, we will remain conservative in our forecasts, valuations and outlook on innovations and new facility opportunities. We will avoid trends or whims in our marketplace, choosing to base our decisions on measurable returns and realistic value models.

We have built a world-class team who have proven track records, and they have joined IVP to build a company they can be proud of. This is a team of achievers, innovators and leaders and I am incredibly proud of the work they are doing.

For those who have supported us, watched our journey and been instrumental in what we have achieved thus far, I thank you and I look forward to sharing opportunities for us to celebrate new achievements this year and beyond.

Thank you and all the best.

Kimball Carr

President / CEO

Inspire Veterinary Partners

About Inspire Veterinary Partners, Inc.

Inspire Veterinary Partners is an owner/operator of veterinary hospitals in the US. As the Company expands, it expects to acquire additional veterinary hospitals, including general practice, mixed animal facilities, and critical and emergency care.

For more information, please visit: www.inspirevet.com.

Connect with Inspire Veterinary Partners, Inc.

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/InspireVeterinaryPartners/

LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/company/inspire-veterinary-partners/

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding the Company's current expectations. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Factors that could cause actual results to differ include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties related to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions related to anticipated acquisitions, or factors that result in changes to the Company's anticipated results of operations related to acquisitions. These and other risks and uncertainties are described more fully in the section captioned "Risk Factors" in the Company's public filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. Forward-looking statements contained in this announcement are made as of this date, and the Company undertakes no duty to update such information except as required under applicable law.

Investor Contact

TraDigital IR
Kevin McGrath
+1-646-418-7002
kevin@tradigitalir.com

General Inquires

Morgan Wood
Mwood@inspirevet.com

SOURCE: Inspire Veterinary Partners, Inc.

View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire

FAQ

What improvements did IVP implement in 2024 to enhance operations?

IVP implemented company-wide integrations across accounting platforms, practice management software, and KPI reporting systems, improved clinical recruiting, enhanced supplier relationships, and developed new job leveling programs.

Has Inspire Veterinary Partners (IVP) regained Nasdaq compliance?

Yes, as of February 2025, IVP has regained both bid price compliance and shareholder equity compliance with Nasdaq requirements.

What is IVP's unique approach to veterinary employment?

IVP offers no negative earnings accruals for veterinarians, no non-compete restrictions for associate doctors, and flexible employment structures that accommodate different practice preferences.

When will IVP launch its ESOP equity plan?

IVP plans to launch its ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) in 2025, making it the first of its kind in veterinary medicine.

How did IVP perform financially in 2024?

According to the update, IVP's performance as a public company in 2024 was disappointing, affected by challenging market conditions for small and microcap listed companies.