Inogen moves through ‘rebase year’ 

GOLETA, Calif. – Inogen has put Eric Pauls, vice president of sales for North America, in charge of both its rental and business-to-business channels to reduce friction and scale overall growth. 

The move marks a change from a previous sales structure in which separate leaders managed the rental, B2B and direct-to-consumer channels. 

“We believe this change will improve alignment across our business and ensure that we are directing every customer and patient to the right resources for sales to be completed successfully,” said Kevin Smith, president and CEO, during a conference call on Nov. 7 to discuss the company’s third quarter financial results. 

Inogen announced in September that Pauls had joined the company. He was previously senior vice president of sales for Tactile Medical and before that he worked at Philips in increasing roles of responsibility for 19 years. 

‘Taking and expanding share’ 

Inogen reported domestic B2B revenue increased 35.1% in the third quarter compared to the same period last year, driven by increased demand from new customers and resellers. That follows a 16.5% increase in the second quarter year over year. 

“Our performance was led by strong POC sales through our business-to-business channels,” Smith said. “We continue to expand our relationships with new and existing customers as patients and providers increasingly recognize the benefits that our solutions provide over other oxygen therapies and appreciate our quality, ease of servicing and eight-year service life. In particular, we are having success taking and expanding share within the accounts of some of our largest customers.” 

‘Rebase year’ 

Inogen reported DTC sales decreased 23.2% in the third quarter, as the company continues to operate with a smaller sales team. By the middle of next year, however, Inogen will lap that change, making for better comps, and it will have more results from a pilot program cross-training its team to execute both cash and insurance transactions in the DTC channel. 

“So, this has been a rebase year for DTC,” Smith said. “We’ve been through that third quarter in the middle of that rebase and so we have positive outlooks for this going forward. But we won’t be getting into that full rollout of the patient-first program until we hit the first half of next year.” 

‘Interesting play’ with Rove 

Inogen’s recently launched Rove 4 portable oxygen concentrator will also be “more interesting” for the DTC than the B2B channel, Smith said. The B2B channel tends to prefer keeping patients on one device – typically the G4 – to reduce their investment, he said. 

“We’re able to capture patients earlier in their disease state, take them on that first product, the Rove 4, for a little bit longer since it has an additional setting (840ml/min of oxygen),” he said. “So, there’s an opportunity there also, as we initiate patients for treatment with the Rove 4, that if they do well, if they live long, but their disease progresses, then we could upgrade them in the future to the Rove 6. So that we believe is an interesting play for it for us.”