Waystar (WAY) 46th Annual William Blair Growth Stock Conference summary

Market Overview, Industry Trends, and Context

• U.S. healthcare faces nearly $500 billion in administrative costs and $1–1.5 trillion in annual wasteful spending, with significant inefficiencies due to manual processes and claim denials.

• Providers spend $20 billion annually contesting denied claims, and 53% of bad debt write-offs come from insured patients.

• Healthcare IT and RCM services are in high demand as hospitals seek to improve margins and patient/provider experiences, with 63% of revenue cycle leaders reporting understaffing.

• Patient out-of-pocket spending totals $506 billion, highlighting the need for payment simplification.

• The total addressable market for RCM is projected to grow from $20 billion in 2025 to $25 billion by 2030, with AI-driven solutions expected to capture a share of the $100+ billion annual spend.

Technology, Platform Vision, and Advancements

• The platform is cloud-native, delivering hundreds of feature improvements quarterly to over a million providers and aims to power an autonomous revenue cycle with minimal human intervention.

• AI solutions, including those powered by Google Gemini and AltitudeAI™, accounted for 40% of Q1 2026 bookings and leverage unified clinical, financial, and administrative data.

• Over 150 AI models automate tasks from insurance eligibility to claim submission, with proprietary data from 7.5 billion annual transactions training self-learning models.

• The agentic AI flywheel and deep workflow integration continuously enhance automation and intelligence across the revenue cycle.

• The platform integrates with over 530 practice management and EHR systems, supporting 200+ channel partners and enabling innovations like proactive clinical justification and intelligence-powered appeals.

Business, Operational, and Financial Performance

• Serves over 30,000 client organizations, including 16 of the top 20 U.S. News Best Hospitals, reaching 60% of the U.S. patient population annually.

• Processes one in three acute patient discharges and over $2.4 trillion in annual gross claim charges, with 7.5 billion+ payment transactions.

• Q1 2026 revenue grew 22% year-over-year, adjusted EBITDA grew 26% with a 43% margin, and unlevered free cash flow reached $90 million.

• Denial rate was 4.82%, with a 21% decrease from the previous month; average days to pay was 32, down 5.3%.

• AI-based solutions prevented nearly $16 billion in claim denials in 2025, achieving a 99% first-pass claim acceptance rate and delivering 95% time savings on claim edits and 90% faster appeals.