Inogen: ‘We’re happy with what we’re seeing’ 

GOLETA, Calif. – Inogen shared the ways it’s increasing “synergies and efficiencies” across its various sales channels during a recent conference call to discuss its financial results for the first quarter of 2024. 

The company’s president and CEO, Kevin Smith, said these efforts include training its team to execute in both its direct-to-consumer and rental channels, launching partnerships within its business-to-business channel and generating new targets in its rental channel. 

“We continue our efforts to reduce friction across our sales channels,” he said. “We have seen encouraging results by promoting communication between our sales personnel and launching specific pilot projects to drive this cross-partnership.” 

Among Inogen’s financial results for the first quarter was a 31.3% increase in domestic B2B revenue and an 8.3% increase in rental revenue. 

Smith said the company’s efforts also include targeting hospitals, in addition to individual prescribers, through its rental channel to better manage its cost and margin profile. This allows the company to go “even further upstream” and gain a few months in billing before the patient hits a capitated period, he said. 

“So those patients, of course, have follow-ups by prescribers and so that leads to another connected relationship back to the prescriber,” he said. “We like what we're seeing so far. It’s early stages to see how well we roll this out further, but it looks promising at this point for us.”  

Inogen’s direct-to-consumer channel saw a 15.6% decrease in sales in the first quarter, but Smith pointed out the company was facing tough comps from the prior year when it had a larger sales team in that channel. The size of that team now stands at about 150 to 170 sales reps. 

“Quarter on quarter, we’ve been happy with what we’re seeing coming out of (the DTC channel),” he said.