Who is going to get to the end of the alphabet first? Covid-19 or Lyra Health? Jess and I talk about a Series F, some big healthtech deals, and more: Wheel gets $150 million; Topography Health gets $21.6 million; Lyra gets $235 million; Big Health gets $75 million.
-Matthew Holt
Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on #THCBGang at 1pm PT 4pm ET Thursday for an hour of topical and sometime combative conversation on what’s happening in health care and beyond will be: Queen of all employer benefits Jennifer Benz (@Jenbenz); fierce patient activist Casey Quinlan (@MightyCasey); Suntra Modern Recovery CEO JL Neptune (@JeanLucNeptune); and, making a rare but welcome appearance, digital health guru Fard Johnmar (@fardj).
Video will be live (and then preserved) below. If you’d rather listen to the episode, the audio is available from Friday as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.
Summus Global is company with a very interesting model that gives a glimpse about the future of virtual care. It delivers online specialty care and much more to employers. You might think that means it is in the second opinion space, or in the care navigation space. And you’d be right, but not completely right. Julian Flannery the CEO tells me that it’s much more than that and has greater ambitions too. I took really deep dive into Summus with conversation with Julian and a thorough demo of the service from Dennis Purcell the COO–Matthew Holt
In this episode of Health Tech Deals, Jess’s productivity this weekend was brought to a show-stopping halt thanks to some Microsoft updates. Does adding unnecessary clicks and creating useless toolbars mean that Microsoft is finally ready for healthcare IT? Jess and I talk about this and some more deals in health tech: TigerConnect gets $300 million, Verana Health gets $150 million, Waymark gets $45 million, Formel Skin gets $30 million Euros, and RCM acquires competitor Cloudmed for $4.1 billion.
-Matthew Holt
Like the new intro? We sure do! In this episode of Health Tech Deals, Jess and I talk about the latest health tech deals and fundraising efforts: DexCare raises $50 million; Avaneer Health raises $50 million; Deepscribe raises $30 million; Little Otters gets $22 million; Ianacare gets $12 million.
-By Matthew Holt
On #THCBGang I hosted the double trouble of vaunted futurists Ian Morrison (@seccurve) & Jeff Goldsmith, and medical historian Mike Magee (@drmikemagee) for an hour of conversation and banter about the health care system, the world in politics, and whether “Don’t Look Up” is a spoof or a documentary. Really good stuff, especially from Jeff on whether Medicare pays enough to keep hospitals alive. (Spoiler alter–he doesn’t think so!)
You can see the video below & if you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.
After our Christmas break THCB Gang is back! Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on #THCBGang at 1pm PT 4pm ET Thursday for an hour of topical and sometime combative conversation on what’s happening in health care and beyond will be THCB regular writer Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard); fierce patient activist Casey Quinlan (@MightyCasey); futurist Ian Morrison (@seccurve) & patient safety expert and all around wit Michael Millenson (@MLMillenson)
You can see the video below live at 1pm/4pm or it’s kept here for posterity. If you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! Let’s break Jess’s New Year’s Resolutions a tiny bit and look at some 2021 healthcare deal holdovers. Healthcare.com raises $180 million, bringing their total to $212 million; Found raises $100 million, bringing their total to 132 million; Well raises $70 million, bringing their total to 135 million, and Garner Health raises $45 million, bringing their total to $70 million.
-Matthew Holt
This is the last THCB Gang of what has been a long, grueling, but enthralling year. And every week (well almost every week) we have had a group from across the health care luminescence to discuss it.
Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on #THCBGang at 1pm PT 4pm ET Thursday for an hour of topical and sometime combative conversation on what’s happening in health care and beyond will be THCB regular writer Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard); delivery & tech expert Vince Kuraitis (@VinceKuraitis); privacy expert and entrepreneur Deven McGraw (@HealthPrivacy); WTF Health host & Health IT girl Jessica DaMassa (@jessdamassa); and three occasional gang members making very welcome appearances–venture investor & soccer mogul Marcus Whitney (@marcuswhitney); surgeon & startup guy Raj Aggarwal (@docaggarwal); and health economist Jane Sarasohn-Kahn (@healthythinker).
And towards the end of the show we should have our now traditional (or 2nd time) visit from as many other gang members who can make it!
The video will be below but if you’d rather listen to the episode, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.
Each week I’ve been adding a brief tidbits section to the THCB Reader, our weekly newsletter that summarizes the best of THCB that week (Sign up here!). Then I had the brainwave to add them to the blog. They’re short and usually not too sweet! –Matthew Holt
For my health care tidbits this week, it’s time to bring up the disconnect between the continual collapse of #DigitalHealth stock prices and the continued increase in private sector investment and valuation in the same sector.
All of nine months ago, way way back in March 2021 market leader Teladoc hit a stock price of $308. Last week it hit a low of just under $90. Meanwhile several companies have IPOed or SPACed this year and almost all of them have seen their stock fall dramatically. For example, pioneer online mental health company Talkspace is now at a market cap of under $300m. This week a different mental health company Cerebral which was only founded in January 2020 raised $300m at a private valuation of over $4 billion. Yes they could have bought out Talkspace for that amount! In October Medicare Advantage plan Devoted Health raised money at a $12 billion valuation which exceeded the market cap of rivals Clover, Bright Health and Oscar–each of which has more members.
So what’s going on? Part of this is the wash of money still going into venture funds. Interest rates are historically low, while inflation is picking up, so that money has to go somewhere. Additionally some of the companies that SPACed out were probably unable to get such a good valuation in a private round. But it can’t be that all the 50 or so public companies are lower quality than the private ones. That indicates that either the private valuations aren’t real (because there are so many protections built into the deal for investors), or that the private and public valuations are going to get closer together. There is of course one more possibility–some of the private companies may pursue M&A and buy out some of the public ones. But in any event, this current arbitrage cannot last forever.
It’s not unlikely the public stocks may pick up. But we’ve seen private and public market bubbles before and the aftermath isn’t usually pretty.
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