Drug discounter GoodRx plans US IPO; Ginger mental health coaching raises $50 million

August 11, 2020 | by

The bubble bath got soapier with more IPOs and big raises on tap. 

GoodRx, the relentlessly advertised prescription discount scheme with spokespeople Martin Sheen and son Charlie, has filed initial paperwork with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a potential initial public offering (IPO). This has been in the rumor mill for a while. Timing would be about 4th Quarter or early in 2021, according to Reuters.

It may at least a partial exit for Sand Road PE giant Silver Lake Partners, which took a one-third interest in GoodRx in August 2018, creating an estimated value at $2.8bn. CNBC  Both their growth since then and key hires have indicated preparation for going public. According to MedCityNews, their revenue is up by 55 percent since 2018 and they now employ 350 people. As mentioned above, they advertise heavily on TV with celebrity endorsers. In June, two IPO-experienced executives joined the company (release): new president Bansi Nagji, McKesson’s former chief strategy officer who was on Change Healthcare’s board during its IPO; and CFO Karsten Voermann from acquisition company Mercer Advisors and who led Mercury Payment Systems through its 2014 IPO.

Ginger, formally known as Ginger.io, raised $50 million in Series D funding. Lead investors are Advance Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Cigna Ventures, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, and LinkedIn Executive Chairman Jeff Weiner. Ginger provides on-demand mental health coaching as part of employee benefits within the US. Their release claims 200 companies, health plans Optum Behavioral Health, Anthem California, and Aetna Resources for Living, and tripled revenue in the past year. According to Crunchbase, this is their ninth funding round with a raise total of $120 million. Mobihealthnews

Verily, Google’s life sciences arm, gathers in another billion to go…where? (updated for Study Watch FDA clearance)

January 17, 2019 | by

Biotech/device company Verily added to its 2016 $800 million stake from Singapore’s Temasek a fresh $1 bn from Silver Lake Partners. with reported participation from Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan. Verily is majority-owned by Google parent Alphabet, which has added a new member to the Verily board, CFO Ruth Porat, and Egon Durbat from Silver Lake.

CEO Andrew Conrad, who is still there despite a brace of bad press two years ago [TTA 6 Apr 16], stated that “We are taking external funding to increase flexibility and optionality as we expand on our core strategic focus areas. Adding a well-rounded group of seasoned investors, led by Silver Lake, will further prepare us to execute as healthcare continues the shift towards evidence generation and value-based reimbursement models.”

One is tempted to say, ‘whatever that means’. They have had multiple ventures from contact lenses with Novartis’ subsidiary Alcon (reportedly discontinued but dating back with Google to 2014), diabetes with Sanofi, to sleep apnea with ResMed. VentureBeat reports they are cash-profitable and even venturing into areas such as small exploding needles that can extract blood through a wearable device–not precisely for the needle-phobic. There seem to be multiple projects in multiple directions that are primarily research. Certainly their finding at $1.8 bn is an outlier even at 2018’s big scale–but with Alphabet/Google as a parent and A-list partners, the risk is minimal. Mobihealthnews, Crunchbase

FDA clearance of Verily’s Study Watch. Late last week, Verily announced that their Study Watch was given a 510(k) FDA clearance. It records, stores, transfers and displays single-channel ECG. To date, there are no plans to use it beyond a handful of research studies primarily on cardiac disease. Mobihealthnews. Meanwhile, Google, not Verily, paid Fossil $40 million for a still under development smartwatch technology to fit into Google’s Ware OS area. It’s not known whether it is health related, but their CEO admitted that it was based on tech from the Misfit acquisition–and Misfit was focused on health tech. After the sale closing, it is predicted that some Fossil R&D staff will move over to Google. Back in 2015, Fossil paid $260 million for Misfit and their fitness tech but generally has stayed in the conventional smartwatch area. The story broke in Wareable. Also Mobihealthnews.