News roundup: Omada Health files S-1 for IPO in 2025–and a look at 2024 healthcare IPOs, Philips debuts new smart baby monitor, ActiveAlert launches in UK, ATA Nexus 2025 calls for speakers, abstracts

October 4, 2024 | by

Omada Health plans exit into the public markets. Omada, which has virtual health diabetes and hypertension management programs, reportedly filed an S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), according to a Business Insider source. The IPO may be planned for 2025. Omada has been on a hot streak lately, inking deals with Amazon for their health condition programs, adding GLP-1 management, plus accreditation from NCQA and URAC.

Unlike the bare shelves of 2023, 2024 has racked up a few healthcare and digital health IPOs. Waystar’s IPO landed in June and closed today at $26.80, above its $21.50 opening price. This is for a decidedly unglamorous but revenue-generating part of healthcare–RCM and payments management. Tempus AI, in the far glammier AI in precision medicine sector, also IPO’d in June at $37, and after some initial summer sag recovered to $48.96 today. But June also saw yet another formerly hot healthcare tech company, Sharecare, go private after three years of a cracked SPAC. It was bought at 13% of its peak valuation. [TTA 26 June] Another supersonically sad summer story was Tel Aviv-HQ’d Nuvo, which developed and markets a digital pregnancy monitoring system. It went public on Nasdaq via a SPAC on 1 May–then filed for Chapter 11 reorganization by 22 August. Has this finally, finally put paid to SPACs? Bloomberg News, The Middle Market

Virtual MSK provider Hinge Health reportedly is testing the IPO market, having hired Morgan Stanley to start the process. [TTA 3 Oct]

Omada investors since 2011 have poured $525 million into the company over 11 rounds, ending with a debt financing in January 2023. There are 33 investors, including eight lead investors such as Fidelity, Cigna, and Andreessen Horowitz. Crunchbase

If one is to believe the analyst and investor quotes in this Business Insider article, once we get past 2024 and into Q1 2025, the ‘clogged pipe’ of waiting IPOs will roar back into the market like a hungry beast. Aside from wincing at the heckuva mixed metaphor, this Editor tends to be a lot more sanguine about next year. She believes that there are a lot of hungry investors waiting, all right–to offload years of risk to the public and other investors and recoup some if not all of their investment money. Mr. Market may, or may not, feel the same. Hat tip to HIStalk 4 October

On a lighter note, Philips is introducing its most advanced monitoring system to date, the AI-assisted Avent Premium Connected Baby Monitor. The system includes a camera/mic, ‘parent unit’, and app. The camera/mic tracks the baby’s chest motions in sleep and breathing without a wearable. It also has Cry Detection + Translation, which uses AI-assisted and machine learning to interpret baby’s cries. Parents can set up notifications via the parent unit or the app to better understand if baby is tired, gassy, hungry, uncomfortable, or irritated. Release, Mobihealthnews

At the other end of the age spectrum, the Taking Care personal alarm (PERS) company in the UK is introducing ActiveAlert. It adds an AI-assisted twist to personal assistance by triggering a wellbeing check-in call when it detects changes in the frequency, timing, or nature of alarm calls. Their models use 30 years of alarm call data. If there is a change, families are notified. According to their release (PDF), the patterns of alarm call usage can be used to take a more proactive approach to elder care in alerting for concerns or red flags to families before emergency scenarios arise. 

Planning ahead to 2025, the American Telemedicine Association will be returning south–to New Orleans. ATA Nexus–Redefining Care Delivery will be 3-5 May at the New Orleans Convention Center. Deadline is 1 November for speakers and general content proposals, as well as research abstracts for oral and poster presentations. Information for applications is here. The form for requesting the sponsorship and exhibit prospectus is here. Release

A Gimlet Eye view on IPOs and Cracked SPACs: Altaris buys Sharecare for $518M, takes it private; a look at Waystar and Tempus AI post-IPO

June 26, 2024 | by

Gimlet EyeSharecare finally gets itself bought and taken private, less than three years after its SPAC. One-time health tech darling Sharecare, now a patient navigation and employee benefits platform and once valued at $3.9 billion, will be acquired by healthcare-focused private equity company Altaris LLC for $1.43 in cash per share, or about $518 million. The shares on the buy date, 20 June, were trading at $0.77 so the offer is about an 86% premium, though shares are now trading at around $1,38. (Notably, Sharecare was below the $1.00 threshold for Nasdaq since February.) The transaction is expected to close in Q2 subject to formal shareholder approval and regulatory agencies. In terms of management, the executive team is expected to continue at least for now, with founder Jeff Arnold voting his shares in favor of the transaction and continuing as a shareholder. Release, FierceHealthcare, Mobihealthnews

Founded in 2010 by WebMD founder Jeff Arnold and celebrity doc/former political candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz, Sharecare had IPO’d a decade later via a SPAC, Falcon Capital Acquisition Corporation. It announced in February 2021’s Pandemic Palmy Days then hit markets on 2 July. At that time as essentially a personal care management app, it debuted at above $9.00 and received $571 million in gross proceeds with a reported valuation of $3.9 billion. A month later, it acquired CareLinx, an on-demand home care provider, from Europ Assistance in a $65 million cash/shares deal. By late 2021, Sharecare entered the Cracked SPAC Track as shares cratered. Dr. Oz is no longer on the board of directors or the advisory board. As share values fell precipitously, in November 2023 Mr. Arnold turned over the CEO reins to Brent Layton, a 20+ year Centene veteran and its retired president, picking him from the BOD and moving to chairman.

Shortly thereafter, Fruit Street sued Sharecare, a former partner, for $25 million charging that their diabetes prevention program (DPP) was supplanted by Sharecare’s own, breaching their contract and appropriating intellectual property. [TTA 14 Dec 2023] This suit is apparently still wending its way through the infamous Fulton County, Georgia courts. Sharecare also faced an escalating number of shareholder class action lawsuits alleging false and misleading statements on their financial condition (KRON 4).

What can we learn from IPOs as they are reviving? The first, of course, is that SPACs have gone the way of the dodo and passenger pigeon. The second is that there are quality IPOs, and then there are the ones to watch out for even if you are not an investor.

Remember first and foremost that VC and PE investors want to exit, profitably. And quickly. Exit=Sell to Someone Else. “Someone else” can be an IPO or another investor. An IPO means offloading the risk to the investing public. Please do keep in mind that what follows 1) is not investment advice, only observations and 2) your Editor is only a marketer, but one who has seen investments go up, down, and sideways since her days at the Frank Lorenzo School of Airline (Mis)Management, a/k/a New York Air (right, below) including a year observing up front and personally the dismal fate of Eastern Airlines. (Somewhere she has her old Texas Air share certificates…)

The investment scene in health tech and AI strongly resembles the Wild West days of airlines post-deregulation 30 years ago. Investor money in, now fleeing for the exits, whether the bankruptcy court or passing the hot potato to others with money.

Waystar IPO’d earlier this month at $21.50 per share. Checking in today, it’s trading at $21.55, essentially in a narrow and flat trading range in a down market. The IPO gave Waystar a fully diluted valuation of $3.69 billion. It’s early days, but three factors in favor of WAY staying the course at least short term are:

  1. They waited to IPO for the better part of a year and pulled it back when their initial valuation of $8 billion made Mr. Market ROTFL.
  2. Their investors have held on tight: EQT AB, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), and Bain Capital will beneficially own approximately 29.2%, 22.3%, and 16.8%, which is over 68% of the company.
  3. They occupy a boring part of healthcare and aren’t new kids on the block. Payments and revenue cycle management (RCM) aren’t sexy or trendy. Waystar is the combination of ZirMed (1999) and Navicure (2001) which merged and renamed in 2018. 

The downsides: Competition. Lots of it. The usual unprofitability. Waystar lost money the past two years. Last quarter, those losses accelerated (Google Finance). Will that show up later this year in share price?

Tempus AI also IPO’d mid-month at an eyewatering $37/share, at the top of its offering range, and a valuation in excess of $6 billion. It’s AI! It’s backed by Google! And it rose 15% on its first day of trading, 14 June! Precision Medicine! Intelligent Diagnostics!

But where are shares today on 26 June? It closed yesterday at $24.96. That’s a downer of 32% from the IPO price–38% if you take it against the first-day close above $40. I’m sure the first-day investors, unless they have cast-iron stomachs, have already reached for the antacids.

So what’s going on here? Tempus AI’s business combines AI for data analytics and a vast database to guide doctors in therapy and treatment, identify clinical trials, guide treatments, and close gaps in care. The analysis is done on blood samples, buccal swabs, and liquid tests. It’s a familiar pitch that multiple companies are using around AI and their ‘vast databases’ from the time of IBM Watson’s lofty ambitions.

  • Their CEO has already traversed the hype circuit. “We’re on a really good trajectory,” Tempus AI CEO Eric Lefkofsky, the founder of Groupon, said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Friday morning before shares started trading. “As revenues have been growing quickly, we’re not investing all that gross profit dollar growth back into the business. We’re generating improved leverage every quarter.” (Exactly what does that mean? Probably that money is sent down to the profit line.) Setting expectations–within the next year, the company is expected to be cash flow and EBITDA positive within the next year. It’s twice been on CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list of private companies which historically has been a mixed bag.
  • In their favor is that they already have as of today 510(k) clearance from FDA for its Tempus ECG-AF device to identify patients who may be at increased risk of atrial fibrillation/flutter (AF). It’s the first FDA clearance for an AF indication in the category known as “cardiovascular machine learning-based notification software”. But it needs to be integrated into resting 12-lead ECG recordings collected at a healthcare facility and analyzed against other patient data. What is that timeline and market?
  • Tempus has already survived and evolved from one major pivot. Looking back, they started in the genomic testing business in 2015, primarily concentrating on oncology. In 2020, it branched out to then-trendy Covid-19.  CNBC 17 June 2020  Genomics is now subsumed on the site by terms such as pharmacogenomics (PGx) coupled with patient-reported outcome (PRO) software.

Investors up to the IPO were listed as Google, Baillie Gifford, Franklin Templeton, NEA, Softbank, and T. Rowe Price. Who’s sticking around? The underwriters are Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Bank of America Securities, and Allen & Company. Reuters  Customers include AstraZeneca and GSK (GSK.L). One of its competitors, Guardant Health, which has patents in DNA blood testing for cancer, is suing on infringement on five patents. Reuters

All in all, Tempus AI started off way high–and there is only one way to go from there. They have a great story and a potentially good business, but it bears watching, not investing, at this point.