Accolade Stock: An Employer Telehealth Platform

Bear in mind when just a few years in the past Amazon introduced it will revolutionize healthcare, partnering with heavyweights Berkshire Hathaway and J.P. Morgan? The thought was to experiment with their very own staff and finally roll out some high-tech-enabled platform to different employers. Utilizing massive information, AI algorithms, and numerous telehealth companies, Amazon promised to enhance main and pressing care, whereas Alexa performed the function of the naughty nurse. On the time, the very concept despatched healthcare shares on a tumble. On this yr’s slapdown of tech shares, that aura of invincibility across the e-commerce big has worn off a bit. The inventory is down greater than a 3rd in 2022. Its $1 billion flop in Center Earth might signify the height (possibly) of crappy content material in any respect prices. However an even bigger owie must be its choice to close down the cornerstone of its efforts to nook the healthcare market, Amazon Care. 

Apparently, it’s not as simple to get different firms’ staff to pee in bottles, so Amazon opted to purchase itself an current answer with the $3.9 billion acquisition of One Medical earlier this yr. One Medical is a “human-centered, technology-powered nationwide main care group on a mission to make high quality care extra inexpensive, accessible, and satisfying via a seamless mixture of in-person, digital, and digital care companies which might be handy to the place individuals work, store, and stay.” You might just about copy and paste that description for lots of the value-based AI healthcare startups which have emerged lately, particularly with a deal with telehealth companies.

The present chief in telemedicine, Teladoc (TDOC), has misplaced about 75% of its worth this yr, significantly after writing off a large chunk of goodwill associated to buying Livongo, an AI inventory for managing power situations like diabetes and hypertension. So, what to make of an organization we just lately got here throughout referred to as Accolade (ACCD), a telehealth enterprise that mixes “open, cloud-based clever know-how with multimodal assist from a group of empathetic and educated” medical personnel? Accolade is making plenty of cash and dropping plenty of cash, particularly after writing off almost $300 million for overpaying on a few acquisitions final yr. Hmm. Sounds vaguely acquainted. Let’s take a more in-depth look.

About Accolade Inventory

Based in 2007, the Pennsylvania firm took in about $235 million in funding from the likes of Andreessen Horowitz and well being insurer Humana, earlier than having the decency to file a correct IPO in July 2020 (in a yr when greater than half of recent shares had been SPAC mergers). Accolade raised $220 million in an upsized itemizing, and it’s been a curler coaster experience ever since. At the moment, shares in Accolade inventory are down about 65% since going public. The corporate had its largest slide in its brief historical past again in April when the inventory plunged almost 50% throughout the identical week when Teladoc inventory dropped by about 40%. Within the case of Accolade, the corporate not solely had an enormous earnings miss but in addition introduced it misplaced one in every of its largest clients (and earliest buyers), Comcast. That’s introduced the corporate’s market cap to lower than $1 billion.

On the plus facet, income progress has been fairly spectacular to date, particularly final yr when it elevated 82% to $310 million. Greater than $93 million was associated to a few 2021 acquisitions that we’ll revisit intimately later.

In fact, it’s onerous to not make some cash in U.S. healthcare, a $4.1 trillion market that the U.S. authorities expects to develop to $6.2 trillion by 2028. The worth proposition of firms like Accolade is that they’ll reduce these medical prices utilizing know-how, whereas offering customized healthcare centered on prevention. That begs the query:

What Precisely Does Accolade Do?

Within the firm’s personal phrases:

“We offer customized, technology-enabled options that assist individuals higher perceive, navigate, and make the most of the healthcare system and their office advantages. Our clients are primarily employers that deploy Accolade options with the intention to present staff and their households … a single place to show for his or her well being, healthcare, and advantages wants.” 

There’s plenty of language about providing “knowledgeable opinion companies”… “connectivity” … extra “knowledgeable medical opinion suppliers” … and “educating” members about advantages like wellness applications and telemedicine. The thought is to emphasise “helpful healthcare utilization,” resembling main care visits by video and prescription refills whereas lowering “wasteful healthcare utilization,” like pointless emergency room visits, hospital readmissions, and extreme inpatient stays. Now, the skeptical amongst us would possibly learn all that as a technique to delay hands-on medical care for so long as attainable by pushing drugs on Zoom. However the Accolade app has a 4.9-star ranking on greater than 13,000 evaluations within the Apple retailer, so it have to be doing one thing proper. Proper?

Talking of know-how, the corporate combines massive information and machine studying to drive actionable insights via its True Well being Engine, resembling detecting necessary well being occasions and flagging life-saving early interventions. Accolade pairs its personal large dataset, which incorporates data just like the historical past of affected person situations, medicines, and procedures, with information from employer clients, pharmacies, medical suppliers, the Facilities for Medicare & Medicaid Companies, and the corporate’s multitude of companions. The algorithms crunch all that information and calculate numerous scores for members that quantify their general well being standing and their propensity to take a desired motion. The scores inform beneficial actions that pop up in InView, a buyer relationship administration instrument for medical employees, in addition to suggestions on to members via True Well being Engine. 

How Does Accolade Make Cash?

Accolade primarily generates income from its clients utilizing a recurring per-member-per month (PMPM) charges mannequin, usually with three-year-long contracts with clients. The corporate has greater than 700 enterprise clients (up from simply 54 from two years or so in the past), representing greater than 10 million members. Gross-dollar retention charges have held regular at 98% to 99% yr to yr. Accolade provides numerous plans (see under) that aren’t actually well worth the time to get into as a result of the corporate doesn’t trouble to interrupt down income by every answer. In actual fact, there’s little granularity to its income. The mannequin appears a bit like a finances airline, the place you should buy the essential airfare after which pay further for check-in baggage and entry to the onboard bathroom.

Along with employers, Accolade has 100,000 direct customers subscribed to digital main care and psychological well being companies via PlushCare, one in every of its three new acquisitions from final yr.

Acquisitions by Accolade

That’s a simple segue to the acquisitions that resulted in a one-time $300 million goodwill impairment cost. Apparently, the steep drop in Accolade inventory worth despatched its market cap under the worth it paid for PlushCare and 2nd.MD. The previous is a supplier of digital main care and psychological well being assist that price Accolade $450 million. The latter, acquired at a price of $460 million, supplies knowledgeable second-opinion consultations by video or telephone on whether or not a member ought to elect for high-cost care choices resembling surgical procedure. (Bear in mind, the system is designed to chop prices for employers and presumably members.) The third acquisition, HealthReveal, is a medical AI firm centered on “guaranteeing sufferers obtain optimum, customized power care to preempt opposed outcomes.”

It’s price noting a basic development that we’ve seen this yr of high-growth firms paying the piper in terms of overpaying for acquisitions. It’s not simply anecdotal. Based on Bain & Firm’s M&A Report 2022, complete mergers and acquisitions reached an all-time excessive of $5.9 trillion globally in 2021.

The Telehealth Market

It’s changing into obvious at simply how inflated firm valuations have been for the previous two or three years, now that the cash spigot has been turned off. So we have to assess the marketplace for telemedicine via that lens. McKinsey and Firm believes that as a lot as $250 billion in U.S. healthcare spending may shift to some type of digital care, so long as there may be “sustained shopper and clinician adoption and accelerated redesign of care pathways to include digital modalities.” To that time, we’ve already seen a pullback in telehealth visits from the pandemic highs of 2020, although the identical McKinsey report notes that telehealth use has stabilized at ranges 38X larger than earlier than the Rona hit. A minimum of that was the case round mid-2021. Demand for digital psychological well being stays fairly robust, which is why Accolade and others are including these sorts of choices.

One other massive query: Does telehealth cut back prices? There are actually loads of business white papers on the market placing a constructive spin on that query, resembling one from Cigna claiming members save $100 per digital go to. Then again, a examine out of Australia famous that whereas telehealth supplies “overwhelmingly constructive affected person advantages and will increase productiveness for a lot of companies” there may be scant proof that it reduces healthcare prices to the system. And Australia spends lower than half of what the US does on healthcare per individual – $4,937 versus $11,945 in 2020. And a reasonably attention-grabbing examine by Penn Medication, an instructional analysis heart, discovered an almost 1% unfavorable affect to its backside line for telehealth companies primarily based on a wide range of elements, however particularly the extra time it took to ship these companies versus in-person visits.

The fact might be someplace between these two extremes, however evidently the MBAs must do some extra homework on the enterprise case for telehealth. We are able to’t simply make investments our cash on the belief that digital care is cheaper or supplies higher outcomes for sufferers by emphasizing preventive care, even when it is smart intuitively.

Ought to You Purchase Accolade Inventory?

Whereas we by no means inform you the place to place your cash, you possibly can most likely sense the place we’re not placing ours. We just like the recurring income mannequin, and apparently clients are sticking round primarily based on the retention fee. Nonetheless, if most of these 700 clients have been onboarded in solely the final couple of years and most of these join three-year contracts, then the gross-dollar retention fee relies on a comparatively small pattern measurement (54). The departure of Comcast gained’t have an effect on the retention fee till the top of the 2023 fiscal yr. (Accolade is a kind of weirdo firms with their very own calendar system, just like the Mayans however with much less human sacrifice.) 

Thankfully, Comcast now accounts for lower than 10% of revenues (it was 24% simply two years ago), and Accolade doesn’t establish any clients representing a ten% or higher share of income. Once more, subsequent yr’s retention fee will theoretically give us a greater sense of the affect of the Comcast loss. One other assumption is that the corporate is solely centered on the US, so no worldwide publicity. That’s additionally a unfavorable for us, to not point out the present market cap of simply $800 million (as of Oct 17, 2022). As well as, Accolade up to date its full-year 2023 steerage at its final quarterly report back to between $355 million and $365 million, which represents progress of 16% on the midpoint of the vary. That’s a reasonably vital slowdown in progress. Even with its present monetary troubles, Teladoc is a $4 billion firm with $2 billion in annual income.

Accolade misplaced about $45 million in money final quarter which suggests the $330 million in money on their books supplies a runway of about seven quarters. With gross margins within the mid-40s they’ll want to understand synergies from these acquisitions pretty rapidly or face the dismal prospect of elevating capital via promoting fairness or issuing extra debt (Accolade has about $321 million in long-term debt on their books as of final quarter).

Conclusion

The telehealth area is seeing fairly a little bit of volatility and uncertainty within the (virtually?) post-covid period. As risk-averse buyers, we’re content material to sit down on the sidelines because the business continues to shake out the kinks and consolidate. Amazon nonetheless seems intent on dominating the digital healthcare area with its acquisition of One Medical, which has 8,000 clients. It’s onerous to see Accolade rising above an more and more aggressive and crowded market.

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