Where there’s a will, there’s a WAY
More than one year after digital health’s last public exit, revenue cycle management (RCM) company Waystar filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last week, a main step toward an initial public offering (IPO). The company, which would trade under the stock ticker WAY, facilitated more than 4 billion healthcare payment transactions in 2022 and serves 30K+ healthcare provider organization customers via subscription models.
The question on everyone’s mind is whether Waystar will be the spark to thaw digital health’s IPO freeze. Our hunch is that Waystar’s exit readiness is an outlier, rather than a sector signal. While the company is not yet profitable, its relatively strong financial position ($387M in 1H2023 revenue, with $21M in net losses over the same period) and publicy-traded comps—like its main competitor, R1 RCM—gave the company a strong position to go public. Other digital health players preparing to IPO will need similarly strong track records of consistent business metrics to weather an exit in today’s lukewarm public market environment.
Headlines
Amazon Will Start Testing Drones That Drop Prescriptions On Your Doorstep
A big week for Amazon: flying drugs and rebranded Iora Centers AP News
Novo Nordisk Stops Ozempic Kidney Trial After Early Signs of Success
GLP-1s demonstrate promise for kidney, cardiovascular care Reuters
Harman The Latest To Launch LLM For Healthcare
Samsung release comes alongside other Big Tech GenAI announcements HealthcareITNews
Beyond Clinical Boundaries: Fostering BIPOC Youth Wellness>
Insights into startup MindRight’s text-based coaching with BIPOC youth MindRight
Recent Funding
- PCOS and hormonal condition-focused virtual care company Allara raises $10M
- Pair Team nabs $9M for its community-based care coordination services for Medicaid
- Virtual value-based cardiology clinic Ventricle Health collects $8M
- Leucine inks $7M for its AI digital twin technology for pharma manufacturing and compliance
- Virtual weight management and obesity clinic Ilant Health launches with $3M