We made it back from ViVE in one piece! Will Jess DaMassa stab me in the back Brutus-Style? Tune in to find out as we discuss deals: Clarify buys Embedded Healthcare; Wildflower raises $26 million; Vivante Health raises $16 million; Gravie raises $75 million; and Nice Healthcare raises $30 million.

–Matthew Holt

Transcript

Jess DaMassa:

Well, we made it back from Vive all in one piece and we landed squarely in the Ides of March. Will I stab Matthew Holt in the back Brutus-style? Tune to the March 15th episode of Health Tech DEALS. Oh Matthew Holt, those ruthless Romans, never trust an Italian. That’s the lesson here.

Matthew Holt:

Well, sad enough, I trusted you and you told me to buy some stocks. And now, have you seen digital digital health talks yesterday?

Matthew Holt:

Everybody off another 10%?

Jess DaMassa:

Okay, but how does that compare with the reality of everything else right now?

Matthew Holt:

I don’t know. Somehow, Teladoc was about 300 a year ago

Jess DaMassa:

Don’t even talk to me about Teladoc.

Matthew Holt:

Now it’s around 50.

Jess DaMassa:

It will be on it’s way up…

Matthew Holt:

Don’t tell me why I bought it.

Jess DaMassa:

… before you know it. I’m optimistic. What about that gambling stock? They were actually just on the cover of Bloomberg Business Week. That one that I made you-

Matthew Holt:

That one you made me buy as well? That’s down like… That one’s only off like 40%.

Jess DaMassa:

Yeah.

Matthew Holt:

That’s a bargain compared to some of the stabbing in the back.

Jess DaMassa:

Matthew Holt, we’re weathering this market downturn together. Best friends til the end.

Matthew Holt:

Can I remind you the reason I started following your stock picking is you’d weathered the market upturn rather better than I had. And I was investing shopping malls during the pandemic.

Jess DaMassa:

Actually, the market goes up, the market goes down. Now is the time to buy. I was watching a bunch of analysts who were like, buy, buy, buy. So I’m getting my next round of picks together.

Matthew Holt:

I wish I had some money left to buy with , although I am noticing the amount of money is starting to dry up a little. It’s not drying up, but it’s starting to slow down a little bit. And the evaluations I hear are starting to trim themselves-

Jess DaMassa:

Oh, yeah, the valuations are falling apart. That’s for damn sure. People, we got a lot of dirt at Vive.

Matthew Holt:

Totally insane to just crazy. All right, you ready?

Jess DaMassa:

Let’s set your timer. Yeah. Let’s do it. Clarify health makes a buy, Embedded Health. This is Zeke Emmanuel’s company. Matthew Holt, explain.

Matthew Holt:

Which I understood. So Clarify has a huge data set, which it gets from Datavant and other data brokers. Puts it all together, and then does stuff with it for Pharma and providers and health plans. Embedded healthcare, Zeke Emmanuel, one of the legendary of trio Emmanuel brothers at, he’s the medical ethicist at Penn. Something to do with behavior change and economics for capitated physicians. And presumably, you’ll put that into the Clarify stack. How it works, I don’t know. How much they paid, I don’t know. Not that big a deal is my guess. I don’t think it’s, I don’t know much about it before.

Jess DaMassa:

There might be an interview with CEO Jean Drouin to explain that. Wildflower gets $26 million, brings their total up to 40 million. This is maternity care. Very, cool.

Matthew Holt:

Yeah, Leah Sparks, who by the way, is one of the founders of Health Tech 4 Medicaid, been around for a while doing this with some rural Medicaid state plans, improving maternity care support, which is a big deal because it’s messed up in this country. She’s got a big deal. Providence, which is the big system, is a partner, and one of the big players in this, along with TT Capital. And they’re going to expand the system to the whole of Providence in California. So hopefully more moms will benefit.

Jess DaMassa:

All right, just in time for IBS appreciation day, which is a thing.

Matthew Holt:

Really?

Jess DaMassa:

Vivante Health gets $16 million, brings their total up to 40. They’re a GI clinic.

Matthew Holt:

This is another big of the GI clinic for IBD and IBS, and all Crohn’s and all the stuff. Kim Angelides, who did that Fem Tech company, founded this, but then left. Gave me a nice t-shirt. Similar to Oshi, which raised some money recently to do the same sort of thing. So if you can picture that. Your friends at SevenWire at the lead here, Robert Garber.

Jess DaMassa:

Interesting. All right, Gravie gets $75 million in E-round, brings their total up to $147.

Matthew Holt:

Yeah, this is a big health plan market based benefit thing. Huge amount of money, $147 million in total. They have 1500 total employer clients. Only a hundred thousand lives. They’re really small, not many. Doesn’t sound like much to me.

Jess DaMassa:

All right, Nice Healthcare.

Matthew Holt:

Whoa, you were in on the wire there.

Jess DaMassa:

Nice. I could feel it.

Matthew Holt:

What’s Nice?

Jess DaMassa:

Nice. Nice.

Matthew Holt:

Nice.

Jess DaMassa:

Nice. They get $30 million.

Matthew Holt:

Sorry, you weren’t saying the last one was “nice”, you’re saying the next one is Nice.

Jess DaMassa:

Nice. Nice.

Matthew Holt:

Come on.

Jess DaMassa:

Can I please continue?

Matthew Holt:

Please.

Jess DaMassa:

Thank you. Nice Healthcare gets $30 million, brings their total up to $36.

Matthew Holt:

All right. I had a chat with Thompson Aderinkomi, who’s the CEO here. Interesting. So this is a subscription service. $36 bucks a month, sold to small businesses. So basically you buy your people a high deductible health plan, with dodgy coverage, but to be nice to them, for either $36 bucks a month, which is what, $420 a year, if my math is correct? Maybe…

Jess DaMassa:

Is that on the website? Step one, buy a dodgy high deductible health plan. Step two, plugin Nice. Step three…

Matthew Holt:

And this is, it’s like telehealth, but where telehealth doesn’t make it, they send the NPs, nurse practitioners, out to the home to do a whole bunch of stuff. So that’s a nice solution for most people, I think. And this is a bit, sold as a subscription to small businesses, they can add on. They’re going to go to 20 markets with this money. So he’s aiming at this at secondary markets. Incidentally, he did a very similar company, backed by the folks at Lemhi Capital, who then pulled out. And all the people working with him said, “Oh, you should do this again.” So DNA Capital is leading this round. I think it’s-

Jess DaMassa:

Does this sound like Sprinter to you? I mean like Sprinter, I know has phlebotomist, but they also have clinical nurses. And the point is to extend the telehealth reach, and provide some sort of diagnostics. Is this not the same premise here?

Matthew Holt:

Yeah, no. This is more like Firefly plus a visiting nurse practitioner group… It’s comprehensive primary care, more than it is just one thing or another.

Jess DaMassa:

Just one thing. Okay.

Matthew Holt:

But you could imagine that Sprinter, which I think I still have got right in my analysis, is-

Jess DaMassa:

Max, call and let us know.

Matthew Holt:

I need to go back and discuss that the video you did last week with the Max. Max?

Jess DaMassa:

Cohen.

Matthew Holt:

Cohen?

Jess DaMassa:

Cohen. Yeah.

Matthew Holt:

Max Cohen, the CEO. But anyway, this is more like virtual primary care with a thing going to the home when necessary. And I think some of that is, we’ll see, aimed at employees. So not an incredibly sick crowd, but for moms and kids and what have you. I think you’ll see a lot of this, right? Because as most people are going to high deductible health plans, it’s not that expensive. We’re talking less than 500 bucks a year to add this for an employee. And I can see this as being the way… You kid, but I will save several thousand on your premiums by buying you a high deductible health plan. And that will give you primary care for free essentially. And I think a lot of the, if you look at Firefly, and whatever Chris Hogg comes up with, at Marley and Me Health, and whatever, not to mention Teladoc’s virtual care platform, a lot of this is going to head down this direction because that’sthat’s all people need.

Jess DaMassa:

This is, and tell me if you got this too, but this was like an undercurrent, to borrow Sarah Holuback’s language, at Vive, I thought, was all this conversation about different ways that people are starting to needle in on the payment model. Like playing with different types of high deductible plans, or redoing the PBM, or we’re taking apart this, or rebuilding that. Or Flume Health building their own health plan through a tech stack. They’re powering Firefly. It seems like, correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like three or four years ago, nobody was ever talking about changing the payment model. It was like an immutable truth that could not be bent, other than maybe through value based care, maybe. And now it feels like people are starting to question it.

Matthew Holt:

So I think the answer is right, getting the whole system, to do real value based care, is really tough. But if you can come off a slight slices of it-

Jess DaMassa:

Yeah, right?

Matthew Holt:

… go after streams which are reasonable. So I don’t know whether, go back in our list today, Vivante, which is trying to slice off just GI care, or Wild Flower, which is just doing maternity game. That probably has to come from the main system and be full down from a health plan.

Jess DaMassa:

Yeah.

Matthew Holt:

But something like a primary care model, that you can sell your employees-

Jess DaMassa:

That’s what I’m saying. Like…

Matthew Holt:

You can build a decent business, probably, if you can get the numbers right. You get the reinsurance right, and what have you. But at all in, $500 per person, per year, most people don’t spend that much on primary care. But you get a few who are expensive, it makes your economics go south. So they probably have to get it big enough and get the reinsurance right. But you probably could build a pretty decent business in second tier and semi rural markets, and semi suburban markets, doing mostly telehealth, which doesn’t get used that much and it’s very cheap, with home visits when necessary. Yeah, I think it’s probably-

Jess DaMassa:

But I’m just saying too, like have you ever heard this much chatter about this, and seen this many businesses launched this way? Transcarent, you mentioned Rural Health, Jenny Schneider’s new company, Homeward. There’s a bunch of them that are starting to play with this virtual first model and the payment around it. I feel like that’s new. You don’t think that’s new?

Matthew Holt:

No, no. I think it’s new. It’s the slicing of it. Can I sell you one bit for a few bucks a month outside of what you’re currently paying in premiums? And we’re going to see more high deductible health plan. We’re going to see more messing around with this within Medicare Advantage as well. It will be a different flavor, but can you get to the home? Can you do this? Can you do that? For the Medicare Advantage Plans, and in Medicaid as well. So I think, yeah, you definitely hit on something.

Jess DaMassa:

I like it. Oh, how nice is that? Look at you.

Matthew Holt:

It’s good you’ve hit on something. Next time, can you hit on a stock quote for me, a stock pick for me that works?

Jess DaMassa:

You are so bitter right now.

Matthew Holt:

I’m so poor.

Jess DaMassa:

What did I tell you?

Matthew Holt:

Poor and bitter.

Jess DaMassa:

Listen, man, if you can’t weather the losses, don’t play the game.

Matthew Holt:

If I can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. Yeah.

Jess DaMassa:

Exactly. If you can’t stomach the risk… I understand you’re like 40 years older than me and don’t have that much time to make things back up, but still.

Matthew Holt:

I can’t…

Jess DaMassa:

If you have more age appropriate stock picks for Matthew Holt, knowing his ability to weather risk, or at least market downturns quietly, head on over to Twitter and tweet them over to him. He is @boltyboy. I am @jessdamassa. And to never miss an episode of Health Tech Deals and all the stock picking fun we have here, head on over to the healthcareblog.com, sign up for the email newsletter, and we will drop these episodes along with the best of the blog into your inbox every week.

Matthew Holt:

I read somebody who was criticizing, I forget who they were criticizing, Clover or one of them, and saying. And somebody replied to them saying, “Shorting is un-American”. The last year I’ve been very patriotic. But very painful.

Matthew Holt:

I actually, you don’t know this about me, but back in 2002-

Jess DaMassa:

Oh my God. Go on.

Matthew Holt:

I was broken legged and mostly unemployed for most of 2002. And I made a lot of money shorting the stock market then. Why did I forget?

Jess DaMassa:

Hold on, broken lagged and shorting the stock market.

Matthew Holt:

I smashed my knee up and I sat on my ass trading stocks for about three months, and made some money shorting it.

Jess DaMassa:

Is this some bizarro Matthew Holt version of Hitchcock’s Rear Window with Jimmy Stewart… I imagine looking out the window with his binoculars.

Matthew Holt:

Except for I was sitting in Park City looking at the ski slopes,…

Jess DaMassa:

Yeah, and instead of Grace Kelly, you had a computer and you were making stock picks. Awesome. Let’s leave this here, yeah? I agree. All right, guys, we’ll be back with more deals next time. Take care.