Teladoc CEO: ‘I See Really Only Tailwinds Going Forward’
The looming end of the COVID-19 public health emergency won’t hurt the growth prospects of virtual-care provider Teladoc Health Inc., CEO Jason Gorevic said Feb. 22.
Speaking to analysts and investors after Purchase, New York-based Teladoc reported its fourth-quarter results, Gorevic said formal declarations ending the public health emergency will change little for his team because some of the extraordinary measures launched by various stakeholders early during the pandemic to spur on telehealth usage – waiving co-pays and loosening state licensure requirements, for instance – already have reverted to their status quo ante. Instead, he said, the broad trend – accelerated in many ways by COVID – toward chronic care management and value-based services plays into the hands of Teladoc.
“I see really only tailwinds going forward,” Gorevic said. “And as you probably know, there are several movements within Congress to continue to expand the support for both [chronic care management and value-based care] from a regulatory as well as reimbursement perspective.”
Teladoc finished 2021 with 53.6 million paid members, a year-over-year increase of 3.3 million, as it consolidated its fall 2020 acquisition of Livongo, launched a number of new products and signed some large contracts. For 2022, Gorevic and his team see that number growing further, although they are guiding investors to wide range of 54 million to 56 million. The company’s average U.S. revenue per member rose more than 50% last year to $2.49 while utilization rose steadily from 16 percent in late 2020 to 22.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2021.
Those numbers helped drive Q4 revenues to $554 million, up 45 percent from the year-prior numbers, and lifted Teladoc’s adjusted EBITDA to $77.1 million from about $50 million in late 2020. The company’s net loss narrowed to about $11 million.
Teladoc’s executives are forecasting top-line growth of at least 25 percent this year to somewhere around $2.6 billion, with adjusted EBITDA expected to grow at a similar rate to between $330 million and $355 million. Growth of the latter, CFO Mala Murthy said on the company’s conference call, will accelerate during the year as recently signed chronic care contracts are brought on board.
Shares of Teladoc (Ticker: TDOC) were down about 2 percent to roughly $64 during late-morning trading Feb. 23. After a massive runup two years ago, they have lost more than half their value over the past six months and are back to their levels of late summer 2019.
