Teladoc's acquisition of Livongo Digital Healthcare has reached a phased peak.

Digital healthcare has experienced explosive growth as the U.S. epidemic continues, which has also driven investment and mergers and acquisitions in related industries.
, the first remote consulting company to go public and continue to achieve high growth, has been the main driver of Teladoc's growth, and its own revenues have distanced itself from rivals in recent years after continuing to acquire a number of companies in the consultation chain.
However, with the outbreak also good for competitors, Teladoc opted to acquire other digital healthcare leaders to maintain its lead in the face of high-growth rivals such as AmWell, and the Livongo acquisition took off in this case.
both Teladoc and Livongo have achieved high growth, according to H1's 2020 results.
however, Teladoc's membership fee growth was not significant due to its unique membership fee model, which was only 47 per cent, but the fee was high, at 144 per cent.
Member fee revenue growth has continued to decline since Teladoc went public, falling below 50 per cent for the first time in 2019 to 32 per cent, rebounding to 47 per cent in the first half of the year, but still not more than 50 per cent, as other payer parties have set up their own remote consultations.
means Teladoc's model of relying on membership fees will face bottlenecks, which will lead to a significant slowdown in overall revenue growth.
revenue growth slowed to only 32% in 2019, but in the first half of 2020 it relied on rapid revenue growth, with overall revenue growth returning to more than 50%, or 63%.
teladoc has seen a significant increase in usage, from just 3.7 per cent in 2014 (only 3.7 out of 100 members use its consultation service) to 11.3 per cent in 2019.
this aspect is the increase in user motivation, on the other hand, after the slowdown in membership growth, user usage growth has a magnification effect.
teladoc remote consultation usage fell to 9.3 per cent as membership growth picked up in the first half of 2020.
that taking into account the explosive growth in the number of visits in the first half of the year, the continued decline in usage means that member revenue remains the main factor in Teladoc's revenue, rather than the revenue from consultations.
So, although membership fee revenue fell below 80 per cent for the first time in the first half of this year, it still accounted for 76 per cent of revenue, and even though it rose 144 per cent, it still accounted for only 24 per cent.
, Teladoc's rapid growth is due not to the increase in the number of visits, but to its unique membership fee model.
teladoc's lead has been unshakable because most of its competitors rely on consultation as their main source of income.
But as membership growth slows and other companies find ways to expand revenue, such as AmWell, which builds platforms that primarily provide solutions for and benefit healthcare providers, Teladoc must find new growth models and slow disease management becomes a new target for expansion.
management has long been a huge market for investors and entrepreneurs, but it has long been unable to cash in effectively.
with the listing of Livongo, the market sees a little hope.
the listing of Livongo, the company maintained a high growth rate, mainly due to successive orders from large companies, driving its reliance on conversion from the B to the C end.
second quarter of 2020, Livongo's revenue grew 125 percent to $92 million, an increase of 80,000 people with diabetes, an increase of 113 percent, and achieved its first quarterly profit, although the first half of the year was still a loss.
, of course, Livongo's high growth has also benefited from the outbreak, with some companies switching to online services as offline slow-motion management has had to shift.
Livongo and Teladoc are the same customer-receiving model, relying mainly on high channel fees to get customers, during the outbreak can turn a loss, mainly because of increased user participation, which is directly related to the user can not go offline to participate in traditional slow disease management, but since the U.S. outbreak eased in May, the number of AOL medical consultations has declined significantly, and offline consultations have seen a significant increase.
14 per cent of online consultations in April, but by the end of June they had fallen to just 8 per cent, according to politico, which compiles data on 37 health-care systems.
The same is true for chronic disease management, some agencies may resume offline orders, but because the urgency of slow disease management is not high, so users into the line and then back offline there will be a longer delay, not as quickly as the reversal of the consultation."
, Livongo will continue to grow at a high rate in the short term, but may face some decline after the outbreak recedes.
Teladoc chose to complete the deal at a high market value, although at a high price, but because its share price is also high, in the exchange-oriented trading still has an advantage, the key is through mergers to ensure their own leading position, and into the field of slow disease management can provide a better story for the market.
However, the synergy between referral and chronic disease management is not high, as Teladoc is still general-based, and slow disease management users need specialists, while specialist consultations are more vulnerable areas of Teladoc, which will drive its enhanced specialist service capabilities.
Teladoc is doing a B-side business, but it is difficult to get enough revenue from the actual services that actually take place to support its market value, and although the fee revenue increases faster, Teladoc's core revenue still comes from the group's membership fee, without which it is impossible to support the company's revenue growth.
Therefore, this suggests that Chinese investors, if there is no B-side income as a bottom, relying only on the C-side of the run to support income, unless it is high-frequency services, it will be difficult.
Overall, the development of digital health care in the United States has reached a phased peak, although the second outbreak in the United States in July in local areas, but this has not changed the number of online consultations into the platform period of the status quo, a large proportion of users are still back offline.
because the user's habits are changed by external pressure, once the external pressure is less, the user will still return to the original habits.
, the high growth in digital health care now is likely to be the peak of the next 5-10 years.
however, in the process of continuous use of online consultation and chronic disease management services, there will still be users precipitated, which also provides more valuable customers for the future development of digital health care.
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