JPM21: Teladoc projects 2020 revenue to reach $1.1B as it expands virtual primary care

Teladoc expects 2020 revenue to reach $1.1 billion, doubling its 2019 revenue of $553 million, driven by surging demand for virtual care solutions.

The telehealth giant reported it delivered 10.6 million virtual visits last year, up from 4.1 million visits in 2019. The company's U.S. paid membership will reach 50 million to 51 million users, up about 36% from 37 million users in 2019.

Teladoc completed its massive $18.5 billion acquisition of Livongo in October, and, combined with its acquisition of InTouch Health last year, the company's value proposition in the marketplace is only getting stronger, Teladoc CEO Jason Gorevic said during a presentation at the annual J.P. Morgan healthcare conference Monday.

Livongo is a digital chronic condition management company that helps people manage their health through the combination of connected devices, artificial-intelligence-enabled nudges and human coaches.

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The company is set up for sustainable long-term growth, Gorevic said, projecting 30% to 40% average annual revenue growth through 2023.

"We are sitting on a trove of data, more than 1 billion data elements from Livongo, and data from 14 million virtual visits that we have delivered or enabled for our clients, and that puts us in an unmatched position to take care of our members and adapt and deliver in a changing environment," Gorevic said.

Monday, Teladoc also announced an expanded partnership with Dexcom, a continuous glucose monitoring technology company, to provide personalized health insights to people managing Type 2 diabetes at no cost. The goal is to combine Dexcom’s CGM solution with Teladoc Health’s data science capabilities to enhance the diabetes management experience, the companies said.

Teladoc and Livongo, which went public a year ago, have both experienced explosive growth during the COVID-19 pandemic as consumers have turned to virtual care options.

While some healthcare providers quickly turned to Zoom or FaceTime and other point solutions to deliver virtual appointments, many providers and hospitals are turning to Teladoc for purpose-built virtual solutions for healthcare as well as the data insights the company can offer, Gorevic said.

"We’ve seen this incredible 'snap back' in the last few months with providers who early on used Zoom or FaceTime to keep their doors open and have now realized how insufficient those capabilities are, as they are not integrated with their systems or their workflows and are not purpose-built for clinical use cases," he said.

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Teladoc's goal is to deliver what it calls "whole-person care" to members for a range of health conditions, from episodic to acute and chronic conditions, and across different care sites, according to Gorevic. With the InTouch Health acquisition, Teladoc helps deliver virtual care across 11,000 different sites, including hospitals and physicians' offices, from a single integrated technology platform.

In 2019, Teladoc piloted its virtual primary care program, called Primary360, with the aim of early detection of chronic disease. That service now offers 70 distinct diagnoses such as hypertension and diabetes. With early commercial traction, the company is expanding that program this month with multiple partners, including large employers and health plans, Gorevic said.

"People woke up in 2020 to the power of virtual care. We are breaking down the walls, the physical barriers, of people all needing to be located in the same place so we can deliver care on the consumers’ terms," Gorevic said.

Teladoc has plenty of "running room," he said, noting there are 65 million potential telehealth users at its current clients and 18 million potential Livongo enrollees at Teladoc clients.

"We are still just scratching the surface. There is a tremendous opportunity to expand our membership," he said.

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The company's bookings in 2020 were up 35% year over year, and Teladoc sees major cross-selling opportunities with the Livongo and InTouch Health capabilities. Gorevic announced Teladoc just closed another cross-selling agreement with a regional Midwest health plan.

Teladoc also is seeing increased interest from hospitals and health systems to use the company's virtual care technology, including Livongo's connected devices, to move care from the hospital to the home, he said.

"We see the opportunity to share in the risk and savings with hospitals," Gorevic said, noting the potential to offer services as part of value-based care arrangements and bundled payments.

Teladoc experts to launch "hospital at home" pilot projects with large health systems this year. "This will not have a material impact on our economics in 2021, but we will start to see that in 2022. This will become a meaningful line of business for us," he said.