While online medical operation Teladoc Health (TDOC) has had a rough time of things lately, it will not go quietly into the night. In fact, it just made one major acquisition move, and picked up Catapult Health in an all-cash deal. The news sent Teladoc shares surging, up nearly 7% in Wednesday afternoon’s trading.
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Teladoc, known for its position as a virtual health care platform, picked up a string of new features by agreeing to buy Catapult Health. Catapult offers an “at home wellness exam” that allows patients to check their own blood pressure, collect their own blood samples, and even add various bits of “screening information” before meeting with a “nurse practitioner.”
Teladoc is putting up $65 million in cash to pick up Catapult, and Catapult will continue to operate as an “integrated care segment,” the reports noted. Teladoc has been working to build its membership numbers up and offer more services, so the acquisition of Catapult should go quite some way toward augmenting its position.
Pitching Cost Cutting
Cost cutting is increasingly in vogue with businesses today, and, with so many employees on health insurance plans, cost cutting there too can be helpful. But Teladoc is right in the thick of that fight as well, and is offering up ways for businesses with health insurance plans to cut costs on weight loss / diabetes medications.
One of the biggest ways is by actively pitching glucagon-like peptide-1 agonist (GLP-1) drugs to businesses. The emergence of GLP-1 drugs is actively changing the weight loss and diabetes fronts, and telehealth operations like Teladoc are working to maintain a position therein. By pitching these drugs more aggressively, they can make the case of fending off higher costs later.
Is Teladoc a Good Stock to Buy Now?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on TDOC stock based on four Buys and seven Holds assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 44.39% loss in its share price over the past year, the average TDOC price target of $11.61 per share implies 4.41% upside potential.
