- Babylon intends to sell its Independent Physician Association
(IPA) business in California, including Meritage Medical Network,
which it grew from $111m in 2021 revenue to over $400m in estimated
2022 revenue
- Proceeds from sale are expected to provide sufficient capital
for Babylon’s funding requirements through profitability
- Babylon will transition its public reporting and governance
from foreign private issuer to U.S. domestic reporting company
standards in 2023
Babylon (NYSE: BBLN) (“Babylon” or the “Company”) today
announced that it intends to divest Meritage Medical Network
(“Meritage”), a network of approximately 1,800 physicians providing
physical care in California with over $400 million in estimated
2022 revenue, in order to focus on its core business model through
further investment in its digital-first contracts.
Meritage provides physical care for almost 90,000 members and
more than a dozen insurers across six counties in Northern and
Central California.
Unlike Babylon’s digital-first, value-based care contracts,
Meritage delivers care through its network of independent
physicians. Babylon has therefore decided that divesting Meritage
is in the best interests of the Company and its shareholders, to
allow capital to be recycled to focus on building out the
digital-first product. Proceeds from the sale are expected to
provide sufficient capital for Babylon’s funding requirements
through profitability. There is no change to the Company’s previous
guidance on its expected time period to profitability.
Babylon is initiating a formal process for the sale of Meritage
with a major investment bank acting as its financial advisor for
the sale process. In the interim, Babylon remains committed to
supporting Meritage through its ongoing growth and enrollment
activities and high-quality clinical care delivery to its
members.
Babylon Will Transition to U.S.
Domestic Company Reporting Requirements, Governance and U.S. GAAP
Accounting
As part of Babylon’s transition to U.S. domestic reporting
company status, the Company will, beginning January 1, 2023, cease
to file reports with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
(the “SEC”) as a foreign private issuer, and begin complying with
the SEC reporting requirements for a domestic issuer. Babylon will
report its Q4 and 2022 year-end results under U.S. GAAP. The
Company’s full-year 2022 audited financial statements, prepared
under U.S. GAAP, will be filed in an Annual Report on Form
10-K.
Babylon further plans to continue simplifying its capital
structure, which it began in June 2022 by completing the exchange
offer for all of its outstanding public and private warrants for
Class A ordinary shares. In addition, Babylon intends to collapse
its two-class share structure into one, consisting entirely of
Class A ordinary shares. Each Class B ordinary share is expected to
be converted into one Class A ordinary share. This planned change
will not be economically dilutive to any shareholder, and following
the change, no shareholder will hold enhanced voting rights.
As previously announced, Babylon’s shareholders have approved a
reverse share split, which is expected to take place during Q4
2022, resulting in the Company’s outstanding shares being
consolidated at a ratio within the approved range of 15:1 to
25:1.
Additionally, the Company plans to recruit and appoint
additional independent members of its Board of Directors,
unaffiliated with institutional shareholders, during the next 6
months.
Ali Parsa, Founder and CEO, said: “The sale of our IPA business
and streamlining of our reporting and governance processes will
result in a more focused business, simpler structure and stronger
balance sheet.”
About Babylon
At Babylon, our mission is to make quality healthcare accessible
and affordable for every person on Earth. To this end we are
building an integrated digital-first primary care service that can
manage population health at scale.
Founded in 2013, we are reengineering how people engage with
their care at every step of the healthcare continuum. By flipping
the model from reactive sick care to proactive healthcare through
the devices people already own, we offer millions of people
globally, ongoing, always-on care. And, we have already shown that
in environments as diverse as the developed UK or developing
Rwanda, urban New York or rural Missouri, for people of all ages,
it is possible to achieve our mission by leveraging our highly
scalable, digital-first platform combined with high quality,
virtual clinical operations to provide integrated, personalized
healthcare.
Today, we support a global patient network across 15 countries,
and operate in 16 languages. In 2021 alone, Babylon helped a
patient every 6 seconds, with approximately 5.2 million
consultations and AI interactions. Importantly, this was achieved
with a 93% user retention rate in our NHS GP at Hand service and 4
or 5-star ratings from more than 90% of our users across all of our
geographies. We are working to demonstrate how our model of
digital-first integrated primary care can be applied to manage the
health of the population in different settings across Medicare,
Medicaid, and commercial value based care contracts in the US and
our primary care services in the UK.
Babylon is also working with governments, health providers,
employers and insurers across the globe to provide them with a new
digital-first platform that any partner can use to deliver
high-quality healthcare with lower costs and better outcomes. For
more information, please visit www.babylonhealth.com.
Forward-Looking
Statements
This press release contains “forward-looking statements” as
defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
Forward-looking statements generally relate to future events or our
future financial or operating performance. When used in this press
release, the words “estimates,” “projected,” “expects,”
“anticipates,” “forecasts,” “plans,” “intends,” “believes,”
“seeks,” “may,” “will,” “should,” “future,” “propose” and
variations of these words or similar expressions (or the negative
versions of such words or expressions) are intended to identify
forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements
include, without limitation, information concerning Babylon’s
possible or assumed future results of operations, business
strategies, debt levels, competitive position, industry environment
and potential growth opportunities.
These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future
performance, conditions, or results, and involve a number of known
and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other important
factors, many of which are outside of Babylon’s management’s
control, that could cause actual results to differ materially from
the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. These
risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other important factors
include, but are not limited to our future financial and operating
results and ability to generate profits in the future; that we may
require additional financing and our ability to obtain additional
financing on favorable terms; our ability to sell the IPA business,
including the timing of the sale and the sale price; if we fail to
comply with the NYSE’s continued listing standards and rules, the
NYSE may delist our Class A ordinary shares; uncertainties related
to our ability to continue as a going concern; our ability to
successfully execute our planned cost reduction actions and realize
the expected cost savings; the growth of our business and
organization; risks associated with impairment of goodwill and
other intangible assets; our failure to compete successfully; our
ability to renew contracts with existing customers, and risks of
contract renewals at lower fee levels, or significant reductions in
members, pricing or premiums under our contracts due to factors
outside our control; our dependence on our relationships with
physician-owned entities; our ability to maintain and expand a
network of qualified providers; our ability to increase engagement
of individual members or realize the member healthcare cost savings
that we expect; a significant portion of our revenue comes from a
limited number of customers; the uncertainty and potential
inadequacy of our claims liability estimates for medical costs and
expenses; risks associated with estimating the amount and timing of
revenue recognized under our licensing agreements and value-based
care agreements with health plans; risks associated with our
physician partners’ failure to accurately, timely and sufficiently
document their services; risks associated with inaccurate or
unsupportable information regarding risk adjustment scores of
members in records and submissions to health plans; risks
associated with reduction of reimbursement rates paid by
third-party payers or federal or state healthcare programs; risks
associated with regulatory proposals directed at containing or
lowering the cost of healthcare, including the ACO REACH model;
immaturity and volatility of the market for telemedicine and our
unproven digital-first approach; our ability to develop and release
new solutions and services; difficulty in hiring and retaining
talent to operate our business; risks associated with our
international operations, economic uncertainty, or downturns; the
impact of COVID-19 or any other pandemic, epidemic or outbreak of
an infectious disease in the United States or worldwide on our
business; risks associated with foreign currency exchange rate
fluctuations and restrictions; and the other risks and
uncertainties identified in Babylon’s Annual Report on Form 20-F
filed with the SEC on March 30, 2022, and in other documents filed
or to be filed by Babylon with the SEC and available at the SEC’s
website at www.sec.gov.
Babylon cautions that the foregoing list of factors is not
exclusive and cautions readers not to place undue reliance upon any
forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made.
Except as required by law, Babylon does not undertake any
obligation to update or revise its forward-looking statements to
reflect events or circumstances after the date of this press
release.
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