Trupanion Hikes, CVS $2 Deal, Petfolk Tops Charts, and More
You're listening to the Birdbath presented by the Fountain Report. I'm your host, Ryan Leech. Welcome back to The Birdbath. Each week we scrape the surface of the news you need to know so let's get into it. But before we get into it, let's take a moment to acknowledge I'm recording this on Memorial Day so that you all can hear it first thing Tuesday morning, and I wanna make sure that we we take a second to pause and and honor and reflect on those who gave their life fighting to defend the United States.
Speaker 1:If you're one of our US listeners, you probably had the day, and I and I hope you took a moment at least to to think about sort of what the day meant. And if you're outside the country, I know you each all have your own days for this, but here in the US, this was a big one and something, really important. So I wanted to make sure that I took a second there to to do it. So now let's get into it. Our top story this week is CVS Group's plan to sell their non core operations in the Netherlands and Ireland.
Speaker 1:Over the next 2 weeks, they're gonna be selling all of their their practices in in those two countries to a company called Global Veterinary Excellence, which is a new business that was set up by doctor James Cahill. Doctor Cahill is a veterinarian and former head of CVS's international operations. So it falls really in line. He's someone that was deeply involved in this and is now taking this into its own separate business. But the thing about this story, because people sell businesses all the time, the thing that's a little wild and fun, or terrible about this is the value.
Speaker 1:They sold the business to doctor Cahill for €2, so just about $2.17 in the US money. So this is not something wildly unexpected. The businesses were at pretax losses of over £6,500,000 last year. They're expected to lose another £6,000,000 this year in 2024. And a lot of times you'll see large businesses divest themselves of these sort of assets, and they need to put some sort of nominal value on it.
Speaker 1:Now CVS Group is hopefully trying to set up the Global Veterinary Excellence Group with some cushion to be able to to continue driving so these practices can stay open, and they're doing an unsecured loan of £600,000. So we'll continue monitoring this, but CDS has been taking some real hits over the past couple months. They had a cybersecurity attack in April. They had the British version of the, FTC looking into anti competitive pricing and regulations around that, And they're continuing to see more and more and more things here. So this is a big setback for where they wanna see themselves going.
Speaker 1:In a statement, they said that they're gonna be focusing primarily on their UK and Australian expansion, and being able to offload these, difficult assets is something that's gonna allow them more flexibility. So if I wanna tie everything together, right, let's do a full circle. A company that also was sold for a very nominal value, $1, the company Newsweek was sold for $1 in 2010 and has since turned around and is boasting its highest revenue and readership in nearly a 100 year history. But you're saying, Ryan, why does Newsweek have anything to do with CBS Group? Well, PetFolk was just ranked 5th on Newsweek's most loved workplaces.
Speaker 1:Every year, Newsweek does a survey and and polls all of the different employees around many different companies and ranks the top 100 global most loved workplaces. And PetFolk, congratulations, hit number 5 on that list. In the announcement, they said that the results were determined after surveying more than 2,000,000 employees from businesses with workforces anywhere from 30 to over 10,000 employees. Doctor Audrey Weistrach, founder and CEO, said we couldn't have achieved this incredible recognition without the dedication and commitment of our amazing team. Our passion for pets, commitment to excellence, and unwavering support for one another truly makes PetFolk the most loved workplace.
Speaker 1:Thank you for making every day a joy and embodying the heart of our mission. Here's to many more milestones in a future where every pet receives the exceptional care they deserve. Congratulations to everyone at PetFolk. It was interesting, or I enjoyed seeing this just, because in the report that Newsweek put out, they hit on a 2023 Pew Research survey that found that just 51% of their respondents said that they were highly satisfied with their job. So almost half of the people in the world or in the US don't enjoy their job or aren't highly satisfied with their job.
Speaker 1:When you dove deeper into it, they found that fewer than half expressed high level of satisfaction with the amount of feedback they received from their managers and their chance to develop new skills, and only a third were satisfied with their opportunities for promotion. So, you know, I like to look at some of the overall economic trends that are going on. We have incredibly low unemployment in the US right now, but a recent survey showed that 49% of people believe that we have high unemployment, which is an exact inverse. And so there's this disconnect, I think, within the way that people are perceiving the current economic situation, and what economists and, and the Dow Jones are telling us are are going very well. So lots of lots of interesting things here, but congratulations to PetFolk for their great news in that top five ranking.
Speaker 1:MixLab has expanded their veterinary compounding offering into large animals with an acquisition of NextGen Animal Health. They just announced last week that they're gonna be acquiring NextGen Animal Health with a continued support from Vantara Ventures, who is one of their investors. Next gen specializes in formulation of products for equine, exotic, wildlife, and zoo animals. There weren't financial terms disclosed, but if I hear them, I will let you know. But so what this means for MixLab is that they're gonna be able to expand their portfolio.
Speaker 1:They're adding a 4th pharmacy location to their already 3 that they have. The 4th one's opening up in Texas. They've got another one in California, New York, and Florida, and they're growing their overall capacity of formulary. They're growing their customer care team, and they really wanna make sure that they're set up to meet the demand that people are planning to see as we see a increase of of client demand for pharmaceuticals outside the clinic. They expect over the next few months to not only take this growth, but be able to do a deeper investment into their e mix, which is a proprietary prescription management form, as well as releasing a portal specifically for pet owners.
Speaker 1:So we've seen a lot of companies that are are looking at trying to tackle this, sort of e scribing, e scripting situation. MixLab is coming at it. They're increasing their compounding opportunities. They're increasing their formulas. We saw pharmacy with WAG.
Speaker 1:We're seeing some really cool things out of some other players in the space, but, the vet industry and the animal health world is is prime and key and waiting for that e script solution that we see in in human health care that allows you to go right down the street to that Walgreens or pop into Target and pick up your medications whenever you need them. So let's keep our eye out on what Myx Lab is doing. They're they're always cutting edge in what they're what they're bringing to the industry. Another company that is led with the vision of cutting edge in technology is Modern Animal. So Modern Animal has just announced the launch of their first suite of AI assisted enhancements to their own internal practice management software, PIMS, which they call Claude.
Speaker 1:They are sort of reaching at what we've seen a lot of the AI companies and a lot of the PIMS in space dig into first, which is the overall feature enhancements of a patient overview. So doctor walks in and wants to know sort of who they're meeting and what's going on, allow AI to knock that out for you. A visit summarization, which is in a lot of ways voice dictation in a more passive way than what we've seen previously, which is actually each individual training their own voice recorder that then transcribes it. But now voice visit summarization utilizing AI allows people to speak in a organic and a natural way and then allow an AI tool to be able to filter out the background noises and the client questions and all that and give a solid, visit summarization or a SOAP note. And then an interpretation and summarization of lab work, which is great, something that we're seeing from from a few other companies as well.
Speaker 1:The the company Modern Animals founder and CEO, Steven Eidelman, said while so far we've used this advantage to augment our team's administrative efficiency, we have started to envision a world where AI becomes a reliable collaborator that increases confidence in medical decisions for doctors at all levels. So it is. It's what we're seeing. It's the big hot button issue for a lot of people. Where is the line on AI within veterinary medicine?
Speaker 1:I've seen some incredible companies, over the past couple months that I've had the opportunity to to sit down with and learn. A lot of people are outside of their PIMS bringing in these AI suites, and some are tackling patient overview or visit summarization or the interpretation of lab work as individual standalone products, or some are looking at it as a full suite that can then integrate or plug into or read from the PIMs. Now Modern Animal, as as a lot of you know, this is an internal system similar to VCA's Wolfware, which isn't something that, outside parties are gonna be able to participate in, but it would be neat to sort of see how they're interpreting this. Data shows that when people utilize an AI tool, they're 68% more likely to continue using AI for future systems or processes or needs. So, anytime that we get this in the hand of people, I think it's a big plus side.
Speaker 1:The final thing that's kind of important to think about and and tying it back to that pet folks story, and modern animal and pet folk really play in, different sides of the of the country, but they're starting to converge down the middle. And what we're seeing is this demand for solutions that aren't aimed just at the pet parent, but at the employees and the team that are working there. We're seeing companies that understand that the employees and the practitioners and DVMs and technicians and every person within the clinic is is having a much higher demand on their time. We're still tackling burnout. We're still tackling access to care, and we're seeing companies that whether they're looking at a solution internally, whether they're partnering like CityVet did with ReadyVet Go, or if they're engaging a company like GuardianVets with their GuardianVet call intercept product, which which allows people to take those calls out of the clinic and allow them to focus on the patients that are in front of them.
Speaker 1:All of these things are really focusing on an improvement and an ability to hire, retain, and keep the top talent within your practice. So lots of people looking at this to tackle it in different ways and definitely things to research if you are in the world of owning, buying, selling, acquiring, or working within clinics. Finally, our what feels like a weekly news update on pet insurance space. Trupanion announced that the California Department of Insurance has approved a 29% rate increase, which previously last June, they had a rate increase of 12% and these new rates are gonna go into effect late July 2024. The team at Trupanion said the rising cost of veterinary care amplifies the need for Trupanion to price correctly.
Speaker 1:Given the financial impact inflation has had on veterinary practices in California since 2022, this new rate will bring California residents more in line with those rising costs. So over the last 2 years, we've seen a 41% increase in premiums by True Trupanion, and I think we'll personally, I'm gonna be very surprised to see what those renewal rates are, or maybe I won't be surprised. But, we saw the nationwide, rates for for nationwide pet insurance actually went up quite a bit, and we heard about a lot of people leaving the company or or being let go due to a decrease in overall demand. The entire insurance marketplace, not just in the pet sector, is is really undergoing a major shift. We saw massive numbers of natural disasters.
Speaker 1:We saw lots of wind, hail, tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, things like that that are affecting the bottom line of the insurance companies, they're adjusting their premiums and now we're beginning to see that same trickle down for the companies like Nationwide, Trupanion, others in the space. So tough stuff, but, I'll be curious to see anytime these rates go up, it does feel as if it's, another sort of difficulty and another hurdle that the insurance space needs to tackle, but, really hoping that we can find a way to to crack that nut and find a way for for insurance companies to be able to get over that line. So stay tuned if we can find more solutions and maybe we'll solve it here on the birdbath. And for more on these and other stories, join us by subscribing to the Fountain Report. There's always a link in the bio.
Speaker 1:And don't miss out on any episodes by subscribing and rating the show. For the Birdbath, I'm Ryan Leach. See you next week.
