Telehealth — a new frontier in healthcare that seeks to apply the creature comforts of the digital age to medical services is a field that carries much promise. However, most telehealth stocks haven’t exactly been performing well as of late.
There’s no big mystery as to why — the COVID-19 pandemic saw a sudden surge in utilization, but as soon as in-person healthcare services resumed, demand dried up significantly. On top of that, this is a field with no shortage of regulatory and legal risks — while the rapid increase in demand owing to the lockdowns engendered a saturated market.
One business in this space stands apart — in the very same timeframe in which most peers and rivals have struggled, Hims & Hers Health (NYSE: HIMS) has seen excellent performance. At press time, HIMS stock was trading at $31.26 — over the last 30 days, the price of a single HIMS share has increased by 48.90%, bringing year-to-date (YTD) returns up to 224.22%.
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The company maintains a diversified product portfolio — whereas most of the ventures in the industry focus solely on virtual consultations, Hims offers a wide range of over-the-counter products, a subscription-based model, and tackles a broad range of issues. It has also managed to notch four consecutive quarters of earnings beats.
Surprisingly enough, the company’s chief executive officer (CEO), Andrew Dudum, recently executed a large sale of Hims & Hers stock. Let’s take a closer look at the exact details.
CEO sells $6.2 million worth of HIMS stock
According to data retrieved by Finbold’s insider trading radar from an SEC Form 4 filing made public on December 17, Dudum sold HIMS shares on eight occasions from December 13 to December 17.
These trades were executed at prices ranging from $28.77 to $32.63 — in total, the CEO disposed of 204,907 units of Hims & Hers stock, worth a combined total of approximately $6,244,283.
Readers should note that a closer look at the filing reveals that the transactions were made pursuant to a 10b5-1 plan adopted back on August 28 — in other words, the sale was prearranged.
While this particular sale cannot serve as a reliable bearish signal, readers should still exercise caution. HIMS stock is currently trading at a trailing price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 70.15 — in terms of forward P/E, the situation is only slightly better, with the metric sitting at 67.10%.
There’s no denying that the budding telehealth business has shown strong growth — the company’s Q3 2024 report showed a 77% revenue increase year-over-year (YoY) — as well as a 44% surge in subscriber count over the same period. As promising as these metrics are, at present, would-be investors need a strong tolerance for risk if they intend on going long.
Featured image via Shutterstock
