HIMS: Why did the stock drop so much
Looking into the details
At Hims & Hers, we believe we are building the next-generation health care platform
Andrew Dudum, founder and CEO
Hi Multis
After the big drop on Tuesday, I wanted to address the Hims & Hers (HIMS) earnings first.
The Numbers
For a growth company, revenue growth is crucial. The reason? This stat that I have repeated so often and will continue to repeat until everybody's sick of it. :-)
Hims & Hers showed terrific revenue growth. The Q4 2024 revenue reached $481 million, a 95% year-over-year increase. That's great and a beat of 2.3% versus the consensus.
For the full year 2024, revenue came in at $1.5 billion, up 69% YoY. Of course, the market has been moving HIMS in sync with the GLP-1 sentiment. If you exclude GLP-1, revenue increased by 43% year-over-year to $1.2 billion. Up to now, since Q2 2024 the company has generated more than $225 million in GLP-1 revenue. Not bad at all for a company that just started with GLP-1 in 2024. But on the other hand, 43% revenue growth, excluding GLP-1, is also strong.
So, Hims & Hers passes with flying colors for revenue growth.
Another very important element in the long thesis for HIMS is subscriber growth. Here, too, HIMS did very well. Total subscribers increased by 45% to over 2.2 million in Q4. Again, very strong.
(Unless mentioned otherwise, all images come from the earnings call presentation)
And founder and CEO Andrew Dudum is ambitious when it comes to subscribers:
I think 10 million subs on the platform, to me, feels really quite in reach. My optimistic hope and personally ambition would be to try to achieve this in the next five to six years.
Over 55% of the total subscribers use at least one personalized solution. That's very important because it's also an essential element for the thesis. If you feel like you are not treated like "a patient" but as "a person," you are much more likely to stick. All too often, we still get standardized drug doses, independent of our personal reactions to it. With the personalized approach, HIMS is really filling a need that traditional healthcare still mostly ignores but that is clearly in demand from consumers.
Hims & Hers definitely feels it hit a goldmine there. It revealed plans to expand from hundreds to thousands of personalized treatment variations. Personal data is extremely important there. Hims & Hers is leveraging data to offer personalized medication, supplements, workout routines, and nutrition plans. This total approach makes so much sense.
You can also see in the graph above that the percentage of personalized subscribers (the green color) continues to grow.
The supplements, weight-control shakes, and wellness focus also make HIMS healthcare-focused, not just sick care-focused. I think prevention and the integrated (holistic, if you want) approach is the way of the future, driven by much more data insights. Many of us (including me) have smartwatches, but up to now, not much happens with the data points it generates. I think more and more personalization will be the most important healthcare revolution we'll see in the next few years and it seems like HIMS is already working on that. Andrew Dudum on the call:
Data is a key differentiator on our platform as we are one of, if not the only, large-scale vertically integrated health systems spanning the end-to-end patient journey.
It was also in the investor presentation.
That's also how you see the company's recent acquisitions.
If you missed it, Hims & Hers bought two companies last week.
The first acquisition was Trybe Labs. It's a company that offers at-home testing. This acquisition will allow HIMS to offer affordable tests of the whole body. This will give the company deeper health insights and more precise treatment recommendations. It will amp up personalization. Blood samples are still the best way to document the state of someone's body.
Trybe offers blood tests for hormone levels, cardiac risk, stress markers, cholesterol, thyroid function, and much more. All of these things are very important, not only to be tested but also to keep in mind for the side effects of treatments.
You may see my passion shining through here. I'm a data junk and I find it frustrating that my body, the most important thing in my life, is not measured in all ways it can so I have a personal plan, whether it comes to food, drugs or exercise. And that's precisely what HIMS wants. The company's not there, but that is the vision and I can only cheer for that.
The other company HIMS bought was a peptide production facility. Peptides are gaining traction in healthcare for a wide range of applications: skincare, metabolic health, cognitive performance, recovery and much more. Taking the production in-house will not only allow HIMS to have higher margins, but it will again allow them to personalize the doses.
But we are still in the numbers section of this article, so let's switch gears again.
EPS came in at $0.11 for Q4 2024, which was in line with the expectations. Adjusted EBITDA increased 160% year-over-year to $54 million in Q4. For the full fiscal year, adjusted EBITDA reached $177 million, with margins more than doubling to 12%. For a company growing at 95%, those numbers are incredible.
How was guidance?
Well, good. The company projected $2.3 billion to $2.4 billion in revenue for 2025. That implies a 56% to 63% YoY growth. Adjusted EBITDA is seen between $270 million and $320 million for 2025.