Accolade Is Latest To Join Health Service IPO Bandwagon

To launch a successful IPO in the current market environment, it seems to help to be a fast-growing health care services provider.

Shares of One Medical, a provider of primary care clinics and telemedicine, closed up nearly 60 percent in first-day trading a month ago. Since then, it’s largely held on to those gains.

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Progyny, a benefits management focusing on fertility, meanwhile, has seen its shares roughly double from its initial offer price back in October. While the broader markets have swooned, Progyny has held strong.

Now, another well-funded health service company is betting investor enthusiasm for the space will trump market skittishness. Accolade, a service provider that serves as a kind of go-between for consumers, employers and health insurance companies, is seeking to raise up to $100 million in an IPO, according to a prospectus filed late Friday.

The ups and downs of IPOs

Like most venture-backed companies on the IPO path, Accolade is posting both strong growth and persistent losses. Its most recent financials are for the ninth-month period ending Nov. 30, for which it reported revenue of $88 million, and a net loss of $49 million. For the corresponding period a year earlier, revenue was $60 million, with the same net loss of $49 million. (Accolade operates on a fiscal year ending in February, so results for its last full fiscal year are not yet available.)

The company’s pitch to investors is that its platform will see continued large-scale adoption as health care plans and services become increasingly complicated for people to navigate. Its customers are primarily employers that deploy Accolade to provide employees and their families “a single place to turn for their health, healthcare, and benefits needs,” per the IPO prospectus.

Accolades core offerings includes a software platform backed by a support staff of health assistants and clinicians.

Headquartered in Seattle, with significant operations in the Philadelphia area, Accolade has raised $237 million in known funding since its founding in 2007. Key backers include Andreessen Horowitz, Comcast Ventures and Carrick Capital Partners.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias.