STAT+: DarioHealth acquires Twill, hoping it’s a shortcut to profitability
DarioHealth, with apps for managing chronic diseases, will acquire mental health app maker Twill, hoping to attract large customers and become profitable.
DarioHealth, which makes apps for managing chronic diseases, today announced it will acquire digital mental health company Twill for $10 million in cash plus stock valued at over $20 million at the end of Tuesday trading. The move is a bet that a consolidated offering can attract a critical mass of large customers in a market where profits have been elusive.
Founded in 2011, Dario started with a diabetes app targeted at consumers before expanding it to hypertension and weight management. It still maintains that direct-to-consumer business but has since shifted its focus to selling its suite of offerings, including a musculoskeletal care program it acquired in 2021, to health plans and employers in the hopes of reaching much larger patient populations. Recent updates aimed at making itself attractive to clients include a new offering built around popular, and expensive, GLP-1 weight loss drugs, and published real world data suggesting its tools can save clients money on downstream health care costs. With Twill, Dario adds a mental health app and related services, addressing a top demand of employers.
Despite momentum, DarioHealth, which is publicly traded, is unprofitable, and by its own estimations on earnings calls last year, it remained a ways from that milestone. Before acquiring Twill, the company said that it expected the whole business to break even at about $80 million in revenue — about four times the roughly $20 million it projected for 2023. In November, the company reported that it lost over $40 million in the first nine months of 2023.
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