Hacker News Reader

Comment by zumachase | Hacker News Reader

Wow...an S-1 with positive net income.

Yes but they don’t really have a way to expand outside of the US, they are basically an answer to a uniquely American problem unless they’ll go they’ll target the self medicating crowd that uses the relatively dodgy online questionnaire/chat prescription pharmacies.

So they're a mature, profitable company going public and that's a "Yes, but..."?

They seem pretty vulnerable to being obsolete if there is any sort of substantial change in the prescription drug market. And there seems to be quite a push to change the prescription drug market. Just look at how convoluted their revenue generation is, there are like 5 middle men.

That's why they use the money that they mad to hire lobbyists to ensure that policies won't change in any meaningful way.

I hate how this world works :/

This is true of basically any major healthcare play. On the (at this point extremely) off chance that we move to single payer, for instance, insurance companies face an existential crisis. On the off chance that we fix prescription drug price gouging and absurdly inconsistent pricing and all of these problems that GoodRx solves for patients simply by _cutting them in on the scam a bit_, then GoodRx faces an existential crisis.

The fact that there are 5 middle men is... more of a moat in this case? They've solved a complex, intractable problem profitably. Does this mean they're a 20-year company? Eh, not without some significant additional revenue streams or pivots into different areas, and to that point I agree with you about their vulnerability. But for the next 10 years? These are good margins building a business that only incrementally reduces the fucking over of the consumer.

> Yes but they don’t really have a way to expand outside of the US, they are basically an answer to a uniquely American problem

The US accounts for 45% of global pharmaceutical sales. Even if they're limited to "only" half of the global pharmaceutical market, that doesn't sound like the worst position to be in.

I think that’s for North American and it’s in revenue not in actual sales, but yes that is currently the case but it’s also clear that the US health system cannot continue as it does for much longer. So overall while they can clearly profitably operate in the current market I’m not so sure about their longevity.

The market size and business opportunity is not measured by units sold but by overall revenue. Am I missing something?

Yes you are missing the point that this company can only operate because of just how utterly broken the US healthcare system is, and sooner rather than later there will be sufficient political pressure to change that.

Because their risk is dramatic health-care reform? In the USA?

Medicaid for All almost made it into the Democratic Party manifesto this time, it was cut but realistically it will make it into the 2024 or 2028 one especially once the longer term effects of COVID-19 will be more apparent because many of the recovered will suffer long lasting effects potentially for the rest of their (hopefully long) lives, and overall once all the bullshit settles down people will see it as a pretty good wake up call.

You're almost proving my point. Look at the numbers; between now and any reform in 2024 they'll be making $100MM/yr in Net Income -- by 2028 they'd have a war-chest of $800MM -- cateris peribus.

"sooner rather than later" won't be in 4 and could take 8! years (that's seems later to me)

If you're concerned about their longevity it looks like they'll have plenty of cash to figure it out over plenty of time.

It depends on the time scale you are looking at 4-8 years isn’t a lot, and also there are plenty of other changes that could happen in the prescription drug market and there have been many pushes for that which don’t require a full on single payer system.

Most of these changes still maintain the necessity for price transparency, which GoodRx still offers. There will always be some need for an online portal through which to shop for medication, regardless of whether or not there are price controls or if the payments are reimbursed/subsidized by the state.

8 years is a bit less than half of Google's existence.

A political “manifesto” is meaningless.

GoodRx doesn't cover physician administered drugs, which makes up a sizable proportion of that 45%.

This is not really a problem. If they were in a situation where they didn't have a way to expand outside of say, Burundi, that would be a problem, but the US is 25% of the global economy.

Why is that a problem? Companies don’t need to be international.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com