Just in time for the ASRM conference, we share insights on the hottest fertility field news stories you can take with you to the Networking Lounge.
Listen to hear:
About the acquisition that took place, which was not reported in the US or Canada.
US Fertility’s recent change of CEO.
KKR’s debt for the IVIRMA deal.
The recent celebrity embryo lawsuit that has now turned against the clinic
With this roundup, Griffin offers a sneak peek into the future of Inside Reproductive Health and news coverage of the business of the fertility field.
Transcript
Griffin Jones 00:04
The biggest Fertility Center in Canada being sold to an overseas company and it not being reported on in North America KKR the global investment firm be behind the EV RMA deal. And the banks behind them selling off their debt, getting rid of their debt to private lenders. CCRM expanding into New Jersey with an acquisition, kind body expanding into Houston and getting the Walmart deal, a major lawsuit happening with that you knew about but now being directed towards the fertility clinic. The this is the news that I'm going to try to give you some insights on today. This is the type of news that inside reproductive health wants to report on in the future. This news content that I'm giving you today is not reported on by us. I'm giving you kind of a preview of the direction that inside reproductive health is going on. Many of you are coming back from SRM. Many of you talking about these things, at SRM. So I wanted to give you some water cooler topics to think about and reflect on catch you up a bit. By the time this episode airs. I'm sure there's probably a big announcement or two that happened today. That didn't make it to this episode. But inside reproductive health is moving in the direction of news media outlet of being able to cover more of these stories, we're still going to do the podcast where we go more in depth. But we also want to cover new stories like these. And many of you listening may have had a meeting about sponsorship with me at ASRM because we are starting to close those sponsorships and only a few companies are able to get in now. And for you, the listening audience, the docs, the CEOs that listen in to reproductive health and read, it's for the aim of getting you more content, some of which is is like this. So I'm gonna go through these stories today, I'm going to try to give my insights. As always, if I get something wrong, please email me and tell me and we can correct on a future episode or you can come on to give more insights or just complain about it quietly to a friend, whichever you prefer. First story is an older one I'm gonna go from older to more recent. And the reason I still want to talk about a story from over a year ago with the Yujun deal of TRIO fertility is because it was never reported on in North America. If you Google Eugin, TRIO, fertility, there's no story that I can find from the Toronto Star from the from Bloomberg from any US or Canadian media outlets. Eugin. If that name sounds familiar to you, is the health system out of Spain that bought Boston IVF. Some years back, they're owned by a another company that's a public traded company. And I think this is significant for two reasons. One is that I think that trio was the largest center in Canada, if you recall, there was a merger some years ago, between five and 10 years, probably seven, eight years ago, something like that, where there was a merger that made trio fertility between life quest and T carts. And then they became true, I believe there were the largest center in Toronto, according to this Spanish media outlet lab on guardia the they did 2700 cycles a year. And so I think that's significant. But I also think it's significant of parent companies that are buying centers, when some of their subsidiaries are large enough to also have done this acquisition. So just just like by you, just by numbers and speculation, Boston IVF could have done this deal. I don't know, I have no idea if they wanted to go to Canada or not. But I think about this when Shady Grove buys CRM and Houston that it's like well, did somebody else in US fertility want to do it? Do it will will these parent companies opened de novo clinics as part of the bigger brand or or will one of their subsidiaries. So I think that's significant. And I also think that it's significant that none of us knew about that. And it shows that there is a lot of strategy happening not just from Wall Street private equity, but European health systems and, and health systems and large networks in other countries that are still TGT coming to different markets in North America as far as I can tell, this is the their first acquisition in Canada, but with their, with their, all their acquisition of Boston IVF, or at least partial acquisition of Boston IVF as well. This media outlet plus mundo se is reporting that Eujin covers more than 37,000 IVF cycles in 2019. So you might infer how much they're doing. Now. Next story also a little bit older, but there's been an update in the last month or so is the what's behind the KKR deal of edrms. So many of you know that there was RMA of New Jersey, and then there was there were armies that are not affiliated with RMA of New Jersey, and there are their armies that were and then they merged with EV of Spain to be to form their global company, EV RMA a few years back. And then the company, the global investment firm KKR made an acquisition of e vrma. Global back in early 2020. To deal that is reported by Axios to have been $3 billion euros at the time, that would have been 3.2 million US, but they're probably paid in euros, at least according to that report. And but the latest development is that the banks that helped to finance that deal the some of them like Morgan Stanley, and Credit Suisse AG, according to this report by Bloomberg, have decided to sell off that debt to private credit firms. So instead of them getting the interest from that, that loan, there, they'd sold it, according to what Bloomberg says, for 96 and a half cents on the euro. So these banks took a little bit of a loss on it. And in order to sell it to the private lenders, they're not going to be getting that interest, the private credit firms will be and they sold what they had for a little bit because KKR they're using some of that some of what they're buying, you know, some of what they paid for is going to be from their limited partners. The pension funds, the the high net worth individuals, the these these big funds that they used to purchase, make a 3 billion euro purchase, according to this article, 800 million of that came from debt. And so that's been sold, what the greater applications are beyond that. That's beyond my paygrade right now, but if you know you can come on in, we could do an analysis of that. Next door is ecrm made a big acquisition of IRM s in New Jersey and I rms used to be part of the St. Barnabas health system there they were a private center on probably one of the largest independently owned private centers on the East Coast, they have 11 rd eyes. And that acquisition was officially announced at the end of August. And so this is going to add to CRMs footprint in the northeast, it may give them more leverage with insurance companies because they have CCRM, New York they also just added a doctor there. And so they may be able to have more leverage with insurance companies there may be more efficiencies in marketing and some of the services that they're offering that allows them to expand but this is a group that a lot of people wanted and was independent for a long time. And it's it's really big. There's not so many of these size groups anymore. There's there's very few and and CCRM got one of the last ones of that size. Next story. There's a big CEO change at one of the largest fertility companies in North America. That's us fertility. You of course know them from Shady Grove fertility Mark Segal, having been the CEO there then going on to be the CEO of the newly formed parent company that was formed in 2022. With the backing of the private equity firm amulet capital they took. They took one of the groups in Florida fertility Fertility Center of Illinois and RSC of the Bay Area to form us fertility at that time. Mark Segal, who had been the CEO for 25 Five years at Shady Grove, went on to become the CEO of that company. And it will be stepping down come the New Year, the new CEO is Richard Jennings. Jennings was the CEO of California cryo bank and then went on to be the CEO of generate life sciences, Derek lifesciences was acquired by Cooper in 2021. What this could mean is I wonder if this means companies like us fertility will be looking to expand more in the third party space, acquiring companies that are either surrogacy agencies or donor agencies or both. I think a lot of networks are creating their own. And it might make sense to do some acquisitions, it probably does make sense to do some acquisition. So I wonder if this would if Jennings being CEO of us fertility will help with something like that, if that's part of their vision. And I also wonder what this means for Shady Grove, because I don't know who the shady the CEO of Shady Grove is right now. I probably should. I don't know if Mark Segal held that position as he became the CEO of us fertility, according to his LinkedIn profile. He didn't I don't know what that means, if you just marked it, as you know, through that time through 2020. Or if if he was concurrently serving in that position, if they filled that with someone else, or if they decided not to feel that because they then had a parent company and US fertility and didn't feel that they needed that role, but perhaps a different type of President role. I don't know that somebody's probably going to get a bunch of texts saying how do you not know who this is and update me and you are absolutely free to do that. A big story on the fertility benefits coverage front is Walmart signing with kind body for a number of years, I thought that it was a one horse race with progeny, maybe it would become a two horse race with carrot, and then kind body started adding employer benefits as they grew into the company that they're building. And now maybe it's a two horse race, maybe it's a three horse race. Walmart's a pretty big deal. Insider reports that the benefits include financial support of up to $20,000 lifetime for eligible surrogacy and adoption costs that they are rolling this out company wide. And this is a company with 1.7 million associates but insider doesn't report how many of them will have access to that benefit or what the vesting terms are in other kind body news channel too. And Houston reports that came about he is opening and clinic there is that big news. I think it's big news because of what Houston is. Houston is sort of the anti Phoenix in terms of consolidation of clinics. Houston was a market that consolidated relatively early relative to the rest of the country. Of course, you had HFI Houston fertility Institute, which had sold their lab or at least part of their lab to Vera that was in the early days, sometimes in the mid 2000s. And then we've seen a lot more acquisitions since a spire had acquired Houston fertility specialists to have a spire Houston. They later went on to buy after they merged with Prelude and who had already acquired the Vera at that point merger acquired with Vera at that point they had, they had HFR as part of their portfolio, but then went on to buy the rest of the practice. The center of reproductive medicine was the last sizable independent practice in Houston. And then last year, they were acquired by Shady Grove fertility. So Houston has been a very consolidated market, there still are a few, much smaller independent practices there. Maybe they'll grow. But now there's more competition coming into that marketplace. Finally, the media outlets suggest reports on a update to a story that you've probably known about for some time, but this is the first time I've heard about this. And it sounds like they're now going after the clinic. So you've probably heard about the Sofia Vergara lawsuits that have been happening for the last decade or so with her ex fiance, Nick Loeb, if I'm understanding that correctly, where he was suing her to prevent her from taking the embryos from destroying the embryos. And he did not win that lawsuit over several years of litigation suggests now reports that the clinic itself is being sued. that art reproductive services, which I believe is our Reproductive Center in Beverly Hills, is now being named by Nick Loeb in the latest suit. This is reported as of October 9 22. I can't give you too many more legal insights here. I'm happy to have one of the reproductive attorneys that we've had on in the past, come back on and talk about more protection for you doctors and covered entities. But what I can see happening here is that the plaintiff, the ex fiance, didn't win against his ex fiance, who was probably well lawyered up. And so now he's going after another target. He didn't go after the fertility center at first went after his ex fiance he lost. And now for whatever reason, perhaps for this further say I have no idea is now going after the clinic. So I think it's something to think about for Fertility Centers that even if you might feel that, okay, this clearly isn't between us, you may need some extra legal protection, simply because you might be the easier target to go after in terms of arsenal of legal defense. That's a bit of my speculation. But that's the latest on that case that's being reported in the news. These are the insights that I have for you. Hopefully, you're talking about them at ASRM and sharing this episode and talking about these headlines, because we want to create a lot more news for you. In the future. We're working with journalists to bring original news stories for you. I've given you the stories that are currently in the news. We will expand the podcast coverage, we'll expand the news coverage. It's for you, the doctors and the nursing managers, the practice managers, the executives working in the fertility field, so that you have this news firsthand, into your mailbox. And thanks to the sponsors, that will be a part of it. And thanks to you all for listening. And if you've enjoyed this direction, please let me know please send me an email because it helps us to decide what content to cover next. Hope I got to see you at SRM and hope you have a safe journey back.
17:23
You've been listening to the inside reproductive health podcast with Griffin Jones. If you're ready to take action to make sure that your practice thrives beyond the revolutionary changes that are happening in our field and in society. Visit fertility bridge.com To begin the first piece of the fertility marketing system, the goal and competitive diagnostic. Thank you for listening to inside reproductive health