Waiting to consult doctors at their surgeries is becoming old-fashioned among China’s early adopters. Remote medical consultations via platforms such as JD Health have surged during the pandemic. Expect the trend to outlive coronavirus lockdowns. JD Health’s Hong Kong listing, in which it sold $3.5bn of shares, is well timed.
The stock rose 56 percent on Tuesday, valuing the offshoot of ecommerce giant JD.com at more than $40bn. Hot money stacked up for the postponed Ant Group listing was one reason for the jump. The industry’s potential was the other.
China is a perfect test bed for digital medicine. Public healthcare is under-resourced. The private sphere lacks a restrictive US-style oligopoly. The large ageing population is prepared to pay for the best doctors.
There is room for more. JD Health launched online consultations less than three years ago. The sessions work well for conditions not requiring physical examinations. They are mostly free.
Drug sales are the main revenue source, alongside specialist consultations, making JD Health’s the largest online retail pharmaceuticals platform in China. That creates conflicts of interest for online physicians as big as those that conventional practitioners wrestle with.
Charging for consultations would resolve these. Public national medical insurance cannot be used to cover fees from online consultations, absent regulatory reform. But China’s growing middle classes can be persuaded to stump up.
JD Health’s parent is a bigger concern for investors. JD.com will be hit by Beijing’s new antitrust regulations. JD Health’s main competitors are healthcare units of Alibaba, Ping An and Tencent, tech giants equally exposed to official disapproval of cross-selling and cross subsidies.
It helps that China’s online healthcare sector is worth just $4bn within a $1tn local healthcare market, too small to inspire direct attacks. The desperate need for medical resources during the pandemic has kept regulators friendly, for now. Companies such as JD Health can curry further official favour by helping with a push to digitise medical records.
JD Health’s enterprise value of 14 times trailing sales is high even by US tech standards. But smaller rival Alibaba Health Information Technology trades at 20 times. Medium-term prospects in this increasingly prosperous, urban nation are good. You might even say they are the picture of health.