Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: All Right, we want to go back to health and
Speaker 2: wellness for a moment and turn to our health. The
Speaker 2: company is on a mission to help wearers of their
Speaker 2: smart ring live healthier and longer lives by providing personalized
Speaker 2: health data. And in fact, the company's latest funding round
Speaker 2: has or a value at five point two billion dollars.
Speaker 2: We're pleased to say joining us right now is the
Speaker 2: CEO of or Health, Tom Hale. Tom, great to have
Speaker 2: you on Bloomberg Television. I want to start with connecting
Speaker 2: the dot between the weight less loss drugs that JLP
Speaker 2: one drugs and what you provide to your users. Have
Speaker 2: you seen the popularity of those obesity drugs. I'm curious
Speaker 2: what kind of impact or spillover it has to the
Speaker 2: market that you are serving.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So we started in sleep and you know, for everyone's information,
Speaker 4: we make a wearable ring that tracts your biometrics and.
Speaker 3: Gives you insights and data.
Speaker 4: And of course one of the things that are stomers
Speaker 4: are extremely interested in is metabolic health. One of the
Speaker 4: things that we did last year was start to enable
Speaker 4: people to track their meals by taking a photograph and
Speaker 4: seeing the results of what they had eaten and then
Speaker 4: start to map that to their metabolic impact. We signed
Speaker 4: a partnership with dex Comm and also received investment from
Speaker 4: Dexcom and Dexcom is the maker of continuous glucose monitors,
Speaker 4: which is a way you understand your metabolic health through data.
Speaker 3: So in Aura, what we see now.
Speaker 4: Is that people who are generally trying to monitor and
Speaker 4: manage their health and improve their and optimize their health
Speaker 4: are really focused on their metabolic health.
Speaker 3: And GLP ones basically affect your metabolic health.
Speaker 4: Now here's a little known fact metabolic health and GLP ones.
Speaker 4: They act on your body in a way very similar
Speaker 4: to sleep. So the more sleep you get, the better
Speaker 4: off you are. It helps reduce it helps reduce your
Speaker 4: appetite at midnight. Snacking is a real thing. If you
Speaker 4: don't sleep, you want to eat, and it also helps
Speaker 4: you feel more satisfied. So one of the things we
Speaker 4: do is we help people understand the impacts of their
Speaker 4: behaviors on all sorts of their health, including.
Speaker 2: Metabolic got it, got it, thank you for explaining that.
Speaker 2: So the ring itself can cost about three hundred dollars,
Speaker 2: and then there's a membership fee as well a monthly
Speaker 2: fee of about six US dollars a month. Do consumers
Speaker 2: have subscription fatigue? And I ask that because your monthly
Speaker 2: fee is pretty low relative to a lot of other
Speaker 2: subscriptions out there, and I'm just wondering how you arrived
Speaker 2: at that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 4: I think people do have subscription fatigue, particularly for things
Speaker 4: that don't provide value. Of course, your health is priceless,
Speaker 4: and so for people who get the value out of
Speaker 4: managing and monitoring their health, actually they're willing to pay
Speaker 4: quite a lot more than the modest subscription fee that
Speaker 4: we charge. The thing that I find most interesting, as
Speaker 4: somebody who's been in subscription businesses for most of my life,
Speaker 4: is that the retention rates.
Speaker 3: For Aura are literally off the charts.
Speaker 4: We are better than best in class than consumer subscription
Speaker 4: products like Netflix or Spotify. It's really sunning, and I
Speaker 4: think that goes to the fact that if you've invested
Speaker 4: in a piece of hardware, which people do, they buy
Speaker 4: the ring first before they pay the subscription, and you
Speaker 4: care about your health, you will retain really, really well.
Speaker 4: And so our subscription business is both large and very
Speaker 4: very stable.
Speaker 3: So we're very pleased with the outcome.
Speaker 1: I am curious, Tom, where's the competition? And when this
Speaker 1: ring first started to become popular, there was this idea
Speaker 1: that you know, you were going to be knocked off
Speaker 1: in a big way. And I know there's been a
Speaker 1: few entrants in this space that have kind of come
Speaker 1: and gone or certainly didn't get traction. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: what are you doing that? I guess these other companies can,
Speaker 1: and particularly the larger companies, you know, the Apples and
Speaker 1: Samsungs of the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think the most important thing is that we've been
Speaker 4: doing this for a long time. As you probably know,
Speaker 4: the power of AI and machine learning really depends on data,
Speaker 4: and we've been collecting not just data from our users,
Speaker 4: but scientific research data to really inform our algorithms and
Speaker 4: inform our product. We're a science first company. We depend
Speaker 4: always on the research and always on the differentiation that.
Speaker 3: Science can provide.
Speaker 4: The other thing that's really important to recognize is that
Speaker 4: as people come to this market, many of them come
Speaker 4: to it thinking about the problem that they're solving is fitness.
Speaker 4: This is sort of a classic use case for wearables,
Speaker 4: So the fitbit, that's how people think about it. Whereas
Speaker 4: I think our approach has been to think much more
Speaker 4: broadly about health. So, for example, we started in sleep,
Speaker 4: we expanded into women's health. Now we're looking at cardiovascular
Speaker 4: health and metabolic health. As we started this conversation and
Speaker 4: the breadth of that offering, people don't necessarily just want
Speaker 4: to think about one dimension of their health.
Speaker 3: They want to think about all of them. So what's
Speaker 3: next for this company?
Speaker 1: We talk about a company that's more than ten years
Speaker 1: old right now, it's at phenomenal growth, phenomenal revenue. And obviously, Tom,
Speaker 1: your appointment a few years ago a CEO raised a
Speaker 1: lot of speculation that they would be ready to go public.
Speaker 1: That was twenty twenty two. Is twenty twenty five? Are
Speaker 1: you going public this year?
Speaker 4: You know, I don't think we have any plans to
Speaker 4: go public, and quite frankly, as someone who's operated public
Speaker 4: companies my entire life, I'm really enjoying.
Speaker 3: Operating a private company.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so I don't think we've got a lot
Speaker 4: of ambition to go public anytime soon, and if we do,
Speaker 4: we will definitely let you guys know.
Speaker 2: Yes, let's make sure that that happens. Tom final question
Speaker 2: to you, what is your fastest growing customer. Is it
Speaker 2: the young people or is it someone who is on
Speaker 2: a new fitness kick because of something like GLP one.
Speaker 2: Are they seniors?
Speaker 3: Well, this is stunning.
Speaker 4: So we have customers across the entire spectrum, you know,
Speaker 4: from CEOs to moms, to busy dads to teenagers and
Speaker 4: college kids who are managing their health. The interesting thing
Speaker 4: to me is that two big changes in our demographic
Speaker 4: in the last twelve months have been one women. We
Speaker 4: actually used to be majority men and we've slipped to
Speaker 4: majority women.
Speaker 3: And that's on the back of our like.
Speaker 4: FDA approof features like fertile window or just basically the
Speaker 4: ability to predict when you're going to have your cycle,
Speaker 4: which by the way, the ring can do very accurately
Speaker 4: because it's using temperature to predict it. The other side
Speaker 4: of it, of course, is young people have been really,
Speaker 4: really into health and really into being proactive about their health,
Speaker 4: and we've seen that group, basically kids and young adults
Speaker 4: from from eighteen to twenty five is the fastest growing
Speaker 4: demographic and is about a couple percentage points from being
Speaker 4: the largest demographic for AURA. Really interesting to see how
Speaker 4: important health is to the youth and the young people
Speaker 4: around the world.
Speaker 1: All right, Tom, I appreciate you taking time for us.
Speaker 1: Tom Hale CEO, thanks for making really hell or a
Speaker 1: health for now.