Ro CEO not rushing IPO
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Ro's Zach Reitano at Axios BFD. Photo: Sam Popp on behalf of Axios
Benefits that exist in the private market are growing, Ro CEO Zach Reitano said at Axios' BFD event in New York on Tuesday.
Why it matters: The company has raised over a billion dollars, but it sounds like Ro won't be going public anytime soon.
The big picture: Reitano told Axios' Dan Primack "never say never," when asked if he could see it going public, but he touted benefits of being a private company.
- "Why do companies go public? The primary reasons have been, historically, to raise capital or to create liquidity for employers and investors," says Reitano.
- "I think that that ... now can increasingly be done as a private company."
Flashback: Reitano started the company as a goal oriented health care company, with vertical integration being the key.
- The company built its own electronic medical records from scratch, has its own certified cap credit and lab, own and operate six pharmacies distributed throughout the country, with some of them doing compounding in house.
- Ro's four big categories are metabolic health, sexual health, dermatology and fertility and 70% of members are over the age of 40.
Yes, but: While GLP-1's are all the rage today, they are not new and have helped treat patients for two decades.
- "The early data on the breadth of the label and attacking the chronic conditions where we know that negative health happens if we don't do anything, are quite impressive," he says.
- "But I think it would be really intellectually dishonest for us to say we're as a society, going to put tens of millions of people on this new drug and the only things we're going to learn are exclusively positive."
The bottom line: "The data that we have for the vast majority of people, not all, but the benefits of GLPs far outweigh the risks," he says.
Go deeper: Obesity management set for a shakeout
