Deep Dive: Invitae

Fools:

After completing a deep dive into Invitae (ticker: NVTA, Market cap: $1B), I recently built a position in my portfolio for the company. The headline about Invitae to whet your whistle: in March of 2015, during its first earning call as a public company, Invitae reported full year revenues of $1.6 million; just 2 days ago on the company’s end of year earning call they announced revenue of $147.7 million in 2018. I’ll let you do the math on that rate of growth, while I spend a little time providing some background on the company…

Here is what I learned in my research:

Company origins and leadership:

Invitae was spun out of Genomic Health in 2012 and IPO’d in February of 2015. The Company’s founder is Randy Scott who was co-founder of Genomic Health (Mkt cap $3B) and before that the founder of Incyte (mkt cap $18B), a drug developer. Scott is currently Executive Chairman of Invitae and owns roughly 6.5% of the company’s shares. Here is Scott’s bio from the Invitae website:

Randy is executive chairman of Invitae. Prior to this position, Randy served as chief executive officer. Prior to co-founding Invitae, Randy served as Genomic Health’s Chief Executive Officer from 2000 until 2009 and Executive Chairman until 2012. Under Randy’s leadership, Genomic Health developed and launched two revolutionary cancer diagnostics tests. At Incyte, Randy served in various roles from 1991 through 2000, including Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Scientific Officer. Randy holds a B.S. in Chemistry from Emporia State University and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Kansas. Randy is a prominent thought leader in the genomics and sequencing space and is the author of more than 40 publications, 20 patents, and is the recipient of numerous awards, which highlight his leadership in the personalized medicine space.

https://ir.invitae.com/governance/management/default.aspx

The CEO of Invitae is Sean George. His background is equally impressive:

Sean is chief executive officer of Invitae, whose mission is to bring genetic information into mainstream medicine. Prior to his CEO position, he served as Invitae’s president and chief operating officer. Sean was a co-founder and CEO of Locus Development, an early stage genetic analysis startup that later merged with Invitae. Prior to co-founding Locus, he served as COO at Navigenics, an early leader in personalized medicine. Previously, he has also served as SVP of Marketing and SVP, Life Science Business at Affymetrix as well as VP, Labeling and Detection Business at Invitrogen. In the past, he has also worked at McKinsey & Co. and Molecular Probes. Dr. George holds a B.S. in Molecular Genetics from UCLA, an M.S. in Molecular Biology from UC Santa Barbara, and a Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from UC Santa Cruz.

George gets the outstanding distinction of being the first CEO of a company I own in my portfolio to receive a 100% Rating on Glassdoor: https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Invitae-Reviews-E784446.ht…

While you are on glassdoor.com checking out George’s rating, I encourage you to also read the employee comments. 90% 0f employees would recommend the company to a friend and much of what is written conveys the excitement of working in a company growing fast and innovating even more rapidly.

Company mission/purpose:

Invitae believes that genetic screening will play an increasingly important role in the prevention and treatment of diseases. They aim to provide genetic screening at a low cost as part of everyone’s comprehensive preventative care and healthcare treatments. Here is the Company’s mission statement from there website:

Invitae is one of the fastest growing genetic information companies, whose mission is to bring comprehensive genetic information into mainstream medical practice to improve the quality of healthcare for billions of people.

And the company’s strategy to meet this mission:

Specializing in genetic diagnostics in clinical areas across all stages of life, Invitae is aggregating the world’s genetic tests into a single service with better quality, faster turnaround time, and lower prices.

Invitae utilizes an integrated portfolio of laboratory processes, software tools, and informatics capabilities to process DNA-containing samples, analyze information about patient-specific genetic variation, and generate test reports for clinicians and their patients. Invitae provides a variety of diagnostic tests with clinical utility in:

*preimplantation and carrier screening for inherited disorders
*miscarriage analysis
*pediatric and developmental disorders
*neurological disorders
*cardiovascular disorders
*metabolic disorders
*hereditary cancer

Products:

Invitae offers test in three key areas:

Diagnostics: Confirm a diagnosis, provide a better understanding of prognosis, and direct medical management;

Reproductive health: Help make healthy pregnancies possible with carrier screening and pre-implantation testing;

Proactive health: Determine a healthy adult’s predisposition to cancer, cardiovascular conditions, and more.

In this last category, “proactive health,” you can work with your doctor to order a test from Invitae, for the cost of $350, that will screen for 147 different genes “that are well-established indicators of a significantly increased risk of developing hereditary cancers, cardiovascular conditions, and other medically important disorders.” This information presumably can be useful in designing preventative actions on the part of the individual.

You can learn more about the genetics test catalogue that Invitae has developed here: https://www.invitae.com/en/

I find this company and the field of genetics to be fascinating. There is a lot more information about the company that I encourage you to explore. Go on their website, which is packed with company information; read each quarterly ER conference call transcript; dig into their quarterly and annual reports, and the company’s pre-IPO S-1, which clearly sets out Invitae’s business strategy, effectively how they plan to meet the company mission through execution on their business objectives. For me doing this has been a fascinating way to understand the laser focus this company has had and how that focus translates to striking results thus far.

My Investment Thesis: I am going to now dive into the qualitative and quantitative metrics that will allow us to see the performance of Invitae. But before I do that, I thought it would be helpful to define my investment thesis for this company, so here it is:

Given the advances in science and the rapidly declining cost in effort and expense in mapping the human genome, personalized medicine is the next big trend in healthcare in the developed world. Invitae, led by proven industry leaders and attracting significant capital for research and development, has developed products that are superior qualitatively and price point-wise in a disruptive market that is expanding rapidly. Finally, Invitae is proving that scaling is critical to it business model: by consistently increasing the number of sample tests they perform, they are able to bring down the cost of test to the consumer, thereby significantly increasing profitability over time.

So far in the life of Invitae as a public company, this thesis has prove out. What follows are some metrics that help us understand this better.

Key Business Metrics: (*All numbers rounded.)

2014-2018:

First lets look at some long term numbers that are key to understanding Invitae’s growth:

Volume: In 2014, the company accessioned 4,300 samples, by the end of 2018, 303K samples.

Revenue: In 2014, the company earned $1.6M, by the end of 2018, $147.7M.

COGS (Cost of Goods) Per Sample Test: in 2014, COGS=$1,320, by the end of 2018, COGS=$264.

Note that as volume increased, COGS decreased significantly. This, to me, proves out a key investment thesis that as the company scales it becomes more efficient. Next, we’ll take a look at 2018 and see that volume has grown consistently much faster than operating expenses, another key indicator of a path to profitability, IMHO. Also noteworthy is how consistently the company executed against these key business metrics. If you go through quarter by quarter you will see that the increases in each of these areas trended upward throughout this 5 year period.

Recent results (Q417-Q418):


_**Volume (samples Accessioned):**_     **Q4(17)     Q1(18)     Q2(18)    Q3(18)     Q4(18)** 
                                  53K        64K        73K       78K        87K

*102% growth in annual volume Y/Y

_**Revenue:**_                         $25M        $28M      $35M      $37M       $45M

*117% Growth in annual revenue Y/Y (includes a 1-time $1.9M payment from medicare--see earnings report for details)  
                     
_**COGS(per sample)**_                $322        $279      $279       $262       $243

*Invitae is committed to creating a differential cost advantage over competitors. Scale gives them the ability to achieve this.   

_**Gross Profits**_                   $8M          $10M      $15M       $17M      $24M
  
*Improved gross profit by 274% annually Y/Y. Gross margin of 46% in 2018, including gross margin of 53% in Q418.  
Company's long term gross margin goal: 50%.  Note: Given history to date, I believe they can exceed this as volume continues to scale up (but this is an informed guess). 

_**Operating Expenses** *$43M         $46M      $47M        $47M      $50*_

*Operating expenses increased 36% annually Y/Y.

An important point: While grew volume 102% Y/Y, OPEX grew just 36%. This is a critical data point when assessing Invitae’s path to profitability, IMHO.

Guidance for 2019

Invitae expects to accession more than 500K samples in 2019 and expects to generate more than $220M in revenue.

Here is an excerpt from the Earning Report Press Release on 2/19/19:

Full Year and Fourth Quarter 2018 Financial Results

Increased test volume by 102% year-over-year:
Accessioned approximately 303,000 samples in 2018, including approximately 87,000 samples in the fourth quarter, which exceeded the increased 2018 guidance of more than 285,000 samples expected in 2018

Increased revenue by 117% year-over-year:
Generated revenue of $147.7 million in 2018, including $45.4 million in the fourth quarter, which exceeded the increased 2018 guidance range of $140-145 million expected in 2018
Includes $1.9 million in payments from Medicare for Lynch syndrome analysis

Decreased cost of goods sold (COGS) per sample by 24% year-over-year:
Drove down COGS per sample to $243 in the fourth quarter
Improved gross profit by 274% year-over-year:
Achieved gross profit of $67.6 million in 2018, including $24.2 million in the fourth quarter
Reported 46% gross margins in 2018, including 53% gross margins in the fourth quarter

Total operating expenses, which excludes cost of revenue, for the full year 2018 were $190.2 million compared to $139.4 million in 2017. Operating expenses for the fourth quarter of 2018 were $50.1 million compared to $43.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2017. For the full year 2018, net loss was $129.4 million, or a $1.94 net loss per share compared to a net loss of $123.4 million, or a $2.65 net loss per share, for the full year 2017. For the fourth quarter of 2018, Invitae reported a net loss of $29.8 million, or a $0.40 net loss per share, compared to a net loss of $40.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2017, or a $0.78 net loss per share.

At December 31, 2018, cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash, and marketable securities totaled $131.9 million. Net increase in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash was $100.7 million in 2018 and $11.7 million for the fourth quarter, and cash burn was $97.6 million in 2018 and $17.0 million for the fourth quarter.

Conclusion:

I hope this gives you, my fellow Fool investors, a worthy introduction to Invitae as a potential investment. I think this company could be interesting for investors interested in rapidly growing companies in the health care sector and for those investors who are looking to diversify their hyper growth holdings beyond SaaS related companies (although there is a data analytics component to this company that I did not detail here–and that I am still trying to understand). I wrote this deep dive to encourage all of you to take a deeper look at NVTA, not as a recommendation for you to invest. Every investor should complete their own due diligence before putting their hard earned cash into buying shares in a company. I also wrote this so that the smartest investors on these boards will find the weak points in the investment thesis and the company performance and note those. We all have our blinds spots, it is the TMF mind hive that helps smoke 'em out…

I have thoroughly enjoyed diving deep into understanding this company. And thus far, my investment has been a good one. I built my position in this company starting on February 11th and added later in the week as I grew more comfortable with my investment thesis. My timing proved to be fortunate as my current position is up about 25% mostly as a result of Invitae’s blowout earning report 2 days ago (blind squirrel luck…). I don’t expect the ride to be this easy going forward, as this is a growing company that at some point, no doubt, will experience growing pains.

Finally, I must say I have enjoyed doing this wrote up as well. Largely because while writing this post i have finished off 2/3rd of a fantastic French 2015 Madiran (Chateau Laffitte-Testone), a rather bretty red that provides an extra kick to this Ticker Guide… All of that is to say, please excuse all typo and content errors, blame the magnifique French vintners and my propensity to post UI of red wine. :wink:

Best, Swift…
Long NVTA

55 Likes

Hi, thanks for the introduction to Invitae,

In your numbers I don´t see any reference to below, from https://www.fool.com/premium/coverage/investing/2018/11/07/h…

“Wavering confidence is not entirely surprising at this point in the company’s life. While Invitae has grown revenue at a triple-digit clip in recent quarters, the company’s operating losses have grown as well. Therefore, investors figured it would be better to wait and see if the business would continue to make progress on its stated goal to reduce operating cash burn by 50% by the end of 2018.”

Do you have any insight on that?

Thanks again!

ferran

ferren,

Given how quickly this company is growing, the disruptive nature of its product and the long run-way for growth, I am not concerned by cash burn at this point. Here is what the CFO said on the Conference call earlier this week about meeting the targets you refernced (btw, that link did not work for me…but no prob):

Shelly Guyer

One of our stated goals for 2018 was to reduce the quarterly cash burn, non-GAAP measure as detailed in our press release by 40% to 50% from the first quarter as we accepted the year. We reached our goal a quarter early, and by the end of the year, we achieved a 52% reduction, exceeding our original goal. The cash burn for the full-year 2018 was $97.6 million, including $17 million in the fourth quarter. We benefited this quarter from the one-time Medicare payments and good cash collections as payers clean the slate at yearend. We anticipate a small additional cash benefit in first quarter of 2019 from Lynch Medicare payments.

At this critical juncture, we have shown that we can control the four key levers of our business. We have proven that the model works and we’ve reached the point where we can make the decision to drive toward breakeven in the near term or continue to invest in our competitive advantage and continue capturing the growth and creating new market potential. We’ve chosen the ladder. Looking forward, We anticipate that the cadence of 2019 will follow 2018, higher burn in the first two quarters reflecting of deliberate investment in selling and marketing and R&D and then a controlled decrease in the back half as we reap the benefits of these investments.

Best, Swift…
Long NVTA

4 Likes

Therefore, investors figured it would be better to wait and see if the business would continue to make progress on its stated goal to reduce operating cash burn by 50% by the end of 2018."

I can take this one!

Invitae stated at the beginning of FY2018 that their goal was to reduce cash burn by 40-50% by the end of the FY. The actual met that goal a quarter early, getting their burn down to $18MM per quarter at the end of Q3 and stayed level at the end of Q4.

Their cash burn is still something to keep an eye on, but they are in a much better financial position than they were in just a year ago.

1 Like

Swift and Cloudatlas, thanks for the explanation.

Certainly interested.

YW, 8Joy. As I mentioned in the write up, it is important for you to do your own due diligence before investing in this (or any other company). NVTA’s share price has almost doubled in 2 months. It is a small cap company, growing at a rapid pace–share price will be volatile going forward. Any stumbles in the key business indicators I discussed will send the share price tumbling, I am sure. So caveat emptor-- make sure you are solidly comfortable yourself with the details of this company. Being a severe skeptic is one of the most important competencies of successful investing, IMHO. Best, Swift…

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Thanks for reminding me about NVTA

This is a useful supplementary article I previously bookmarked

https://www.cmlviz.com/research.php?number=12283&cml_art…

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That is a fantastic report, tchalla. Thanks for posting. +1 Swift…

This area they are in is interesting. Any other ‘genetic diagnostic’ company you’ve seen out there? How does this compare to say a 23&me?23&me is pretty much on the consumer side and promoting getting your DNA read to derive all sort of ‘fun’ information (disease probability; genealogy and history …). It would be more interesting if that becomes more ‘sticky’.
There are also laboratories that run gene sequencing and diagnostic services. Some are labs that your doctor or specialist can order genetic testing from. Is Invitae one of those? How do they differentiate themselves from these?

Do they have a technology that enables them to do things that other cannot do? Or can they do it faster and at a lower cost? I think with current sequencing technologies, you can get your entire DNA read for a few hundreds of dollars. Robust and reliable genetic tests that can be easily administered and that can be cheap will be very important. Ultimately, it could become like a pregnancy test that any individual could administer on themselves or someone else?

tj

1 Like

I don’t see any sort of moat at all here.
What’s preventing any larger company with a bunch of cash and a reputable brand name from replicating exactly what they do but at a lower price?
Cheers, PB.

tj:

As always, you’ve got questions. The answers, of course, lie in source materials like NVTA’s earning reports and conference calls; in analysts’ blogs; in news reports and press releases. All of this is available on the web as well as a wealth of other information regarding the company. It would be great if you dug around some to developed some of your own analysis and insights and brought them back to the board for all to consider and learn from. I look forward to reading what you discover and add to the conversation.

Bloke:

Read this report tchalla posted up thread, It says what I would say about moat:

https://www.cmlviz.com/research.php?number=12283&cml_art…

The most important thing to understand is that the underlying structures of healthcare as we have known it for generations are changing in the most fundamental ways. The ability to easily and affordably map and analyze the human genome has changed everything. You should not think of Invitae as a company selling a better widget. This is not a business model based on transactions, instead the company understands that the systemic change that is occurring in healthcare and it is positioning itself to take advantage of a core need created by that change. Invitae is a technology based health care company working to be right at the heart of this fundamental change in how we think about, predict and treat human health. The future of medicine will be technology and software driven and rely on dna data analytics specific to each individual. This is not your (or your father’s) medicine. Read the report above to better understand the potential in all of this…and as the author notes, the significant downside risks to the company as it tries to realize this vision.

Best, Swift…
Long NVTA

5 Likes

Swift:

right…just tell me something I don’t know. That was the purpose of the questions.

since you brought it up, I might think you have an idea. If you don’t or don’t want to answer, just say so. Or don’t reply. I ll undertand.

but thanks for the tip.

tj

1 Like

I read that report which purports to be an interview but is actually just quotes from the earnings call.
The numbers are impressive, but I don’t understand what is referred to as a “network effect” apart from the fact that healthcare insurance companies will pay for the analysis, and still don’t see any moat.
Best of luck with your investment and I hope that it works out for you, but I can’t find any sustainable competitive advantage here if a big company with deep pockets were to enter this market.
If they were to then they could possibly buy Invitae so that would obviously boost the stockprice, but if they decided not to then there is a risk of them being crushed.
Again, all the best but this isn’t for me.
Cheers, PB.

Hi Swift,

Very interesting company… thanks for detailed overview.

I do remember investing in GHDX and MYGN a few (3 or more) years back… And I remember GHDX co-founder starting a dedicated subsidiary… seems like thats the NVTA as spin-off here.

I did make some money on GHDX but honestly, both GHDX and MYGN were quite disappointing as growth companies. They went through painful process of getting one after other payer on board and started growing revenue… only to hit a wall on two fronts.

  1. the payers started worrying about monopoly testers like these who had upward of 75% gross margins (compared a more traditional test labs like DGX with less than half that GM%). So the payers started becoming more choosy in approving cost of these tests and probably contributed to slowing growth.
  2. Their addressable market didnt pan out to be that large… as they didnt quite kept adding new test that were meaningful (I would even surmise that it was the NVTA subsidiary that was working on market expansion while mothership of GHDX was left to stay focus on few existing tests)

All said and done, GHDX did better than MYGN (MYGN was more mature) but didnt really break out up untill recently. Their share price was stuck in low $30s between 2012 to early 2018. Agree that since then its broken out to now in $80s and growth seems to be resuming in 20% range but I dont know the story behind it. I need to check.

However, back to NVTA- with that background I read the CMLviz article, did a quick check on last 10 yrs GHDX revenue growth and quick scan of their website… I have to say I am not completely bought into this.

At a first blush, I get an impression of promotional CEO creating bizarre claims and showing pie in the sky to gain investor attention. Why do i say this?

  1. Recurring revenue claim: How is this a recurring revenue? Its a test, you get result and you make decision and thats it. Ok, you are very likely to take another test sometime in your lifetime for some other issue but thats not recurring.

  2. The data and network effect claim seems to be just as invalid. There are many many companies in this space with EHR, data management etc. I dont get what is the network effect here that can add value to NVTA business.

BTW - none of these mean to take away from what is fact - NVTA absolutely knows how to build a great genetics test company and their operational metrics are stellar.

My contention is that this business very likely has much lower ceiling than what the CEO is trying show to investors AND that this CEO has a history of taking a more promising product to its new gig.

I will try to keep my bias in check and really study this one better (hey this is only one in the universe of the stocks debated on this board that is growing at 80% y/y per latest quarter) but I am just not going to equate this to a SAAS or cloud type of scalable business and be very skeptical on network effect or recurring revenue claims.

Nilvest

7 Likes

tj: Apologies, no offense intended. As I said, you always have good questions; unfortunately, in this case, I don’t have all the answers. It would be great to have your help in fleshing this one out. But no need to do so, if not inclined. All the best.


Thanks Nilvest. All great points for more consideration. There is one thing you said that I don’t fully understand:

My contention is that this business very likely has much lower ceiling than what the CEO is trying show to investors AND that this CEO has a history of taking a more promising product to its new gig.

Can you elaborate on this point further, especially your second point?

Regarding genomic network: the company has has consistently articulated their strategy on this from the beginning. See pg 5 of S-1: https://d1lge852tjjqow.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001501134/8a8b793…

I appreciate your skepticism on actual progress towards network effect, as I have found it difficult to gain visibility into progress on this strategy but NVTA. On the other hand, as I mentioned in post above, if they can achieve it the potential for this company is far greater than what it is doing today. And that “if” is not entirely based on hope. If you follow the key company metrics that they set early in their history and have articulated across many earnings reports, this is a company that consistently hits its marks. The founder/leadership has a proven ability to create significant value in this field and they have demonstrated that they can compete well in the marketplace. So this is all evidence that they are a company that can deliver on the big vision. Not there yet, admittedly…will they get there in a manner that leads to profitability and staunches cash burn? That’s the million (billions) dollar question!

Best, Swift…
Long NVTA

1 Like

Nilvest,

They went through painful process of getting one after other payer on board and started growing revenue… only to hit a wall on two fronts…

Those two reasons may be part of why MYGN provided disappointing returns, but this Fool writer provides another reason: in 2016, NVTA beat them in the market place on price and with superior tests.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/09/17/myriad-genetics-sh…

Best, Swift…

Hi all,

I found these boards about five months ago and have greatly benefited from the knowledge and resources offered by the community here. This is my first post and I figured I’d try to contribute as I’ve been looking a bit at NVTA after Swift’s great introduction.

On the recurring revenue issue, this is definitely not a SAAS company. That said, their aim seems to be to eventually offer many tests that can pull from the same genetic information throughout the lifetime of a patient. Here is a quote from the S-1 link Swift posted earlier:

"The decreasing cost of DNA sequencing is allowing us to provide an increasing amount of genetic information for the same price and thus aggregate an expanding number of genes into a single service. As a result, our assay captures more genetic information than the physician may initially request. Only those genes that are requisitioned by the ordering physician are analyzed by our medical team and reported to the ordering physician and patient. The additional information is stored electronically on behalf of the patient should their physician request any of it in the future… “Ultimately, we believe we can significantly improve patient care by offering comprehensive genetic testing, where reports for large numbers of genetic conditions can be available for additional charges over the lifetime of a patient.”

Also, on the CC, the CEO was asked about the pipeline for new tests. Here’s part of his response:

“And, so over the next 18, 24 months, we will continue down that path and on and on, disease area by disease area, adding panels, adding genes, up to and including exomes and genomes… And then of course continue to expand new content, the continued menu expansion as we continue in all disease areas.

To me, it sounds like it is still early days with genetic test development but they are working to provide a “comprehensive” range of offerings. Additionally, I can see how a genetic database of patient information could have quite a range of revenue possibilities in the future. Their goal is to reach 1 million customers by 2020. I initially was very interested in the progress they’ve made to reduce the costs of these tests. This seems to be allowing for very fast growth and I think their low cost business model has the potential to push more widespread adoption.

What I am most concerned about is their competitive moat. They have many competitors as they are operating in so many different areas. Just as one example, I looked at their new Non-invasive Prenatal Screening Test (NIPT or NIPS). They’re actually outsourcing this currently through Illumina’s Verifi test with plans to eventually bring it in house. This test is also offered by Myriad, Ariosa Diagnostics, Laboratory Corporation of America, Progenity, Mayo Clinic Laboratories and ARUP Laboratories. From what I could find, their nearest competitor in price is Ariosa’s Harmony test at around $800. I’m unsure what happens to their volume if competitors simply decide to lower their prices in response.

Additionally, I then had a look at some of their technology offerings. The screenshots for CancerGene Connect look nice but I wasn’t able to find much more on it. Their family history tool has a single one star review from 2014 on the apple app store. Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. If they indeed want to build an amazon-like network for genetic testing, I think they need to work significantly to develop their software to build out systems for patients, clinicians and other groups to access and manage all of their information. They mention in their IR videos that they have a team of software developers who are working to create their proprietary software but I’m not seeing anything that even comes close to the ‘stickiness’ and functionality of the companies we follow here.

I was initially very excited by the company, their tremendous growth and their business model centered on lower cost. I’ll continue to look further but holding off for now as it seems to be extremely early innings in a very competitive market.

Jeff

10 Likes

Great points Jeff, thanks for sharing this research.

Hi Swift, my point was that after taking GHDX public, this CEO then went and worked on NVTA and while they spun it off, GHDX investors wouldn’t really benefit from his work on NVTA (his next gig)… though GHDX did invest into NVTA… he could instead decide to expand GHDX portfolio and business and bring everything he is bringing to NVTA to GHDX itself… it was a decision that he made, in an effort to maximize his personal outcome but not really maximize GHDX investors’ outcome.

this is in contrast to what some of the great companies we discuss on this board - SQ, SHOP, TWLO etc… whose founders and management are extremely focused on expanding their product portfolio… e.g Jack Dorsey could spin off its CASH app or lending business as a separate company as it is a huge space by itself… and leave SQ as SMB payment processor company… that would be much better for Jack but not so much for SQ investors… rather than doing something like that, Jack is focused on growing SQ with all the adjacent products and business he can.

Hope this makes my point clear.

2 Likes

Jeff and Nilvest, Seriously helpful thoughts and info. Thanks.

Nilvest, you have now made me curious about how the spin-off of NVTA came about. Hadn’t looked at that at all, nor really thought about it. Do you know if there is anything in writing about this? I’ll dig around to see what I find too, of course.

Great first post Jeff! Look forward to hearing your thoughts on “the boards” more.

Best, Swift…
Long NVTA

Hi Swift, i havent really tracked GHDX or NVTA for couple of years now… I just remember I was the founder / CEO transitioned to chairman and then transitioned to internal incubated startup… and GHDX didnt really grow up to its promise… I did make money on GHDX and MYGN but it was not good RoI with time… and then I had Athena at that time which was also falling short of promised outcome… so i am really careful of genetic testing and also of health care information (EHR) type of plays.

BTW - Your post on NVTA triggered me to look again… NVTA certainly has executed well and grown tremendously… lets keep exchanging notes, I am keen to see reasons on why I should forget the past!!