Ping An Good Doctor, China’s largest health care platform, reports jump in users amid coronavirus, smaller than expected annual loss
- Online medical consultation an efficient, convenient method during outbreak, company’s chairman says
- Company posts net loss of 733.86 million yuan, lower than a forecast of 872 million yuan
Ping An Healthcare and Technology, which reported a smaller than expected annual loss on Tuesday, said its online health care platform had seen a jump in the number of new users amid the coronavirus outbreak.
The platform – already China’s largest by registered users – recorded an increase of 10 times in the number of new registered users every day on average between January 22 and February 6, compared with the first 21 days of January, the company said. Its daily online consultations had also grown nine times on average over the same period.
Ping An Healthcare and Technology, better known as Ping An Good Doctor, is providing free online and telephone consultations to people concerned about catching the deadly virus.
“Throughout the coronavirus outbreak, it has been demonstrated that online medical consultation is an efficient, convenient method that allows patients to avoid catching infectious diseases,” said Wang Tao, its chairman and chief executive, adding that it was referring suspected patients to hospitals.
The outbreak, China’s worst infectious disease epidemic in decades, has prompted unprecedented and economically damaging mass quarantine policies. Moreover, it has killed more than 1,000 people and infected more than 44,000.
The company, a five-year-old unit of Chinese giant Ping An Insurance, posted a net loss of 733.86 million yuan (US$105 million) for 2019, down from a loss of 913 million yuan the previous year. It was also lower than the 872 million yuan average loss estimated by nine analysts Bloomberg polled. The analysts expected its pre-tax net loss to narrow to 620 million yuan this year, before it turns a profit of 40.8 million yuan in 2021.
Its revenue grew 51.8 per cent last year from 2018 to 5.06 billion yuan, on the back of rising fee-paying patrons and higher fees per customer. The increase in revenue was driven mainly by a 109 per cent jump in online consultation revenues to 858 million yuan, with the profit margin expanding to 44 per cent from 40 per cent.
But while the sales of Ping An Healthcare and Technology’s online health care products have risen 56 per cent to 2.9 billion yuan, its profit margin has fallen from 10.8 per cent to 8.1 per cent.
It had 3 million monthly paying users – 26 per cent higher year-on-year – out of 66.9 million monthly active users and 315.2 million registered users, at the end of last year.
Since late last year, Ping An Healthcare and Technology has been co-promoting its service packages, partly by integrating them into Ping An Insurance’s critical illness product.
In August, it launched Private Doctor, a family doctor service comprising four packages for children, adults and seniors, with the aim of targeting China’s more than 100 million-strong middle class families.
The company is targeting 10 million users of the service by 2024. The average spending on the platform’s online pharmacy and other health care products by families is twice that of other users.
With annual fees ranging from 1,099 yuan to 7,999 yuan, Private Doctor users are entitled to unlimited online consultations, medical appointment services, health checks, discounts on medicines and accompanied hospital visit services for seniors.
Private Doctor is an upgrade on the 199 yuan Health 360 product. Health 360 and Private Doctor together earned more than 400 million yuan for the company last year.
Ping An Healthcare and Technology’s shares closed down 3.8 per cent at HK$76.45 on Tuesday, ahead of the results. They have rallied 22 per cent from mid-January, when the coronavirus outbreak gathered pace, compared with a 4.5 per cent loss on the Hang Seng Index.
