Amwell made a bang with its Wall Street debut Thursday, trading under the ticker $AMWL on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock jumped 28 percent after opening above range at $18 and was up further in after-hours trading Thursday night.
The Boston-based telehealth company helps providers, insurers, patients, and innovators to deliver greater access to more affordable, higher quality care. Dr. Ido Schoenberg, chairman and CEO at Amwell, says that now was the right time for the company to begin trading publicly.
"We felt that the level of maturity of the company, the readiness to provide transparency with great governance is such that the public option is a great option for us. We have a big appetite for a big global agenda."
Schoenberg added contribution from multiple sources was important to his company's future, saying, "When you look into the future, realizing that we have so much more to do, we felt that wouldn't it be great if the contribution would not come only from strategic partners, but from people and individuals that have one thing in their agenda, and that is realizing our mission."
The mission Amwell is currently embarking on has not come quickly. During a time where initial public offerings (IPOs) have become all the rage on Wall Street — tech companies such as Snowflake and JFrog have experienced success in their first days of trading publicly this week — Schoenberg notes that it took his company over a decade to reach the level they're at today.
"People look at us as an overnight success, but they tend to forget that it's been 15 years in the making. We're also not measuring ourselves a day at a time," he said, noting that building a successful healthcare business is a long and complicated road.
Like many telehealth companies during the coronavirus pandemic, Amwell has seen increased activity over the past several months. "People were locked in their home and as a result many of them were forced to try telehealth for the first time. When I say people, I don't only mean patients. I very much also mean providers. Many doctors and nurses tried telehealth and loved it, as we knew for years," Shoenberg added.
But for Amwell's CEO, who says his company has taken an interest in chronic care, it's the level of trust patients have with their healthcare providers and making sure those patients return to health that is most important.
"When you talk to your own doctor from a hospital that you trust or a clinic that you know, that have access to your records, you can really talk about the entire continuum of care," Schoenberg says. "We really don't measure ourselves by total visits. If we do our work really well, we would like to see less visits on our platform."
Nvidia on Wednesday became the first public company to reach a market capitalization of $5 trillion. The ravenous appetite for the Silicon Valley company’s chips is the main reason that the company’s stock price has increased so rapidly since early 2023.
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A big-screen adaptation of the anime “Chainsaw Man” has topped the North American box office, beating a Springsteen biopic and “Black Phone 2.” The movie earned $17.25 million in the U.S. and Canada this weekend. “Black Phone 2” fell to second place with $13 million. Two new releases, the rom-com “Regretting You” and “Springsteen — Deliver Me From Nowhere,” earned $12.85 million and $9.1 million, respectively. “Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc” is based on the manga series about a demon hunter. It's another win for Sony-owned Crunchyroll, which also released a “Demon Slayer” film last month that debuted to a record $70 million.
The Federal Aviation Administration says flights departing for Los Angeles International Airport were halted briefly due to a staffing shortage at a Southern California air traffic facility. The FAA issued a temporary ground stop at one of the world’s busiest airports on Sunday morning soon after U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy predicted that travelers would see more flights delayed as the nation’s air traffic controllers work without pay during the federal government shutdown. The hold on planes taking off for LAX lasted an hour and 45 minutes and didn't appear to cause continued problems. The FAA said staffing shortages also delayed planes headed to Washington, Chicago and Newark, New Jersey on Sunday.
Boeing workers at three Midwest plants where military aircraft and weapons are developed have voted to reject the company’s latest contract offer and to continue a strike that started almost three months ago. The strike by about 3,200 machinists at the plants in the Missouri cities of St. Louis and St. Charles, and in Mascoutah, Illinois, is smaller in scale than a walkout last year by 33,000 Boeing workers who assemble commercial jetliners. The president of the International Association of Machinists says Sunday's outcome shows Boeing hasn't adequately addressed wages and retirement benefits. Boeing says Sunday's vote was close with 51% of union members opposing the revised offer.
