Rounds: Take the Money and R1, Megan Scheffel, Dan Bise, and Jeremy Friese

Stephanie, it's full and so much news is out there right now, so we have to talk about it.

I think the first big one is the Aura IPO.

And I have one question for you, my friend.

Is this a hardware company? Is this a health data company?

Health data is such a bold claim to make.

I would say it's a health tech company, but it's a hardware-focused health tech company.

And the valuations that they are hoping for sure don't reflect that.

I think I saw news this morning that they're targeting a $40 to $44 range that values the company, according to Reuters, at anywhere from $14 to $15.5 billion fully diluted at the high end of the range.

Bold strategy.

What do you think?

Yeah, I was reading the same report this morning, and I think it's really going to be, like you said, it's going to be that fundamental question because it is still predominantly a hardware business.

They have showed, though, strong growth in subscriptions.

So there is a very good digital aspect to what they're doing.

And to me, the very long-term strategy here, if they do want to pull off a valuation like that, which is a very strong multiple on revenue, which we should talk about.

But it's really going to be in the health care side of the business.

And by that, I mean, what are they doing with health plans, employers, all the big decision makers and stakeholders across the industry, and not just the consumer business? And I have seen Aura recently making a lot of moves there, also partnering with a lot of care delivery companies, which we talked about on this show.

So it's all clearly set up for that eventual move more into the enterprise.

And the underlying argument there is that this health data that they are collecting through the wearable is going to be really relevant to prevention and long-term health of a population.

so fully agree with that and i think that makes it a fundamentally stronger business than fitbit which is going to have a lot of parallels too but let's just get down to brass tacks on the valuation here so the valuation and i don't have auras projections at all but if we assume similar seasonality from last year to this year which is probably overstating things given last year you saw a really big ramp in membership in the fourth quarter And if you also assume that they have a similar growth rate of 75% next year compared to this year, which is in line with what they've been growing, that also probably overstates it.

All of that gets you to $2.8 billion of revenues.

And that is a very generous number for their 27.

Even with that very generous projection, it's still five to six times revenues.

And that's a comparison.

to Fitbit came out at, I think like two times.

They peaked at five times before being taken out at less than one time.