First Half of 2014 Tough on HIT Vendor Stocks

The stock price indices of public companies in six healthcare industry sectors rose during the first half of 2014, while the seventh sector–health information technology vendors–fell.


The stock price indices of public companies in six healthcare industry sectors rose during the first half of 2014, while the seventh sector--health information technology vendors--fell.

That is one of the findings in a mid-year 2014 report from Elmhurst, Ill.-based Healthcare Growth Partners, which provides investment banking and strategic advisory services to healthcare companies.

A market basket of 23 health information technology companies saw its stock value drop by 9.6 percent during the first half of the year after posting strong gains during 2012 and 2013. In another sector, four HIT services companies--Computer Sciences Corp., DST Systems, Huron Consulting Group and Navigant Consulting--cumulatively rose 6.4 percent. Other sectors with stock market gains included pharmacy benefit management firms (8.7 percent), contract research organizations (1.4 percent), healthcare facilities (15.4 percent), payers (18.1 percent) and disease management firms (15.5 percent).

Seven HIT vendors made gains in their stock price: Allscripts, CPSI, Everyday Health, Imprivata, IMS Health, MedAssets and WebMD.

The list is considerably longer for those who lost stock price value during the first half of 2014: Advisory Board, athenahealth, Benefitfocus, Castlight, Cerner, Covisint, Healthstream, Health Insurance Innovations, HMS Holdings, Medidata Solutions, Merge Healthcare, Premier, Quality Systems Inc., Streamline Health, Veeva, and Vocera Communications.

Castlight (-61.8 percent) and Covisint (-61.4 percent) had the largest stock price losses, while the biggest gains went to Everyday Health (+36.9 percent) and WebMD (+25.2 percent).

The Health Information Technology and Health Information Services 2014 Mid-Year Review, which also covers HIT market evolution trends, mergers and acquisitions, and investments in HIT companies, is available here.

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