At the Goldman Sachs Annual Global Healthcare Conference in Miami, Teladoc CEO Chuck Divita laid out the virtual care giant’s strategy under his leadership after taking a year to do a deep dive on the business.
Divita said the company was at a pivot point, and it’s creating room to make more investments for short-term and long-term growth. Mergers and acquisitions are going to be part of that strategy.
“We’re looking to create efficiencies, but also to create capacity to invest during this important moment in time,” Divita said onstage.
Divita laid out the four strategic themes Teladoc has been working on in 2025: enhancing its offerings in integrated care to drive more value for clients, leveraging its scaled mental health position to serve more people, expanding internationally and creating operational excellence.
Mala Murthy, chief financial officer of Teladoc, stressed that they are repositioning the company under Divita’s leadership and that they have already seen improvements in removing cost, streamlining parts of the business and embracing a flatter business structure.
With a year under his belt, Divita said he is ready to start making more moves.
Divita and Murthy explained the purposes of the two acquisition deals the company already sealed in 2025: at-home diagnostics company Catapult in February and mental health provider Uplift in May.
Both offered key competencies to bolster Teladoc. Divita explained that through Catapult’s at-home blood draw test, the company can engage more patients. In the visit with the virtual nurse that follows, many patients have discovered they have high blood pressure or diabetes for which they weren’t getting care. Identifying new or unmanaged conditions offers Teladoc a way to plug patients into other service lines.
“So it’s just another place for us to meet people where they are, help them with preventive care, identify conditions and get them plugged in,” Divita said.
The acquisition of Uplift created an easy pathway to accepting insurance coverage for its mental health services through BetterHelp, which was previously a cash-pay only business. The company was making progress organically to contract with payers, it said, but UpLift streamlined the process.
UpLift contracts with all major commercial insurers, including Medicare and Medicaid, according to a press release from Teladoc. The acquisition also further cements Teladoc’s investment in the virtual mental health market, despite the company’s struggle with its BetterHelp direct-to-consumer segment. Teladoc executives expect the acquisition of UpLift to bring in more customers and increase member duration by 30%, they said in their April earnings call.
The company seems ready to continue its M&A roll to reach new markets and engage customers.
“We’re at an important point in the company, at this pivotal time, and we’re going to make investments, not just for the short term, but things that we think are going to start to increase that TAM (total addressable market), start to increase the scope and range of what we can do. And we think that’s, you know, the right place to deploy our capital,” Divita explained onstage.
Murthy explained the strategy and balance between organic and inorganic growth.
“We think about our overall capital spend in a balanced way between organic and inorganic,” Murthy said. “So we will invest appropriately in our data and analytics and engagement. We’ve talked a lot about engagement and engaging the customer. Product enhancements that, you know, we talked about increasing the competitive marketplace. Absolutely, we will focus on innovation. We have the right team in place. The fact that we’ve now brought all of the clinical organizations together is going to help that as well.”
She continued: “Inorganically, as we think about the priorities we will focus on if there are any patterns around engagement, if there is anything that would expand the aperture in terms of services, which I’ve talked about international, is there anything interesting? It’s always going to be strong strategic rationale, and it has to make sense for us in terms of driving our top line growth on a sustained basis.”
Murthy said Teladoc is “modestly” above its targets for this year, and it will continue to be prudent and cut costs where necessary. She explained the company will seek to drive more value in its patient interactions and increase engagement and enrollment.
Teladoc’s first-quarter 2025 revenue was $629.4 million, a decrease of 3% from the first quarter last year, according to the company’s earnings report released in late April. Integrated Care segment revenue grew 3% year over year to reach $389.5 million in the first quarter. BetterHelp’s revenue fell 11% from last year, bringing in just $239.5 million. The revenue was also down from the last quarter of 2024, when its revenue decreased 10% year over year to $250 million.
Teladoc had a pretax goodwill impairment charge of $59.1 million in the first quarter of 2025. It did not include the charge in its 2025 outlook.
Teladoc’s 2024 fourth-quarter revenue was $640.5 million, down 3% year over year. In the fourth quarter, Teladoc’s integrated care business brought in revenue of $391 million, up 2%. A significant part of the company’s $1 billion loss in 2024 was due to its $790 million noncash goodwill impairment charge incurred by BetterHelp.
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