Share to twitterBest Buy in the past year has made $1 billion in health care related acquisitions targeting seniors. Best Buy is known as the largest U.S. specialty electronics retailer, but some day, it may be better identified with healthcare instead.
Just how serious is Best Buy in healthcare? Company executives have referenced ‘health” 44 times on earnings calls since 2018, versus only two times before that, Morgan Stanley analysts calculated. In the past year, the electronics retailer also spent about $1 billion, or 6% of its market cap, buying three healthcare services, “surprisingly” for a company historically known for growing without acquisitions, according to the report.
GreatCall had more than 900,000 paying subscribers when Best Buy bought it. CST, known for remote patient monitoring, has about 100,000 subscribers, some of whom access its services as a supplemental benefit under their Medicare Advantage plan.The electronics retailer in August also acquired the predictive healthcare technology business of BioSensics and hired its data science and engineering team based in Watertown, Massachusetts.
Geek Squad’s team of 20,000 is another advantage that would be hard for Best Buy’s rivals to replicate, according to Morgan Stanley.