Small Survey Points to Physician Adoption of WBMD's (WBMD) Medscape App - Leerink Partners
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Steven Wardell from Leerink Partners conducted a small survey of physicians going online and sees an acceleration of physicians using WebMD's (NASDAQ: WBMD) Medscape app. He raised his price target to $55 from $54 and reiterated his Outperform rating.
The survey consisted of calling 3 physicians, reviewing mobile app utilization data, and speaking with management. In the 8 categories of professional information that Leerink researched, physicians are accelerating the pace at which they are substituting toward mobile apps (on tablet and especially smartphone). This accelerating shift is driven by the easy availability of larger-screen smartphones (such as the iPhone 6 Plus, released 9/14) which are more suitable for medical content consumption and workflow steps and the greater utility offered by increasingly enhanced medical mobile apps such as the Medscape app. This in turn drives Medscape utilization and attractiveness to advertisers.
One physician specialist who was in late career cited that once he had switched to an iPhone 6+ in 2015, he had shifted his habit from getting 25% of his professional content on his smartphone to 90%, with his primary 2 apps being his Epic EMR app and Medscape.
The continued growth of the Medscape app is significant for WebMD's value. Pharma advertising accounts for an est. 58% of WBMD's sales in 2015 and the Medscape accounts for ~70% of that pharma ad spend.
For an analyst ratings summary and ratings history on WebMD Health Corp. click here. For more ratings news on WebMD Health Corp. click here.
Shares of WebMD Health Corp. closed at $43.33 yesterday.
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