Babylon Holdings Limited (Babylon), a digital-first value-based care company, and Alkuri Global Acquisition Corp (Alkuri Global), a special purpose acquisition company, today announced that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement. Upon closing of the transaction, the combined company will operate as Babylon and plans to trade on Nasdaq under the new symbol “BBLN”. The transaction reflects an initial pro forma equity value of approximately USD4.2 billion. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2021.
Babylon was founded in 2013, with the mission to put accessible and affordable quality healthcare in the hands of every person on Earth. Babylon is poised to re-engineer the USD10 trillion global healthcare market to better align systemwide incentives and shift the focus from reactive sick care to preventative healthcare, resulting in better member health, improved member experience and reduced costs.
The company is scaling at c5x annual revenue growth in 2020, and is expected to grow by c4x in 2021, covering millions of people across four continents.
Babylon helps patients through two primary channels: Babylon 360, its digital-first value-based care service; and Babylon Cloud Services, a suite of digital self-care tools that enables patients and clinicians to gain insights and information either through Babylon directly or through Babylon’s roster of top-tier partners. Combined, those services cover 24 million people across the United States, Canada, Europe, Africa and 13 countries in Asia. In 2020, the company helped one patient every five seconds with approximately 6 million patient interactions. Moreover, Babylon has a 95 percent user retention rate and a five-star rating from more than 90 percent of its users.
Supported by capital raised through the transaction, Babylon will continue to expand its services both with existing and new customers. Babylon has achieved strong traction in the US market and is focused on building on this momentum by rapidly scaling its operations.
Dr Ali Parsa, Founder and CEO of Babylon, comments: “We founded Babylon on a fundamental belief, that it is possible to make quality healthcare accessible and affordable for every person on earth by combining the latest in technology and the best in medical expertise. We have achieved one of the highest growth rates every year since our inception, with consistently high clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction. Becoming a public company is just another step in our journey. We are at the very beginning of our work to re-imagine our sector, to make it digital-first and prevention-first and shift the focus away from sick care to true health care.”
“Babylon’s patient-first approach – coupled with its focus on accessibility and affordability – has made it one of the most exciting growth stories in health and technology,” says Alkuri Global CEO Rich Williams. “When we founded Alkuri, we set out to identify high-potential, disruptive companies with visionary founders and strong teams. Babylon is all of those things, and we’re excited to work with them on their truly world-changing mission.”
The transaction is expected to deliver up to USD75 million of gross proceeds to fund Babylon’s pro forma balance sheet, including the contribution of up to USD345 million of cash held in Alkuri Global’s trust account assuming no redemptions. The combination is further supported by a USD230 million private placement (the “PIPE”) – funded over 85 per cent from new, external institutional investors including AMF Pensionsförsäkring, Sectoral Asset Management and Swedbank Robur with strategic investor Palantir – at USD10.00 per share.