Books, clothes, groceries, voice-controlled devices, streaming services… what are they missing? Ah, yes - healthcare.
What it means: Amazon has acquired PillPack, a mail-order pharmacy that delivers pre-sorted packets of prescriptions drugs to people’s homes, for a billion dollars. The company automates a lot of pharmacists would usually do: checking when refills are due, confirming insurance, etc.
It’s particularly upsetting news for Walmart, who were PillPack’s second highest bidder at $700 million. News of Amazon winning the deal meant a bunch of people pulled their money out of Walmart, sending the company's share price down by $1.03 per share… which doesn’t sound like much, but given there are three billion shares of Walmart out there, not investing another $300 million into their offer for PillPack ended up costing the company 3 billion dollars in other people's investments. Talk about (non-)buyer’s remorse.
The CEO hasn’t said yet whether he wants to make this new healthcare hobby an international thing, or what his next investment might be - though we do already know he’s partnered up with two other major companies to provide healthcare for employees in the US.
