Hims & Hers soars after agreement to buy Zava, expanding geographic footprint

Hims & Hers is up about 6% in premarket trading after the health and wellness platform announced an all-cash deal to acquire European peer Zava.

The purchase would enhance Hims’ presence in the UK and marks its foray into the German, France, and Irish markets. Management expects the deal to close in the second half of this year and be accretive by 2026, per the press release.

Hims raised $1 billion in capital in May, which CEO Andrew Dudum said would help the company invest in focus areas like international expansion and artificial intelligence.

Hims first expanded to the UK in 2021 when it acquired London-based vertical health platform Honest Health.

Hims, which currently had 2.4 million subscribers as of its most recent quarterly report, will inherit Zava’s 1.3 million subscribers. Zava appears to own its own doctor networks and pharmacies in the UK and Germany, according to the company’s terms of use for those countries.

Hims has been on a rollercoaster this year as investors get a clearer picture of the company’s future after it lost its ability to make exact copies of popular weight-loss drugs last month. It has shifted focus to offering other weight-loss drugs and partnering with Novo Nordisk to offer Novo’s branded drugs on its platform.

Hims also has its eyes on expanding into hormone treatments. In the past year, it has acquired a peptide facility in California and an at-home testing lab in New Jersey that will support that expansion.