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My worst investment: Teladoc Health $TDOC
Today I'll talk a little about my worst loser to date, which is Teladoc Health $TDOC. In 2020 I got drawn into the company while sitting in the waiting room of my doctor for an hour just to get a 30 second exam that could've been done via Telehealth. I got really drawn into the bubble and ended up at one point making $TDOC 17% of my portfolio by continuous dip buying. I ended up selling it at a 75% and since then the stock has fallen another 29%. Luckily this was in my experimentation phase where I did not commit too much cash into the portfolio, so the loss wasn't too big in $ terms, within the four digits. In hindsight I learned a lot from the mistake and here is the summary of my learnings:
- Try to get first-hand experience if you invest in consumer-facing products.
- Dilution is a real cost and can't be ignored under any circumstance!
- Invest alongside Owner-operators with skin in the game.
- Management integrity is vital as well as them holding their promises.
If you want to read my full article on my mistakes, check it out here: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4521285-teladoc-why-i-was-wrong-about-this-stock
I entered similarly to you— I had bought Livango because of the diabetes application. And then when they were bought out by Teledoc I decided to hold on. Totally decimated everything I had made on Livango.
Anyway, I think there is a place for Telehealth in the industry, but just not as big of an opportunity that Teledoc had made it out to be.
@nathanworden I think there is an opportunity, but it could be more of a commodity business. Livongo was a story management failures rather than a bad industry in my opinion. I also paid way too much and shouldn't have kept averaging down. Water the weeds, rip out of the flowers kind of thing.
@stonkmetal Thanks for the write up. Sizing really matters with new business models especially for growth companies.
Nice summary! I agree with Todor, sizing and diversification is really important for this type of companies
Appreciate the honesty here. This name has been through the ringer and most are too ashamed to admit they owned it.
@investmenttalk Yep, I wear it like a batch of honor. I did a similar Post Mortum article on $ADBE as well (al though that investment thesis did not break nearly as bad).
Great post! I never owned it but I definitely got close to buying into the hype. I wonder if they are a takeover target 🎯
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