Intuit Broadens With Healthcare SaaS Acquisition

In my most recent post on Intuit (NASDAQ:INTU), I said that the company had two choices in broadening its SaaS strategy: to broaden its market to include businesses that are outgrowing QuickBooks, and to broaden its portfolio of offerings. Intuit’s recent acquisition of SaaS healthcare company Medfusion for $91 million indicates that it is following the second option. Let’s take a closer look.

Medfusion makes health record software and software that lets patients communicate online with doctors, clinics, and other healthcare providers to schedule appointments, pay bills, request prescription refills, fill in medical forms, and review lab results. Its software is used by more than 30,000 healthcare providers, most of them small businesses. This acquisition will accelerate Intuit’s healthcare strategy. Intuit already has a healthcare presence: in 2005, its Quicken Health division developed Intuit Expense Manager for managing healthcare bills, and last year it launched Expense Tracker for paying healthcare bills online. A very large portion of the healthcare market is small physicians’ offices. This strategy pretty much keeps Intuit within the small business category but adds vertical specific expertise. I like the strategy.

With the U.S. government pushing for digitization of the healthcare sector, there is a lot of interest in the SaaS healthcare sector. I have recently done interviews with CEOs of healthcare companies including Kryptic, with revenue in the double digits, which uses email applications to bring collaboration to the healthcare industry. Navinet has about 40% of U.S. providers using its multipayer portal that automates health plans. Phytel, with $20 million to $50 million in annual revenue, looks to motivate patients to reconnect with physicians, optimize healthcare with better decision-making data at the point of care, and extend its reach beyond the walls of a practice.

Intuit last week reported strong third quarter results. Q3 revenue grew 13% to $1.6 million, exceeding its guidance. Operating income was $888 million, up 16%. EPS was $1.78, up 21%. Q2 analysis is available here.

Intuit reported strong growth across all segments. Employee Management Solutions revenue grew 13%. Revenue from Financial Management Solutions grew 16%, Payment Solutions was up 8%, Consumer Tax Group grew 12%, Accounting Professionals grew 15%, and Financial Institutions grew 21%. Other Business revenue grew 20%.

Based on its strong results, Intuit raised its full-year revenue and earnings guidance. For fiscal year 2010, the company expects revenue growth of 10% to $3.41 billion to $3.425 billion, EPS of $1.69 to $1.72, and operating income of $840 million to $850 million. The stock is trading around $34.52 with market cap of about $10.84 billion. It hit a 52-week high of $37.52 on May 3.