IVF clinics look to remote consultations to bounce back from pandemic

Australian IVF patients have faced delays in their treatments as centres reopen after the coronavirus lockdown, but the nation's ASX-listed operators say they are confident business will bounce back from the pandemic, which has hit share prices hard.

‘‘Once we restarted, we experienced a backlog of patients, and delays in starting treatment occurred,’’ said Kate Munnings, head of Virtus Health.

‘‘This has been resolved and our patients are able to access fertility treatment as readily as they were before COVID-19.’’

Virtus Health chief executive Kate Munnings said delays to IVF treatments had now resolved. Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

Virtus Health and rival Monash IVF have seen hundreds of millions of dollars wiped off market valuations over the past 12 months, with share prices down by almost a third since January.

Virtus shares were trading at $3.41 in early afternoon trading, about a 30 per cent decline on where they started the year. A year ago, the company's market cap was $361.1 million; this week it is $263.7 million. Monash has seen similar drops, with its share price down 38 per cent since January and its market value shrunk to $229 million from $328 million last June.

The fertility treatments sector was hit hard early on in the pandemic, with centres forced to shutter due to restrictions on elective surgery.

Now that elective procedure scheduling has been relaxed in Australia, the operators are working hard to clear the backlog of patients, while also implementing new safety measures.

"We have heavy floor markings, reconfigured waiting rooms, giving people the option to wait in their own vehicle for their appointment... we also have temperature checking for patients," Monash IVF chief executive Michael Knaap said.

He denies the recovery phase and new precautions have limited Monash's capacity. While treatments in NSW and Victoria had resumed in slightly slower numbers than in other states, the transition to remote appointments had streamlined the process, he said.

The cost and duration of fertility treatments can often rise with the number of planning appointments and nurse check-ups necessary, and the finance and payment arrangements which need to be set up by patients. Operators such as Monash are hoping to keep many of these consultations online when the pandemic has passed.

"We're putting a lot into that digital engagement," Mr Knaap said.

Ms Munnings said Virtus had implemented strict safety measures including temperature checking everyone on the company's sites, disinfecting all surfaces between patients and testing patients for COVID-19 when fertility specialists think this is required.

She said the business had now worked its way through the backlog of patients and this had been achieved by doing fewer face-to-face appointments.

"We continue to offer fertility consultations and counselling via telehealth where possible," she said. "As a result, our capacity to assist couples is now back to normal."

Analysts are sounding increasingly optimistic for the industry, despite the fact that share prices have been depressed even prior to the pandemic.

Morgans equities analyst Scott Power said the IVF sector had been fiercely competitive over the past few years, which had affected the price of companies like Virtus. However, IVF would be a market where customers were willing to spend regardless of broader economic trends, he said.

"IVF is not as 'discretionary' as you might think," he said.