HealthBeacon is an Irish digital therapeutics company that develops products for managing injectable medications for people in the home. The Dublin headquartered company partnered with Cantor Fitzgerald in 2020 for corporate financing, and in December 2021 was listed on the Dublin Euronext Growth Market (ticker code: HBCN). The company is the first alumnus of Euronext’s pre-IPO programme, IPOready, to list on Euronext markets. HealthBeacon has also acquired five new clients, three pharmaceutical companies and two programmes through the HSE and the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). The current client roster includes includes Amryt, Novartis, NHS, HSE, Sanofi, Accord Healthcare, Clonmel Healthcare, Teva, Viatris, and AbbVie.

Head of Corporate Finance, Conor McKeon sat down with CEO Jim Joyce to talk through the company’s recent successes. 

Congratulations on the recent listing on Dublin Euronext Growth Market – a great achievement for such a young company.  Can you tell me how you found this experience?
Thanks to the team at Cantor Fitzgerald for all of the support. I found it to be game changing for the organisation, we had to mature all aspects of the organisation while investing heavily in how we communicate to investors. Energising and exhausting in the same breadth.

Was listing on a public market an objective of yours from when you set up HealthBeacon?
It was always an option and a quiet ambition, but we weren’t single minded about it. We sized up our options, tested the market and just got a great reception from potential investors.

Aside from raising further growth capital on Euronext, how do you believe being listed on a public market will assist HealthBeacon in its next stage of growth?
Aside from capital we have created a much stronger organisation that our large pharma and healthcare clients can rely on to do transparency, reporting and corporate governance.  Down the line it will give us access to additional capital and a currency for acquisitions.

What sort of impact has COVID 19 had on trading over the past 2 years and how has the company adopted to this changed world?
For us it has been a pandemic of two faces, the world has started to move rapidly towards remote patient monitoring and the digitisation of heath delivery which has accelerated deal making and put companies like HealthBeacon at the centre of an important transition to digital healthcare tools. On the other side our supply chain has been challenged and we have entirely new work practices. We miss getting together with team members and customers where so much magic and serendipity in business can happen and are delighted to see the light at the end of this tunnel.

HealthBeacon is a great example of an Irish business accessing a combination of private equity capital from both institutional and retail investors. What advice would you give to a start-up company trying to access both private retail capital and institutional private equity?
My advice would be to spend the time learning how to articulate your company’s story and your game plan for growth in simple accessible language. Your story should inspire engagement, emote passion and convey the competence to deliver it.  Build a team of experts and employees that help validate your offering and de-risk for new investors.

Was the access to the Employment and Investment Incentive Scheme (EIIS) a key source of capital for HealthBeacon?
Yes, 100%. The EIIS scheme has been an anchor consistently in our investment rounds.

Are there any changes you would like to see to the EII Scheme to help other upcoming high growth indigenous businesses?
Clarity in the scheme is so important, it needs to be stable and reliable for both investors and entrepreneurs, in the past we have faced delays or confusion in the rules.

What do you do in your downtime?
Lots of family time, travel, playing basketball with my boys and cold-water swimming!

Conor McKeon is Head of Corporate Finance at Cantor Fitzgerald Ireland