One of Our Favorite Beneficiaries of Re-Opening
Physical therapy is one of our favorite sectors for re- opening in health care and the SPAC, FAII, which is merging with ATI Physical Therapy, is a great way to play it. The Health Care recovery has lagged many other sectors, but the signposts that it is catching up continue to emerge. ATI Physical Therapy’s 1Q21 looks right in line with the late 1Q21 volume recovery that we anticipated and have heard from so many companies report. Trends continued to improve in April, and we suspect into May as well. We've been tracking Google Trend data as a proxy for patient volume measured by WebPT, the EHR and RCM company. If the trend holds, PT volume is breaking to the upside in 2Q21 which agrees with ATI's comment that visits per day hit 21K in April after reporting ~19.5K in 1Q21. They also said some locations are already above trend, reflecting a wave of pent- up demand we think will be the story of 2021.
"While certain geographies currently exceed 100% of pre-COVID visit volumes (2019 comparative), others are still in process of recovering. Across our portfolio, visit volumes were in the high 70%'s of pre-COVID levels as we entered 2021, increasing to approximately 83% as we exited April 2021," said Labeed Diab, Chief Executive Officer of ATI Physical Therapy.
We continue to see a path into the $30s for FAII/ATI.
All data available upon request. Please reach out to with any inquiries.
Thomas Tobin
Managing Director
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