When the FDA cracked down on your core product and Novo Nordisk slapped you with a lawsuit, most companies would hunker down. Hims & Hers chose to go shopping instead. The telehealth company announced Thursday it’s acquiring Australian digital health platform Eucalyptus for up to $1.15 billion — the biggest deal in the company’s history and a clear signal that CEO Andrew Dudum is betting the company’s future on international expansion.
The deal structure tells you a lot about how HIMS is managing risk. Only $240 million hits at closing, with the rest spread across deferred payments over 18 months and performance-based earnouts running through early 2029. Eucalyptus brings $450 million in annualized revenue and over 775,000 customers across Australia, Japan, the UK, Germany, and Canada. Its brands include Juniper (weight loss) and Pilot (men’s telehealth) — essentially mirror images of what Hims already does in the U.S.
The strategic logic is straightforward: when your domestic market is under siege, go where the regulators aren’t. Last year’s Zava acquisition gave HIMS a footprint in the UK, Germany, France, and Ireland. Eucalyptus deepens that international bench and adds the Asia-Pacific region. Combined, these moves transform Hims from a U.S. telehealth startup into something closer to a global consumer health platform.
But there’s a catch. HIMS is spending most of its cash pile on this deal, which was once a safety net for investors nervous about the company’s legal exposure. The Novo Nordisk lawsuit over Hims’ $49 compounded version of Wegovy isn’t going away, and the broader FDA crackdown on compounded GLP-1 drugs remains the elephant in every room. As Leerink analyst Michael Cherny put it, the “go/no-go on oral Wegovy and the future path for the entire compounded GLP-1 category will remain the dominant theme for HIMS until it is addressed.”
Shares rose 7% in premarket trading on the news, though the stock remains well off its highs — bouncing off a 17-month low. For traders, the setup is classic high-risk, high-reward. If the international expansion works and the legal clouds clear, HIMS could look absurdly cheap a year from now. If the GLP-1 business collapses and Eucalyptus doesn’t scale, they just spent their war chest. Either way, you can’t accuse Dudum of playing it safe.