The Tyro Payments Ltd (ASX: TYR) share price is lifting after the company announced 2 positive updates today.
At the time of writing, the Tyro share price is trading 5.26% higher at $3.60.
What's driving the Tyro share price today?
COVID-19 trading update
Tyro has remained committed to providing weekly transaction value updates for greater transparency regarding the impact of COVID-19 on its business.
In today's update, the company revealed a 102% date-on-date increase in transaction values between 1 May and 7 May from $0.263 billion to $0.531 billion. From a year-to-date perspective, transaction values have increased 21% from $17.45 billion to $21.12 billion.
May's doubling of transaction values likely reflects the cycling of weak COVID-19 driven comparables from a year ago.
Tyro acquires Medipass
Alongside the regular COVID-19 trading update, Tyro announced its acquisition of health fintech, Medipass, for $22.5 million. The acquisition's total consideration is expected to comprise 60% cash and 40% Tyro shares, with the completion set to occur this month.
Medipass has created a digital health payment platform allowing healthcare providers to accept healthcare payments without the need for a terminal. Its multi-sided platform links healthcare funders, healthcare providers and patients to streamline the claims approval and payment acceptance process.
Medipass currently integrates with 17 cloud-based practice management and bookings systems, with approximately 4,400 active healthcare providers working with it.
Tyro believes Medipass' functionality and clientele complement its existing health vertical and integrated practice management systems. The company will integrate Medipass's digital health payments platform with Tyro's card-present health solution to create a unified health payments offering. This solution will deliver both card-present and non-card present transactions.
Both the COVID-19 trading update and telehealth acquisition appear to be well received by the market, with the Tyro share price making up for lost ground after falling almost 10% last week.
Management commentary
Commenting on the acquisition, Tyro CEO and managing director Robbie Cooke said:
Our combination with Medipass is a significant step in building out Tyro's core health vertical and is consistent with our strategy to build our offering through acquisition where there is a distinct opportunity to gain scale and to enhance our position in a key vertical.
Making a comeback
Just when things started to get better for the Tyro share price after the initial COVID-19 selloff last year, its business was hit with a significant terminal outage. This, in turn, instigated a scathing short-seller attack from Viceroy Research in January this year.
Its shares have only recently managed to recoup the losses from those negative events.
