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5 Title>
COVID-19 Survivors
<Report Subtitle>
Industries which will gain from the global
lockdown
MarketLine Theme
MarketLine ThemeReport
Report
Report Code:
Report Code: <Code>
ML00026-033
Published:
Published: <Month
June YYYY>
2020
5 COVID-19 Survivors
3 UC&C Providers
Since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 3. UC&C Providers
to be a pandemic in March, the toll of lockdown measures across
the world has been severe in most sectors. However, there are Remote working has become essential for businesses under
sectors which have seen demand for at least some of their goods lockdown, and for many the shift has exposed a huge gap in their
and services increase during this otherwise disastrous period. IT infrastructure. Providers of Unified Communication and
Collaboration (UC&C) services have stepped in to facilitate
1. Pharma and Medical Devices remote working at scale, and a raft of marketing campaigns has
taken off as the market rapidly diversifies.
Racing to produce diagnostic tools, therapies and treatments for
COVID-19, pharmaceutical and medical device companies are 4. Consumer Tech Services
working both independently and in partnership with the public
sector to meet demand. New entrants from other sectors are Social media and streaming services have a larger captive
further intensifying competition, and tech giants are accelerating audience than ever in house-bound populations, and have seen
their long-term healthcare strategies. subscriber rates soar. The post-pandemic future poses a
challenge to these tech giants, which must retain new users.
2. Food Retail and Delivery
5. Private Equity Funds
Supermarkets around the world have become focal points of
demand as the hospitality sector effectively shuts down. Conventional private equity deals are in decline, but private
Restaurants and cafes which have managed to continue equity funds have an alternative form of investment – private
operating have done so through delivery services, which are investment in public equity (PIPE). PIPE is booming, owing to an
busier than ever. The confluence of these two areas of demand is unprecedented store of capital high demand from public
grocery delivery, a global trend which has been accelerated. companies whose valuations are plummeting despite good
prospects for recovery.
1. Pharma and Medical Devices
1.1. Big pharmas are competing to beat the virus
1.1.1. Work with the public sector massively outweighs that with the private
1.1.2. Gilead’s remdesivir is currently the biggest contender
1.1.3. Demand is needed to compensate for the risks to the industry
1.2. The US is leading a boom in medical device R&D
1.2.1. US leads global output, with companies competing independently and in partnerships
1.2.2. Greatest demand comes from in vitro diagnostics
1.2.3. External competitors are weighing in
1.3. Tech companies are bringing new healthcare solutions to market
1.3.1. Amazon’s healthcare ascendance has been accelerated
1.3.2. Tech giants are weighing in with tracking apps
2. Food Retail and Delivery
2.1. The door has closed on hospitality as another opens for food retail
2.1.1. Patterns of demand for groceries have changed
2.2. Sharing economy apps gain from both food retail and hospitality
2.2.1. Lockdown could hasten trends towards grocery delivery
2.2.2. COVID-19’s impact on diverse global delivery apps will be ubiquitous
3. UC&C Providers
3.1. IT providers will see lasting gains from a change in business practices
3.1.1. Remote working boom comes at a time of transition
3.2.1. UC&C providers have a crucial marketing opportunity
3.2. Diversification of the market is ramping up
3.2.1. The UC&C market will continue to diversify with disruptive new entrants
3.2.2. Cloud services have also become vital
4. Consumer Tech Services
4.1. Social media and streaming are benefitting from captive audiences
4.1.1. Streamers’ preparedness for long-term impacts will vary
4.1.2. Keeping users locked in will differentiate more established players
4.1.3. Social media also needs to retain new users after lockdown
5. Private Equity funds
5.1. Private Equity funds are eyeing up struggling public companies
5.1.1. PIPE deals are already on the rise
5.1.1. Private equity funds have huge stores of cash to invest
5.1.3. Strong but struggling public companies present an opportunity
1 Pharma and Medical Devices
3 UC&C Providers
Work with the public sector massively outweighs that with the private
The vast majority of COVID-19 sufferers are either in publicly funded healthcare systems or in countries where the government is first in line to secure
“
Partnerships with
treatments. In this environment, and in the interests of maximizing access to data and the efficiency of clinical trials, partnerships with public research
public research
bodies are more popular than independent R&D. Examples include Merck’s partnership with the Institute for Systems Biology in the US, or that between
bodies are more Clover Pharmaceuticals in Australia and CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. Independent research, however, appears to have
popular than yielded the most success, with Gilead’s remdesivir treatment showing the highest success rates.
independent
R&D Gilead’s remdesivir is currently the biggest contender
Gilead has developed its remdesivir antiviral to Phase III clinical trials in China and the US. Following a trial in the US sponsored by the National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the director of the Institute Dr. Anthony Fauci said it had proved that a drug could block COVID-19. The rate of
recovery was shown to be 31% faster for patients who used the drug. A key competitive feature of remdesivir is expected to be its required dosage, which
is smaller than those of competitors’ drugs and would reduce the risk of shortages.
8
1
The US is leading a boom in medical device R&D
Whilst pharmas work towards therapies, medical device manufacturers are seeing huge
demand for testing kits and ventilators, with the US leading R&D and production.
9
1
The US is leading a boom in medical device R&D
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1 Tech companies are bringing new healthcare
solutions to market
Other notable players in the healthcare sector will be the tech giants, who are emerging as key healthcare service providers more
quickly than was anticipated prior to the pandemic. Traditional providers of healthcare services in the private sector also stand to
benefit in some ways from the pandemic, as struggling public providers outsource capacity. However, these providers are
increasingly being nationalized.
Amazon’s healthcare ascendance has been accelerated
“
COVID-19 The quickest mover among the tech giants has been Amazon, which is rumoured to be in talks with public healthcare providers to
presents an deliver testing kits to patients’ homes. Having long piloted its Amazon Care service as an internal service for employees, it began
opportunity for delivering testing kits in the Seattle area in early 2020. The company has long been expected to have designs on the private
Amazon to bring
healthcare sector. Through its Alexa service and the wearables that it runs on (currently smartwatches), Amazon will be able to
its remote
monitor health indicators and automatically push treatments remotely, the same way it monitors consumer preferences and pushes
treatments to
market ahead of products (see Figure 3). Since COVID-19 has forced many patients to remain at home, it presents an opportunity for Amazon to bring
schedule its remote treatments to market ahead of schedule.
Tech giants are weighing in with tracking apps
Google and Apple have also formed an unprecedented partnership to provide a COVID-19 track-and-trace app on their smartphones.
Together they occupy the vast majority of the global smartphone market, and are offering a decentralized system that would avoid
storing location data. Track-and-trace apps, which alert individuals if they have been in contact with a COVID-19 carrier, are widely
seen as a pillar of the pandemic’s long-term containment. Centralized solutions which store the data gathered by the apps have
initially been favored by countries like the UK and Germany, although the latter has gone on to switch to the decentralized model. It
is debatable whether the cornering of a solution to the track-and-trace by Google and Apple will help to cement their dominance in
the smartphone market, or whether it is simply proof of that dominance.
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1 Pharma and Medical Devices
3 UC&C Providers
Supermarkets in most countries have stayed open during the COVID-19 lockdown, making them unique among
businesses which rely on physical congregations of customers. Initially, spikes in demand stemmed from panic-
buying, a widely-criticized practice which has tended to decline after the first few weeks of a country’s lockdown.
Increased demand has then been maintained, and driven even higher, by transferred demand from the hospitality
sector. One collateral effect of the latter sector’s particular vulnerability to lockdown measures has been the bulk
substitution of foodservice transactions for supermarket transactions. The extent of hospitality’s vulnerability is
illustrated in Figure 3.
The number of trips customers can make to the supermarket has also been limited in most countries. Restrictions
have been most extreme in China and Italy, where trips outside the home have been limited to one every few days.
It can be assumed, in light of the sales growth shown in Figure 3 and the limitations on journey’s outside the home,
that customers are spending a great deal more per trip. This is another change in the pattern of demand, and has Figure 3
made the competition for customer loyalty more intense than ever, with more turnover at stake in each visit. Figure
Monthly growth rate in retail sales volumes (March X
2020);
accommodation and food service business closures (April 2020).
Source: ONS
Source:
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2 Sharing economy apps gain from both food retail
and hospitality
Like supermarkets, food delivery apps have received a boost from transferred demand as restaurants are forced to close their doors.
These apps, the largest of which is Uber Eats, were already thriving off restaurant demand, delivering food for businesses which
previously lacked the logistics or incentives to operate their own takeout services. They have emerged as one of the most robust
areas of the sharing economy during the pandemic, and although grocery delivery is a relatively new frontier for them, it will be
pushed forward as well by lockdown pressures on supermarket logistics.
As virtual queues continue to back up for hours online, customers have gradually turned to the grocery tab on their Uber apps and
other platforms. Uber Eats saw a 52% year-on-year increase in gross bookings in Q1 2020, according to its earnings report. The
platform has already launched grocery deliveries in several new markets during the lockdown, partly in response to the threat to its
more vulnerable ridesharing business, but also to seize this abundant opportunity. With the prospect of converting first-time users to
online groceries after lockdowns are lifted, delivery apps are effectively seeing a massive marketing opportunity that will lock in long-
term growth.
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2 Sharing economy apps gain from both food retail
and hospitality
Figure 4
South America’s biggest delivery apps and their current Figure X
markets.
Source: Company Press Releases Source:
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1 Pharma and Medical Devices
3 UC&C Providers
Figure 5
Figure X
Projected increase in remote workforce for the UK, Q1 2020. (Based on total
workers in 2019 in roles that could reasonably be performed remotely)
Source: Office of National Statistics (ONS) Source:
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3 IT providers will see lasting gains from a change
in business practices
UC&C providers have a crucial marketing opportunity
Remote working under lockdown has accelerated a trend towards a permanent restructuring of business practices. This trend was previously being driven
by workers’ needs and preferences, gains in operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness, and pressure to reduce carbon footprints. It will now also be
driven by the more immediate pressures of the public health crisis. Tech companies are therefore using free trials to market their offerings and lock in long-
term loyalty from businesses in periods of transition.
Among the free trials on offer, some are targeting clients within the public sector, whilst others are reaching out to both public and private sectors (see
Figure 6). The majority fall into the former category, and are thus fostering positive PR for their brands whilst reaching a relatively untapped section of the
UC&C market. The latter category is home to established giants like Microsoft, Cisco and Google, and more recently Zoom, which having first made a bid
specifically for the education segment is now offering unlimited calls to free-plan users.
Figure 6
Summary of free trials
from leading UC&C
providers
Source: Company press
releases
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3
Diversification of the market is ramping up
The UC&C market will continue to diversify with disruptive new entrants
Despite the presence of established players, the market for UC&C will continue to expand at pace with other technological
advances. As recently as April 2020, for instance, the US telecoms giant Verizon acquired the BlueJeans video conferencing
platform. Verizon is a key player in the rollout of 5G connectivity, which will be another enabler of remote working. Remote
“
Tech companies working solutions like UC&C will be made massively more reliable and secure with 5G connection speeds, and Verizon makes sense
are using free as a UC&C provider. New entrants have come from other directions as well. The prior integration that gives Microsoft its edge in
trials to market the market is being challenged by offerings like Facebook’s Workplace social network and Google’s G Suite. Neither of these has
their offerings fully realized its potential in the UC&C space, but both could still cause disruption during a remote working transition.
and lock in long-
term loyalty from Cloud services have also become vital
businesses in A key technology which underpins UC&C, as well as increasingly underpinning business’ general IT infrastructure, is cloud storage.
periods of As remote working has accelerated the uptake of UC&C services, the migration of businesses to the cloud has in turn been sped
transition up. The tech giants are again the main winners here; Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Tencent dominate the market. There will also
be lost business for these companies, as potential enterprise-scale clients which are struggling financially amidst the pandemic
postpone their previous cloud migration plans. However, whilst the impact of this lost business remains to be seen, the new
imperative for cloud migration is likely to bring in more business from clients who have instead had to scale up their migration.
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1 Pharma and Medical Devices
3 UC&C Providers
The tech companies which appear to have received the greatest uplift from consumers in lockdown are streaming and social media
platforms (Figure 7). There is a larger captive audience for these services, which are gaining a greater share of attention. For the
streamers the uplift will be temporary, but it has come at a crucial time for new players in the field building their subscriber bases.
Social media companies, meanwhile, have gained daily active users for a variety of use-cases, and will have varying retention after
lockdown.
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4 Social media and streaming are benefitting from
captive audiences
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1 Pharma and Medical Devices
3 UC&C Providers
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5 Private equity funds are eyeing up struggling
public companies
Private equity funds have huge stores of cash to invest
It was widely reported at the start of 2020 that the amount of uninvested capital in private equity funds come January was at an all-time high of around
$1.5tr, much of which represents debt for those funds. The private equity sector has generally done extremely well since the 2008 financial crisis, when it
“
The amount of came to the rescue of various sinking companies in lieu of the big banks. The financial crisis brought about by COVID-19, which is expected only to deepen
uninvested until at least the first half of 2020, provides another opportunity for such rescue missions.
capital in private
equity funds Strong but struggling public companies present an opportunity
come January
Public companies which have been trading high since 2012, rewarding shareholders and buying back shares, now find themselves under-capitalized and
was at an all-time
with cash-flow problems as investor confidence plummets. This crisis of confidence gives private equity funds a way to put their cash to use in short-term
high of around investments, namely PIPE deals. The aim of the funds in these disastrous times will be to rescue the companies which have the best chances of recovery
$1.5tr after the initial shock of recession. The success of this strategy when it was last deployed during the 2008 financial crisis makes its use now seem
inevitable.
Top ten highest-value PIPE offerings in Q1 2020 The conditions for a storm of PIPE will be further enhanced by the
Announced Value (US$m) Company offering Fund acquiring
lack of competition for the equity at stake. Investments from
March 14,000.00 Alibaba Group Unconfirmed
corporate entities will be restrained because the business impact
May 3,304.65 Semiconductor Manufacturing Intl. Unconfirmed
January 2,900.00 Navistar International Corp Traton SE
of the pandemic will be ubiquitous. Meanwhile, private investors
February 2,842.40 Contemporary Amperex Tech. Unconfirmed with more short-term concerns are already showing alarm as
February 2,820.00 Bank of China Ltd Unconfirmed valuations tumble, and are unlikely to offer better lifelines than
April 2,500.00 The Charles Schwab Corp Unconfirmed the private equity funds.
February 2,310.00 Tesla Inc Unconfirmed
April 2,125.95 Lens Technology Co. Ltd. Unconfirmed
April 1,916.73 National Australia Bank Ltd Unconfirmed
April 1,817.29 ams AG Unconfirmed
Source: MarketLine Deals Database
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Appendix
Sources
MarketLine Advantage
GlobalData Intelligence Centers
Office of National Statistics (ONS)
Company Press Releases
Further Reading
MarketLine Theme Reports
• Coronavirus (COVID-19) Executive Briefing
MarketLine Case Studies and Analyst Insights
• Manufacturers Retool in Lockdown
• Food Retail: Companies have taken innovative steps to survive during COVID-19
• COVID-19 therapy development: Pipeline continues to expand but vaccines remain underdeveloped
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Appendix
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