Prenuvo CFO hones strategic finance approach
One of the top things on Jill Woodworth’s to-do list as the newly-minted CFO of proactive healthcare firm Prenuvo is understanding “how the finance function is partnering today with the rest of the executive team,” the Peloton alum told CFO Dive.
After taking the top finance seat at the medical full-body scanning technology provider in May, Woodworth is still focusing on learning the business and how to best invest in finance to ensure it’s supporting the company’s goals.
An area where Woodworth has seen an “early signal” for future growth is in strategic finance, she said. While the accounting and tax teams function well, for example, there’s room to hire individuals with key financial planning and analysis skills that can aid the business in making future decisions, whether in terms of product or opening a new clinic, she said.
“There’s obviously been rigor around some of that, but really having finance play a role and developing that strategic finance muscle is something I’m excited to build out,” Woodworth said in an interview.
Understanding the why
Before joining the Redwood City, Calif.-based company, Woodworth most recently served as CFO for data intelligence firm Alation, according to her LinkedIn profile. Her previous roles include a four-year stint as CFO for exercise equipment firm Peloton Interactive, where she helped to nurture the company through its pre-public days to becoming a multi-billion-dollar entity, with Peloton reporting $4 billion in annual revenue for its fiscal 2021, according to company documents. Woodworth departed the company in September 2022, according to her LinkedIn.
“I think the company’s at a very interesting new inflection point where, I’m being brought in to help them scale and grow,” Woodworth said of Prenuvo. “It’s very reminiscent of the early days of Peloton.”
Similar to the exercise bike company, Prenuvo is a “really interesting product that has low brand awareness,” Woodworth said, “but it’s growing very predictably.”
Prenuvo, which provides full-body scans supported by a full-body image library and AI technology, has seen demand for its services steadily rise, with the company having conducted 130,000 scans and debuting its “Advanced Scan” product in February — which combines its scanning technology with blood diagnostics, according to the May press release announcing Woodworth’s appointment. Advanced Scan already accounts for a quarter of the company’s business, Prenuvo said.
To support that growth, a skilled FP&A team is crucial. For Woodworth, FP&A is the area of the finance team that “really partners with the different business leaders to understand the why,” she said. “Because…if something’s not working well, or we missed a number, or we exceeded in some metric, knowing that as soon as possible and understanding the why helps us course correct over time. So I do spend a disproportionate amount of time in more FP&A-oriented activities, especially when accounting teams are working quite efficiently.”
The question of scale
Woodworth is also keeping a close eye on how the company can continue to manage its cost as Prenuvo looks to scale. There are several similarities between the MRI scanning provider and Peloton here, she said; with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for Peloton “exploded, and overnight, the company needed to scale a lot of fixed costs in a vertically integrated model to meet that demand,” she said.
Once things normalized, that meant thinking through “how to unwind some of those fixed costs,” as well as how to best leverage relationships with third parties and best manage that growth, she said.
“As I look at Prenuvo, hopefully we don’t have a black swan event like COVID-19, but it’s really just thinking very smartly,” she said. So as the company is looking to scale, the question is, “how do we scale some of those fixed costs, and where do we look to bring in partners to help complement our offering and keep our cost structure as flexible as possible?” she said.
Woodworth is also thinking carefully about “how the company will be capitalized to meet its growth objectives over the next couple of years,” she said. In February, the company announced the close of a $120 million Series B funding round, co-led by Forerunner Ventures, Left Lane Capital, and an existing investor, Felicis, according to a press release at the time.
With the Series B, the company is well-positioned in terms of liquidity, Woodworth said, noting Prenuvo’s CEO and founder, Andrew Lacy, has tried to “achieve a break even, slash, slightly profitable business” from its inception.
“There’s a lot of cost control, with a lot of things that you know aren’t necessarily true of Series B, Series C, companies, and so it does give me a little bit of latitude to rethink what our capital structure is,” she said.
With the current macroeconomic volatility, Woodworth would rather be over- than under-capitalized, she said. The finance chief is also mulling the best ways that capital can be put to use; the business, which currently operates 20 clinics across the U.S., could continue to grow its clinic footprint, she said, but it could also continue to expand its product offering.
“I also want to think a little more about whether or not we ought to be investing in more technology to eventually bring down the cost of the scan to reach more people,” she said of potential growth opportunities. The company operates as a cash-pay service at the moment, with a 60-minute, full-body scan costing $2,499, according to its website. “Then the third bucket is, what’s our optimal level of marketing spend? It’s a company that has relatively low brand awareness today, and is that something we should really invest behind?”
link
