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Hinge Health is considering delaying its IPO plans amid a plunging stock market.
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The physical therapy startup still hopes its "recession-proof" model will draw investor attention.
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Some tech companies, including Klarna and StubHub, have reportedly already delayed their IPO plans.
The physical therapy startup Hinge Health is considering delaying its IPO as the public markets plunge in response to President Donald Trump's tariff plans, Business Insider has learned.
But the startup hopes to forge ahead with its spring initial public offering timeline, as a provider of critical health services.
In March, Hinge Health filed its S-1 form to go public and hoped to start pitching investors toward the end of April, a person familiar with the efforts said.
After Trump announced sweeping retaliatory tariffs on Wednesday— sending the public markets into a frenzy — Hinge Health could be forced to reassess those plans.
Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs are set to range from 10% to 50% on imported goods from about 90 countries, the president said Wednesday. Since that announcement, the S&P 500 has plunged more than 9%.
Hinge Health had hoped to go public sometime in April or May, keeping its plans flexible with the market volatility in mind, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak with the press.
This person said Hinge would still seek to go public unless it couldn't draw investors' attention away from the volatility in their portfolios. The startup has plenty of cash on its balance sheet and doesn't need the IPO proceeds to finance the business, they said.
A representative for Hinge Health declined to comment.
It appears Hinge isn't the only startup considering delaying its IPO plans. The payments platform Klarna and the online ticket marketplace StubHub both put their plans on ice following the tariffs announcement, The Wall Street Journal said. The outlet added that Klarna and StubHub planned to pitch public investors on their respective IPOs next week but decided to postpone their road shows after the past two days of market volatility.
Klarna and StubHub both declined to comment to BI.
Healthcare's IPO drought
Hinge Health would be the first healthcare delivery startup to go public in nearly three years. The IPO market has been decidedly closed for digital health startups since 2021, and the healthcare companies from that year's IPOs haven't performed well on the public markets.
The San Francisco company launched in 2014 to provide virtual care for joint and muscle pain. It's raised more than $1 billion from venture capitalists, including Tiger Global, Coatue, Insight Partners, and Atomico, including a $400 million Series E in October 2021 at a $6.2 billion valuation.