San Francisco-based AI-enabled ambient automation platform Augmedix saw its stock price drop more than 40% after reporting it observed a slowdown in provider purchasing commitments and downgrading its 2024 full-year revenue outlook from $60 to $62 million to $52 to $55 million. 

Still, the company beat estimates of its revenue growth, with a 40% increase in the first quarter, to $13.5 million, compared to $9.6 million during the same period last year. 

It reported a 45% gross profit increase from $4.4 million in Q1 2023 to $6.3 million in Q1 2024. 

Operating expenses increased to $12.7 million in the first quarter of the year compared to $9.5 million in Q1 last year, and the company reported a net loss of $6.5 million, compared to $5.2 million last year.

Augmedix reported a loss in adjusted EBITDA from $5.1 million in Q1 2023 to $4.3 million in Q1 2024, with an operating cash burn of $8.2 million, compared to $6.2 million. 

The company held cash and cash equivalents of $37.3 million at the end of this year's first quarter, compared to $19.9 million at the end of Q1 last year. 

“We are continuing to sell cohorts of new Live users, although not at the level that we had previously expected, while providers evaluate various AI offerings, including our own. A couple of our health systems have chosen to transition some of their Augmedix Live users to Augmedix Go Assist, reducing the near-term revenue expectations at these accounts," Manny Krakaris, Augmedix CEO, said in a statement.

"While the transition from our established Live product to our AI-based solutions, Augmedix Go and Augmedix Go Assist, may result in slower short-term revenue growth given the lower APRU of our AI products, we welcome this transition as it exposes us to a much larger segment of the market. We expect this will ultimately result in robust revenue growth going forward that is generated from products with inherently higher gross margins than our established Live product.”

THE LARGER TREND

Augmedix debuted on the NASDAQ in 2021, roughly a year after the company closed a $25 million private placement that would see it merge with SPAC company Malo Holdings. 

Though the company's revenue was up in the first quarter of this year, investors are weary of the decrease in its projected full-year revenue. 

As of Tuesday morning, the company's stock price fell 41%, with more than one million shares traded today, compared to its daily average of 336,000 shares. 

Its stock is currently trading at $1.13 per share, a decrease from its all-time high of $7.00 per share in 2021. 

Another company making waves in ambient documentation is Microsoft's Nuance Communications. 

In March, Nuance announced a new clinical documentation tool dubbed Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX) Copilot, formerly DAX Express, that uses the latest version of OpenAI's artificial intelligence language model GPT-4.

The company said DAX Copilot drafts clinical notes within seconds from conversations with patients conducted through telehealth or in person. The product builds on its DAX documentation product, which launched in 2020.