GoodRx shares jumped this week after the company announced an expanded partnership with national retail pharmacy Kroger and following news about the launch of TrumpRx, a government-run, direct-to-consumer website.
The company, a prescription drug savings platform, saw its shares gain more than 14% this week. Shares were up nearly 5% Friday morning.
The White House announced Tuesday it was rolling out a direct-to-consumer website, where individuals can buy prescription medications at discounted prices, rather than through insurance. President Donald Trump announced a deal with Pfizer to sell drugs directly to consumers at discounted prices through TrumpRx, offering savings of up to 85%, with most savings averaging at about 50%.
The new website was unveiled as part of the Trump administration's broader effort to implement a “most favored nation” (MFN) pricing model for prescription drugs.
A senior administration official told NBC News that the Trump administration hopes to launch the TrumpRx website and implement the new pricing for Medicaid patients by “early 2026.”
GoodRx sees an upside to the TrumpRx proposal for the company's business model, CEO Wendy Barnes said during an interview on Fox Business on Wednesday.
Barnes floated the idea of a potential partnership with TrumpRx.
"As they continue to work with other manufacturers, these are ones that we really already work with today, and we have a platform that the multitude of Americans continue to use to check that pricing," Barnes said on Fox Business. "We view a government website as something that can continue to enable what we're doing as well. And furthermore, we believe that GoodRx can continue to power and perhaps partner with the government in this effort, which is part of the conversations that we have been having as well."
Barnes said she didn't view TrumpRx as competition to the company's services.
"When you think about the way in which pharmaceutical manufacturers convey discounts today, much of what we're hearing about, particularly as it pertains to Pfizer, has to do with their direct program pricing. So these are programs that on the whole function whereby they choose a direct price, and they in turn either use a pharmacy of their own, or they partner with, let's say, one, two or three smaller home delivery pharmacies," Barnes said. "That's juxtaposed to a point of sale and or brand price that would flow through someone like GoodRx, which we're doing today with a multitude of manufacturers, whereby if you have insurance or not, you can take advantage of that price at really any pharmacy in the U.S., which is how the GoodRx platform works."
She added, "What we're helping the administration to understand, and a number of agency officials, is that consumers and Americans want choice. They don't want to be told that you have to get your drug through perhaps one, two or three mail-order or home delivery pharmacies. That is a perfectly reliable channel—we work with both. The idea would be that as the government and/or with us, we should be able to avail ourselves of obtaining those prescriptions through any channel that we desire and that works for us best."
Analysts also see clear opportunities for the company to work with the Trump administration on the DTC website.
"A potential partnership with GoodRx and a government program such as TrumpRx would be additive to growth and a logical use of commercial technology to establish a transparency platform, in our view," Michael Cherny, senior research analyst at Leerink Partners, wrote in an analyst note.
While it's too early to calculate the potential revenue and profit opportunities, assuming a partnership were to happen, GoodRx is a "logical technology platform for a program like TrumpRx to drive pricing transparency on a user-friendly website/mobile app," Cherny noted.
Leerink Partners views GoodRx's underlying business and access to data integrations as "woefully underappreciated relative to where the stock has been trading year to date," Cherny wrote.
Also this week, GoodRx announced a brand medication savings program, called RxSmartSaver powered by GoodRx, that rolls out to Kroger pharmacies nationwide. RxSmartSaver is now available at Kroger’s 2,200 pharmacies across 35 states.
“Friction at the pharmacy counter causes frustration for both pharmacists and consumers, leading millions of people to abandon their prescriptions each year,” Barnes said in a statement
According to the company, Kroger can access savings when customers are picking up their medications, including copay cards, patient assistance programs and "80-plus unique cash prices" for brand medications that in many cases aren't covered by insurance or have poor coverage.
The savings program includes Dexcom's continuous glucose monitor Dexcom G7, Boehringer Ingelheim's Humira biosimilar adalimumab-adbm, long-acting insulin Lantus, Ozempic and Wegovy, among other drugs.
The solution also delivers stronger economics for retail partners, the company said.
"Each prescription filled helps strengthen the savings flywheel: manufacturers extend the reach of their affordability programs, pharmacies improve profitability while deepening patient relationships, and consumers gain easier access to more affordable prices for brand medications," the company said in a press release.
GoodRx first launched this program earlier this year with Midwest-based retailer Hy-Vee and plans to expand with additional retailers in the coming months.
In August, the company announced a collaboration with Novo Nordisk to expand access to GLP-1 medications, Ozempic and Wegovy, for eligible cash-paying customers at a price of $499 per month.