Haim Haviv, founder and CEO of Hudson Dental, connected with Becker's to discuss how he and his team plan to make their DSO a household name among dentists.
Hudson Dental recently acquired its first practice in the Greater Binghamton area of New York. The DSO is backed by private equity firm Hudson Yards Capital.
Note: This response has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: What inspired you to start a DSO?
Haim Haviv: I was in my initial stages of transitioning from the banking world working for JPMorgan at the time in late 2020. I had a personal incident where I had to go to the oral surgeon to get an implant and replace a tooth that I had. We started talking and someone in New Jersey next to where I live said, "Well, if you're a banking guy and you're going into private equity, you should probably look at dentistry." I started thinking about it and saw a market with tremendous growth and opportunity, a market with people that I feel comfortable working with, like the dentists and the hygienist staff. This is a market where I can make an impact. I started looking at DSOs and what they do and I realized there was a lot of room for consolidation and passing those savings to patients and making sure we're very efficient in helping the dentist really manage the business side, which is where I feel like I can really excel. So I put together a team and started a journey.
Q: What makes Hudson Dental different from the other DSOs out there?
HH: We are made out of entrepreneurs and people that came to dentistry from a different industry but do know small business. Personally, I grew up in a small business. My father had a small business back when I was born and I was in the business day in and day out. I think we are really able to bring that mentality of understanding the business owner. Dental practice is a business. It has a very strong clinical side, but there is so much going on other than the few minutes that the patient receives the treatment during a one-hour, half-an-hour visit. There is so much going on around it. I think we are really about to bring that mentality and support the business owner in a way that really supports them.
Q: Can you describe Hudson Dental's growth strategy?
HH: When we come to a practice and we look at the market, we have a goal of internal growth in everything we do between 5 and 7 percent. That's the organic side of things and that's being done by revenue growth. We're also looking at the cost structure, so we put in cost controls for the cost and we put in revenue controls for the revenue and growing the revenue. So we're growing EBITA from both the revenue side and the cost side.
The other thing that we do is inorganic growth. Our plans are to grow and acquire more offices as we grow. We're looking at anywhere between $15 to $25 million in acquisition of revenue a year.
Q: Where can the dental industry expect to see Hudson Dental positioned in 5 years?
HH: We have six practices now that are under contact that are under the [advanced diligence] stage of acquisition and one that we bought. In five years, we are probably going to have 50 to 100 locations on the East Coast, then start expanding nationally. We aim to be and are going to be a household name among dentists.