Hims & Hers|FTC Suit Wipes 14.73% as Privacy Denial Falls Short
The Complaint
Hims & Hers Health closed Wednesday at $25.00, down $4.32, a 14.73% drop after the Federal Trade Commission filed suit against the telehealth company. The FTC, joined by California and Utah, alleges Hims & Hers charged patients for prescription subscriptions before they ever consented, then made those subscriptions deliberately hard to cancel.
The complaint cites specific consumer harm. One customer said they were charged $897 before ever speaking with a healthcare professional, and another paid $147 for a three-month Lexapro supply after simply indicating they were open to medication on an intake form. Regulators say the company advertised free consultations and displayed 'Pay $0 today,' then enrolled patients in recurring billing the moment a prescription was written, burying the cancellation option behind a button labeled 'Add/remove items from order' that never used the word cancel.
Beyond billing, the FTC alleges Hims & Hers shared patients' sensitive health information, including conditions like erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation and hair loss, with advertising platforms Meta and Snap, despite marketing the service as '100% online, private and secure.' The FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection director said the complaint lays out consumers unknowingly locked into recurring subscriptions and their most private health information disclosed without consent. This closes the first advance: the drop is not a rumor or a single number miss, it is a dated, sourced regulatory filing naming specific billing and privacy conduct.
The Company's Defense
Hims & Hers pushed back publicly, calling the claims baseless and describing the action as an effort to generate headlines at the company's expense rather than genuine enforcement. The company says the FTC's complaint disregards substantial evidence it provided during a nearly three-year investigation and ignores established state telehealth standards. But read closely, the company's statement about data sharing says only that customers have the information they need to make informed decisions, and that its privacy policy lets them choose how data is used. It does not deny that health data reached Meta and Snap.
The regulatory hit has already drawn a second layer of legal exposure. The Law Offices of Frank R. Cruz announced a securities fraud investigation into Hims & Hers on behalf of shareholders who lost money in Wednesday's decline, explicitly citing the $4.32 drop to $25.00 as the injury event. This reframes the answer: the FTC suit is not a contained regulatory cost, it is now also a live securities-litigation risk feeding on the stock's own reaction. The company's next earnings report, scheduled for August 10, becomes the next dated checkpoint where management must address both the underlying allegations and any financial fallout.
The Broader Tape
Hims & Hers' decline landed inside a broader risk-off session. The S&P 500 ended 1.5% lower, the Nasdaq 100 slipped 2.1% and entered correction territory, and the Dow lost 2.2% in its worst day in over a year, as the Federal Reserve held interest rates unchanged for a fifth consecutive time and investors grew concerned inflation was running ahead of the curve. HIMS was named specifically among the day's stocks in focus alongside names like SOFI and ADBE. This matters for the answer: the market backdrop explains why sentiment was already fragile, but it does not explain the company-specific 14.73% move, which the FTC filing accounts for on its own.
Put together, the evidence supports one conclusion over the other. A weak macro tape amplified the day's selling, but it did not create Hims & Hers' decline; the FTC's dated complaint, with its named consumer charges and unresolved data-sharing allegations, is the specific catalyst the securities bar has already keyed on. What remains open is how the company defends its billing flow and privacy claims in court, and whether the August 10 earnings call brings clarity on subscriber retention or a compounding legal disclosure. Until then, the stock carries both a regulatory overhang and a shareholder-litigation overhang that did not exist a week ago.
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