Two Deals for Renal Care Providers

Consolidation is still possible in the kidney-care sector, even though Fresenius Medical Care (NYSE: FMS) and DaVita HealthCare Partners (NYSE: DVA) appear to have about 90% of the U.S. market. Last week, DaVita announced its $415 million acquisition of Renal Ventures Management, LLC, a network of 36 dialysis clinics in six states, with headquarters in Lakewood, Colorado. RVM’s two physician divisions, Multispecialty Physician Partners and Physician Venture Partners were part of the deal. The second acquisition came from a much smaller player, privately held U.S. Renal Care, Inc. of Plano, Texas. The target was DSI Renal, owned by Frazier Healthcare and New Enterprise Associates, which... Read More »

Medical Device Maker Scooped Up for $1.7 Billion

Greatbatch, Inc. (NYSE: GB) is touting its “transformative deal” to acquire privately held Lake Region Medical for $1.73 billion. Transformative in that the combined company will be one of the world’s largest medical device manufacturers, serving the cardiac, neuromodulation, vascular, orthopedics and advanced surgical markets and posting revenue of approximately $1.5 billion. The transaction is expected to be double-digit accretive to cash EPS in 2016, the first full fiscal year post-closing, and meaningfully more accretive thereafter. It expects to achieve net annual synergies at the operating profit level of $25 million in 2016, which is expected to increase to at least $60 million in... Read More »

Labs, MRI and Dialysis M&A

The Laboratories, MRI & Dialysis sector has been plagued by low reimbursement rates and competition from local hospitals for some time now, but you can’t really tell that to see the number of deals we’ve recorded in the last five years. Although the sector peaked with 47 deals announced in 2012, there have been 24 transactions made public this year (six of those in August), for a total of $2.3 billion. With CMS’s push to value-based and bundled payments, we expect to see more activity in this sector. Even though rates are low, there’s little uncertainty about them. YearSector dealsSector spending 201433$11.0 billion 201337$1.9 billion 201247$2.2 billion 201131$6.0 billion 201042$2.3... Read More »

Cardinal Health Buys NaviHealth

Rumors surfaced last week that Nashville-based NaviHealth, a portfolio company of Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, was about to be acquired by Cardinal Health (NYSE: CAH). Our friend in Nashville, Milt Capps, published the story on his Venture Nashville Connections blog on August 24. Sure enough, the story was verified on August 25 when Cardinal issued a FAQ statement about the $290 million deal. What does a medical products distributor like Cardinal see in a post-acute care coordinator like NaviHealth? Quite a lot, since its sweet spot is managing bundled payments in the post-acute continuum of care. The acquisition of even 71% of NaviHealth gives Cardinal Health scale and the... Read More »