When Mike Salvino took over as CEO of DXC Technology (NYSE: DXC) in September 2019, he announced during his first earnings call that the company was planning strategic alternatives, including the possible divesture of three of its non-core assets, which made up roughly 25% of the company’s revenue. One of those segments included its U.S. state and local health and human services business (HHS business), which DXC managed to divest last week to Veritas Capital Management LLC for $5 billion in cash.
DXC’s HHS business is an end-to-end provider of technology solutions critical to the administration and operations of health programs. The business facilitates performance efficiencies and improved outcomes for a wide range of stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem.
The sale represents a transaction value of approximately 3.5x trailing 12-month sales of $1.4 billion. DXC will use the proceeds to pay down debt.
DXC will retain its remaining healthcare practice, serving customers across the healthcare continuum, including payers, providers and life sciences firms.
Veritas Capital has not been very publicly active on the healthcare M&A front lately. The last deal announced, according to our Deal Search Online database, was in 2016 for Verisk Health, a digital health company under Verisk Analytics, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSK). Veritas paid $820 million for the company, which provides data services, analytics and advanced technologies to support value-based healthcare delivery and payment systems. It had 350 clients in the United States at the time of the deal.
After a rather subdued month in February, Veritas Capital’s big purchase is a much-needed jolt in the M&A market. February only has 100 deals on the books so far, and roughly $3.8 billion in announced spending. Can we blame it on the coronavirus? Maybe, but no way to be sure. March is looking to be a much healthier and active month, nonetheless, with already $22.8 billion in spending. The Ides of March just passed, so we’ll see what the close of the first quarter brings.
