Cerner Corporation posted its financial performance for the fourth quarter of 2021, and the full year of 2021.
Cerner is an electronic health record (EHR) vendor based in Missouri. For 2021, the company posted a revenue of $5.7 billion, which is up 5% from 2020 at $5.5 billion. Its net earnings for 2021 decreased from $780.1 million in 2020 to $555.6 million in 2021, which represents a 29% drop from the year before.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, Cerner reported $1.45 billion in revenue, which is up from 2020 that reported $1.39 billion for the same period. Net earnings also rose in the final quarter, with $174.8 million, which is a 24% increase from $141.5 million in 2020. Yet, Cerner’s net loss more than doubled in the final quarter of 2021. The company posted a net loss of $3.3 million, compared to a net loss of $1.3 million during the final quarter of 2020.
“While revenue in the fourth quarter was slightly below expectations primarily due to a COVID-related project delay and lower technology resale, we had a solid fourth quarter driven by a sharper focus on our core business and better operational execution,” said President and CEO, Dr. David Feinberg.
In December of 2021, Oracle Corporation announced that it intended on buying Cerner for $28.3 billion, or $95 per share. With Oracle’s resources, infrastructure and cloud capabilities, Cerner will accelerate the pace of product and technology development to enable more connected and efficient care. Yet, Oracle’s waiting period to acquire Cerner expired on February 22, 2022 and was extended until March 16, 2022.
Additionally, Cerner has not been incredibly active in M&A. The last time the company made an acquisition was in December of 2020 when it acquired Kantar Health (NYSE:BCSF) for $375 million. The deal closed in the first half of 2021 and bolstered Cerner’s Learning Health Network client consortium to more directly engage with life sciences for funded research studies.
While Cerner may have seen a slightly disappointing year, it is not representative of the rest of the eHealth sector, or EHR subsector. Since the start of 2021, there have been a total of 26 EHR acquisitions that totaled over $46.8 billion in disclosed prices. Companies such as Bain Capital & Hellman & Friedman and ConnectiveRX were among the buyers.
