On April 6, Great Lakes Dental Partners, a portfolio company of private equity firm Shore Capital Partners, announced that it acquired Associates for Dental Care for an undisclosed price. The acquisition is GLDP’s third transaction of 2022 and fourth overall since 2021 as it makes moves to expand its presence across the country, especially in the Midwest.
Founded in 2008, Great Lakes Dental Partners (GLDP) is a network of dental practice locations dedicated to advancing dental healthcare throughout Chicago and the surrounding area. GLDP provides best-in-class support in operations, recruiting, technology, marketing and collaboration among clinicians. Meanwhile, Associates for Dental Care, run by Dr. Ashur Joseph and Dr. Linda Salmon, has one location in Chicago and provides all dental procedures and needs.
This acquisition comes on the heels of GLDP acquiring several other dental practices in the last 10 months, strengthening its foothold across the country. In February 2022, GLDP acquired Premier Dental Group in Merrillville, Indiana, and in January it purchased Beverly Smiles Family Dentistry in Chicago. Finally, in June 2021, GLDP acquired Valparaiso Family Dentistry in Valparaiso, Indiana. None of the prices were disclosed, but the deals illustrate how active and aggressive GLDP has been in making their mark on the market.
According to the LevinPro Database, the acquisition of Associates for Dental Care is the 130th physician medical group deal of the year, and the 27th dental practice transaction of the year (comprising 30 different dentist practices). Of those 130 deals, 15 were completed by private equity companies such as Thurston Group and Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe. The rising trend of private equity firms plunging into physician medical groups further highlights how active and lucrative this sector is. With the high deal quantities for PMGs and by GLDP stating it is looking for more acquisition opportunities, we anticipate that this year will continue to see a healthy M&A market.
