Blackstone stikes a healthy $1.6 billion deal for Apria Healthcare

Posted Jun 19th 2008 10:13AM by Tom Taulli
Filed under: Deals, Private Equity, Blackstone Group L.P (BX)

Apria Healthcare Group Inc. (NYSE: AHG), a home healthcare services company, has seen its shares plunge from $31.57 to $15.31 over the past year. But as of today, things got much brighter, as the shares spiked 26% to $20.

The Blackstone Group (NYSE: BX) has agreed to buy the company for $1.6 billion. Debt financing will come from Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), Wachovia (NYSE: WB) and Barclays Capital (NYSE: BCS).

Apria operates about 550 respiratory and infusion therapy facilities across the US and serves more than two million patients per year. For the latest quarter, Apria posted a 35.1% increase in revenues to $528 million (there was a nice boost from the Coram acquisition). Net income was $20.8 million.

However, Apria has had to deal with Medicare payment reductions. Although, as for Blackstone, this is something it can cope with since it will hold onto the company for a while and can restructure the Apria platform.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates MergerBook.com.

Tags: ahg, Apria Healthcare, ApriaHealthcare, bac, bcs, blackstone, bx, inthenews, wb