CVS buys dwelling healthcare group Signify Well being for $8bn

CVS Well being has agreed to purchase dwelling healthcare supplier Signify Well being for about $8bn, beating Amazon in a hotly contested takeover battle and opening a brand new entrance within the pharmacy chain’s effort to turn out to be a diversified healthcare juggernaut.

Signify shareholders will obtain $30.50 per share in money, a 6 per cent premium to the corporate’s share worth as of Friday’s shut.

The Dallas, Texas-based firm boasts a community of 10,000 clinicians throughout the US who present in-home health assessments to a variety of sufferers, together with these coated by the government-funded Medicare programme.

“Signify Well being will play a vital position in advancing our well being care providers technique and offers us a platform to speed up our development in value-based care,” mentioned CVS Health chief govt Karen Lynch.

CVS was already the biggest drugstore chain within the US when, in 2019, it purchased insurance coverage group Aetna in what it characterised as an effort to construct a heavyweight firm with the facility to carry down healthcare prices in America.

That transaction signalled a development in direction of consolidation throughout the US healthcare sector. CVS’s bigger rival, UnitedHealth Group, has additionally introduced offers for firms which might be energetic in dwelling healthcare and different scientific providers.

Analysts say the vogue for diversified healthcare firms displays incumbents’ must curb price inflation in addition to defend in opposition to potential disrupters. Amazon had additionally been among the many bidders for Signify, the Monetary Occasions and different shops have beforehand reported.

The CVS deal represents a turnround within the fortunes of Signify shareholders. The corporate’s shares commanded $24 in an preliminary public providing final yr however modified arms for lower than $13 in the beginning of this yr and remained under the IPO worth till information of a possible deal was reported final month.