Ventas REIT to Acquire Ardent Medical Services for $1.75 Billion

Ventas, a healthcare REIT company, announced that it will acquire Ardent Medical Services and Ardent Health Services for $1.75 billion. Ardent is based in Nashville, Tennessee, and the private equity firm, Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, has owned it since 2001. Ardent owns and operates 12 acute-care hospitals, a rehabilitation hospital, and three multispecialty physician groups and retail pharmacies. Ardent currently generates about $2 billion in revenue, with about half of the revenue coming from commercial payers.

Once the deal closes, Ardent will be able to distribute almost $75 million in excess cash to its shareholders. Ventas plans to separate Ardent's hospital operations from its real estate. It wants to sell the hospital operations to entities owned by the current management of Ardent and other equity sources. Ventas will also own as much as 9.9% of the hospital-operations entities.

Ventas is based in Chicago and has a market capitalization (current stock price and number of outstanding stocks) of $24.23 billion. Ventas recently merged with American Realty Capital Healthcare for $2.6 billion, which added 152 new properties, including 10 senior-living providers.

Summary by MedicalGroups.com

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