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Valuing a Private Urgent Care Company for Banner Health

Client/Profile

Banner Health, a multi-state nonprofit health system, headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, operates 29 hospitals, including three academic medical centers, many rural hospitals which are the sole providers in their community, other related specialized healthcare entities, and two medical groups, Banner Medical Group and Banner University Medical Group (BUMG) that comprise over 2,000 providers.

Additionally, Banner is the anchor health system for Banner Health Network, an accountable care organization covering over 700,000 Arizona beneficiaries. Banner also recently introduced its academic medicine division, Banner University Medicine, following its acquisition of two Tucson-based academic medical centers and BUMG.

Challenge/Situation

To prepare a business valuation of a rapidly growing privately held urgent care company, Urgent Care Extra, with more than 30 locations in the high-growth markets of Phoenix and Tucson, and plans to add 19 more locations in the next two years.

Multiple factors were motivating Banner to consider acquisition of the company, most specifically the increasing role that urgent care centers can play in providing health care to patients in a lower cost setting. The company was believed to be considering multiple potential buyers. While the identity of the other potential buyers was unknown, it was believed that one or more of the interested parties might be a private equity firm or other similar entity.

While Banner was interested in acquiring the company, management recognized the requirement that the transaction be at fair market value. As such, Banner required a fair market valuation of the company, to support their decision-making related to the considered acquisition.

Process

Working with the company’s broker, Veralon obtained fundamental data for Urgent Care Extra, including financials, visits, and costs to build out additional locations. We also interviewed the CEO and CFO. We assessed each market where a new urgent care center was proposed, to assure that the market would support the center, and developed financial projections, and associated risk factors for each of the new urgent care centers.

We valued the company using both the income and the market approaches, including researching and identifying comparable transactions.

Results

In November of 2017, Banner Health announced that it had acquired 32 Urgent Care Extra locations across the Tucson and Phoenix metro areas that will be rebranded as Banner Urgent Care. Following the acquisition, Veralon assisted the system with purchase price allocation—the appropriate distribution of costs across their balance sheet. This expansion in the Arizona market, now Banner Urgent Care, is an important part of Banner’s ambulatory strategy to reach patients in all of Banner’s communities.