Denver-based health care company Coram Inc. is being acquired by Lake Forest, Calif.-based Apria Healthcare Group Inc. for $350 million.
Coram provides in-home intravenous treatments including treatment for hemophilia and nutritional therapies. With the acquisition, Apria plans to move its infusion headquarters to Denver.
Buying Coram allows Apria to expand its home infusion business, gain Coram’s specialty pharmaceutical business and reduce its dependence on government reimbursements.
Coram, whose headquarters are in downtown Denver, has about 2,100 employees nationwide and 200 in Colorado. It serves more than 65,000 patients through 70 home infusion branches and 50 ambulatory infusion suites.
The two companies overlap in certain areas and functions and some employees could be displaced – both companies have offices in the Denver area, for example – but Apria executive vice president and spokeswoman Lisa Getson said it’s too soon to tell how many employees could be impacted.
The companies jointly announced the acquisition Monday and said they expect the deal to close as early as mid-November, pending government and regulatory approvals and other standard conditions.
Coram chairman, president and chief executive John Arlotta and the company’s management team will continue to lead Coram’s operations after the merger, the companies said.
Jefferies & Co. analyst Arthur Henderson said parts of the infusion business that Coram is in are growing rapidly.
Coram had struggled for years through financial and legal problems, and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2000. It emerged from bankruptcy in 2004.
After getting out of bankruptcy, “there was a lot of operational clean-up that needed to be done,” Henderson said.
Arlotta joined the company in 2005, and “they’ve done a really good job in a very short period of time in the past couple of years turning that business around.”
Apria, which has more than $1.5 billion in annual revenues, expects Coram to generate about $500 million in revenue in 2008. Apria expects the deal to dilute net after-tax earnings by about $3.5 million to $5.5 million in 2008, then become accretive to net after-tax earnings in 2009 by about $5 million to $6 million.
Kelly Yamanouchi: 303-954-1488 or kyamanouchi@denverpost.com
