Oracle to Acquire Cerner For $28.3B
Big news in the healthcare and technology industries comes our way via press release:
Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL) and Cerner Corporation today jointly announced an agreement for Oracle to acquire Cerner through an all-cash tender offer for $95.00 per share, or approximately $28.3 billion in equity value.
According to the press release:
"Working together, Cerner and Oracle have the capacity to transform healthcare delivery by providing medical professionals with better information—enabling them to make better treatment decisions resulting in better patient outcomes," said Larry Ellison, Chairman and Chief Technology Officer, Oracle. "With this acquisition, Oracle's corporate mission expands to assume the responsibility to provide our overworked medical professionals with a new generation of easier-to-use digital tools that enable access to information via a hands-free voice interface to secure cloud applications. This new generation of medical information systems promises to lower the administrative workload burdening our medical professionals, improve patient privacy and outcomes, and lower overall healthcare costs."
"We expect this acquisition to be immediately accretive to Oracle's earnings on a non-GAAP basis in the first full fiscal year after closing—and contribute substantially more to earnings in the second fiscal year and thereafter," said Safra Catz, Chief Executive Officer, Oracle. "Healthcare is the largest and most important vertical market in the world—$3.8 trillion last year in the United States alone. Oracle's revenue growth rate has already been increasing this year—Cerner will be a huge additional revenue growth engine for years to come as we expand its business into many more countries throughout the world. That's exactly the growth strategy we adopted when we bought NetSuite—except the Cerner revenue opportunity is even larger."
In addition, the press release notes that Cerner will be organized as a dedicated Industry Business Unit within Oracle, and that "Oracle intends to maintain and grow Cerner's community presence, including in the Kansas City area, while utilizing Oracle's global footprint to reach new geographies faster."
This is exciting news in the healthcare revenue cycle industry, as Oracle's technological capabilities and expertise will benefit the overall goal of interoperability. We'll provide additional details as released.