NEW CANAAN, CONN. (PRWEB) JULY 26, 2021 – Health care merger and acquisition activity slowed in the second quarter of 2021 but remained very high, according to new acquisition data from Irving Levin Associates, LLC. There were 573 deals announced in the second quarter, a 6% drop from the record first-quarter total of 611 deals. Activity in the second quarter was 67% higher than the same quarter in 2020.
Activity in sectors such as Long-Term Care and Physician Medical Groups drove much of the deal closings, with 110 and 103 deals, respectively. Private equity continued to dominate the physician market as buyers, and investors swarmed the Long-Term Care sector after occupancy hit bottom in March and began to rebound in the past few months.
Home health and hospice agencies also remained an attractive target for investors. Demographic tailwinds and increased demand for home health services gave strategic buyers more than enough reason to make some big acquisitions. In one of the quarter’s largest deals, Humana Inc. purchased the remaining stake it did not own in Kindred at Home, a national home health provider, for $5.7 billion, including debt. Like many other strategic buyers, Humana is trying to keep a competitive edge in the post-acute care market, and Kindred was a clear opportunity for the insurance giant.
Activity in the technology sectors remained robust despite a slowdown in activity. M&A activity in the eHealth sector dropped after four straight quarters of growth. There were a record 103 deals announced in the first quarter, but that declined to just 90 deals in the second quarter. Demand for telehealth services seems to be slowing down after a surge in 2020, a trend to keep an eye on for the remainder of the year.
Deal value in the second quarter totaled $128.1 billion, an increase of 40% compared with the $91.3 billion spent in the first quarter, based on disclosed prices. The spending in Q2:21 was astronomically higher than the $13 billion disclosed in the second quarter of 2020. Huge deals from companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Thermo Fisher Scientific played a significant role in the large transaction value total.
“Despite a slight slowdown in the second quarter, the healthcare M&A market has roared back from a rough period in 2020,” said Dylan Sammut, Editor of Health Care at Irving Levin Associates. “Unless some major headwinds hit the industry in the second half of the year, this could turn out to be a record year of activity in the healthcare M&A market.”
All quarterly results are published in The Health Care M&A Report, which is part of the Irving Levin Associates and LevinPro investment research source. For information, or to order the reports, call 800-248-1668. Irving Levin Associates is celebrating more than 70 years of delivering exclusive M&A intelligence to its sophisticated audience of seniors housing and healthcare investors. The company was established in 1948 and has offices in New Canaan, Connecticut and North Bethesda, Maryland. The company publishes research reports and newsletters and maintains databases on the healthcare and senior housing M&A markets.
