Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
According to Reuters, the privately held AccentHealth, a company that shows CNN programming hosted by Dr Sanjay Gupta on TV screens in the waiting rooms of doctors’ offices, is exploring a sale that could fetch $300 million.
AccentHealth is working with investment bank Moelis & Co to help find a buyer, according to Reuters’ unnamed source. AccentHealth is owned by private equity firms M/C Partners and Ridgemont Equity Partners.
The company pays a licensing fee to Time Warner Inc’s Turner Private Networks to carry customized medical segments featuring Gupta, who is CNN’s chief medical correspondent, and Robin Meade, host of HLN’s morning show.
The company, founded in Tampa, Florida, in 1995, has screens in 30,000 waiting rooms, reaching 200 million patients annually. In 2013, Accent Health bought both Havas Impact’s health panel business and Everwell waiting room television network (a division of MediVista Media LLC.) The two purchases basically doubled Accent Health’s size.
Accent Health operates various condition-specific networks, believed to be 21 different networks at last report, and generates revenue by selling advertising to companies that want to reach patients in waiting rooms of doctors’ offices. It uses BroadSign’s content management system. The company also sells medical wall displays and distributes marketing brochures.
Its competitor PatientPoint, owned by private equity firm Catterton, is one of the companies that may look at acquiring AccentHealth, according to Reuters’ sources.
The Reuters article says that AccentHealth generates roughly $20 million to $25 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization and could sell for roughly 10-12 times that amount.
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