Amedisys CEO: Over 300 Deals in Pipeline

One of the nation’s largest home health and hospice providers is not done adding to its already-large pipeline.

During Amedisys’ (Nasdaq: AMED) third-quarter earnings call on Thursday, CEO Paul Kusserow revealed the company currently has more than 300 deals in its pipeline. That number has grown from 17 deals nine months ago, he said.

The news that Amedisys is looking to expand is not exactly new – but the sheer volume of targets in its pipeline is. In August, the company released a list of candidates for acquisitions, joint ventures and partnerships, but the list only included around 200 names.

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The company, which serves around 380,000 patients nationwide each year, has seemingly become more aggressive on deals, Ryan Halsted, an analyst with Wells Fargo, noted during the earnings call. For example, on Tuesday, Amedisys announced it acquired Sarasota, Florida-based Infinity HomeCare for $63 million.

“We believe Infinity was the first really good size deal we’ve done since 2010,” Kusserow said during the earnings call.

The Infinity deal made sense geographically, Kusserow said, adding that Florida is a good place to keep “playing with” private duty and managed care.

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“With our balance sheet in the shape it’s in, we want to employ capital and we want to employ it in very good ways,” Kusserow said.

“We’re seeing on the mid-sized deals that are out there, they seem to be competitive,” he added of the current acquisition landscape.

Overall, Amedisys reported strong third-quarter results and met some of its internally-set goals.

“Returning to Medicare volume growth was our primary goal, and we made great progress, with 4% same-store admissions growth,” Kusserow said.

On Thursday, Amedisys reported a third-quarter net service revenue of $326.45 million, compared with a net service revenue of $300.28 million in the year-ago period. The revenue beat analyst expectations by $14.23 million, rising 8.7% year over year.

Net income stayed about the same year-over-year, with Amedisys reporting a net income attributable to the company of about $8.44 million both in the third-quarter of this year and the third quarter of 2014. Earnings per share came in at 25 cents per share and 26 cents per share in the third quarter of 2015 and the third quarter of 2014, respectively.

Written by Mary Kate Nelson

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