NASHVILLE: Not that long ago, IBD Leaderboard company Acadia Healthcare was a small player in behavioral health, with only a handful of facilities in the U.S.
Then a new management team arrived on the scene with aggressive expansion in mind.
Acadia ‘s new boss is Joey Jacobs. He previously was chairman and CEO at Psychiatric Solutions, which had been folded into Universal Health Services after a $3 billion merger in 2010.
Jacobs and his management team, including other executives from his merged company, arrived in the first quarter of 2011.
They quickly got to work.
Today, after several other buyouts, Tenn.-based Acadia runs 76 behavioral health care facilities with more than 5,600 beds in 24 states, the United Kingdom and Puerto Rico.
A pending acquisition of CRC Health Group, expected to close in 2015’s first quarter, will give Acadia another 120 facilities in the U.S. and a much stronger presence in substance abuse treatment.
The deal, valued at $1.175 billion, was announced in a third-quarter earnings release after the market closed on October 29.
The next day, Acadia’s stock shot up nearly 12% and another 5% the day after. It didn’t hurt that earnings per share in the quarter jumped 53% from a year earlier to 46 cents on revenue of $294.5 million, which was up 59.4%.
CRC Health, based in Cupertino, Calif., is expected to generate $450 million this year. It operates 36 residential facilities and 84 other kinds of treatment units, which together serve 40,000 patients a day.
CRC will be Acadia’s largest deal so far. Analyst Jennifer Lynch of BMO Capital Markets…