Alabama-Based HMO Agrees to Acquire Talbert Medical
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COSTA MESA — An Alabama medical care organization already active in 37 states has agreed to pay $200 million cash, or $63 a share, to acquire Costa Mesa-based Talbert Medical Management Holdings Inc.
News of the deal drove Talbert’s stock price sharply upward in heavy Nasdaq trading. Its shares closed up more than 9% at $62.38, a $5.38 gain for the day.
The acquisition will enable MedPartners Inc. to expand into Utah and New Mexico and add physicians to its existing operations in California, Arizona and Nevada. Talbert has 282 doctors, while MedPartners has about 13,000.
Buying Talbert was “a very good strategic move on the part of MedPartners,” said Margot Durow, an analyst at Vector Securities International in Deerfield, Ill. Birmingham-based MedPartners has purchased two other large medical care organizations in recent months.
Talbert will increase MedPartners’ HMO patient base by about 14%. Talbert’s doctors have contracts with HMOs representing about 270,000 members, while MedPartners’ doctors cover about 1.96 million HMO patients.
The purchase is part of an ongoing consolidation in the medical care industry. Talbert was spun off from FHP International in April, just after FHP was acquired by Santa Ana-based PacifiCare Health Systems Inc.
MedPartners stock rose 50 cents to close at $22.94 a share on the New York Stock Exchange.
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