Acadia prices stock offering to fund U.K. acquisition

Acadia Healthcare has priced a stock offering that will help fund its $660 million, trans-Atlantic acquisition of Partnerships in Care.

The Franklin, Tenn.-based company intends to finance the buy with a mixture of equity and long-term debt. The deal for Partnerships in Care will allow Acadia to enter the growing behavioral health market in the United Kingdom.

Acadia on Wednesday priced its offering of more than 7.7 million common shares at $44 per share, which will yield gross proceeds of about $340 million.

In addition, the company and one of its shareholders have granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase another 1.2 million shares in a secondary offering.

The psychiatric hospital operator signed its deal for Partnerships in Care, the U.K.’s second-largest independent provider of inpatient behavioral health services, June 3.

The independent behavioral health market has grown 9.2% annually in the U.K., as the number of available public beds has declined over the past decade, valuing the market at $2 billion, Acadia noted. While National Health Service beds represented 82% of the total number of inpatient psychiatric beds in 2004, they accounted for only 69% of the total in 2012, according to Acadia’s investment thesis.

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