Dallas-Fort Worth was home to the third greatest number of healthcare transactions in the country according to an analysis by Mergermarket, with 73 healthcare deals between 2015 and 2018. While the number of transactions was high, their value was less than one-seventh of the top two spots. But that might not be a bad thing for North Texas healthcare entrepreneurs.
Chad Watt, the natural resources editor at Mergermarket, described via email how Dallas differs from Boston and San Francisco in regard to mergers and acquisitions. “While D-FW had nearly as many deals as those two areas, the acquisitions here skewed more toward smaller medical businesses rather than blockbuster deals.”
Watt described Dallas-Forth Worth as a region that is a “good place for entrepreneurial medical professionals to build practices,” similar to Miami and Atlanta.
According to Mergermarket head of research in the Americas Lana Vilner, 2018 was nearly a record year for healthcare mergers and acquisitions, with 531 worth over $70 billion, but the volume of said deals is the lowest it’s been since 2010. Similar to Dallas, the nation saw a large number of deals without any major ones. In fact, there weren’t any “mega-deals” valued over $10 billion.
Private equity drove nearly 30 percent of the total market in healthcare, with 154 deals worth $24.1 billion in 2018, and Vilner expects private equity to continue to have a strong influence in 2019.
