Newly public Ardent Health Partners Inc. plans to prioritize investments in ambulatory services—with urgent-care centers at the top of the list—while its leaders look to push acquisitions talks across the finish line.
Speaking to analysts and investors on a conference call after Nashville-based Ardent reported second-quarter earnings, President and CEO Marty Bonick said his team is working on a “robust” pipeline of possible purchases as it seeks to capitalize on what he called “a sort of Tale of Two Cities” market.
“There are systems like ours that are performing well and still a lot that are struggling,” said Bonick, who has more than $830 million in total available liquidity as he looks to make deals. “We’re in conversations with a number of different opportunities that are attractive. We’re going to be very picky.”
Ardent, which runs 30 hospitals and more than 200 other sites of care in six states, in July completed an initial public offering of its stock that netted its about $209 million. The company’s leaders have set a full-year capital spending budget of $170 million to $185 million—they spent $62.8 million of that in the first half of 2024—and will put a chunk of that cash to work on building out the urgent-care networks in their midsized markets, which include Albuquerque, Topeka and Tulsa.
In the first half of this year, Ardent opened eight urgent-care clinics and Bonick told analysts he’s looking to add a “meaningful” number of locations in what remains of 2024, both through new openings and acquisitions. Also on the planning table are surgery centers and freestanding emergency rooms.
In the three months ended June 30, Ardent rang up net profits of $67.0 million on revenue of $1.47 billion. In the same period of 2023, those numbers were $55.7 million and $1.37 billion, respectively. The biggest line-item shift year over year was in salaries and benefits, which rose to $624 million but fell to 42.4 percent of revenue from 43.7 percent in the spring of 2023.
As with larger hospital peers HCA Healthcare Inc. and Tenet Healthcare Corp., a drop in contract labor spending contributed to that improvement: At Ardent, contract labor fell by about $7 million and made up 4.3 percent of total wages last quarter versus 5.7 percent in the prior-year period. CFO Alfred Lumsdaine told analysts he expects that number to stay in that lower range in coming quarters.
Shares of Ardent (Ticker: ARDT) closed at $16.97 on Aug. 16, which was about 6 percent above their IPO price off last month. At that level, the company’s market capitalization is about $2.4 billion.
