The IPO Buzz: Ardent Health Partners Prices Downsized IPO at $16.00 – $4.00 Below Range

Private equity-backed hospital and healthcare chain Ardent Health Partners (ARDT) priced its IPO at $16.00 – $4.00 below the bottom of its range – and cut the deal’s size to 12.0 million shares – down from 14.3 million shares in the prospectus – to raise $192.0 million on Wednesday night, July 17, 2024. The IPO’s price range was $20.00 to $22.00, according to the prospectus. The sharp cut in the IPO’s price and the trimming of the deal’s size gave Ardent Health Partners a market cap – or a valuation – of about $2.26 billion at pricing. Ardent Health Partners’ stock is expected to start trading Thursday, July 18, 2024, on the New York Stock Exchange. J.P. Morgan, BofA Securities, Morgan Stanley and Stephens Inc. led the joint book-runners’ team. This deal marked Ardent Health Partners’ second attempt at going public, The Tennessee hospital and  healthcare chain withdrew its previous IPO plans in January 2020, according to an SEC filing. Ardent Health Partners (ARDT), based in the Nashville suburb of Brentwood, had encountered some substantial pushback from IPO investors over valuation. The reduction in the IPO’s price and its size sliced about $740 million off of the estimated $3.0 billion valuation, which assumed mid-point pricing at $21.00 on the full 14.3 million shares in the prospectus. EGI-AM investments, a private equity firm, is the largest shareholder, the prospectus says. EGI-AM Investments was affiliated with Equity Group International (EGI), the private equity firm run by billionaire Sam Zell until his death in May 2023. Zell is regarded as the creator of the real estate investment trust (REIT). Ardent Health Partners said it may use some of the IPO proceeds to repay some debt. Ardent Health Partners said in the prospectus that it is the fourth-largest privately held for-profit operator of hospitals and a leading provider of healthcare services in the United States. The company runs hospitals and provides outpatient healthcare in eight growing mid-sized urban markets in six states: New Jersey, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Idaho. Ardent Health operates 30 acute care hospitals and “more than 200 sites of care” with over 1,700 providers, the prospectus says, citing numbers that were in effect as of March 31, 2024, according to the prospectus. Ardent Health Partners is profitable. The company reported net income of $151.05 million on revenue of $5.53 billion for the 12 months that ended March 31, 2024, according to financial statements in the prospectus. Ardent Health’s revenue rose 5.9 percent from 2022 to 2023, while its net income fell 51.4 percent in that same period, “due to the non-recurring impact of a $157.8 million gain on the sale of a portfolio of medical office buildings during 2022.” (For more information about these companies, please check the IPO Calendar and the individual IPO Profiles found on IPOScoop.com’s website.) Note: Never trade on proposed symbols. They have been known to change and you might buy something on the OTC Bulletin Board. To see what time the NASDAQ IPOs are expected to trade, please log in to: NASDAQTrader.com then scroll down to IPO Message. Disclosure: Nobody on the IPOScoop.com staff has a position in any stocks mentioned above, nor do they trade or invest in IPOs. The IPOScoop.com staff does not issue advice, recommendations or opinions. Disclaimer: A SCOOP Rating (Wall Street Consensus of Opening-day Premiums) is a general consensus taken, at press time, from Wall Street and investment professionals concerning how well an IPO might perform when it starts trading. The SCOOP Rating does not reflect the opinions of anyone associated with IPOScoop.com. The SCOOP ratings should not be taken as investment advice. The rating merely reflects the opinion of the professionals at the time of publication and is subject to last-minute changes due to market conditions, changes in a specific offering and other factors, such as changes in the proposed offering terms and the shifting of investor interest in the IPO. The information offered is taken from sources we believe to be reliable, but we cannot guarantee the accuracy.