Surgery Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ:SGRY) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Eric Evans: Look, we’ve been in discussions for the last couple of years. We’ve got a lot of health systems interested in talking to us. Some of those are less interesting to us than it might be them to partner with Surgery Partners. So we’ve had to be very picky on who we choose. But yes, no, I do — I think you should anticipate there will be additional health system partners. As we move forward, we’re going to be very disciplined on that and make sure when we do choose those, they’re going to be a great partner over time to significantly move the needle on our value-based goals and really driving value within health care. So I appreciate that question, Bill, and it’s certainly a new additive growth lever that we’re excited to keep pushing on.

Operator: Our next question is from Stephen Valiquette with Barclays.

Stephen Valiquette: So you guys mentioned that the $60 million in acquisitions completed in the first quarter at an average multiple of just under 8x, and the deals were focused mainly on MSK procedures. I guess I’m curious, can you just remind us how this — the sub-8x multiple to stacks up versus recent history on acquisition multiples? And also with the overall ASC industry seeming to have a pretty strong year of potentially accelerating growth in 2023, just curious if the industry strength is expected to have any impact on the acquisition multiples as the full-year progresses, just based on the pipeline of additional deals that you’re evaluating now?

Dave Doherty: Hey, Stephen, let me first start by saying we have not seen multiples change, seeing on our current pipeline, are we seeing them change in this environment, which is encouraging. I would also highlight that when we discuss multiples, we are using actual trailing 12 months EBITDA. So we do not give you synergized multiples. So if you look at our sub-8, that’s been our track record for the last 5 years. If you look at even last year, the multiples for the entire year remained sub-8 on a — as we aggregate them and for the current year. I don’t see those trends changing. So from our perspective, we — as we’ve always said, though M&A is lumpy, and we’re going to be very disciplined in what we approach and how we approach it. But we’re super encouraged and the pipeline is strong, and I would expect us to continue to announce more acquisitions throughout the year and potentially exceed our $200 million.

Eric Evans: Yes. And Stephen, I just had a couple of things I’d add on there. Just a reminder, not only do we buy a sub-8 trailing 12, but in the first 12 to 18 months, our operating systems job is to take a turn, turn and a half off that. So that’s our starting point. When you talked about — first of all, you also commented on the strength of the industry. I’d just like to say we’re all excited about that. It’s not surprising to us. There’s a lot of great companies in our industry. We’re seeing that growth return because it is such a great marketplace. I don’t think that’s going to change the multiples, but certainly, we think high-quality assets are still going to be kind of in that range. And as Wayne said, it’s been quite consistent. We continue to be excited about what that pipeline looks like.