New year, new deals to watch. Some time ago, pharmaceutical services provider Caremark (NYSE: CMX) announced a "merger of equals" with CVS (NYSE: CVS) in a transaction valued at $21B. That deal had toddled along for a few months until competitor Express Scripts (NDAQ: ESRX) hurtled in with a $26B cash-and-stock offer. Today brings Caremark's rejection of the Express Script proposal, and the unusually detailed statement from Caremark is well worth a read.
After the expected litany of reasons why Caremark thinks a combination with CVS offers better strategic benefits, growth opportunities, etc., we get to three of the real reasons Caremark prefers CVS: Less integration risk, quicker timing and greater closing certainty (the CVS deal has already passed antitrust review). These are valid concerns and would certainly justify taking a lower price, particularly considering the concentration in the industry and the considerable (9+ months) timing benefit. Still, with a 20% pricing gap between the proposals you've got to wonder if Caremark has really taken the time to review the merits of a deal with Express Scripts, or at least play it out to leverage CVS to a better price or terms.
There's also a lot of drama in the backstory here, relating to options backdating, indemnity and officer compensation that I won't get into here but which may make the issue of closing certainty that much more important for Caremark management. How that works for shareholders is another matter. I suspect this one won't move quietly to closing.
2 comments:
Pretty amazing that if the deal goes through CVS will be distributing over a forth of the medications in the United States.
Caremark is a terrible company in my experience as a customer. I've had medications shipped to me by them twice, and both times they made mistakes in the shipping address. One time this resulted in a two week delay of important medication. The second time it resulted in a delay and also in a breach of confidentiality because who-knows-who received the packet with my name and medication. The incompetence of this company is abysmal.
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