WEX to acquire Nebraska health care billing software company
File Photo / Tim Greenway
Melissa Smith, WEX president and CEO, with Stephen Crowley, senior vice president of shared services and CIO, at the company's South Portland office in a 2014 file photo.
WEX Inc., a South Portland-based provider of corporate payment solutions, announced Thursday that it has reached an agreement to acquire Benaissance, a health care billing software firm in Nebraska, for $80 million.
Melissa Smith, WEX’s president and CEO, said in the release announcing the acquisition that it builds on the success WEX has already had in the health care sector by allowing it to provide an expanded and differentiated payments solution.
“We believe this will enhance our addressable market opportunity, customer loyalty and wallet share over time, while strengthening our overall value proposition in this attractive, high-growth vertical,” Smith said.
The deal has been approved by the boards of directors of both companies but is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. The companies anticipate the transaction will close in the fourth quarter of this year.
Smith told Mainebiz earlier this year that she was confident WEX (NYSE: WEX) would continue the 10% to 15% annual growth rate it has achieved since becoming publicly traded in 2005, in part because of acquisitions the company made in 2014: the $532.5 million cash purchase of Evolution1, a cloud-based technology and health care payment services company based in Fargo, N.D., and the purchase of ExxonMobil’s European commercial fuel card program for an undisclosed sum that closed late last year.
It didn’t disclose in the release how it would finance the Benaissance acquisition.
WEX has evolved from a fleet card business into a global company with travel, corporate and health payments in its business portfolio. Its revenue totaled $817.6 million in 2014.
WEX and its subsidiaries employ about 2,000 people globally, with about 700 based in Maine.
Benaissance, founded in 2006, is based in Omaha, Neb. After the transaction’s completion, Benaissance will be integrated with WEX’s Evolution1 platform, which already shares a number of mutual partners and customers with Benaissance, the release said.
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