Oracle buys electronic medical records company Cerner for $28.3 billion, its biggest acquisition ever

Enterprise software giant Oracle is closing the year with the announcement of its biggest acquisition ever. Oracle said on Monday that it will buy electronic medical records company Cerner in an all-cash deal for approximately $28.3 billion in equity value (about $95 per share). The deal is expected to close in 2022.

According to Oracle, the acquisition, which is the biggest ever for Oracle, will enable the tech giant to boost its presence in health care by bringing troves of health data to its cloud services. Oracle added that the acquisition will be immediately accretive to the company’s earnings on a non-GAAP basis in the first full fiscal year after closing. It expects Cerner to be “a huge additional revenue growth engine for years to come,” it added.

In a statement, Oracle founder Larry Ellison said, “Working together, Cerner and Oracle have the capacity to transform healthcare delivery by providing medical professionals with better information—enabling them to make better treatment decisions resulting in better patient outcomes.”

The Kansas City, Missouri-based Cerner was founded in 1979 by Cliff Illig, Neal Patterson, and Paul Gorup. The company is a leading provider of digital information systems used within hospitals and health systems to enable medical professionals to deliver better healthcare to individual patients and communities.

Cerner solutions optimize processes for healthcare organizations. These solutions are licensed by 9,300 facilities globally, including more than 2,650 hospitals; 3,750 physician practices 40,000 physicians; 500 ambulatory facilities, such as laboratories, ambulatory centers, cardiac facilities, radiology clinics, and surgery centers; 800 home health facilities; 40 employer sites and 1,600 retail pharmacies.

“Cerner has been a leader in helping digitize medical care and now it’s time to realize the real promise of that work with the care delivery tools that get information to the right caregivers at the right time,” said David Feinberg, President and Chief Executive Officer, Cerner. “Joining Oracle as a dedicated Industry Business Unit provides an unprecedented opportunity to accelerate our work modernizing electronic health records (EHR), improving the caregiver experience, and enabling more connected, high-quality, and efficient patient care. We are also very excited that Oracle is committed to maintaining and growing our community presence, including in the Kansas City area.”

Founded in Santa Clara in 1977 by Larry Ellison, the company moved into its current headquarters in 1989. It is one of Silicon Valley’s older success stories. Tech giants are not the only companies moving out of California. According to a report from CrunchBase, a number of startups as well as other bigger and more established companies, have moved to Austin, Texas in the first half of 2020 alone.