Enterprise software giant Oracle will buy electronic medical records company Cerner in an all-cash deal for $95 per share, or approximately $28.3 billion in equity value.
The deal, expected to close in calendar year 2022, could help Oracle boost its presence in health care by bringing troves of health data to its cloud services.
Oracle shares closed down 5% Monday after the companies announced the deal. Shares initially fell 6% on Friday after The Wall Street Journal first reported Oracle would buy Cerner.
The massive acquisition is the biggest ever for Oracle, one of the largest software providers. The company, founded in 1977, had a market cap around $264 billion as of early Monday morning.
It comes amid a surge in global mergers and acquisition activity. M&A topped $5 trillion for the first time ever in 2021, led by technology and health care, according to a report cited by Reuters.
Oracle said 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.
