In a Hot Dental Market, Viper Equity Partners Fires Up to Expand M&A Reach

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Viper Equity Partners of Palm Beach, founded in 2009 by a group of business and financial professionals, continues to be a dynamic key player in dental consolidation. During Q2, their transactions evolved from 1 to 3 office practices to comprise multi-office dental practices with 15 to 30 locations in concentrated geographies in prime states. With strong Q2 results, Viper is expanding its reach into larger multi-location dental practice deals suitable for rapid value creation for its dental support organizations (DSO) partners.

Consolidation is happening. And like anything, its all about timing. The market is prime for any type of transition, from single location to large groups. At this time, general dentists as well as specialists need to be paying attention. The market for practices is hot and the money being paid for practices is at a historic high. Consolidation and multiples are reaching record highs too, enabling Viper to expand deals into multi-office practices with revenues over $20MM, thereby adding new DSO and sub-DSO buy-side clients. Dental deals hit a record peak this unusually active summer.

“We received over 30 letters of intent (LOIs) this June, and our book of deal inventory rose to over $700MM. Working with single practice owners is our core business, but roll-ups and multi-location deals have become popular.” –Ross Schneider, Vice President of Business Development, Viper Equity Partners

One of Viper’s strengths is that they are skilled at helping the doctors understand the process. In 2018, they aligned over 50 dental practices with DSOs and private equity firms. Thus far in 2019, they have had 100 transactions. They have a reputation of being very value-added and aggressive, keeping deals on track to hit closing dates. This has attracted larger dental groups to Viper. They have a massive referral network and are currently working on deals with groups that have practice counts of 41, 27, 26, 19, and 12. They are also consulting on a 93 office roll up.

Viper’s vision remains clear: to deliver value-added action and indispensable advice to its clients and partners throughout the entire M&A process. Their new North Palm Beach offices house an expanded finance division. Services include package development, financial modeling and forecasting, as well as practice audits. Viper also added a multi-team closing division to facilitate post-LOI diligence through closing for all clients. Further, by partnering with the operational improvement firm ADP, Viper now focuses on groups of offices looking to integrate into a DSO. This collaboration structures them and boosts EBITDAs for market readiness.

“Multiples have pulled back but only to a range that makes sense. They will be stable here for a few years. This is in wake of many recap events for DSOs that have not received the multiples they hope for. But those forecasts were overblown, the recap multiples that are closing are right in line with the industry trends. These are exciting times. Our plan for 2020 will launch integrated and non-integrated DSOs, as well as alignment with DSOs for their recapitalization events.” –David Branch, Principal, Viper Equity Partners

Viper offers free evaluations to all dental practices. It provides them an idea of what they would be looking at in terms of offers. Additionally, Viper has two programs where they represent the practices in the market. Utilizing 30 years of experience, Viper matches each practice with the right opportunity for the best value.

How Viper’s process works:

an extensive marketing system is used to identify dental practices that meet specific criteria,
teams meet with the practice owners who are interested in selling, growing or joining a platform,
after contracted, the departmentalized Viper Teams conduct extensive due diligence on the practice, develop a business summary, and confidential information memorandum,
the practice is taken to market, targeting specific buyers.

Read other Viper Equity Partner articles:

Contact: David Branch |mailto:dave@viperequitypartners.com | 305-988-5945

About Viper: Viper Equity Partners is America’s leading growth transition and M&A advisory firm in dentistry, dermatology, and plastic surgery, with over $1.5 billion closed since 2009. Viper’s M&A expertise and exclusive relationships with private equity-funded organizations are unique. The Viper Team consults with practice-owning doctors and groups from integration and marketing to offer negotiations and diligence to the closing table with high integrity and velocity. For more information, visit www.viperequitypartners.com.

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