Genstar To Buy Health Care Co.

Genstar Capital has agreed to buy Atenda Healthcare Solutions, according to a source familiar with the deal, which is expected to close in the next few months. The company looks to be a good fit for Univita, a platform launched last year to acquire companies that provide services to older Americans.

The purchase price is unclear, though Genstar Capital typically invests $25 million to $200 million of equity in companies with revenues ranging from $50 million to $1 billion. The investment is coming out of the San Francisco firm’s fifth fund, a $1.55 billion pool closed in 2007, according to a regulatory filing.

Davie, Fla.-based Atenda Healthcare operates three businesses: Atenda Specialty Infusion Pharmacy, which provides medication to patients at their homes, nursing facilities or physician offices; Atenda Nursing Management, which provides nursing and custodial care to patients in their homes; and Atenda Home Medical Equipment, which provides equipment and services such as ventilators, oxygen concentrators and urological supplies.

The company, formerly known as Florida Homecare Services, is led by president and CEO Guillermo Salazar, a health care executive since 1983 who has founded 13 primary care physician offices in South Florida.

Genstar Capital has long targeted companies in the health care services sector, including those that specialize in alternate site care, health plan services and home health distribution. Its most recent investment in the sector came in December 2008 when it bought Long Term Care Group, an Eden Prairie, Minn.-based provider of outsourced services to insurance companies, from Advent International and CCP Equity Partners, as previously reported in Buyouts. Long Term Care Group, acquired in an all-equity deal estimated at $300 million (and later refinanced to bring the equity down to the low $200 million-level), became the first company in Univita.

Other Genstar Capital portfolio companies have included Axia Health Management LLC, a Tempe, Ariz.-based company that provides exercise classes, smoking cessation programs and other prevention and wellness services to employers and insurance companies; OnCure Medical Corp., an Englewood, Colo.-based operator of radiation cancer treatment centers in California, Florida and Indiana; and Catalent Pharma Solutions, a Somerset, N.J.-based company that makes oral and sterile medication such as soft-gel “Liqui-caps” and “Vegicaps” for the pharmaceutical industry.

Executives at Genstar Capital declined to comment. Salazar, the CEO of Atenda Healthcare, did not return a call for comment. Genstar Capital, which manages $3 billion, also targets industrial technology and software and business services.