Acadia Healthcare Co. will decrease its 2026 capital spending by $300 million from this 12 months’s roughly $625 million and has determined to shut a handful of its behavioral well being services.
Talking on the Jefferies 2025 Healthcare Companies Convention on Sept. 29, CEO Chris Hunter additionally mentioned Franklin, Tennessee-based Acadia will additional minimize its capex price range in 2027 as his crew prioritizes development in money flows over enlargement and the corporate’s high line.
Phrase of the slower development plans comes after a interval during which Acadia spent tons of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} so as to add greater than 1,800 affected person beds in 2024 and this 12 months to its community, which now spans greater than 12,000 beds at greater than 270 services. It additionally comes simply days after the leaders of New York-based funding agency Engine Capital mentioned Acadia’s shares are vastly undervalued and publicly known as on Hunter’s crew and the board of administrators to “briefly halt new mattress development to refocus on (their) core operations” whereas additionally promoting some properties.
“By sharply decreasing development capex, the corporate will rapidly be capable to show its sturdy free money circulation, return capital to shareholders, and start to regain buyers’ confidence,” the principals of Engine Capital, which owns about 3 % of Acadia’s shares, mentioned in an open letter. “At Acadia’s present valuation, the market will not be pricing in any worthwhile development and is valuing the enterprise at a major low cost to its alternative worth, implying that development is destroying worth.”
Phrase from Hunter of the large deliberate 2026 spending cuts comes about eight weeks after he informed analysts that his crew had paused work on two initiatives in Acadia’s pipelinea transfer that ought to save the corporate about $100 million over a number of years. On the time, Hunter and CFO Heather Dixon pointed to uncertainty across the One Huge Lovely Invoice Act as the primary motive for tapping the brakes.
Talking on the Jefferies occasion, Hunter reiterated that reimbursement questions stay necessary to Acadia’s future capex. His crew, he mentioned, is trying so as to add beds in states with extra favorable cost environments. On the similar time, he added, Acadia will quickly shut 5 services to additional trim prices. Two of these usually are not assembly the corporate’s monetary targets, he mentioned, and three are targeted on consuming issues, which Hunter mentioned aren’t a core enterprise.
