28
2nd QUARTER 2014
Interview by Andrew Zezas
Q A
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J
ay Roberts, chief financial
officer of AdvantEdge
Healthcare Solutions,
has more than 25 years
of senior finance experience,
20 years as a CFO. Roberts has
gained strong expertise in SEC
reporting, accounting, M&A,
and corporate-development transactions
for health care technology companies,
successfully completing over 100 corporate
financing acquisitions and exit transactions.
This knowledge has proven a good fit for
AdvantEdge, which provides medical-billing
services for physician groups, hospitals,
surgery centers, and behavioral health
agencies, and was founded in
1999 by long-term veterans of
the health care IT and medical-
billing sectors. Roberts recently
spoke with CFO Studio
On-Camera about the dynamics
of capital markets in health care
technology. Below are excerpts
from that conversation.
n
(ANDREWZEZAS)
Jay, it’s so nice to
have you here on CFO Studio.
ROBERTS
:
Andy, thank you very much for
having me. I appreciate it.
n
So, you’re in health care technology. Talk to
me about the regulatory environment. How has
the current environment impacted companies’
ability to secure bank financing specifically for
growth funding?
ROBERTS
:
I’ve been in health care IT for
20-plus years, and over that time, the
regulatory environment has become a little
bit more challenging. Certainly, in the last
several years, Dodd-Frank had a big impact
on securitization of debt financing, and
what we’re seeing today is: While the cost of
capital in this current environment is very
attractive and very competitive, we’re also
finding that covenants associated with bank
financing have become more difficult.
We’re also seeing that, while there’s a lot of
capital to deploy and there’s still a good op-
portunity to gain yield, a lot of the traditional
lenders have still been challenged to find good
opportunities because of the economic climate.
n
How about private equity and venture
investors?
ROBERTS
:
The venture and the private-
equity community has been very interested
in coming into the space, specifically into
health care IT and services. We’re finding
that, in particular, the private-equity investors
are coming to health care providers. So we’re
seeing clinical labs, as an example, where that
particular sector has had a lot of interest by
venture and private-equity investors.
n
On the subject of growth, will your
company’s growth be more from upselling to
existing customers new products and services, or
acquiring new customers?
ROBERTS
:
We want to focus on our existing
client base and expand within that existing
client base. We do more and more with hospi-
tal-based clients, and that’s been a big part of
our growth strategy over the last several years.
We also have a very strong initiative relative
to growing organically with new-customer
acquisition. We’ve completed eight
acquisitions in the last five years.
C
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