Greg Weishar
Greg Weishar

The previously announced $1.4 billion acquisition of PharMerica Corp. by a newly formed company controlled by global investment firm KKR, with an affiliate of Walgreens Boots Alliance as a minority investor, has been completed, PharMerica announced Thursday.

The transaction was finalized earlier than expected; when it was announced in August, the company expected the deal to be done by early 2018.

The company now will be private. PharMerica shareholders will receive an amount in cash equal to $29.25 per share of PharMerica common stock, without interest. Shares of PharMerica’s common stock will cease trading on the NYSE before the opening of the NYSE on Friday, the company said.

At the time of the announcement in August, PharMerica Corp. CEO Gregory S. Weishar said that the change would provide PharMerica with “additional resources and expertise to advance and grow the business.”

Weishar has made no secret of the company’s plans to expand its efforts in assisted living. In February, he announced plans to launch a new initiative to increase PharMerica’s share of the assisted living market.

“We have created a model that we believe responds to some of the, I would say, deficiencies that people have articulated in the past with regards to traditional long-term care services trying to serve that market,” he said at the time.

The initiative, called ValueMed, was launched in the first quarter, and in an earnings call in May, Weishar said that early results were “promising” and that the program “has the potential to be a key driver of organic growth in the core business over the next several years.”

“We believe the company’s best-in-class institutional pharmacy service model represents a long-term tailwind for the company, especially as we aggressively compete in the assisted living industry with the ValueMed product,” Weishar said in May.

PharMerica, headquartered in Louisville, KY, operates in 45 states, serving assisted living communities, skilled nursing facilities, hospitals, people receiving care at home and those with cancer.