Cigna Corp. is considering selling or outsourcing its pharmacy-benefits division, a business that might fetch $1.5 billion for the U.S. health insurer in an acquisition, according to one analyst.
Cigna is evaluating “structural solutions” for the unit now that its $3.8 billion purchase of Healthspring Inc. has expanded the pharmacy business, Matthew Asensio, a company spokesman, said in a telephone interview. The move follows decisions by insurers WellPoint Inc. and Aetna Inc. to sell and outsource their pharmacy units, respectively.
The Healthspring deal, completed last month, added 650,000 members to a pharmacy unit that served 6.91 million last year, Bloomfield, Connecticut-based Cigna said on Feb. 2. While managing those benefits is “significant” to customers, “there’s different ways you could do that,” Chief Financial Officer Ralph Nicoletti said at a conference last week.
“Everything is on the table,” for the pharmacy-benefits division, Asensio said. “Nothing has been ruled out.”
Healthspring increased the prescriptions Cigna handles by as much as 50 percent, boosting the value of the unit to as much as $1.5 billion, said Ana Gupte, a Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst, in New York. Cigna could use the proceeds from a sale or outsourcing to cut debt or pay down its pension liabilities, she said.
Cigna had $1.45 billion in mail-order pharmacy sales last year, it said in its Feb. 2 statement. Healthspring, a health- maintenance organization that focuses on elderly Medicare patients, generated $730 million from drug plans in the first nine months of 2011, according to the last earnings report it filed.
‘Bigger Footprint’
