Associated Press
Prison operator The Geo Group will spend $312 million in cash to buy eight correctional and detention locations from the privately held LCS Corrections Services.
The deal price could rise to around $350 million, if the locations meet some performance targets, Geo Group said Monday. It didn’t detail those targets.
LCS runs sites in Louisiana, Texas and Alabama totaling more than 6,500 beds for federal, state and local governments.
The Geo Group Inc. designs and runs correctional, detention and community re-entry sites around the world. With the LCS deal, it will own or manage 106 locations totaling about 85,500 beds. It hopes to complete the deal by the end of February,
Geo Group said the deal will immediately increase its revenues by about $75 million to $80 million. The company also said it expects to improve the utilization of the LCS locations, which have average occupancy rates of about 50 percent.
The company plans to finance the acquisition, which it expects to close next month, by borrowing from its $700 million revolving credit line.
Shares of the Boca Raton, Florida, company rose 8 cents to $42.74 in morning trading Monday while broader trading indexes fell slightly.
