Alliance Imaging may take on additional debt to pursue acquisitions

By Jennifer Lanning Drey

Portland, Ore., Dec. 5 - Alliance Imaging Inc. plans to aggressively pursue acquisitions in 2007 and would consider entering the debt market to gain additional financing for those acquisitions, chief executive officer Paul Viviano said on Tuesday at the Bank of America 2006 Credit Conference in Orlando, Fla.

"It would be our goal to keep our current leverage ratio in the same range of where it's been this year," he further explained.

The company had roughly $77 million in total liquidity available at the end of the third quarter, which Viviano said could also be used to fund future acquisitions.

The company decreased its total debt by $35.8 million during the first nine months of 2006.

Alliance believes it can grow by acquiring competitors. The company expects many of its competitors to be negatively affected by declining reimbursements due to the Deficit Reduction Act and to begin looking to exit the marketplace in mid-2007, he said.

"There's a strong opportunity here to pick up volume and pursue acquisitions in this challenging marketplace," Viviano said.

"We're going to be very vigilant about gaining volume increases from troubled competitors going forward, and we're also going to pursue acquisitions in a disciplined but aggressive manner," he said.

Alliance is an Anaheim, Calif.-based provider of shared-service and fixed-site diagnostic imaging services.

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