How Acadia Healthcare Co. will hit the $6 billion mark – without a five-year plan

November 8, 2016

Nashville Business Journal
by Eleanor Kennedy

Joey Jacobs doesn’t want his team spending time building out five-year plans.

“We stress taking care of today,” Jacobs said in an on-stage interview Monday afternoon during a Nashville Business Journal event.

But Jacobs, CEO of Franklin-based behavioral health giant Acadia Healthcare Co. (Nasdaq: ACHC), is also know for his aggressive goal-setting, and he does have a sort of plan in mind for how the company will hit its next one: $6 billion in revenue by 2020.

“There is no written five-year plan,” Jacobs said. “There is a plan in my brain.”

That plan involves doubling the company’s current $3 billion revenue run rate (that’s a figure determined by annualizing a company’s monthly revenue) not only through acquisitions, Acadia’s bread and butter, but also through working with nonprofit systems looking for a partner to come in and build them a psychiatric hospital.

“They now realize that this is something they can outsource,” Jacobs said, pointing to examples like Acadia’s new facility in Memphis and its recent purchase, and planned expansion, of TrustPoint Hospital in Murfreesboro, close to Saint Thomas Rutherford Hospital.

Beyond that, Jacobs said, Acadia will simply continue its focus on growing same-store admissions, something he argues the company does better than the rest of the industry.

“You don’t need a 100-page powerpoint to make that work,” Jacobs said of his vision. “Many times we make things too complex.”