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Monday, June 04, 2012 3:34am EDT (Reuters) - Health insurer WellPoint Inc plans to buy contact-lens and eyewear retailer 1-800 Contacts Inc for a transaction value close to $900 million, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.
The deal will close in the third quarter and will start adding to the company's per-share earnings in 2014, the Journal said in its report. The deal will be financed with cash on hand, the report said.
"We see a unique way of tying 1-800 Contacts into our product design," WellPoint Chief Financial Officer Wayne DeVeydt is quoted as saying in the report.
WellPoint would also get "a diversified revenue stream into a higher-margin business," the report said, quoting the CFO.
1-800 Contacts has after-tax margins in the "double digit range," compared with around 4% to 5% across WellPoint's health-insurance business lines, the report quoted DeVeydt as saying.
WellPoint and 1-800 Contacts Inc. could not reached for comments by Reuters.
(Reporting by Bijoy Koyitty in Bangalore; Editing by Jon Loades-Carter)
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