An Acquisition With a Good Fit: Two Addictions

This is the kind of deal that Wall Street types like to say has synergy.

Nix-O-Tine Pharmaceuticals is a small Phoenix company that sells a stop-smoking program. Sometimes, the company’s customers gain weight after they kick their nicotine habit.

A few get fat.

Behavioral Services of America, a tiny Mission Viejo firm, has a solution: a physician-supervised weight-loss program known as RxFast.

Nix-O-Tine said Friday that it has tentatively agreed to buy Behavioral Services for about $1 million and will probably relocate its offices to Orange County.

Nix-O-Tine has six employees and lost $752,000 on sales of $241,000 for the nine months ended Feb. 28. Privately held Behavioral Services has about 10 employees and doesn’t disclose financial details.

Behavioral President K. John Harrison said the two businesses complement one another because they both market their products directly to physicians. The company’s weight-loss regimen, which includes a protein supplement and an intensive mental health program, is for people whose body weight is 30% or more above normal.

The deal is conditioned on, among other things, both companies obtaining additional financing.