GMS Dental Sinks Teeth Into Stock Sale Plans

It’ll probably be at least a year until GMS Dental Group Inc. attempts an initial public offering of stock.

But the fast-growing, fatly financed dental management company in Yorba Linda is already chatting up Wall Street.

GMS, formed early last year, has scheduled three presentations this spring to investment bankers and institutional investors. “The process never begins too early,” says GMS Chairman Grant Sadler, who met Monday in Baltimore with investors at a conference of health-care companies sponsored by Alex. Brown Inc.

Sadler said GMS, which raised $21 million in venture capital last year and lined up $10 million in bank financing, should have the wherewithal to carry its ambitious acquisition plans at least through next year.

GMS owns and manages seven dental practices and contracts with about 50 dentists in California, Idaho, Hawaii and Florida. The company would like to expand into Nevada, Arizona and Oregon this year by buying up assets of dental practices and managing them for dentists on a contract basis, Sadler said.

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Barbara Marsh covers health care for The Times. She can be reached at (714) 966-7762 and at barbara.marsh@latimes.com