A California company is hoping future breast enlargements and tummy tucks will help put a big fat bulge in investors’ portfolios.
Alphaeon, which supplies implants, Botox and other cosmetic surgery supplies to a large national network of doctors, is eyeing an IPO in the second half of 2014, The Post has learned.
The $2 billion company has begun to interview investment banks, CEO Robert Grant told The Post.
The network’s doctors perform approximately 30 percent of the Lasik surgeries in the country and 25 percent of breast implants, Grant said.
There were 14.6 million cosmetics procedures in the US in 2012, up 5 percent from the previous year, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
Breast augmentation, rhinoplasty, eyelid surgery, liposuction and face-lifts are the top five performed procedures.
When Alphaeon does go public, it will be the first listed company of its kind, Grant said.
“I started it two years ago, and it has been a rocket ship,” Grant said, adding that Alphaeon-affiliated doctors also do Botox, cosmetic dentistry, sleep disorder treatments and fertility treatments.
“We want to represent half of the self-pay market,” he said.
The Alphaeon model is like a co-operative. Roughly 250 doctors have invested money in Alphaeon.
In turn, Alpaheon buys mostly international surgical and medical products for its doctors to use and offers them the products at a discount, or secures an exclusive license.
“We can get better bargains with manufacturers and get doctors much better deals,” he said.
Alphaeon’s business model has produced profit margins of more than 60 percent.
Its doctors do not have to buy its products. Only some of the Alphaeon doctors have invested in the company.
Alphaeon says it screens its doctors to only include well-regarded physicians in the network — including Richard D’Amico, the New Jersey-based past president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
Ahead of the expected 2014 initial public offering, Alphaeon will kick off an aggressive marketing campaign early next year. The campaign will include two iconic New Yorkers, Grant said.
The CEO declined to name them.
“With the Affordable Care Act, more treatments will be self-pay,” he said, making his practice bigger.
“We have the potential to have $5 billion in revenue in five to seven years,” he said.
Even before Grant’s IPO tome is fully written, some believe it is poorly constructed.
Fox Senior Medical Correspondent Dr. Manny Alvarez does not believe the cosmetic surgery market is going to grow in the way Grant predicts.
He believes people outside of the major cities will choose paying their mortgages over elective surgery.