Health insurer WellPoint Inc said on Tuesday it reached an agreement to sell 1-800 Contacts, its online contact lens business, to private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners in order to focus on its core insurance business. Financial terms of the deal and a separate transaction to sell a similar eye glasses business, glasses.com, to Luxottica Group were not disclosed.Wellpoint said it would take a charge related to the sales, an indication that it is selling the businesses for less than it paid for them.WellPoint's acquisition of the retail contact lens business from a different private equity firm in June 2012 was one of the last big deals by the company's previous chief executive, Angela Brawly, and was met with mostly negative responses from Wall Street analysts at the time.Wellpoint was widely reported to have paid about $900 million for the business, although the company never disclosed the purchase price.
WellPoint, Inc. (WellPoint) is a health benefit company in terms of medical membership in the United States, serving 34. Shares of WLP traded higher by 2.02% or $1.8/share to $91.08. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $59.45 and as high as $94.36. On average, 2102880 shares of WLP exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 1832006.
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