Clearlake preps potential $1.4bn-plus sale of Provation, Private equity firms scale their BD operations, Medline emerges with largest LBO loan since Kraft

Happy Friday, hubsters!

This is Sarah, back from my first official work trip in more months than I can count. It was nice to see a few of you IRL in Chicago, and extra nice to return with lots of good stuff to chase down on brewing deals and the like.

Here’s a big one for ya: Clearlake Capital is gearing up for a sale of Provation Medical, the healthcare technology business it carved out from Wolters Kluwer less than four years ago. Based on the numbers I’ve gathered, it’s grown a lot since that time.

Value expectations are in the $1.4 billion to $1.5 billion-plus range depending on which EBITDA bidders ultimately underwrite, sources told me. The Santa Monica-based PE firm in March 2018 bought Provation for just $180 million in cash.

Provation via its software and SaaS solutions helps physicians and other healthcare professionals improve clinical productivity, care coordination, quality reporting and billing processes. A process will formally kick off this fall.

Check out my full report on PE Hub.

The process comes as Clearlake nears completion of a single asset process for another healthcare technology business — Symplr — after it scored a minority investment from Charlesbank Capital in July. The deal could total $1.25 billion, or up to $1.4 billion or $1.5 billion, depending on demand, secondaries scoopster Chris Witkowsky wrote. Read more here.

Biz dev: Mid-market and lower mid-market PE firms are ramping up the hiring of business development professionals these days. Driving this, writes Karishma Vanjani on the Hub, are factors such as the acceleration of fundraising cycles, and hence, the need to put capital to work more quickly.

For example, Trivest Partners has roughly 30 to 40 portfolio companies with eight business development professionals devoted to different geographies.

The percentage of PE firms with at least one full-time business development professional rose to 64 percent in 2020 as compared with 47 percent in 2017, according to Sutton Place Strategies, a deal transaction database.

“Emerging managers have a heightened sense of differentiation; they need to tell their story,” says Jordan Selleck, co-founder of 51 Labs, a New York-based marketing agency, which focuses on private equity firms and works a lot with emerging managers.
Read it on PE Hub.

Largest ever: Remember Medline? How could you not. Commanding a $34 billion enterprise value in one of the largest leveraged buyouts in history, Hellman & Friedman, Carlyle and Blackstone joined hands earlier this year to invest a majority stake in the healthcare products distributor that has quietly become a force after several decades of family ownership.

According to Bloomberg, the dollar tranche of its takeover financing was just upsized for a second time, going to $7.27 billion from $6 billion originally. That would be the second-largest broadly syndicated dollar LBO loan — trailing only Heinz (with a $9.5 billion leveraged loan) — since Bloomberg began tracking the data in 2013, the report said.
The loan and a euro tranche of $500 million are expected to allocate Sept. 30, Bloomberg said, while Medline has also launched $7 billion in secured and unsecured notes to finance the deal.

That’s it for me! Have a great weekend, and as always, hit me up at springle@buyoutsinsider.com with your comments, tips or anything else!