Juggernaut sells Nature’s One to Bobbie Bay; TT Capital Partners seeks to alleviate loneliness

Good morning, Hubsters. MK Flynn here with today’s Wire.

Happy Monday. I’ve just returned from a few days in Vermont and Massachusetts, where I enjoyed the New England scenery and ate a lot of fresh blueberries and maple syrup. I hope you had a good weekend too!

On the dealmaking front this morning, a couple of transactions caught our attention, one involving baby formula and the other involving property management services.

We’ve also got a look inside a PE deal that involves technology to help identify people at risk for loneliness, a growing problem in the US.

Let’s start with today’s deals.

Baby formula
Juggernaut Capital Partners has sold Nature’s One, a Lewis Center, Ohio-based pediatric nutrition company, to Bobbie Bay, which specializes in European style organic baby formula, as Iris Dorbian reports.

Juggernaut and Nature’s One founder Jay Highman will continue as substantial shareholders of Bobbie Bay.

“Nature’s One is a true pioneer in the pediatric nutrition space,” said John Shulman, managing partner of Juggernaut in a statement. “Juggernaut partnered with founder, Jay Highman, to accelerate product development and vertical integration initiatives. Over the past five years, the company completed the first FDA-approved clinical feeding study of an organic infant formula and designed and constructed the first newly built infant formula facility in the U.S. in 35 years.”

Multifamily dwellings
The RMR Group has agreed to acquire 100 percent of the equity interests in MPC Partnership Holdings, doing business as CARROLL, a provider of management services to multifamily properties, in an all-cash transaction for $80 million, subject to customary purchase price adjustments, with the potential for incremental earnout consideration up to $20 million based on the deployment of future capital.

Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Atlanta, CARROLL provides asset and property management services to 81 multifamily properties with more than 28,000 units, primarily located across the Sunbelt markets of the US.

“Importantly, the CARROLL platform is uniquely positioned to continue benefitting from favorable demographic tailwinds in high-growth Sunbelt markets,” said Adam Portnoy, president and CEO the RMR Group. “Additionally, this acquisition will advance RMR’s private capital growth strategy with high-quality global institutional investors and drive continued growth across the combined platform with the potential to make in excess of $3 billion of additional multifamily investments.”

Predictive model
The US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recently warned of a loneliness epidemic hitting the country.

TT Capital Partners, a Bloomington, Minnesota-based private equity firm is stepping up to the table with a recent majority investment in Pyx Health, a Tucson, Arizona-based provider of technology and support that reduces loneliness.

Obey spoke with Dawn Owens, TTCP partner and CEO, on what enticed the firm to invest in this space. “We appreciate both the importance of addressing the issue [of loneliness] and what it does for healthcare quality, costs and access,” she said. “It’s an opportunity for people to have the best health they can achieve, and we have seen how difficult it can be to do those things.”

Founded in 2017, the company serves more than six million people in more than 70 markets across nearly 30 states covered under nearly all major payers, as well as government, employer and community health plans, according to Pyx.

Owens said the company uses app-based technology, paired with timely human interventions, to help those identified as lonely from their data.

Pyx has “a science-based solution that looks at primarily health plan data to identify characteristics and profiles of individuals who are likely struggling with loneliness,” she said. “The company has a predictive model that helps them identify people who likely need intervention and support.”

But the process of solving loneliness brings to the fore the need to ensure that the healthcare system is accessible to those who need it, she added.

“We thought this is a business that can help with accessibility and make our healthcare system better for a population of individuals who are underserved by it,” she said, adding that severe loneliness was not new prior to covid, although the pandemic put a spotlight on the issue and the downstream impacts.

“The marketplace has started to recognize that loneliness and self-isolation can be a gateway to addressing additional needs. People are more likely to ask for help with loneliness, and in the course of helping them you discover the other needs that they have, which can be other social determinants.”

For growth, Pyx will take a combination of both organic and inorganic strategies. For M&A, Owens said Pyx will look for businesses with complementary services that will accelerate their vision.

That’s all for today. I’ll be back with more tomorrow. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you at my new email address: mk.flynn@pei.group

See you tomorrow,
MK