Swiss diagnostics company Unilabs SA is on sale. Private equity stakeholders Apax Partners and Nordic Capital hope to fetch as much as €1.5 billion ($1.7 billion) from their 2007 investment, Bloomberg reports.
The buyer is likely to be another private equity company or diagnostics company, the article says. Unilabs was founded in 1987 and delisted from the Stockholm Stock Exchange in 2006.
The company's areas of specialization include drug development services, laboratory testing from more than 120 centers across Europe, medical imaging services from 46 centers in northern Europe, cytology and histopathology, and reproductive medicine such as in vitro fertilization.
During its most recent quarter, the company earned €172.1 million ($191.5 million) and had quarterly earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of €27.2 million ($30.3 million).
A potential deal would come soon after France's Labco sold itself to U.K. private equity firm Cinven for €1.2 billion ($1.3 billion), a couple of weeks after the company ditched plans for its previously announced IPO. Cinven then went on to purchase a majority stake in Germany's diagnostics player and laboratory operator Synlab Group for $2 billion, demonstrating that M&A activity is alive and well in the European lab-based diagnostics sector.
- here's the article in Bloomberg