AnaCap parts with Oona Health; European healthcare investments plummet in 2022

Good morning Eurohubsters, Nina Lindholm here with the final Dealflow of the week.

Three letters, SVB, have dominated headlines all week. While we’ve kept our eyes on the fallout, we have also seen some interesting deals. We did hear from one PE firm about what the collapse means for the life sciences sector, which partially inspired me to focus on healthcare today.

Today we have an exit by AnaCap, as the firm parted ways with a Danish private health services and insurance provider. We also have an acquisition to look at with Archimed-backed Carso picking up an Italian food-safety tester. For some extra flavour, we’ll go through some highlights from S&P Global’s report on European healthcare investments in H2 of 2022. Outside of healthcare, I also want to revisit this week’s additions to our Women in PE series.

Healthy.

Let’s start with the exit. AnaCap Financial Partners signed an agreement for the sale of Oona Health, a Danish private health services and insurance provider, to Topdanmark.

Oona, headquartered in Copenhagen, serves corporate and SME companies as well as private individuals in Denmark and Sweden. In 2022, the firm recorded revenues of DKr700 million ($100 million; €94 million).

Oona’s management has expanded the company geographically and launched several new product lines since AnaCap invested in the firm in 2019, according to a release.

“The Nordic private health insurance market presented market conditions in which we were able to identify a clear opportunity to leverage our value creation growth track record in close collaboration with Kent Jensen and his management team,” said Tassilo Arnhold, co-managing partner at AnaCap.

Data.

Next, we’ll dive into some numbers from S&P Global Market Intelligence’s report on European healthcare in H2 2022. Investment in the industry fell by a quarter in 2022 according to the report, with the second half of the year seeing a “particularly sluggish” performance.

Deal volume for all of 2022 peaked in the first quarter, with 234 transactions bringing in $7.50 billion. In comparison, in the final three months of the year, investments were down by more than half, at $3.28 billion.

The top three sub-sectors were healthcare services, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, with PE pouring in $7.01 billion, $3.97 billion and $2.93 billion, respectively. These three subsectors accounted for more than 70 percent of the total private equity investments in European healthcare.

One of the largest deals in the sector according to the report was Ardian’s sale of its stake in Unither to a consortium led by CEO Eric Goupil and comprising GIC, IK Partners, Keensight and Parquest. I spoke to Ardian’s Scarlett Omar-Broca about the exit at the time. You can read that interview here.

If you have any thoughts on these figures or how 2023 might be different, drop me a line at nina.l@pei.group

Testing.

Moving on to an acquisition. Archimed portfolio company Carso Group acquired Agro.biolab Laboratory, a food-safety tester offering chemical analysis, microbiological analysis, materials analysis and pesticide analysis for the general food, water, agricultural and animal feed sectors.

The family of Francesco Gallone, founder and MD of Agro.biolab, will roll over a significant portion of proceeds from the deal into a minority stake in Carso and will hold leadership positions in the merged group’s Italian operations, according to a release.

“This acquisition is totally in line with Archimed and management’s plan to grow Carso organically and through add-ons into a European public-safety testing powerhouse,” said Antoine Faguer, partner at Archimed.

Archimed has identified a potential acquisition pipeline of over 100 companies for Carso and is in advanced negotiations for several future partnerships, the release stated. ArchiMed acquired Carso via its MED Platform I fund in late 2021, alongside Carso founder Bruno Schnepp and private equity firms Siparex and Capza.

Women in PE.

In case you missed any of our Women in PE coverage this week, I thought I’d highlight this week’s stories again. My colleague Irien Joseph spoke with Jaroslava Korpanec, partner and head of Central and Eastern Europe, energy infrastructure at Actis Partners. It’s a great interview, and Korpanec’s story is very interesting. She talked about the importance of role models, retention and authenticity.

In another addition to our series this week, I spoke with Morgane Bouhenic, a partner at IK Partners. Like Korpanec, Bouhenic stressed the importance of retaining young women entering the industry. “We need to do more; we need to get better,” she told me. “Otherwise, we lose not only talent, but also the attractiveness in the competitive job market for new graduates.”

Keep your eyes peeled for the next instalment in our Women in PE series, it will be out on Monday.

That’s all from me today. I hope you all have a great weekend. Craig McGlashan will write to you on Monday.

Cheers,

Nina