Investindustrial, through its Investindustrial VI Fund, will buy the entire capita of HTL Strefa, a leading global medtech company that develops, manufactures and sells medical sharps devices (safety lancets, personal lancets and pen needles for insulin injection). The seller is Scandinavian private equity firm EQT (see here the press release).
The deal is expected to close by the end of Q3 this year and after that Investindustrial will combine HTL with PIC, Artsana’s healthcare business acquired in 2016. The Catelli family will remain as minority shareholders in the combined entity, which will be chaired by Claudio De Conto (current ceo of Artsana) while Mikkel Danvold will remain as ceo to lead the company.
Financing for the creation of the combined PIC-HTL Group has been fully underwritten by UniCredit, who will act as sole Global Co-ordinator. Advisors on the transaction for Investindustrial were: Studio Chiomenti and Wardynski (legal), McKinsey (business), Lazard (financial), PWC (accounting), Willis (insurance) and Golder Associates (environmental).
Formed in 1994, HTL is credited with being the inventor of the safety lancet, a medical device developed for capillary blood sampling, and is now the market leader in this segment and the number two player in personal lancets. In 2014, HTL also entered the high growth safety and non-safety pen needles and lancing devices market, reporting strong growth rates. The combination of PIC with HTL will allow the enlarged group to create an international player with sales in more than 100 countries and 1,800 employees.
This is a change of strategy versus one year ago when there were rumors on the market relative to a possible sale of PIC by Artsana, after the sale to Sodalis Group of the brand Lycia (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Back then the brand Pic Solutions was said to generate about 136 million euros in evenues with 40 million euros of ebitda with an enterprise value of about 500 million euros.
