ICON Acquires PRA Health Sciences

ICON Acquires PRA Health Sciences

by | Mar 1, 2021 3:39 pm | CRO | 0 comments

The contract research organization giant ICON plc (NASDAQ: ICLR) is growing its market reach through the acquisition of PRA Health Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: PRAH). The deal is valued at $12 billion, with the per share merger consideration consisting of $80 in cash and 0.4125 shares of ICON stock. The consideration represents an approximately 30% premium to PRA’s closing price as of February 23, 2021. The transaction value comes out to around 3.77x revenue and 20.2x EBITDA, annualized.  PRA is one of the world’s leading global contract research organizations by revenue, providing outsourced clinical development and data solution services to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.... Read More »
CROs Are Still Trending as Q4 Rolls On

CROs Are Still Trending as Q4 Rolls On

by | Nov 10, 2019 10:26 am | CRO, Other Services, Private Equity | 0 comments

In the first week of November, BioAgilytix Labs, LLC, a portfolio company of Riverside Partners, purchased Cambridge Biomedical. Both Cambridge and BioAgilytix are contract research organizations (CROs) that develop novel therapeutic biologics and biosimilars, specializing in large molecule bioanalysis. The transaction expands BioAgilytix’s global footprint and adds further capacity by joining Cambridge Biomedical’s CLIA-certified, CAP-accredited, and GLP-compliant facility with its GxP laboratories in Durham, North Carolina and Hamburg, Germany. It also gives BioAgilytix a total of 400 employees. The merger follows a busy October for CROs, in which five deals were reported, accounting for... Read More »

Pamplona Capital Wins Auction for PAREXEL

by | Jun 28, 2017 7:35 pm | CRO, Other Services | 0 comments

Pamplona Capital Management LLP, a New York-based private equity firm, has been on the hunt for a contract research organization (CRO) for the past year. According to a report from Reuters, it made an unsuccessful bid earlier this year for Pharmaceutical Product Development LLC, a U.S. clinical trials firm valued at more than $9 billion. On June 20, 2017, Pamplona bagged a different target. The firm announced its acquisition of PAREXEL International Corporation (NASDAQ: PRXL) in a going-private transaction. According to other reports, Parexel’s advisers initially accepted PE firm offers, but later opened up the auction to industry players as well. Pamplona outbid rivals including... Read More »

CROs Are Back, Many with Specialties

by | Nov 18, 2016 4:12 pm | Other Services, Private Equity | 0 comments

We’ve documented the increase in biotechnology acquisitions and license deals by pharmaceutical companies in previous posts. But the impact of pharma’s move away from in-house R&D has benefited other sectors of the healthcare industry, particularly clinical research organizations (CROs). For those outside the technology side of healthcare, CROs provide outsourced research services to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device industries on a contract basis. Through mid-November, we’ve seen an increase of 325% in deal volume for CROs, compared with the year before. In 2015, just five deals for these targets were announced. So far this year, 17 are on the... Read More »