Marlin Equity Partners is parting ways with AdvancedMD Software, Inc. The exit was announced on August 2, 2018, almost three years to the day that Marlin announced its acquisition of the company on August 6, 2015.
Private equity firms are trading healthcare tech and services companies with abandon these days, and there’ve been several take-private deals and carve-outs announced this year. The largest to date is KKR & Co.‘s (NYSE: KKR) $9.9 billion deal for Envision Healthcare Corp. (NYSE: EVHC), but we can add Altaris Capital Partners‘ $1.1 billion acquisition of medtech company Analogic Corporation (NASDAQ: ALOG), Platinum Equity‘s $2.1 billion deal for Johnson & Johnson‘s (NYSE: JNJ) diabetes product company LifeScan, Inc., and GI Partners‘ $530 million deal for Cord Blood Registry (NASDAQ: AMAG).
Today, AdvancedMD provides cloud-based practice Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions to small and mid-sized ambulatory physician practices. Its primary product is called Rhythm, a complete cloud suite of smart applications that accelerate collaborative workflow for every role in the practice.
The acquirer, Global Payments Inc. (NYSE: GPN), agreed to a cash transaction valued at $700 million, which will be financed with its existing credit facility and cash on hand.
This isn’t AdvancedMD’s first change of ownership. The company began in 1999 as PerfectPracticeMD, claiming it had created the first true cloud solution in the medical software market. That company fell on hard times and was bought out of bankruptcy in 2002 by Dominion Ventures and Windward Venture, and was renamed AdvancedMD.
In 2008, Francisco Partners acquired it for an undisclosed price and supported AdvancedMD’s 2010 acquisition of PracticeOne, which added electronic health record (EHR) capabilities. It sold the company to payroll and benefits administrator ADP (NASDAQ: ADP) in March 2011. By that time, AdvancedMD’s software was used by more than 10,000 physicians in 4,100 practices and by more than 300 regional billing partners across the United States.
Marlin Equity entered the picture in 2015, at which time AdvancedMD claimed a national footprint of more than 7,500 practices, 17,500 physicians and 500 billing companies.
In July 2018, AdvancedMD acquired NueSoft Technologies for an undisclosed price, adding its NueMD SaaS platform and increasing its North American footprint by 27%, bringing the total number of clients to 11,000 and practitioners to 33,000.