Dive Brief:

• Baring Private Equity Asia is set to buy Lumenis in a takeover that values the medtech company at more than $1 billion.

• Lumenis supplies minimally invasive devices for treating conditions including benign prostatic hyperplasia and performing aesthetic procedures such as hair removal and cellulite reduction. 

• In a statement posted Tuesday, the private equity group outlined plans to help Lumenis expand its medical and aesthetics businesses globally from its base in Asia.

Dive Insight:

The prospect of succeeding in markets like medical aesthetics has attracted multiple investors over the years, leading Lumenis to go public twice, only to be taken private in deals worth $120 million and $510 million. The larger, more recent of the two go-private deals came in 2015 when China’s XIO Group ended Lumenis' brief second spell as a public company.

Now XIO has sold Lumenis for around twice what it paid for the company. While financial figures are not publicly available, there is evidence that Lumenis grew under XIO. Lumenis ended 2014 with around 1,100 employees. Headcount today stands at nearly 1,500. 

Baring aims to help Lumenis achieve further growth. In a statement, managing director Yan Jiao, who called Lumenis a leader in Asia, said the plan is to support the company’s "global growth aspirations."

The private equity group lists 40 companies in its portfolio of active and expired investments but has limited exposure to medtech. The only company in the "medical-related" subsection of the portfolio is LHI Technology, a Chinese manufacturer of medical cables that it backed in 2006 and has since exited. Carlisle Companies bought LHI in 2014 in a deal that valued the cable manufacturer at $195 million.  

Baring has made more recent forays into industries adjacent to medtech, making investments in a drug manufacturer and healthcare provider in 2014, but its portfolio is still heavily skewed toward consumer-focused businesses. 

At a transaction value in excess of $1 billion, the acquisition of Lumenis represents a significant bet on medtech, although the deal is small compared to some of the private equity group's other takeovers. In recent years, it has struck deals worth up to $4.3 billion, albeit with the support of minority co-investors. 

While medtech investing is fairly new for Baring, its peers have been active in the industry in recent years. In 2018, Platinum Equity's $2.1 billion acquisition of Lifescan from Johnson & Johnson was among the biggest medtech takeovers of the year, spearheading a series of private equity deals that also saw Altaris Capital Partners and Veritas Capital snap up Analogic and part of GE Healthcare, respectively, in transactions worth more than $1 billion each.