Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman have joined forces in putting up a whopping $17 billion to acquire EHR vendor Athenahealth. A blend of equity and debt will provide the funding for this buyout of current owners Evergreen Coast Capital and Veritas Capital, both of which will nonetheless keep a minority stake in Athena. The deal is expected to close sometime in the first quarter of 2022.
Athenahealth offers providers cloud-based software to aid practices with telehealth processes such as population health management and medical record maintenance, in addition to other functions. Though the company boasted a client base of 140,000 ambulatory care providers across the U.S. and branded itself the largest provider of cloud-native EHR and IT tools in the nation, it had shown signs of foundering through weakening revenue and low bookings before being taken private in 2019.
The move to privatization was the choice of Evergreen and Veritas; they shelled out $5.7 billion for Athenahealth in 2019. That tenure featured a Virence Health Technologies merger, significant layoffs, and a rebranding that prioritized a platform-as-a-service EHR model. Luckily for Evergreen and Veritas, healthtech demand has flourished since that deal. Now, along with their remaining investment and the Hellman & Friedman/Bain transaction, new co-investors include Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC and a wholly owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.
