Fortive to Pay $1.4 Billion for Clearlake’s Provation Medical

Dec 3, 2021

Share

(Bloomberg) -- Fortive Corp. has agreed to acquire health-care software maker Provation Medical for more than $1.4 billion from its private equity owner Clearlake Capital Group LP.

Fortive expects to finance the acquisition with short-term debt and available cash, the company said in a statement confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report. Fortive estimated that the deal will be accretive to adjusted diluted net earnings, adding more than 8 cents a share in its 2022 fiscal year.

Shares of Fortive rose as much as 3.6% Friday. The shares were little changed at $74.24 at 2:26 p.m. in New York, giving the company a market value of about $27 billion.

Minneapolis-based Provation’s software is used to track medical procedures as well as recovery, and facilitates physician, nursing and anesthesia documentation. The company, founded in 1994, was acquired by Clearlake in 2018 from information services company Wolters Kluwer NV for $180 million, the companies said at the time.

5,000 Customers

Serving more than 5,000 customers including hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers, Provation is expected to have 2021 revenue of about $110 million, according to the statement.

“Provation is a best-in-class health-care software provider, delivering safe, efficient and scalable procedure documentation and clinical decision support solutions to thousands of health systems, hospitals and ASCs,” Fortive Chief Executive Officer Jim Lico said in the statement.

Fortive beat out rival bidders for Provation, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

Clearlake said in a separate statement that Provation’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization more than doubled in the three years it was owned by the Santa Monica, California-based firm.

Serial Dealmaker

Fortive, based in Everett, Washington, is a serial dealmaker. The industrial company spun off from Danaher Corp. in 2016 and then proceeded to carve out its mobility operations into a public company called Vontier Corp. last year.  

Under Lico, the company has made acquisitions in software and health care to broaden focus beyond its historical expertise in industrial testing and measurement. 

In September, Fortive completed an acquisition worth about $1.2 billion of ServiceChannel Holdings Inc., which makes software for operators of maintenance facilities. 

Provation has also done tuck-in deals including buying endoPRO endoscopy informatics and software portfolio from Pentax Medical and iProcedures, a provider of anesthesia documentation and perioperative data management software this year.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.