PPD Acquisition & Valuation

Aragen Life Sciences is a Hyderabad-based discovery and development organization providing integrated drug discovery, clinical development, and contract manufacturing services across small molecules and biologics for global pharma clients. Formerly GVK Biosciences, it employs 2,400 scientists in facilities totaling 1.2 million square feet in India and the United States. Founded in 2001, Aragen serves top pharmaceutical firms with capabilities in medicinal chemistry, ADME, and GMP manufacturing.

Eurofins, headquartered in Luxembourg, is a decentralized network of life sciences companies that provide various analytical tests and laboratory services. These include tests to evaluate the safety, identity, composition, authenticity, purity, origin, and traceability of various biological substances and products. Eurofins operates over 950 laboratories in 61 countries. Its revenue from Europe, North America, and the rest of the world contributes approximately 50%, 40%, and 10% of total revenue, respectively. Its areas of business activity are food, feed, and environmental testing ("life"), biopharmaceutical services, diagnostic services and products, and consumer and technology products testing, which contribute approximately 40%, 30%, 20%, and 10% respectively.

Medpace is a late-stage contract research organization that provides full-service drug-development and clinical trial services to small and midsize biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and medical device firms. It also offers ancillary services, including bioanalytical laboratory services and imaging capabilities. The company was founded over 30 years ago and has more than 5,400 employees across 40 countries. Medpace is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, and its operations are primarily based in the US, with additional presence in Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, and Australia. Cinven, a global private equity firm, acquired Medpace for $915 million in 2014 and exited its investment in 2018.

Charles River Laboratories was founded in 1947 and is a leading provider of drug discovery and development services. The company’s research model & services segment is the leading provider of animal models for laboratory testing, which breeds and delivers animal research models with specific genetic characteristics for preclinical studies around the world. The discovery & safety assessment segment includes services required to take a drug through the early development process, including discovery services. The manufacturing support segment includes microbial solutions, which provide in vitro (nonanimal) testing products, biologics testing services, and avian vaccine services.

Icon is a global contract research organization that provides outsourced clinical development services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms. Icon supports clients across late-stage clinical trials through the regulatory approval process and postmarket studies. Icon’s services include clinical trial management, patient recruitment, data analytics, laboratory services, and regulatory consulting. With more than 40,000 employees operating in over 50 countries, the company partners with life sciences firms to run clinical trials and bring new drugs to market.

Sartorius AG is a leading provider of bioprocessing solutions. Its bioprocess division sells equipment and consumables for upstream and downstream manufacturing of biologic drugs, and has a focus on single-use technology. Its laboratory products and services division offers a wide range of products for laboratory use, including scales, pipettes, and filtration equipment. As of 2024, the bioprocess and LPS divisions contributed 80% and 20% of revenue, respectively. Bioprocess is housed in its subsidiary Sartorius Stedim Biotech, of which Sartorius AG has a 72% ownership and 83% voting control. The business is geographically diverse, with revenue across Europe, Middle East, and Africa (41% of 2024 sales), the Americas (36%), and Asia-Pacific (23%). We estimate China revenue to be around 10%.

Laurus Labs Ltd is a pharmaceutical company based in India. It provides active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) including intermediates, Generic Finished dosage forms (FDF), and Contract Research services. The entity develops APIs and intermediates for select, high-growth antiretrovirals, Hepatitis C and Oncology. It also manufactures APIs in other therapeutic areas, such as anti-asthma, ophthalmology, anti-diabetics, cardiovascular, and proton pump inhibitors, among others. The company has its business presence in India and Outside India of which it derives a majority of revenue from Outside India. It generates revenue from the sale of API, Intermediates and Formulations, Contract research services, and others.

Sartorius Stedim Biotech is a leading provider of bioprocessing solutions. Its sells equipment and consumables for fermentation, filtration, fluid management, purification, and cell culture media for manufacturing biologic drugs and has a focus on single-use technology. It is a subsidiary of Sartorius AG, which has 71.5% ownership and 83% voting control. The business is geographically diverse, with 35% of sales from the Americas, 42% from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, 15% from Asia excluding China, and 8% from China.

WuXi Biologics is one of the largest biologics contract development and manufacturing organizations in the world. Incorporated in 2014 following the reorganization of WuXi PharmaTech, WuXi engages in full-lifecycle services beginning from drug discovery, clinical trials, and commercial manufacturing. It focuses on developing, refining, and manufacturing processes to increase scalability and efficiency for pharmaceutical companies looking to outsource and access specialized knowledge. As of 2024, WuXi derives more than 60% of its revenue from US companies and focuses its operations on high-growth, late-stage, and commercial projects in the biologics sector. WuXi competes with Samsung Biologics, Lonza, and Fujifilm for contracts.

Demant is a Denmark-based manufacturer and distributor of hearing solutions, such as hearing aid devices and diagnostic equipment. More than 80% of the company's sales come from North America and Europe.

Pharmaron Beijing Co Ltd is a research and development service company supporting the life science industry. The company offers drug research and development service capabilities, ranging from synthetic, medicinal, and analytical chemistry, biology, DMPK, pharmacology, drug safety assessment, radiochemistry, and isotopically labelled metabolism, chemical and pharmaceutical development to clinical development. Its operating segment includes Laboratory services; CMC (small molecule CDMO) services, Clinical development services, and biologics and CGT services. It generates maximum revenue from the Laboratory services segment.

Based in Minnesota, Bio-Techne is a life sciences manufacturer supplying consumables and instruments for the pharma, biotech, academic, and diagnostic markets. It reports in two segments: protein sciences (about 75% of revenue) and diagnostics and genomics (25%). The protein sciences segment sells reagents and analytical instruments used in life sciences research, including antibodies used in protein analysis. The diagnostics and genomics segment sells diagnostic reagents, molecular diagnostics, and spatial biology products. The United States accounts for about 55% of revenue. The firm also has operations in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (20% of sales), the UK (5%), and Asia-Pacific (15%), with the rest of the world accounting for the remaining 5%.

WuXi XDC Cayman Inc is a CRDMO focused on the ADC and broader bioconjugate market and is the only one dedicated to providing integrated and end-to-end services. Leveraging expertise in both biologics and small molecules, it offers interdisciplinary and comprehensive services, covering bioconjugate discovery, research, development, and manufacturing. The company provides these services from proximately located laboratories and manufacturing facilities, resulting in the reduction of development timeline and costs. As a fully integrated one-stop bioconjugate discovery, development, and manufacturing platform, its mission is to continuously enhance its platform and propel and transform the development of the bioconjugate industry.

Repligen, headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, is a global life sciences company that develops and sells bioprocessing equipment and supplies used in the manufacturing of biologic drugs, including monoclonal antibodies, recombinant proteins, vaccines, and cell and gene therapies. Its customers include biopharmaceutical companies, contract development and manufacturing organizations, or CDMOs, and other life science companies. It sells four main product categories: filtration (including fluid management) is the largest category (about 55% of total revenue), while chromatography, proteins, and process analytics are 21%, 11%, and 13%, respectively. Customers in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific contribute about 44%, 37%, and 19% of revenue, respectively.

Divi's Laboratories Ltd is a specialty and generic drug manufacturing company. It is engaged in the manufacture of Active Pharmaceutical ingredients (API), Intermediates, and Nutraceutical ingredients, with a predominance in exports. It also, through its custom synthesis, supports pharma companies for their patented products business from gram-scale requirements for clinical trials to launch, as well as late-life cycle management. Geographically, the company derives maximum revenue from Europe, and the rest from America, India, Asia (excluding India), and the Rest of the world.

Benchling is a software company that sells a cloud R&D platform to life sciences and biotechnology organisations. The platform brings electronic lab notebooks, sequence design and molecular biology tools, sample and inventory registries, workflow management and data analysis into one system of record for scientific work. Customers are pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, agricultural and industrial biology firms, and academic laboratories, which pay recurring subscriptions for access. Benchling also offers a developer platform with APIs for connecting laboratory instruments and other systems, and has added artificial intelligence tools to its product through acquisitions. The company was founded in 2012 by Sajith Wickramasekara and Ashu Singhal and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. It is privately held and backed by venture and growth investors.