GI Partners has agreed to acquire California Cryobank and Cord Blood Registry and will merge the two businesses to create a leading company in the stem cell storage and reproductive tissue services markets.
California Cryobank has been a portfolio company of Longitude Capital and NovaQuest Capital since August 2014 and Cord Blood Registry has been owned by AMAG, a biopharmaceutical company based in Waltham, MA, since June 2015. The acquisitions of California Cryobank and Cord Blood Registry are expected to close in the third quarter of 2018.
California Cryobank (CCB) provides frozen donor sperm and egg services, reproductive tissue storage, and cord blood/tissue banking. The company is registered with the FDA, accredited by both the American Association of Tissue Banks (AATB) and the American Association of Blood Banks (AABB), and is licensed by the states of California and New York. CCB, founded in 1977, has 210 employees and a 20,000-square foot state-of-the-art cryogenic storage facility at its headquarters in Los Angeles (www.californiacryobank.com).
Cord Blood Registry (CBR) is the world’s largest newborn stem cell company and stores samples from more than 600,000 children. CBR has helped more than 400 families use their cord blood stem cells for established and experimental medical treatments, more than any other family cord blood bank. The company is registered with the FDA and accredited by the American Association of Blood Banks (AABB). CBR was founded in 1992 and is headquartered in South San Francisco, CA and has an 80,000-square foot laboratory in Tucson, AZ (www.cordblood.com).
“We have been following the growing and dynamic reproductive and stem cell space for several years and were attracted to these two companies by their robust customer and market characteristics,” said Dave Kreter, Managing Director at GI Partners. “Their combination represents a unique opportunity to create a new platform better positioned to further expand their industry-leading capabilities. We are excited to collaborate with management to extend the combined company’s capabilities internationally and make critical investments to support its next phase of growth.”
GI Partners makes control equity investments in companies with enterprise values of $250 million to $1 billion that are active in the IT infrastructure, healthcare, software, and services sectors. In November 2017, the firm held a final closing of GI Partners Fund V LP at an oversubscribed and hard cap of $2.8 billion. The buys and merger of CCB and CBR will represent the fifth platform investment for this fund. GI Partners was founded in 2001 and is based in San Francisco (www.gipartners.com).
“CCB and CBR are market leaders with significant brand recognition in their respective end markets. The combination of these two exceptional companies will create a natural one-stop shop for meeting customers’ reproductive and stem cell storage needs,” said Howard Park, Managing Director at GI Partners.”
“We are excited to partner with GI Partners in pursuing significant growth and expansion opportunities that lie ahead for our combined company,” said Richard Jennings, CEO of CCB, who will continue on as CEO of the combined business. “As a combined entity with GI Partners’ support, we are well positioned to continue our mission of helping grow and protect healthy families around the world.”
© 2018 Private Equity Professional | June 15, 2018