Warburg Pincus, Mubadala buy Informa's Pharma Intelligence for GBP 1.9bn

Informa will continue to own 15% of the asset. It first revealed plans to carve out different brands within its intelligence arm in early December, as part of a three-year growth plan.

The intelligence company appointed Goldman Sachs to sell Citeline, a brand within the pharma division, at the end of January. Centerview Partners was also working with Goldman Sachs as an adviser. 

Warburg has invested from its Global Growth XIV fund, said a source close; the fund was launched late last year with a target size of USD 16bn. 

Information memorandums were due to be distributed imminently, a source familiar with the situation said, but a sponsor pre-empted the auction process, said a second source familiar.

The GBP 1.9bn price reflects an EBITDA multiple of 20-25x, confirmed a source close, while a second source close points to it being around 24x. 

In the early stages of the auction, the asset was marketed based on EBITDA of GBP 70m-80m, four sources familiar with the situation said.

The high multiple represents the scarcity value of the division, one of the sources said, comparing it to OPIS and Argus Media, which were valued upwards of 20x EBITDA.

In 2020, Informa's pharma division had GBP 122m in revenues (40% of the intelligence arm's total) and GBP 51.5m operating profit (50% of total), Informa said in a statement.

Informa now says it will proceed with the divestment of its finance intelligence business, comprising the brands EPFR Global, IGM and Zephyr, but excluding the retail banking joint venture Curinos.

The Pharma acquisition includes Informa's full portfolio of specialist brands; these include the Citeline suite of products, Trialtrove, Sitetrove, Pharmaprojects, Biomedtracker, Clinerion, Datamonitor Healthcare, Pink Sheet, Scrip, Skipta, and TrialScope.

The acquisition is expected to close in the first half of 2022.

Warburg Pincus and Informa declined to comment. 

Company
Pharma Intelligence provides specialist intelligence and data for clinical trials, drug development and regulatory compliance.

It provides insights on patient enrollment and demographics, trial progress, individual trial sites, and investigators for more than 375,000 clinical trials across 180 countries. The company's services are used by 3,000 pharmaceutical firms and contract research organisations, aiding clinical trial design, commercial strategy, and regulatory compliance processes to maximise the likelihood of success in introducing products to market.

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• Topics
• Buyouts
• Healthcare
• Warburg Pincus