Investors plan to grow in-home health care company
Wellspring Capital Management has acquired Caring Brands International Inc. (CBI). Founded in 1966, CBI franchises home health care services via three brands: Interim HealthCare (mainly in the United States), Bluebird Care (in the United Kingdom and Ireland), and Just Better Care (in Australia).
Sunrise, Fla.-based CBI brands collectively have 550 locations operated by more than 250 franchisees and operators with combined sales exceeding $1.3 billion per year. CBI’s services range from skilled nursing care to helping clients with routine tasks such as dressing and grooming to end-of-life hospice care.
According to a Hospice News report, CBI is the seventh-largest home-based care provider in the U.S.; the report said the company’s franchise business model is unique, with franchisees running the gamut from major private equity investors to mom-and-pop start-ups, some of them with ownership passed down a generation or two in the same family.
Jennifer Sheets, president and CEO of Caring Brands International and Interim HealthCare Inc., released a statement about the acquisition of her company: “We are honored that Wellspring chose to invest in our organization. As we have witnessed over the past year and throughout 2021, the demand for delivering high-quality home-based healthcare services has never been more essential. … We at CBI are excited to be a part of the Wellspring family. We believe we are uniquely positioned for continued outsized growth and through this partnership, we will be able to help even more patients and clients obtain the quality care they need in the preferred and most efficient and effective site of care: their home.”
Naishadh Lalwani, a partner in New York-based Wellspring, said his firm has “been strong advocates of high-quality home-based care providers that enable seniors, individuals with medically complex care needs, and others with disabilities to live independently in their homes. CBI and their franchisees and operators have developed a stellar reputation of empowering individuals to live life on their own terms, and we are excited to partner with Jennifer and team to continue to grow that mission.”
Alexander Carles, co-president of Wellspring, assessed CBI as “a perfect fit with our history of investing in care in and around the home and we are excited to support the next phase of growth for the company and its market-facing brands.”
CBI is the 12th investment by Wellspring Capital Partners Fund V L.P., which was founded in 1995. Wellspring’s current portfolio companies employ nearly 60,000 people globally and generated aggregate revenues in excess of approximately $4.5 billion in the last 12 months. Wellspring invests in diverse segments of the U.S. and foreign economies with a stated goal of serving as a partner to acquired enterprises and benefiting them through its experienced leadership. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
From 2011-20202, private equity hospice transactions increased almost 25%, according to a recent report The Braff Group shared with Hospice News.