Medline raises more than $6bn in biggest Wall Street IPO of 2025 – Financial Times
Private equity-owned medical supply group Medline Industries jumped 41 per cent in its Wall Street debut on Wednesday after raising $6.3bn in the biggest initial public offering of 2025.
Medline’s share price closed at $41 a day after the group had priced its shares at $29 each, towards the top end of its expected range, in an upsized IPO.
Tuesday’s offering brought the deal value above the $5.4bn Medline initially anticipated and eclipsed the $5.3bn raised by Chinese battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology Co, better known as CATL, in May.
Measured by the amount of money raised, Medline’s deal ranks as the biggest private equity-backed IPO on record, LSEG data shows. Wednesday’s share price gain gave Medline a fully diluted market capitalisation of about $54bn.
Blackstone, Carlyle and Hellman & Friedman’s $34bn acquisition of a majority stake in Medline in 2021 was at the time the biggest leveraged buyout since the financial crisis.
The IPO has been closely watched on Wall Street as a gauge of the health of the $4tn private equity industry and whether businesses affected by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs attract investor interest on Wall Street.
Medline’s products are made in tariff-hit regions such as Asia, but its leading position as a supplier of branded medical equipment such as surgical gloves and wheelchairs has appealed to investors, who like its growth prospects and see the business as insulated from changes in the broader economy.
PE firms have in recent years struggled to sell assets and return cash to their investors, making Medline’s long-awaited IPO a significant test of whether the industry can successfully reap profits from its biggest deals.
The company, which sells hundreds of thousands of medical supplies used by large hospitals, had planned to go public early in 2025 but delayed those plans after Trump’s tariffs triggered waves of volatility across global financial markets. Many of Medline’s medical products are sourced or manufactured in China and other tariff-affected countries, including Vietnam, Japan and Mexico.
The IPO market’s revival in recent months following a multiyear downturn in new listing activity has provided the trio of PE groups with a chance to begin realising cash from their investments for large gains.
The groups would have roughly doubled their combined $17bn equity investment if Medline’s shares had priced at the midpoint of their marketed range, said a person briefed on the matter. However, they will not be selling stock as part of the IPO, which will raise billions in cash for Medline to cut its nearly $17bn debt pile.
Founded in 1966, Medline reported $977mn in net income on $20.6bn in revenue over the nine months to September 27, up from $911mn on $18.7bn a year earlier.
Many of the biggest companies to go public in the US this year have struggled after listing. Design software maker Figma surged on its market debut in July, when it was valued at about $60bn. Its shares have since fallen almost 70 per cent.
Additional reporting by Eric Platt in New York
