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It has been a tough year for private equity companies looking to sell their investments to the public markets. In the first six months of the year there were only 14 exits, worth $5.2bn, via initial public offerings, according to Preqin data. Four years ago, the total was $37bn. Can the listing of a maker of washing machines restore the spin?

One problem is that companies unloaded by private equity on to public markets have performed patchily. Consumer-data firm NIQ Global Intelligence, educational content provider McGraw Hill and childcare centre operator KinderCare Learning are all trading well below their IPO prices. Buyout firms could use some more successful issues to show that not everything they proffer has already been wrung dry.

Alliance Laundry Systems is giving it a shot. The company behind the Speed Queen brand of washers and dryers this week successfully raised $826mn. Private equity owners BDT & MSD priced its upsized offering at the top end of the marketed range, valuing the company at $4.3bn. The shares gained 13 per cent on Thursday, their first day of trading.

On paper, making commercial and industrial laundry machines is classic private equity: stable and cash-generative. Alliance has managed to muster growth too, furnishing commercial laundromats in hotels, dorms and apartment buildings. With a 40 per cent share of the commercial laundry market in North America, it has increased revenue a compound annual rate of 9.5 per cent since 2010.

The company does, however, bear another classic feature of private equity-owned companies: debt. It had more than $2bn of net borrowings at the end of June — or nearly six times the company’s 2024 ebitda — up from $1.2bn at the end of 2023. Yet BDT & MSD, its co-investors and a group of management shareholders took out a $900mn dividend payment last August. Alliance says its IPO proceeds will help pay down its debts.

There is something reassuring about Alliance’s sturdy first-day performance, especially in a market that is bloated with artificial intelligence hype. True, the company says it uses machine learning to develop features such as “predictive maintenance”, but it’s hardly the company’s main selling point. It suggests that mature industrial companies can generate enthusiasm too.

Investors, of course, will need to be wary of companies coming to market overly burdened with borrowings and whose private equity owners will retain majority voting rights, as is the case with Alliance. Nonetheless, the signs are encouraging for all those buyout firms hoping their past acquisitions will come out in the wash.

pan.yuk@ft.com

The Sean M. Healey & AMG Center for ALS is pleased to announce that the ALS Residence Initiative (ALSRI) was awarded the 2025 Gupta Family Endowed Prize for Innovation in ALS Care. Merit Cudkowicz, MD, MSC, Director of the Healey & AMG Center for ALS, presented the prize to Steve Saling, CEO of ALSRI, and Barry Berman, CEO of Chelsea Jewish Lifecare, at the 24th Annual NEALS Consortium Meeting.

The Gupta Family Endowed Prize is a global prize awarded to a nominated team who has developed promising new approaches to improving care for people with ALS. The goal of this prize is to encourage idea sharing, innovation, and forward thinking on scalable ongoing projects that have directly improved ALS patient care.

The selection committee awarded the 2025 Gupta Family Endowed Prize to the ALSRI because of their work in creating the first fully accessible, tech-enabled ALS residence model. This innovation demonstrates ALSRI’s commitment to initiating ground-breaking new approaches that lead to exceptional care for individuals living with ALS.

In partnership with Chelsea Jewish Lifecare, ALSRI designed and built the award-winning Leonard Florence Center for Living (LFCL), containing the Steve Saling ALS Residence. Saling envisioned building a place where people with ALS could live safely with autonomy and real quality of life. The residence features private suites, a deli, a café, landscaped outdoor areas, and most critically, cutting-edge environmental control systems. Using eye-tracking and other assistive technology, residents can independently open doors, control lighting, communicate, and even drive their wheelchairs – all without needing physical movement. Steve’s motto is, “Until medicine proves otherwise, technology IS the cure,” and the ALSRI has transformed lives with technology.

“While we honor and respect the incredible research to treat and cure ALS being done across the country and the world, the ALS Residences at the Leonard Florence Center for Living have set out to demonstrate that until medicine proves otherwise, technology and compassionate skilled care are the cure,” says Steve. “Thank you to the Gupta family, the Sean M. Healey & AMG Center for ALS at Mass General, and the Northeast ALS Consortium for recognizing our efforts.”

“The ALSRI has already made a significant impact on the ALS community and will continue to do so by expanding their model to other cities across the country,” says Dr. Cudkowicz. “We are proud to award the ALSRI with this prize and look forward to seeing them continue to pioneer new approaches. I am grateful to the Gupta family for supporting this work.”

To learn more about the Gupta Family Prize and previous winners, please visit this page. For more information about the Sean M. Healey and AMG Center for ALS, please visit our website.

Background on ALS

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is the most prevalent adult-onset progressive motor neuron disease, affecting approximately 30,000 people in the U.S. and an estimated 500,000 people worldwide. ALS causes the progressive degeneration of motor neurons, resulting in muscle weakness and atrophy. There is an urgent need to understand the biology of ALS and to develop effective therapies.

About the Sean M. Healey & AMG Center for ALS at Mass General

At the Sean M. Healey & AMG Center for ALS at Mass General, we are committed to bringing together a global network of scientists, physicians, nurses, foundations, federal agencies, and people living with ALS, their loved ones, and caregivers to accelerate the pace of ALS therapy discovery and development.

Launched in November 2018, the Healey & AMG Center, under the leadership of Merit Cudkowicz, MD and a Science Advisory Council of international experts, is reimagining how to develop and test the most promising therapies to treat the disease, identify cures and ultimately prevent it.

With many clinical trials and lab-based research studies in progress right now, we are ushering in a new phase of ALS treatment and care. Together, we will find the cures.