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Medline Industries, a medical supply group backed by Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman and Carlyle, could go public as soon as this year in a bellwether test of investor appetite for large companies owned by private capital.
The biggest privately owned US distributor of medical products, Medline confidentially refiled its draft prospectus for an initial public offering with the US Securities and Exchange Commission last week, putting it on pace to go public in the coming months, according to three people familiar with the matter. The listing could value the company at more than $50bn and raise between $4bn-$5bn.
Medline’s board is set to meet next week to make a final decision about whether to push forward with an IPO in the remaining months of 2025 or pursue the offering in early 2026, said the people. Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman and Carlyle did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The listing will be closely watched by investors, as Medline delayed prior IPO plans earlier this year over concerns about tariff impacts. Many of Medline’s medical products are sourced or manufactured in China and other tariff-affected countries, including Vietnam, Japan and Mexico.
After years of postponements because of high interest rates and lower valuations, private capital groups have endured additional delay due to uncertainty surrounding the economic impact of President Donald Trump’s trade war. Medline was the largest among a handful of prominent companies that delayed their IPOs after his “liberation day”.
The offering will also be a closely followed deal for the $4tn private equity industry, which will signal whether large private equity groups can begin exiting their largest takeover deals through IPOs. The trio of private equity investors took over Medline, a family-run, Chicago-based company, for $34bn in 2021 in one of the largest leveraged buyouts of all time.
Medline has benefited from a jump in its profits since the takeover, according to Fitch, which upgraded its credit rating in January. The group’s private equity owners have been waiting to realise billions of dollars in paper gains, as a multiyear downturn in new listing activity is beginning to reverse.
Medline’s plans emerged at the end of a week in which seven large-cap companies, including buy now, pay later firm Klarna, the Winklevoss twins’ crypto exchange Gemini and Blackstone-backed data centre engineer Legence went public in the US.
There were no guarantees that Medline would decide to go public this year, the people stressed, adding that the IPO could lapse into next year if there is further market uncertainty. The group’s owners, which also include sovereign wealth funds in Singapore and Abu Dhabi and its founding family, have not set firm goals on the size or valuation of the offering, meaning figures could change, the people added.
Medline first confidentially filed IPO plans at the end of last year, to list in 2025. Medline’s updated S1 filing included figures from the second quarter in which it generated $935mn in adjusted earnings, two people said. The business was on track to generate roughly $3.8bn in earnings across 2025, they added.