04 October 2022, London – Stanley Capital Partners (SCP) has invested in a majority stake in French pharmaceutical group Laboratoire XO (Lab XO). Debt was provided by US lending giant Ares Management.
Headquartered in Saint Cloud, France and founded in 2015, Lab XO specialises in mature market authorisations to sell and market drugs across various therapeutic areas such as pain, central nervous system, cardiology, oral care, and women’s health. With a turnover of €60m, 26 brands, and a distribution network of more than 45 countries (US, Europe, the Maghreb, and the Francophone world), the Lab XO team has demonstrated strong capabilities to integrate mature brands from big pharma and to generate organic growth through life cycle management.
SCP will be actively working with Lab XO’s management team to strengthen and develop the company through its next phase of growth. Its acquisition of Lab XO will serve as a platform investment with further add-on investments in the pipeline. To date, Lab XO has grown both organically through the success of its brands internationally and externally through 16 add-on acquisitions.
The completion of this investment brings SCP to assets under management to $440m.
SCP Founding Partner, Simon Cottle, said:
SCP is pleased to partner with Karine Pinon and her impressive management team to accelerate Lab XO’s growth with a global footprint. All parties share a vision to couple further acquisitive growth with building leading lifecycle management capabilities to create a formidable specialist pharma player providing essential medicines to its customers in the patient community.
Patrick Hargutt, SCP Founding Partner, said:
We identified Lab XO some years ago as one of the remaining scalable platforms into the established medicines sub sector using our proprietary research and AI sourcing technology.
Karine Pinon, CEO of Lab XO, said:
Entering into this partnership with SCP and its team will be a key step in the continued development of Lab XO into a global leader in the pharmaceutical industry. Having successfully grown the business across France and Europe, we firmly believe that working with SCP will allow the team to reach its global potential and best serve our valued customers.
About Stanley Capital Partners LLP
Stanley Capital Partners LLP (SCP) is a fast-growing European-focused mid-market private equity firm using research and technology to identify investment opportunities to transform businesses in the growth sectors of Healthcare, Technology and Resource Efficiency. SCP targets businesses with enterprise values of $250m-2.5bn or more where SCP can partner with management teams to create value through M&A, operational change, and technology enablement. SCP was founded in 2019 by Simon Cottle, James Brooks and Patrick Hargutt and has a team of 12 professionals. Lab XO represents the 4th investment that SCP has led since its formation in 2019, evidencing SCP’s strong ability to originate investment opportunities and deploy capital. SCP has assets under management of $440m today.