Deep Pipeline of Quality IPOs for 2026, Says PwC's Bellin

US IPO volume is poised to exceed $40 billion this year, with Medline Inc.'s IPO shares surging 30% in their trading debut after the medical supplier raised $6.26 billion in the year’s biggest initial public offering Wednesday. As the calendar flips to 2026, there’s also hope that some of the world’s biggest private tech companies, such as SpaceX, might also go public. PwC US IPO Leader Mike Bellin joined Carol Massar, Tim Stenovec, and Natalia Kniazhevich on 'Bloomberg Businessweek Daily' to break it all down.

When the Mills family sold Medline Inc. to private equity in one of the largest leveraged buyouts ever, the $32 billion deal seemed the apotheosis of a Covid economy defined by low interest rates and stratospheric valuations.

Four years later, with market forces radically different and opportunities for major public exits limited, Medline’s private equity backers have notched a rare recent win. Shares of the medical-supplies company surged 41% from the offering price in its public debut Wednesday, valuing Medline at about $55 billion. That handed sponsors including Blackstone Inc., Carlyle Group Inc. and Hellman & Friedman a return of more than double their initial equity investment.

“After a choppy market for IPOs this year, this debut is a very positive sign,” said Don Zambarano, head of private equity at KPMG US. “With firms facing continuing pressure to return capital to their investors, it shows that public markets certainly do have an appetite for profitable and mature businesses.”

While the Mills family locked in most of their gains in the 2021 buyout, they retained a stake in Medline worth more than $9.6 billion at market close. Together with the $28.7 billion windfall they received four years ago — adjusted for taxes and market performance — their total net worth is about $42.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

A spokesperson for the Mills family didn’t respond to a request for comment, while representatives for Carlyle and Blackstone declined to comment.

Record Windfall

Founded in 1966 by Jim and Jon Mills, Medline is the largest US provider of medical products such as bandages, gloves and surgical kits. It wasn’t the family’s first medical business: A.L. Mills, Jim and Jon’s grandfather, made surgeons’ gowns and uniforms during World War I after initially sewing butchers’ aprons for Chicago meatpackers.

Aside from a brief stint as a publicly traded company in the 1970s, Medline remained a family-owned business for more than five decades. Starting in 1997, it was run as a partnership by Andy and Charlie Mills and Jim Abrams, the fourth generation of the family to lead the company. The business grew throughout the early part of this century, achieving $20 billion in net sales by 2021.

Before the 2021 leveraged buyout, the Mills family only planned to sell a relatively small portion of their holding in order to allow some family members to cash out, Bloomberg previously reported. But the timing of the sale, around the peak of the post-pandemic deal boom, helped attract a rich valuation, and the family eventually sold about 80% of its stake.

“Making health care run better has been our focus for decades,” Charlie Mills, Medline’s former chief executive officer and its current board chair, said in a statement after the 2021 deal was announced. “This investment from some of the world’s most experienced and successful private investment firms will enable us to accelerate that strategy while preserving the family-led culture that is core to our success.”

The family rolled some of their shares into an equity stake in Medline’s new parent company and walked away with one of the biggest-ever liquidity events for a single family.

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