Medline (Nasdaq:MDLN) today announced an underwritten public offering of 75 million shares of its Class A common stock.
Certain selling stockholders associated with Blackstone Inc., The Carlyle Group, Hellman & Friedman LLC and a wholly owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority commenced the offering. It includes a 30-day option to purchase up to 11.25 million additional shares as well.
According to a prospectus filed with the SEC, Medline’s Class A stock closed on Feb. 26, 2026, at a price of $48.89. If sold at that price, the offering proceeds could total more than $3.6 billion. Including the potential additional share sale, that amount could rise to more than $4.2 billion.
However, Medline is not selling any shares of the stock in the offering and will not receive any proceeds. The sale does provide another meaningful return for private equity firms Blackstone, Carlyle and Hellman & Friedman after they made a multibillion-dollar investment in Medline in 2021.
Medline completed an upsized initial public offering (IPO) worth more than $8 billion in December. The Financial Times labeled it the largest private equity-backed IPO of all time.
Private equity continues to play a significant role in medtech, with recent acquisitions and deals (HistoSonics, Hologic, Owens & Minor, Olympus, Surmodics) highlighting that. Recent reports also suggest that J&J MedTech could look to private equity for its planned DePuy Synthes sale.
