HydraFacial and Vesper Healthcare announced a definitive merger agreement at an enterprise value of $1.1 billion. HydraFacial and Vesper Healthcare will combine, after which HydraFacial will become a public company.
WHO: HydraFacial has a 23-year history. The company’s HydraFacial system offers an effective, experiential, noninvasive, and accessible skin treatment experience. HydraFacial’s innovative signature treatment utilizes a delivery system to provide, within approximately 30 minutes, a three-step experience to cleanse, extract, and hydrate skin, offering an immediate outcome and an instantly gratifying glow. Treatments can be further customized to address individual skin concerns and needs with the use of a variety of specific booster serums.
HydraFacial has built a community of loyal estheticians and consumers through its innovative skincare solutions, education, and comprehensive training for estheticians. In December of 2016, the company was acquired by private equity firms Linden Capital Partners and DW Healthcare Partners. Since then, HydraFacial has generated compounded annual revenue growth of more than 50% through 2019. In 2019, 3.2 million HydraFacial treatments were performed worldwide.
Vesper Healthcare Acquisition Corporation is a special-purpose acquisition company formed for the purpose of effecting a merger, capital stock exchange, asset acquisition, stock purchase, reorganization, or similar business combination with one or more businesses, with the intention to focus its search on companies in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors. Vesper Healthcare is led by Chief Executive Officer Brent Saunders and Chief Financial Officer Manisha Narasimhan, Ph.D.
WHY: The transaction is expected to drive both US and international growth, and broaden HydraFacial’s global footprint in the beauty-health category. HydraFacial is well-positioned to benefit from four key advantages: a large and growing market with favorable demographic trends; a technologically advanced offering with high consumer and provider satisfaction; a shift in consumer behavior in seeking approachable and effective skin health solutions that bridge the gap between traditional beauty and healthcare options; and a diversified channel mix that spans multiple touchpoints including day and resort spas, medical offices such as dermatology and plastic surgery, and beauty retail.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS: Clint Carnell, HydraFacial CEO, stated: “Our goal at HydraFacial has been to create an incredible experience that is effective, democratized, and personalized, for men and women of all ages and skin types. Our HydraFacial technology does just that, which has led to exceptional loyalty and satisfaction from estheticians and consumers alike. Our treatments provide immediate and noticeable results to consumers and a strong return on investment for providers. We have a proven track record of growth in a large and growing market, we have developed a critical mass globally with over 15,000 delivery systems in operation and our business model provides us with a recurring revenue stream in consumables. This, along with favorable demographic trends, supported by our experienced team which has been made even stronger by combining with Vesper Healthcare, has created a business model that we believe is well-positioned to deliver sustained long-term growth. We plan to leverage our infrastructure to bring to market additional innovative products backed by powerful technology. I am honored to partner with Brent and Manisha and look forward to benefiting from their insights as we embark on this new chapter.”
Brent Saunders, CEO and co-founder of Vesper Healthcare, said, “This is a significant day for Vesper Healthcare and HydraFacial as we team up with a category-creating company in the emerging area of beauty health. Our goal is to build a premier company in beauty health, focused on providers such as estheticians and nurse practitioners, consumers, and partners and we believe that HydraFacial is the perfect platform to achieve this goal. HydraFacial possesses industry-leading consumer satisfaction scores and has presence in two high-growth categories within personal care—skincare and, more recently, hair care. We look forward to working with the HydraFacial team to create a valuable, industry-leading, global company in beauty health.”
Linden Managing Partner Brian Miller and Partner Kam Shah added, “We would like to thank the entire HydraFacial management team for driving extraordinary growth in the beauty health category. HydraFacial’s rapid transformation from a niche medical technology provider into a category-creator represents another great example of Linden’s differentiated Value Creation Program and Human Capital strategy in practice. As the largest individual shareholder going forward, Linden looks forward to providing continued partnership and support to the Company.”
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