Medline — a massive medical supply company based in Northfield — publicly filed paperwork Tuesday for a proposed initial public offering.
It has not yet been determined how many shares will be sold or at what prices, but the registration statement filed publicly with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is a major step toward taking the company public.
Bloomberg previously reported that the company was seeking an initial public offering that would raise about $5 billion and value the company at as much as $50 billion. That could make it the biggest initial public filing in the U.S. this year, if it happens before Dec. 31, according to Bloomberg.
A spokesperson for Medline declined to comment Tuesday.
“Becoming a public company is a responsibility that we take seriously,” wrote CEO Jim Boyle in a note with the filing. “We will create value for our shareholders through our relentless customer focus, stellar execution, and commitment to long-term success.”
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“You have my commitment that we will continue to prioritize our customers and partners, operate openly and transparently, and conduct ourselves with humility and integrity,” Boyle wrote.
Medline sells hundreds of thousands of products, including patient gowns, medical supplies and instruments, personal protective equipment and Curad bandages. Perhaps most famously, it’s behind the iconic pink and blue striped blanket used to wrap newborns in hospitals.
The company has more than 43,000 employees across the world, including nearly 6,100 in Cook and Lake counties. About 850 of those local employees work at the company’s flagship distribution center in Grayslake. Medline has eight facilities across the Chicago area, and had net sales of $13.5 billion for the six months that ended June 28, according to its SEC filing Tuesday.
Medline was long owned by the Mills family after being founded in 1966 by brothers Jim and Jon Mills. The brothers were building on the legacy of their grandfather A.L. Mills who, during World War I, responded to requests by nuns at Chicago’s Mercy Hospital to make surgeons’ gowns and uniforms at his company Mills Hospital Supply.
In June 2021, the family agreed to sell a majority stake in the company to funds managed by private equity firms Blackstone Group, Carlyle Group and Hellman & Friedman. Members of the Mills family told the Tribune at the time that they agreed to sell Medline to the private equity firms to raise cash for family members and to strengthen the company.
At the time, The Wall Street Journal reported the value of that deal at about $34 billion, including debt, based on information from anonymous sources.
Industry-watchers have long been awaiting the Medline IPO. In December, the company confirmed that it had confidentially submitted a draft registration statement to the SEC related to an IPO.
Now that the company has publicly filed its registration statement, it must wait at least 15 days before it can start meeting with potential investors, with a so-called road show presentation, to help drum up interest in its shares, in hopes of being able to set a strong price, said Aslam Rawoof, a partner at Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff. Once any comments from the SEC have been addressed, the company can then ask the SEC to declare its registration effective and then price its offering, he said. The shares can begin trading publicly the next day. Medline has said that it plans to list its stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol MDLN.
Large private companies often seek to go public to raise money to grow their businesses, pay down debt and provide liquidity for shareholders and employees, Rawoof said. Going public is “a very good sign because companies (typically) only go public if the business is doing well,” Rawoof said.
He said many efforts to take companies public are driven by private equity owners, such as those behind Medline. They often invest in a company and may restructure it in hopes of making it run better, and then, after five years or so, take the company public “to get their money back so they can return their capital to their fund investors,” Rawoof said.
This isn’t Medline’s first foray into being a public held company. In 1972, Medline became a publicly held company for five years before returning to private ownership.