Piramal Enterprises (PEL) on Friday informed the stock exchanges its fully-owned arm, PEL DRG Dutch HoldCo BV, would sell its healthcare insights and analytics business to NYSE-listed Clarivate Analytics Plc for $950 million. The deal includes $900 million on closing and $50 million to be received at the end of 12 months thereon.
The transaction is subject to shareholder approval and is expected to be completed by end of next month, PEL said in a joint press release.
PEL DRG Dutch HoldCo BV is the holding company of the sold business housed under what is called Decision Resources Group (DRG).
The Ajay Piramal company had invested $650 million in 2012 to acquire DRG, of which $260 million was equity. It has realized 2.3 times its initial equity investment in rupee terms.
The revenue from the healthcare insights and analytics business was ₹1,330.74 crores for the financial year ended March 31, 2019, PEL said.
Clarivate Analytics is into providing insights and analytics to accelerate the pace of innovation in its verticals.
“This is a milestone acquisition which doubles the size of our life sciences business, is accretive to our 2020 earnings and sets us up as an essential, end-to-end, industry-leading data and analytics provider in the highly attractive life sciences ecosystem,” the release quoted Clarivate Analytics executive chairman and chief executive officer Jerre Stead as saying.
The divestment is part of the group’s deleveraging exercise and follows PEL raising Rs1,750 crore from Canada’s CDPQ via preferential allotment last month.