Antares announced that it closed more than 55 healthcare industry transactions in 2020 bringing total commitments to healthcare borrowers to more than $4.5 billion. Throughout 2020, Antares supported the refinancing and growth initiatives of existing borrowers while also closing transactions with 22 new borrowers, including 16 new borrowers in Q4’20, a record for the firm.

Antares’ healthcare portfolio has grown to consist of 108 borrowers across more than 64 private equity sponsors and over 20 subsectors, including but not limited to, behavioral health, durable medical equipment, healthcare IT, hospice, insurance services, medical devices, pharma distribution and services, and physician practices.

“While 2020 was an unprecedented year in many respects, we saw the U.S. middle market healthcare industry lead deal activity resurgence in the summer of 2020, particularly in the areas of pharma services and at-home care,” said Rich Davidson, senior vice president for Antares. “In the latter part of the year, we experienced a significant increase in new deal activity that coincided with some sectors that had been impacted by the spring lockdowns and had since rebounded, including physician practices, particularly within women’s care and dental.”

In 2020, healthcare deals represented 21 percent of Antares’ unique pipeline deals, making it the firm’s most active year supporting the needs of middle market healthcare borrowers.

“One of the permanent trends coming out of COVID is the accelerated acceptance of at-home care,” continued Davidson. “This has been apparent in the resiliency of provider-based businesses who have successfully pivoted a portion of their business to telehealth. We’ve also seen growing acceptance from consumers to get more healthcare directly at home including strong demand for hospice, home infusion services and home-delivered drugs. Home-based care has attractive attributes at each of the payer, physician, and consumer levels which should make this trend sustainable even in a vaccinated post-COVID world.”

Select 2020 transactions in which Antares served as administrative agent and lead left arranger include:

• Unitranche credit facility to St. Croix Hospice (H.I.G. Capital)
• 1st lien credit facility to Onsite Mammography (Olympus Partners)
• 1st lien credit facility to Solaris Health (Lee Equity Partners)
• 1st lien credit facility to Physical Rehabilitation Network (Gryphon Investors)
• 1st lien credit facility to RxSense (Parthenon Capital Partners)
• 1st lien credit facility to Logibec (Novacap)