CVC Fund VIII to invest in FutureLife

CVC Capital Partners (“CVC”), through CVC Capital Partners VIII, has agreed to acquire a cocontrolling holding in FutureLife, a leading pan-European IVF provider, alongside the company’s current investor Hartenberg Holding (“Hartenberg”).

Headquartered in Prague, Czech Republic, FutureLife is a leading Pan-European provider of IVF and related genetics services, with presence across eight European markets including Czech Republic, Ireland, Netherlands, Finland, Romania and Estonia. FutureLife has 42 wellinvested clinics and performs in excess of 39,000 IVF cycles annually, IVF add-on and laboratory services, as well as a series of biological and surgical treatments.

FutureLife is well-positioned in a growing and resilient IVF market that is benefitting from secular growth trends, which are underpinned by strong social and demographic tailwinds. Increased personalisation of the treatments, digitalisation and automation across the IVF industry is expected to increase efficiency and customer experience. FutureLife also provides a strong platform from which CVC will support further consolidation of a traditionally fragmented market.

Matěj Stejskal, CEO of FutureLife said: “Partnership with CVC will be the beginning of a new sustainable growth phase for us. FutureLife’s development has been an amazing success story, having built our network very quickly across eight European countries. Our unique partnership model with strong autonomy of the clinics is appealing to many doctors, scientists and partners. Our strategic thinking is focused globally now. Our sector is at an exciting stage of its development and we are lucky to have a great company, partners and colleagues who are willing to grow with us and share knowledge. The next stage for us, is to achieve harmonisation between our clinics and strong organic growth with margin improvement. I strongly believe that CVC with its track record in our core geographies and the broader healthcare sector experience is the right partner for this exciting new chapter of our company.”

Jozef Janov, Managing Partner at Hartenberg added: ”FutureLife is an exciting story that traces its roots back to an idea in 2013 to build a European IVF leader. We knew from the beginning that to achieve this we would need to meticulously select our targets and build a strong base platform. FutureLife has since completed 22 acquisitions in eight countries including the recent acquisition of Nij Group in the Netherlands. The Group’s focus is to provide the highest quality and broadest range of fertility treatment to aspiring parents, whilst complementing this with synergistic genetics, biological treatments and surgeries.

Management has an ambitious but actionable growth plan that sees FutureLife growing organically and through M&A. Therefore, at this stage in the development of the company and market, we believe it is the right time to take a new partner on board for FutureLife that can work alongside us. We consider CVC to be the right partner with whom we can accelerate towards our goal of becoming the largest and highest quality women’s health platform globally.”

István Szőke, Managing Partner overseeing CVC's private equity activities in the EEME regions, added: “CVC has extensive experience of partnering with ambitious Czech headquartered businesses to support their international expansion, through previous successful investments such as Avast and StarBev. We believe that FutureLife can be a global leader in the fertility sector and we look forward to working with Matěj and his team, as well as our new partners at Hartenberg to accelerate the growth of this exciting business opportunity.”

Cathrin Petty, Managing Partner and head of Healthcare commented: “We see significant potential in this sector, having monitored it closely for a number of years. In FutureLife we are delighted to be backing a world class diagnostic and clinical research business, and are very excited to support the company in its next phase of development and growth.”

Hartenberg was advised by Lincoln International (investment banking), EY (financial and tax due diligence), L.E.K. (commercial due diligence) and Eversheds (legal), CVC by PwC and White&Case.