Medline pulls off $6.26B mega-IPO, delivering 2025’s biggest listing and a key PE test
Medical supply giant Medline Inc. has raised approximately $6.26 billion in what is now the largest IPO of 2025, delivering a closely watched liquidity moment for its private equity backers and a signal that the long-frozen IPO market is reopening at scale.
According to Bloomberg, Medline sold 216 million shares at $29 apiece, near the top of its marketed range, exceeding its initial plan to offer 179 million shares priced between $26 and $30. The transaction eclipses the $5.3 billion IPO of CATL earlier this year and ranks among the largest private equity–backed listings on record.
The company, backed by Blackstone, Carlyle Group, and Hellman & Friedman, is expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker MDLN. The sponsors are not selling shares in the offering, with proceeds earmarked primarily to pay down Medline’s nearly $17 billion debt load following the firm’s $34 billion leveraged buyout in 2021, the largest LBO since the global financial crisis.
For Wall Street, the IPO is more than a single-company milestone. Investors have been closely monitoring the deal as a stress test for the $4 trillion private equity industry, which has struggled to exit marquee assets amid higher interest rates, market volatility, and geopolitical uncertainty. Medline’s strong pricing suggests renewed appetite for large, cash-generative businesses with defensive end markets.
Tariffs were a key overhang heading into the offering. Medline sources and manufactures products across China, Vietnam, Japan, Mexico, and other tariff-exposed regions, and the company delayed its IPO earlier this year amid market turbulence tied to U.S. trade policy. Despite that exposure, investors appear to be betting that Medline’s scale, pricing power, and essential role in hospital supply chains insulate it from macro swings.
Medline supplies hundreds of thousands of medical products, ranging from surgical gloves to wheelchairs, to major health systems, giving it steady demand characteristics that stand in contrast to more cyclical industrial or consumer IPO candidates.
For Blackstone, Carlyle, and Hellman & Friedman, the listing marks a critical inflection point. While the firms’ combined $17 billion equity investment could roughly double in value at IPO pricing, the real test will come over time as lockups expire and the sponsors seek to fully monetize one of their largest-ever bets.
As IPO issuance slowly recovers after several lean years, Medline’s blockbuster debut may serve as a bellwether, suggesting that large, private equity–owned companies with durable cash flows can once again command premium public-market valuations, even in a tariff- and rate-sensitive environment.
