BrightSpring Health Services, the parent company of long-term care pharmacy PharMerica, began trading on the Nasdaq in January using the symbol BTSG, following the pricing of its initial public offering. In conjunction with the news, the firm announced that it would award approximately $100 million in restricted stock unit grants to around 20,000 full-time, tenured employees.
“Our dedicated employees are the foundation of our mission-driven organization, and we are honored to have this opportunity to further invest in them in a unique way,” BrightSpring CEO Jon Rousseau said in a press release. “As we continue to advance, investing in our people has remained at the forefront in order to deliver high-quality and cost-effective care to patients. By creating broad and deep employee ownership on a large scale, we continue to demonstrate the company’s commitment to rewarding and further incentivizing our skilled and compassionate clinicians, pharmacists and caregivers and the broader BrightSpring team.”
BrightSpring announced its intention to go public last year, disclosing that it was seeking to raise $1 billion in the initial public offering. It had tried to launch an IPO in October 2021 but backed out due to unfavorable market conditions.
PharMerica itself went private in 2017 when it was acquired for $1.4 billion by what then was a newly formed company controlled by global investment firm KKR, with Walgreens Boots Alliance as a minority investor.
PharMerica merged with BrightSpring in 2019 as part of KKR’s acquisition of BrightSpring. With BrightSpring going public, affiliates of KKR and Walgreens Boots Alliance now hold the majority of the
company’s shares.
PharMerica serves stakeholders in skilled nursing, assisted living, hospice, intellectual disability and developmental disabilities/behavioral health, home infusion, and specialty and hospital management.
