WSJ: PPD exploring sale

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — For the second time in a year, there are reports that Wilmington-based PPD is exploring a sale.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a sale “could value the drug-research company at about $5 billion amid a rush of takeover activity among healthcare-services providers.”

The report also says PPD has hired some big-name banks to start looking for suitors, but that the company’s owners, private-equity firms Carlyle Group LP and Hellman & Friedman LLC, could take PPD public, too.

The firms bought PPD, which does research for the pharmaceutical industry, in 2011 for near $4 billion. The deal took PPD’s stock off of NASDAQ.

Almost exactly one year ago, Reuters had a very similar report about the future of PPD. That report cited sources who valued the company at $7-8 billion.

PPD spokesman Ned Glascock said the company did not have a comment on the WSJ story. In responding to the Reuters report last December, Glascock told WWAY, “PPD doesn’t comment on speculation and rumor in the marketplace.”