North American Science Associates (NAMSA)

Private Equity Manager (GP)

Case study

About the company

North American Science Associates (“NAMSA”) is a contract research organisation (“CRO”) which provides outsourced research and development services to medical device companies. The company offers product development strategy, medical device testing, regulatory and quality control testing, and clinical research services to its clients. NAMSA has approximately 980 employees and a customer base including the top 30 medical device companies.

Why invest

The depth and breadth of NAMSA’s scientific, medical and regulatory expertise is widely recognised by the medical device industry. The company is well positioned to benefit from growing regulatory complexity and the resulting trend towards outsourcing.

ArchiMed is a healthcare-focused manager with sub-sector level knowledge and expertise that enables the sourcing of proprietary deals.

Our relationship

Pantheon established a co-investment relationship with ArchiMed after completing a manager-led secondary transaction with the private equity manager.

Active management

ArchiMed has an extensive deal sourcing network and, at the time of the transaction, already had a pipeline of near-term potential add-on acquisitions for NAMSA. As a consequence, two accretive add-on acquisitions were completed less than six months after the initial investment.

The manager has also pushed forward with plans to strengthen management team capabilities and further align incentive plans. A new CEO was appointed in April 2021. He is a former Operating Partner of ArchiMed.