New York, May 22, 2026, 16:01 EDT
- Medline holders priced an upsized 72.6 million-share secondary offering at $37 a share.
- The company is not selling stock and will not receive proceeds.
- Shares traded near $37 late Friday, holding above the $29 IPO price but well below their December peak.
Medline Inc. shares were little changed late Friday after some of its largest backers priced an upsized secondary offering at $37 a share, a $2.68 billion sale that gives investors a fresh read on demand for one of last year’s biggest U.S. listings. A secondary offering is a sale of existing shares; in this case, Medline said it will not receive any of the proceeds.
The timing matters because the Northfield, Illinois-based medical-supply company came public only in December and has been watched as a gauge of appetite for large private-equity exits. The selling holders are affiliated with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman and a unit of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Medline said.
The sale was increased to 72,554,594 Class A shares from a 60 million-share launch, and the underwriters have a 30-day option to buy another 10,883,189 shares. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BofA Securities and J.P. Morgan are global coordinators and joint bookrunning managers.
Medline stock was quoted at $37.08 at 3:53 p.m. in New York, down 0.05% on the session, with volume above 35 million shares, according to StockAnalysis. The shares are still above the $29 initial public offering price, though below the $50.88 high shown for the past 52 weeks.
U.S. stock trading was not shut for a holiday Friday; Nasdaq’s regular session runs 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern time and Memorial Day is listed as a market holiday on Monday, May 25. That leaves investors heading into a long weekend with the Medline block priced, but not yet closed.
Medline’s IPO closed in December with 248.4 million shares sold at $29 each after underwriters fully exercised their option, and the company said then that part of the proceeds would go toward debt repayment. The stock’s first-day move was strong: it opened at $35 and closed at $41, Reuters reported through Investing.com.
The company competes in medical-surgical supply and distribution with large healthcare logistics names including McKesson and Cardinal Health, Reuters reported at the time of the IPO. That is the business investors are now re-pricing after the lockup unwind: high-volume hospital products, private-label supplies and supply-chain services, not a biotech-style growth story.
Jim Boyle, Medline’s chief executive, said when the company reported first-quarter results this month that Medline had started 2026 with “strong momentum,” citing existing-customer growth, large implementations and new customer wins. The company raised its full-year organic sales growth outlook to 8.5% to 9.5%; organic sales means sales growth excluding some effects such as acquisitions or other items that can blur the core trend. Medline Inc.
The profit picture was less clean. Medline reported first-quarter net sales of $7.4 billion, up 10.7%, but net income fell 25.8% to $239 million, with higher cost of goods sold, tariffs, operating expenses and an IPO-related employee bonus weighing on results. Adjusted EBITDA, a profit measure that strips out interest, tax, depreciation, amortization and some other costs, fell 10.6% to $776 million.
Tariffs remain the obvious overhang. Mike Drazin, Medline’s chief financial officer, told investors the company saw about $120 million of tariff impact in the first quarter, including $85 million tied to tariff changes, Digital Commerce 360 reported. Boyle said the company would first try to absorb or offset pressure internally: “We’re going to continue to leverage our playbook to do as much as possible internally to mitigate any challenges before we pass anything on to our customers.” Digital Commerce 360
But the new share supply could cap near-term gains if buyers view the sale as a signal that early owners want liquidity while margins are under pressure. The downside case is plain enough: more tariff or freight costs, slower hospital spending, or further insider selling could leave Medline trading more like a levered distributor than a prized IPO scarcity trade.
Still, the stock has kept a premium to its IPO price. “This is a very different profile than the typical growth IPO — Medline is profitable, cash-generative, and well understood,” Jeff Zell, senior research analyst at IPO Boutique, told Reuters in December. Friday’s block sale now tests whether that argument still clears the market at $37. Investing.com Canada
