Hello, Hubsters! Rafael Canton here with the US edition of the Wire from the New York newsroom. I’m filling in for PE Hub senior reporter Michael Schoeck who is attending ACG’s DealMax 2025 conference this week. If you’re attending the conference, you can get in touch with him at michael.s@pei.group.
Let’s start off the Wire with a look at autism care. Firms such as Goldman Sachs Alternatives and Shore Capital Partners have been active in the subsector. PE Hub reporter John R Fischer has a story about how a lack of supply is driving demand in autism care dealmaking.
Then, we have insights from Lead Edge Capital on how tariffs and the stock market turmoil are affecting dealmaking.
Already, we're hearing about deals in the works that have been postponed while would-be buyers assess the impact of tariffs on the targets. We'd like to learn how the tariffs and the stock markets' reaction are affecting your dealmaking. If you have thoughts you'd like to share, email me at rafael.c@pei.group.
Unmet needs
The demand for autism care outweighs the available supply of services in the US. These unmet needs are incentivizing private equity firms to invest in opportunities to build, grow and sell platforms in the sector. We've timed the publication of the story to April, a month traditionally associated with autism.
PE Hub reporter John R Fischer has the story on the growing interest in autism care deals and how a fragmented market is creating investment opportunities. Back in December, Goldman Sachs Alternatives announced its acquisition of autism therapy provider Center for Social Dynamics (CSD) from NMS Capital. And in June, Shore Capital Partners announced the sale of another autism therapy provider, Behavioral Innovations, to Tenex Capital Management.
“If you’re an investor looking for commercial opportunity and unmet needs, I think autism is far more on your radar now than 15 or 20 years ago,” Adrian Jones, partner, and chairman and co-head of global private equity, at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, told John. “The market is big enough that there is opportunity for a number of investments and deeply fragmented across the country and even by state.”
To learn more about what’s driving deals in the sector, John gathered insights from Jones; John Hennegan, founding partner at Shore Capital Partners; and Jon Krieger, managing director at M&A advisory firm Calex Partners.
John writes that greater awareness has created favorable end-market dynamics for PE investments in applied behavioral analysis (ABA) therapy, the dominant form of therapy for children on the autism spectrum.
One out of 34 children are diagnosed today, compared with one out of 63 over 20 years ago, raising concerns about rising incident rates and in turn, demand for ABA therapy. PE firms see organic opportunities to provide capital and resources to increase the available supply of these services at home, in schools, virtually or in clinics, as well as robust reimbursement incentives from mandated coverage by payors and to an extent, Medicaid.
“Reimbursement rates are increasing and are expected to continue to rise over the next five-plus years given the supply and demand imbalance, mental health parity protections and small percentage of payors’ total medical spend,” said Krieger.
Read on for more of this story including how the need to build and expand clinics and other physical sites offering autism care services has created de novo, organic and M&A opportunities for PE investors.
Rising uncertainty
PE Hub is monitoring how private equity is viewing how tariffs and the current economic environment are affecting dealmaking.
“We have not seen an immediate impact between tariffs and private market dealmaking volume yet,” Zach Ullman, principal at Lead Edge Capital said. “However, everyone we speak with – GPs, LPs, companies – are more cautious than a week ago. We know private markets tend to lag public markets. When deal volume starts to slow, we tend to see the best secondary opportunities.”
Lead Edge is a growth investment firm based in New York. The firm invests in software, internet, and tech-enabled businesses globally. Some past investments from Lead Edge include Alibaba Group, Asana and Toast.
“Any uncertainty is bad for business,” Ullman said. “In uncertain environments, you hold off on major decisions, such as growth investments, capital investments, and capital markets transactions. That last bucket includes going public or running a sale process. We have seen companies such as StubHub, Klarna, and MNTN put their IPOs on hold. That kicks the can on the backlog of public IPOs further into 2026.”
That’s it for me. If you have any questions, thoughts, or want to chat about deals in the tech, consumer or sports sectors, please email me at rafael.c@pei.group.
Tomorrow, Craig McGlashan will be with you for the Europe edition of the Wire and I will be back with the US edition.
Cheers,
Rafael
