Billionaire-Owned Lab Network to Raise $590 Million in Offering

Felipe Marques and Vinícius Andrade
·2 min read

(Bloomberg) -- Diagnosticos da America SA, a health-care firm owned by Brazil’s billionaire Bueno family, is poised to raise at least 3.3 billion reais ($590 million) in a share sale.

Dasa, as the firm is known, is set to sell stock at 58 reais apiece, according to people familiar with the matter. The firm had initially proposed a price range of 64.90 to 84.50 reais per share but was forced to reduce it to lure investors, said the people, who asked not to be named because the information isn’t public yet.

The firm will use proceeds to finance a hospital acquisition spree it recently embarked on.

Dasa didn’t immediately reply to a message seeking comment on the pricing.

Dasa isn’t the only firm struggling to price a transaction in Brazil’s volatile market. More than half a dozen firms suspended initial public offerings in March, when offshore investors pulled about 4.6 billion reais out of local stocks amid the worsening pandemic and concerns about the economy.

The Buenos are one of Brazil’s richest families. The clan’s late patriarch, Edson Bueno, and his ex-wife, Dulce Pugliese, bought the majority of the firm’s shares over the past decade, remaining business partners even after divorcing.

Though Dasa remained publicly traded, a free float of about 2% of the shares made the stock prone to volatility and price distortions. On Tuesday, the shares closed at 144 reais each, well above what was proposed in the share sale.

After Edson Bueno died in 2017, Dasa was split between Dulce, Edson’s daughter Camilla and her stepson, Pedro, who’s also the firm’s chief executive officer. Though Dasa is their main asset, the family’s fortune comes from a multibillion-dollar transaction completed almost a decade ago. Edson Bueno and Dulce agreed in 2012 to sell Amil, a health insurer they created, to UnitedHealth Group Inc. for about $4.9 billion.

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