A year after aborting a sale process, the Graphite private equity owner of the 18-year-old UK-based pharma events and information provider Hanson Wade (HW) has succeeded in selling just part of the business (accounting for some 30% of revenue and 36% of revenue), maybe for proceeds quite close to what had been last year’s £400mn target price for the whole company.
The HW clinical trials database Beacon Intelligence has been sold to Corten Capital pe for an estimated £250-300mn. Graphite has said the deal has given it a 4x return on the equity it had injected into Hanson Wade (HW) in 2019. This may be a calculation that also includes the estimated value of the HW business it still owns. If so, that might imply the sale price of Beacon was in the £250-300mn range we are quoting – given that the remaining assets (depending on 2026 growth rates) may be valued at £100-200mn. But, conceivably, it could be that the Beacon sale itself netted closer to the £400mn, which could be a 4x return on Graphite’s total investment (not counting the remaining HW assets). Which would, of course, mean that the pe investor may eventually make a 5-6x cash return on its 2019 investment.
Either way, it looks like a good deal for Graphite Capital which had acquired HW for c£95mn of equity in 2019 (3x revenue and 12x ebitda). The pe firm must have dreaded the onset of Covid soon after it had signed the deal. But, despite the loss of HW live events, the medication-intensive pandemic proved to be the making of Beacon.
The same UK independent broker which had advised Graphite on the acquisition in 2019 has scored again, this time for Corten.
The intermediary, Cardean Bell, earned its money in 2026 by pre-empting a planned M&A process for the 11-year-old Beacon whose revenue had been just £1mn back in 2019 and has increased 5x since 2021. Although it has been expected to account for almost 50% of Hanson Wade EBITDA in 2026, the subscriber-funded service employs just one-third of the total headcount.
The subscription-funded data startup quietly became the most valuable asset in HW.
Our 2025 estimates show Beacon has accounted for almost all the HW growth in the last four years – and its best margins. It made £10mn EBITDA last year (36% of the HW total). Its 38% revenue increase in 2025 was expected to be repeated in 2026 – when it might have generated 50% of HW total profit.
| SnapShot Hanson Wade | ||||
| £mn | 2025* | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 |
| Rev | 86 | 78 | 75 | 58 |
| Beacon | 26 | 16 | 14 | 10 |
| Events | 60 | 62 | 61 | 48 |
| Ebitda | 28 | 23 | 22 | 11 |
| Margin | 32% | 30% | 29% | 18% |
| People | 431 | 411 | 315 | |
| Beacon | 135 | 82 | 76 | 52 |
| Events | 349 | 335 | 263 | |
| No. events | 351 | 344 | 288 | |
Beacon had been launched by in 2015 “to address a critical gap in structured, granular data on early-stage drug development.” The platform is now used daily by over 300 customer organizations globally – including a claimed 24 of the world’s 30 largest pharmaceutical companies, to track competitive pipelines, identify licensing and acquisition opportunities.
HW itself had been founded in 2008 by Sarah McCaldin, former UK managing director of what may be the world’s largest conference company, the Worden family’s IQPC, of the US.
The company has said: “We have sought, from our earliest days, to provide insights on the most cutting-edge and emerging facets of drug development. What began with a meet-up of academic scientists and biotech CEOs researching circulating tumor cells over 12 years ago, has become a conference portfolio of 200+ niche events, networks, and an industry-defining database service that supports over 25,000 biopharma customers each year.”
It operates three conference divisions covering life sciences, and also construction and HR. But the primary focus (an estimated 75% of revenue) is on the pharamaceutical and biotech industries. Its conferences focus on cell therapy, gene therapy, and precision oncology. Its principal brands include the world’s largest Antibody Drug Conjugate (ADC) event and the CAR TCR summit (“engineering a disease-free world”). But, although the core conference business (in a market where delegates have still been prepared to pay relatively high fees) itself doubled during 2021-3, Beacon has been growing fastest of all.
In 2024-5, HW had been offered for sale with a suggested price of some £400mn – 19x EBITDA in 2023. But would-be acquirers may have been deterred by the significant 2025 challenges facing pharmaceutical companies including Trump administration drug pricing policies and also decisions to cut US medicare programs. These factors – and also a post-Covid hangover in drug development – depressed many US healthcare companies and funds.
Some insiders told us they were unconvinced also by the company’s integrated strategy for data and conferences, while others worried about the long tail in the 300-event portfolio – and the possible impact of AI on its subscriptions business. The average revenue per Hanson Wade event is under £180k with, some say, too little opportunity to scale many of them.
But the decision to pull the divestment process may also have been triggered by HW’s disappointing financials for 2024. These show that, after doubling revenue and increasing EBITDA by 50% during 2021-3, HW revenue in 2024 was just £78mn – 5% up. Revenue in the US (some 70% of the total) fell from £54.75mn to £53mn and the EBITDA margin was 29% – slightly up in the year but well below the 2021 peak of 38%. The Beacon database was still achieving “robust” growth.
But the 2024 results and the US politics of 2025 changed everything. HW had described its results as “appropriate” in the market circumstances. But the 2026 decision to de-merge Beacon – and Corten’s pre-emptive swoop – confirm that the two HW divisions are more valuable to separate buyers.
The sale of Beacon Intelligence might rankle a bit with the HW management team which brilliantly created it, and the de-merger might even pose a new kind of warning that events and data are not easily integrated.
But there’s something else.
As multi-market events companies increasingly build specialist teams to create an integrated approach to larger business and professional markets, it’s a reminder of the clear opportunities to offer the whole range of events, information, training, education, research and consulting services to customers which might once have “only” been exhibitors or conference delegates. That holistic offering may be the way to successfully diversify revenues and also to increase customer dependancy / loyalty. Why wouldn’t a company which hosts an industry’s major events, provides must-have digital information, and conducts well-supported qualifications and CPD become a highly-successful, all-round market leader?
Apart from all else, the rapidly-growing Beacon is a reminder of the data gold just waiting to be mined (and relatively speedily) by people and companies who know their markets.
What are you waiting for?
