Surgent Expands into the Healthcare Professional Education Market Through Its Acquisition of PharmCon
DEVON, PA (August 12, 2019) – Surgent, a Spire Capital Partners portfolio company and leading provider of continuing education and exam preparation courses, is pleased to announce the acquisition of Pharmaceutical Education Consultants, Inc. (“PharmCon”).
PharmCon was founded in 1990 and is headquartered in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Primarily marketed through its ecommerce brand, FreeCE.com, PharmCon is the largest provider of continuing education (“CE”) services to pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, and other healthcare professionals with tens of thousands of annual subscribers. The entirely digitally delivered courses allow healthcare professionals to easily satisfy CE requirements and stay current on the latest trends, including new drug development, disease management, and legal and ethical topics impacting the industry. In addition to boasting the most comprehensive calendar of webinar events in the industry, PharmCon also offers an extensive catalog of on-demand CE courses and, through its subsidiary, American Health Resources, hosts the Northeast Regional Hematology Oncology Pharmacists Symposium, a popular annual conference.
Surgent was founded nearly 35 years ago and has grown dramatically in the last five years. The historically highly specialized provider of continuing education for accounting and tax professionals has grown into a leading provider of end-to-end professional education. Surgent supports the needs of accounting, finance, and tax professionals during their undergraduate education, then guides them through the process of passing credentialing exams, and finally delivers career-building educational courses for all levels of professionals. This evolution has been driven by significant investment in technology and people with the aim of building a strong core platform that can be easily extended into other markets.
“PharmCon has a tremendous track record of growth and a stellar reputation among pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. We are beyond excited to continue building on PharmCon’s great foundation by leveraging Surgent’s technology platform and shared services architecture. We see tremendous opportunities to both expand within PharmCon’s current end markets and to enter additional segments of the healthcare industry,” said Evan Kramer, CEO of Surgent.
One of the first identified opportunities is to enhance the webinar experience for PharmCon’s customers by leveraging Surgent’s innovative technology in order to deliver an even more engaging, dynamic CE experience. Additionally, Surgent sees opportunities to build exam prep courses for the pharmaceutical and other healthcare end markets, given that it has already successfully launched and grown an entire suite of exam prep courses built upon its proprietary learning technology, which tailors each candidate’s study experience to identified knowledge gaps, saving each student potentially hundreds of study hours.
“We are thrilled to work with Surgent to take PharmCon to its next level of success. It’s clear to me that Surgent is the right partner to accelerate PharmCon’s growth given the talent and infrastructure that we can call on to accelerate the business going forward,” said Josh Chesner, President, Pharmcon.
Dentons US LLP and BB&T Capital Markets served as legal counsel and financial advisor to Surgent, respectively. Nexsen Pruet served as legal counsel to PharmCon.
About Surgent
Founded in 1985, Surgent (https://www.surgent.com) provides continuing professional education and exam preparation courses to the accounting and healthcare sectors. Surgent’s services help exam takers become credentialed and satisfy required credit hours and remain informed on the latest trends in their industries thereafter.
About Spire Capital
Spire Capital (https://spirecapital.com/) is an active and experienced private equity firm with an investment focus on lower middle market companies within the technology-enabled business services, media, communications, and education sectors. Spire Capital was founded on the principle of partnering with management teams to help effectuate the next stage of growth. Spire professionals have a broad array of previous operating, investing, and advisory experience that they leverage to provide portfolio companies with strategic guidance and help execute against business plans to achieve sustained, profitable growth. Spire Capital is a New York-based investment advisor registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940.
For more information please contact Lisa Hobart (HobartL@Surgent.com) from Surgent, or Bruce Hernandez (BHernandez@SpireCapital.com) from Spire Capital.