Houlihan Lokey Advises Altima Dental Canada

We are pleased to announce that Altima Dental Canada, Inc., has partnered with Sentinel Capital Partners, LLC. The transaction closed on December 16, 2016.

Headquartered in Toronto, Altima is one of the largest dental support organizations (DSO) in Canada, with a clinic network across six provinces. Founded in 1993 by Drs. Sven Grail and George Christodoulou, Altima's core value is to put patients first, which has enabled it to earn a 96 percent satisfaction rate. Altima-affiliated practices have an excellent reputation for providing high-quality general and specialty dental services, including orthodontics and oral surgery. Altima's strategy is to continue growing through affiliation with other dental offices throughout Canada.

Sentinel specializes in buying and building businesses at the lower end of the middle market in the United States and Canada in partnership with management. Sentinel targets aerospace and defense, business services, consumer, distribution, food and restaurants, franchising, healthcare, and industrial businesses. Sentinel invests in management buyouts, recapitalizations, corporate divestitures, and going-private transactions of established businesses with EBITDA of up to $65 million. Sentinel also invests in special situations, including balance sheet restructurings and operational turnarounds.

Sentinel has a well established record of investing in the dental sector, in which Altima represents its fifth platform investment. Most recently, in January 2016, Houlihan Lokey advised Sentinel and its portfolio company Northeast Dental Management, a leading provider of dental office support services in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, in its sale to Dental Care Alliance, a portfolio company of Harvest Partners.

This transaction highlights Houlihan Lokey's first dental transaction outside of the U.S. and our expertise within the DSO sector. Houlihan Lokey is among the most active advisors in this segment of the market, having closed 10 DSO transactions since June 2014. This most recent transaction further strengthens Houlihan Lokey's leadership in the healthcare sector, and highlights our continued momentum and leadership in the multi-site healthcare services space.

Houlihan Lokey served as the exclusive financial advisor to Altima and assisted in initiating, structuring, and negotiating the transaction on its behalf.

Houlihan Lokey's Healthcare Group is a recognized leader in M&A advisory and capital-raising services, providing advice to healthcare services, managed care, seniors housing, biopharmaceutical, and life sciences companies. With more than 35 investment bankers in Chicago, Dallas, New York, and San Francisco, Houlihan Lokey's Healthcare Group is among the largest dedicated healthcare investment banking groups in the country. The group closed 36 transactions in 2015 and was ranked the No.1 advisor for all U.S. Healthcare M&A transactions by Thomson Reuters. Houlihan Lokey's Healthcare Group has closed more than 275 M&A healthcare transactions since inception.