NEW YORK, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Private equity firm TPG is exploring the sale of Lyric, in a process that could value the software company which supports payments in the healthcare industry at about $5 billion, people close to the discussions said.
The move comes as software dealmaking has shown signs of recovery after concerns about artificial intelligence disruptiontriggered a selloff across the software sector earlier this year.
As activity picks up, there remains wariness about what businesses are worth, and to what extent even highly specialized software providers could be affected by the technology's rapid evolution.
Insurers such as UnitedHealth, CVS and Humana hire Lyric to identify and prevent inaccurate medical claims payments.
TPG is working with investment bankers at JPMorgan Chase on a possible sale of Lyric, said the sources, who cautioned that there is no guarantee that the sale process will lead to a deal for Lyric, and also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
The company generates about $250 million of annual earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA,which normally could put it at a valuation of $5 billion considering a 20 times multiple, the people said.
TPG and JPMorgan declined comment. Lyric didn't immediately respond to a comment request.
AI DISRUPTION
TPG acquired ClaimsXten for about $2.2 billion in 2022. The business had been part of Change Healthcare, but was sold to help smooth potential antitrust hurdles which threatened to derail Change's $13 billion acquisition by UnitedHealth. TPG rebranded the company as Lyric the following year.
The investment firm has previously said that, since then, the company has experienced a significant acceleration in revenue growth. While the size of the growth is undisclosed, TPG said Lyric had benefited from the deployment of AI, and its dataset-rich business would compound those benefits.
Despite this, some prospective software-company buyers are assessing whether AI-native competitors could ultimately perform many of the same functions more cheaply. This could undermine the financial assumptions used to value companies, including payment-integrity and claims-management technology firms, the sources said.
Reflecting uncertainties in the space, the stock of smaller public peer Claritevtumbled 80% between September 2025 and May this year as investors fretted about AI disruption to software companies. While it has recovered since then, it is still trading below $38 per share, from $72 per share one year ago.
(Reporting by Sabrina Valle in New York; Editing by David French and Nick Zieminski)
