Neither process has a confirmed buyer or a signed agreement, and both are visible only through unnamed sources.
Two private equity firms are separately exploring sales of portfolio companies, at valuations that put both squarely in the large-cap sponsor-to-sponsor or strategic range.
TPG is exploring a sale of Lyric at a value of approximately $5 billion, with JPMorgan advising. CVC is exploring a sale of Arthea, the parent of Dr. Teal's, at a value of approximately $2 billion.
Both accounts rest on unnamed sources. Neither sponsor has confirmed a process. No buyer is identified in either case, no agreement has been signed, and the valuations attached to each are what a seller or its advisers are understood to be targeting rather than a price anyone has agreed to pay.
Why two unconfirmed processes are worth noting together
Exit activity, not deployment, is the binding constraint in private equity right now. Sponsors have been holding assets past their intended horizons because exit markets have not cleared at marks they are willing to accept, and limited partners have been waiting on distributions that have not arrived at the expected pace. The industry's problem has been realizations.
Two processes surfacing in the same week at very different scales says something about seller willingness. It says nothing yet about buyer appetite, which is the half that actually determines whether either transaction happens.
The fact that both became visible through unnamed sources rather than through announcements is itself informative about the stage. This is the point at which a sponsor tests the water, sounds out a handful of likely buyers, and retains the ability to stop without ever having been seen to fail. Processes that reach this level of visibility and then quietly disappear are common, and they leave no public record when they do.
The gap between a reported exploration and a sale
A firm exploring a sale is several steps from a transaction. Reported valuations at this stage are seller expectations, and they frequently do not survive diligence, financing conditions or a thinner-than-hoped buyer list. The failure rate between exploration and signing is high, and it is highest precisely when the reported value is the most flattering.
The markers that would turn either of these into a real transaction are visible and specific. Advisers being publicly retained. A first-round bid deadline. Either sponsor confirming a process on the record. None of those has happened.