Nearly a year after shying away from becoming an initial public offering (IPO), BrightSpring Health Services Inc. has allegedly re-filed, this time with a much higher valuation.

The company, which does not yet have a stock symbol, raised the bar from when it initially filed in October 2021 with a $100 million listing. BrightSpring later withdrew its initial public offering plan the following year in November.

Now the home and community-based health care services platform has set a $1 billion listing goal with plans to launch trading on the NASDAQ by the end of this year, according to a Bloomberg News report.

BrightSpring is backed by private equity firm KKR & Co. (NYSE: KKR), subsidiary of KKR Group Holdings Corp. Eight other financial institutions are underwriting the IPO, including Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) and Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC), anonymous sources “familiar with the situation” told Bloomberg.

“[BrightSpring] has confidentially refiled for a listing with a goal of raising $1 billion. The home and community-based health-care services provider backed by KKR & Co. is slated for the fourth quarter,” sources told Bloomberg. “BrightSpring has re-engaged Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and KKR’s own capital markets division as lead bookrunners for the offering.”

The final decision on details and timing of the IPO launch is pending and subject to change, the unnamed sources told Bloomberg/said in the Bloomberg report.

BrightSpring declined to comment to Hospice News’ requests regarding the pending deal.

The Louisville, Kentucky-based company focuses on serving patient populations with complex and specialized care needs across the continuum of care and also offers pharmaceutical and diagnostic services through subsidiaries such as Adoration Health LLC, Pharmacy Alternatives LLC and more.

Historically a personal care company, BrightSpring stepped into the hospice space in February 2021 with its $775 million acquisition of Abode Healthcare from the private equity firm Summit Partners. The company went on to purchase North Carolina-based Dare County Home Health & Hospice for $2.9 million in September that same year.

The company has been quiet on the merger and acquisition front during the past two years following a swath of activity between 2018 and 2020. BrightSpring completed a dozen deals each year during that time span, as well as six acquisitions by Q2 2021 that included the Abode and Dare County deals.

A highly competitive health care market, labor shortages and reimbursement shifts were some of the risk factors that BrightSpring previously cited in the 2021 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Another risk the company identified in the previous filing was that becoming an IPO could limit or adversely affect execution of their growth strategy. BrightSpring cited a significant amount of debt, totaling nearly $3.5 billion in 2021, meaning the company must devote “a substantial portion” of its cash flows to paying down that sum.

Established as ResCare in 1974, BrightSpring currently has an annual census of 350,000 and provides care to seniors across all 50 states, as well as in Puerto Rico and Canada.

In the company’s 2021 SEC filing, it cited a combined market opportunity of $1.5 trillion across all of its business lines as a contributing factor behind the decision to go public.

“A sunnier reimbursement landscape for home health could partly be driving BrightSpring’s move to the public markets,” Aaron Weitzman and Erin Brodwin, health tech reporters at Axios, wrote in a statement shared with Hospice News.

BrightSpring previously forecasted growth opportunities through organic expansion, referral synergies across its service lines, emerging value-based payment models and strategic acquisitions, according to the SEC filing.

The company reported $5.6 billion in annual revenue in 2020, a 23% year-over-year rise from the prior year.

“By providing a complementary and purpose-built suite of services, our care model is designed to address more patient needs and better integrate health services delivery to improve outcomes and patient experiences, while reducing overall costs,” BrightSpring previously wrote in the filing.