The private equity firm Martis Capital may soon acquire Dallas-based Three Oaks Hospice for a price tag ranging from $150 million to $160 million.

Rumors of the potential sale appeared today in an Axios report, in which unnamed sources reportedly confirmed the deal. The Nashville-based investment and management company Petra Capital currently owns Three Oaks Hospice, which reportedly generates between $10 and $13 million in EBITDA, Axios indicated.

Rumors that the hospice was considering a potential sale were first reported last month by the website Ion Analytics. The private-equity backed company provides hospice, palliative care and bereavement services across 28 locations in seven states.

“Martis Capital is acquiring hospice operator Three Oaks Hospice for $150 million to $160 million,” sources told Axios in the report. “Petra was initially guiding bidders to a valuation of $200 million.”

The transaction is reportedly led by Harris Williams. Three Oaks Hospice did not respond to Hospice News’ request for comment.

Three Oaks Hospice launched in 2019, fueled by a $21 million investment seed from Granite Growth Health Partners, Health Velocity Capital and Petra Capital Partners. The hospice has been bullish on growth, making several purchases since its inception. The company in 2020 acquired Peace Hospice & Palliative Care in Naperville, Illinois, and also picked up Hospice Partners of Kansas, both for undisclosed amounts.

De novos have also been a key to its strategic growth, with Three Oaks Hospice using that strategy to expand its geographic footprint in its home state and across a number of new markets.

The company has seen tremendous opportunity in the hospice space, according to Three Oaks Hospice CEO Andrea Bohannon.

”We started Three Oaks Hospice because there is a need to serve the underserved markets of those patients who’ve been diagnosed with a life-limiting illness,” Bohannon previously told Hospice News. “With no serious consolidation in the last several years of the over 4,500 hospice providers, we see an opportunity to leverage our collective experience to not only consolidate a fragmented industry, but to also innovate through technology that can further improve the quality of care and better serve the families of our patients.”

The rumored deal signals that hospice merger and acquisition activity may be starting to rebound after a recent cooling period. The industry saw a flurry of deals alongside record-high valuations that reached 26x in 2020. The market reached similar heights in 2021. Now, some of the assets purchased in those years are maturing and ripe for a sale.

With interest rates coming down, more companies may be preparing to bring their hospice assets to market.

“I think we’ve hit bottom in terms of transaction activity. I would imagine over the next two to four quarters, we’ll see a substantial pickup in transaction activity,” Cory Mertz, managing partner at the M&A advisory firm Mertz Taggart, said in a Home Health Care News webinar. “It’s not extreme, but I think the consensus is that activity is picking up.”

Three Oaks Hospice did not respond to Hospice News’ request for comment.