2017 Key Highlights

  • The industry’s largest private equity backed transaction in 2017 was Blackstone Group’s announced acquisition of Aon’s technology-enabled and human resources platform for $4.3 billion.
  • Strategic acquisitions represented 82 percent of total volume and 72 percent of total value, respectively.

2017 Key Trends

  • Total transaction volume in 2017 increased by three percent over 2016, from 4,462 to 4,581.
  • As for notable market segments, Communications volume in the Online & Mobile horizontal increased by 18 percent; Infrastructure Software volume in the Software horizontal improved by 17 percent; and Consumer Publishing volume in the Media & Marketing horizontal rose by 13 percent.
  • Total transaction value in 2017 decreased by 29 percent over 2016, from $434.22 billion to $309.42 billion.
  • The median revenue multiple from 2016 to 2017 stayed almost constant at 2.0x. The median EBITDA multiple also remained nearly the same at 11.0x.

M&A Market Overview

Berkery Noyes tracked 13,486 Information Industry transactions between 2015 and 2017, of which 2,920 disclosed financial terms, and calculated the aggregate value to be $886.98 billion. Based on known transaction values, we project values of 10,566 undisclosed transactions to be $196.68 billion, totaling $1.84 trillion worth of transactions tracked over the past three years.

Disclosed median enterprise value multiples for all segments combined in this report during the last 36 months were 2.1x revenue and 11.1x EBITDA.

Out of 13,486 deals tracked by Berkery Noyes between 2015 and 2017, transactions valued at $160 million and above garnered a median enterprise value multiple of 3.5x revenue. In contrast, companies with transaction values between $10 million and $20 million captured a median enterprise value multiple of 1.9x revenue.