2017 Key Highlights

  • Five of the top ten highest value deals during the year occurred in the Payments segment. Two of these acquisitions were completed by First Data Corporation: BluePay, a provider of technology-enabled payment processing for merchants, for $760 million; and CardConnect, which offers payment processing and technology solutions to SMBs and enterprises, for $750 million.
  • There were 105 financially sponsored transactions with an aggregate value of $13.23 billion, representing 24 percent of the total volume and 31 percent of the total value, respectively.

2017 Key Trends

  • Total transaction volume in 2017 remained almost constant over 2016, at 442.
  • Total transaction value in 2017 rose by 26 percent over 2016, from $34.01 billion to $42.69 billion.
  • The median revenue multiple increased from 1.8x in 2016 to 2.8x in 2017. The median EBITDA multiple improved from 11.4x in 2016 to 15.8x in 2017.
  • The segment with the largest rise in volume in 2017 over 2016 was Banking with a 27 percent increase, from 81 to 103 transactions.

M&A Market Overview

Berkery Noyes tracked 1,316 Financial Technology and Information transactions between 2015 and 2017, of which 310 disclosed financial terms, and calculated the aggregate value to be $120.02 billion. Based on known transaction values, we project values of 1,005 undisclosed transactions to be $21.94 billion, totaling $141.96 billion 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 2.4x revenue and 14.2x EBITDA.

The largest Financial Technology deal tracked by Berkery Noyes between 2015 and 2017 was Vantiv’s announced merger with Worldpay Group for $11.58 billion in 2017.