2017 Key Highlights

  • The industry’s largest deal in 2017 was The Walt Disney Company’s announced acquisition of 21st Century Fox, which includes the Twentieth Century Fox Film and Television studios, along with cable and international TV businesses, for $66.1 billion.
  • There were 246 financially sponsored transactions with an aggregate value of $28.23 billion, representing 13 percent of the total volume and 17 percent of the total value, respectively.

2017 Key Trends

  • Total transaction volume in 2017 saw a slight uptick over 2016, from 1,820 to 1,847.
  • Total transaction value in 2017 fell by 39 percent over 2016, from $270.89 billion to $166.04 billion. However, overall value more than doubled from 2015 to 2016.
  • The major rise in value during 2016 was due in large part to AT&T’s announced acquisition of Time Warner for $105.27 billion. Also of note, there were two deals in 2017 with disclosed values above $10 billion, compared to four such deals in 2016 and none in 2015.
  • The median revenue multiple moved downward from 2.1x in 2016 to 1.5x in 2017. The median EBITDA multiple declined from 11.5x in 2016 to 9.8x in 2017.
  • The segment with the largest rise in volume in 2017 over 2016 was Broadcasting, which nearly tripled, from 44 to 122 transactions. This was close to the segment’s volume level in 2015.

M&A Market Overview

Berkery Noyes tracked 5,566 Media & Marketing transactions between 2015 and 2017, of which 1,208 disclosed financial terms, and calculated the aggregate value to be $470.78 billion. Based on known transaction values, we project values of 4,358 undisclosed transactions to be $69.81 billion, totaling $540.59 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 1.8x revenue and 9.9x EBITDA.