2019-04-12 Berkery Noyes Releases Information Industry M&A Report for First Quarter 2019
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NEW YORK — April 12, 2019 — Berkery Noyes, an independent mid-market investment bank, today released its Q1 2019 mergers and acquisitions trend report for the Information Industry.
The Information report features companies in the Media & Marketing, Software, and Online & Mobile Industries. It analyzes M&A activity during Q1 2019 and compares it with the past four quarters.
According to Berkery Noyes’ latest data, transaction volume in the Information Industry saw a three percent gain over the past three months. After rising 33 percent in Q4 2018, overall value fell 49 percent, from $118.2 billion to $60.1 billion. Volume improved 12 percent while value remained about constant when examined on a year-over-year basis.
The median revenue multiple during the past quarter moved stayed the same at 2.8x, while the median EBITDA multiple declined from 13.0x to 10.5x. Disclosed median enterprise value multiples throughout the five quarters covered in the report were 2.5x revenue and 11.8x EBITDA.
Two of the Information Industry’s top three largest deals in Q1 2019 were completed by financial sponsors. These two deals, with a combined value of $14.1 billion, represented almost one-quarter of the industry’s aggregate value year-to-date.
Each of the Information Industry’s three broad-based horizontal markets experienced a slight uptick in volume on a quarterly basis. Regarding the Software horizontal, transaction volume in the Infrastructure segment underwent a 22 percent increase, which was the Software sector’s largest gain. The highest value security related transaction during the quarter was Carbonite’s acquisition of Webroot, which secures endpoints and provides network protection, security awareness training, and threat intelligence services, for $619 million.
Meanwhile, Thoma Bravo was the Software horizontal’s most active acquirer year-to-date with 13 deals, either directly or through an affiliated business. Along these lines were:
- Ellie Mae, a cloud-based platform provider for the residential mortgage sector, for $3.3 billion;
- Attunity, which offers data integration and big data management software solutions, for $496 million;
- Aucerna, an integrated technology platform for oil and gas companies;
- BlueSun, which provides back office software solutions to the life insurance and financial services sector in Canada;
- BrightGauge, a business intelligence platform used by IT service providers;
- Coastal Flow Measurement, a family of energy measurement services and software companies;
- Connectwise, which provides professional service automation software to the IT services companies;
- CrunchData, which offers business analytics and data visualization solutions;
- EnableSoft, a robotic process automation (RPA) company;
- Evo W12, a provider of software, billing, and membership services to over 7,000 North American commercial and franchise health and wellness facilities;
- GSQA, a supplier of quality management software;
- Managed Workplace assets from cloud security developer Avast Software; and
- Top Image Systems, which offers automated data capture solutions to manage and validate content.
In the Online & Mobile horizontal, the E-Content segment experienced a 45 percent gain, making it the sector with the largest Online & Mobile rise in volume. As for the Media & Marketing horizontal, deal flow in the Internet Media segment rose 13 percent, which was the most improved Media & Marketing sector during the quarter.
“In general there have been fewer megadeals, but middle market transaction volume should continue at a steady pace as acquirers look for innovative technologies to help expand their product offerings,” said James Berkery, Managing Partner at Berkery Noyes.
A copy of the INFORMATION INDUSTRY M&A REPORT FOR FIRST QUARTER 2019 is available at the Berkery Noyes website.