Full Year 2019 Online & Mobile Industry Trends

2019 Key Highlights

The highest value deal in 2019 was Flutter Entertainment’s announced acquisition of Stars Group, an online gambling company known in particular for PokerStars and other poker brands, for $10.84 billion.

Five of the industry’s top ten largest deals in 2019 occurred in the E-Commerce segment: the aforementioned Stars Group acquisition; Takeaway.com’s announced merger with Just Eat for $6.28 billion; Viagogo’s announced acquisition of StubHub for $4.05 billion; PayPal’s announced acquisition of Honey Science Corporation for $4 billion; and Delivery Hero’s announced acquisition of Woowa Brothers Corp for $3.5 billion.

There were 664 financially sponsored transactions with an aggregate value of $80.57 billion, representing 21 percent of the total volume and 39 percent of the total value, respectively.

2019 Key Trends

Total transaction volume in 2019 saw a two percent uptick over 2018, from 3,026 to 3,090.

Total transaction value in 2019 declined by one percent over 2018, from $209.57 billion to $206.60 billion. However, value doubled in 2018 over 2017.

The median revenue multiple shifted slightly from 2.5x in 2018 to 2.6x in 2019. The median EBITDA moved upward from 12.2x in 2018 to 14.1x in 2019.  

The segment with the largest rise in volume in 2019 over 2018 was SaaS & Cloud, which increased 13 percent, from 899 to 1,020 transactions.     

M&A Market Overview

Berkery Noyes tracked 9,024 Online & Mobile transactions between 2017 and 2019, of which 1,727 disclosed financial terms, and calculated the aggregate value to be $378.27 billion. Based on known transaction values, we project values of 7,297 undisclosed transactions to be $138.12 billion, totaling $516.38 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 2.3x revenue and 12.4x EBITDA.