Full Year 2020 Healthcare Industry Trends

2020 Key Highlights 

The most active acquirer in 2020 either directly or through an affiliated business was New Mountain Capital with ten industry transactions: PatientBlox, Healthcomp, Elysia Group, Laiya Consulting, FlexTech, Medal, Inc., Discern Health, SwervePay, Symplur, and 21GRAMS NY.

The Healthcare IT segment accounted for nearly one-half of total volume in 2020.

There were 197 financially sponsored transactions with an aggregate value of $27.15 billion, representing 36 percent of the total volume and 55 percent of the total value, respectively.

2020 Key Trends

Total transaction volume in 2020 improved by three percent over 2019, from 538 to 553.

Total transaction value in 2020 gained 38 percent over 2019, from $35.77 billion to $49.36 billion.

The median revenue multiple increased from 2.3x in 2019 to 3.0x in 2020. The median EBITDA multiple rose from 12.4x to 16.4x during this timeframe.

The segment with the largest rise in volume in 2020 over 2019 was Medical Education with a 47 percent gain, from 45 to 66 deals. The Pharma IT segment also experienced a notable increase with a 27 percent improvement, from 41 to 52 deals.

M&A Market Overview

Berkery Noyes tracked 1,567 Healthcare/Pharma Information and Technology transaction between 2018 and 2020, of which 318 disclosed financial terms, and calculated the aggregate value to be $101.06 billion. Based on known transaction values, we project values of 1,249 undisclosed transactions to be $20.68 billion, totaling $121.75 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 2.7x revenue and 13.9x EBITDA.