Full Year 2020 Online & Mobile Industry Trends

2020 Key Highlights

Six of the industry’s top ten highest value deals in 2020 occurred in the Finance vertical. These six transactions, with an aggregate value of $51.65 billion, accounted for about one-fifth of the industry’s total value.

The largest deal in the E-Commerce segment during the year was Adevinta’s announced acquisition of eBay Classifieds Group for $9.21 billion.

There were 653 financially sponsored transactions with an aggregate value of $87.38 billion, representing 22 percent of the total volume and 35 percent of the total value, respectively.

2020 Key Trends

Total transaction volume in 2020 declined by four percent over 2019, from 3,101 to 2,964. On a half year basis, M&A activity gained 13 percent in 2nd Half 2020 over 1st Half 2020, from 1,389 to 1,575.

Total transaction value in 2020 rose by eight percent over 2019, from $230.47 billion to $249.66 billion. On a half year basis, M&A value more than doubled in 2nd Half 2020 over 1st Half 2020, from $78.83 to $170.83 billion.

The median revenue multiple from 2019 to 2020 remained constant at 2.7x. The median EBITDA decreased from 14.1x in 2019 to 11.8x in 2020.

The segment with the largest rise in volume in 2020 over 2019 was SaaS & Cloud, which improved four percent, from 1,024 to 1,063 transactions.

M&A Market Overview

Berkery Noyes tracked 9,091 Online & Mobile transactions between 2018 and 2020, of which 1,643 disclosed financial terms, and calculated the aggregate value to be $524.88 billion. Based on known transaction values, we project values of 7,448 undisclosed transactions to be $164.90 billion, totaling $689.78 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 2.6x revenue and 12.5x EBITDA.