Full Year 2021 Information Industry Trends

2021 Key Highlights

Strategic acquisitions represented 75 percent of total volume and 61 percent of total value in 2021, respectively.

Seven of the industry’s top ten largest deals during the year were completed by strategic acquirers.

2021 Key Trends

Total transaction volume in 2021 rose by nine percent over 2021, from 3,966 to 4,329.

As for the industry’s three horizontal markets, Software volume increased by 25 percent; Online & Mobile volume improved by 17 percent; and Media & Marketing volume declined by 14 percent.

Total transaction value in 2021 gained 66 percent over 2020, from $325.11 billion to $540.45 billion.

The median revenue multiple rose from 2.6x in 2020 to 3.9x in 2021. The median EBITDA multiple improved from 12.5x in 2020 to 15.2x in 2021.

M&A Market Overview

Berkery Noyes tracked 12,874 Information Industry transactions between 2019 and 2021, of which 2,366 disclosed financial terms, and calculated the aggregate value to be $959.25 billion. Based on known transaction values, we project values of 10,508 undisclosed transactions to be $297.45 billion, totaling $1,256.70 trillion 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 3.0x revenue and 13.1x EBITDA.

Out of 12,874 deals tracked by Berkery Noyes between 2019 and 2021, transactions valued at $160 million and above garnered a median enterprise value multiple of 5.3x revenue. In contrast, companies with transaction values between $10 million and $20 million captured a median enterprise value multiple of 2.5x revenue.