Full Year 2021 Private Equity Industry Trends

2021 Key Highlights 

The Information Industry’s largest sponsored transaction in 2021 was Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman’s announced acquisition of athenahealth, a provider of cloud-based enterprise software solutions for medical groups and health systems, for $17 billion.

Thoma Bravo was responsible for two the Information Industry’s top five highest vale sponsored deals during the year with the acquisition of Proofpoint, a cybersecurity company that offers email and advanced threat protection, for $12.30 billion; and Medallia, an experience management company that leverages proprietary AI to help companies better understand their customers and employees, for $5.90 billion.

In the Education vertical, the most active overall acquirer in 2021 either directly or through an affiliated business was Leeds Equity Partners with nine transactions.

2021 Key Trends

Total transaction volume in 2021 increased by 22 percent over 2020, from 875 to 1,068.

Total transaction value in 2021 gained 74 percent over 2020, from $88.77 billion to $154.79 billion.

The median revenue multiple rose from 3.2x in 2020 to 4.4x in 2021.

M&A Market Overview

Berkery Noyes tracked 2,957 private equity transactions in the Information Industry between 2019 and 2021, of which 317 disclosed financial terms, and calculated the aggregate value to be $255.23 billion. Based on known transaction values, we project values of 2,640 undisclosed transactions to be $89.88 billion, totaling $345.11 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 3.6x revenue and 15.7x EBITDA.

Out of 2,957 deals tracked by Berkery Noyes between 2019 and 2021, transactions valued at $160 million and above garnered a median enterprise value multiple of 5.2x revenue. In contrast, companies with transaction values between $10 million and $20 million captured a median enterprise value multiple of 2.7x revenue.