Full Year 2022 Education Industry Trends

2022 KEY HIGHLIGHTS

The largest deal in 2022 was the sale of KnowBe4, a provider of the world’s largest security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, to Vista Equity Partners, with an acquisition price of $4.10 billion.

There were 142 financially sponsored transactions in 2022, with an aggregate value of $12.21 billion, representing 32 percent of the total volume and 60 percent of the total value, respectively.

2022 KEY TRENDS

Total transaction volume in 2022 decreased by four percent over 2021, from 465 to 446.

Total transaction value in 2022 decreased by 34 percent over 2021, from $30.89 billion to $20.35 billion, which was in line with its 2020 level.

The median revenue multiple decreased from 4.1x in 2021 to 1.6x in 2022.

Nearly one-third of companies sold in 2022 received transaction values between $4 million to $20 million.

M&A MARKET OVERVIEW

Berkery Noyes tracked 1,344 Education transactions between 2020 and 2022, of which 241 disclosed financial terms, and calculated the aggregate value to be $59.00 billion. Based on known transaction values, we project values of 1,103 undisclosed transactions to be $13.40 billion, totaling $72.39 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 2.4x revenue and 8.8x EBITDA.

Over the past three years, deals in the $10-$20 million range received a median enterprise value multiple of 1.3x revenue compared to 6.2x revenue for those in the $160 million and above range.