Full Year 2023 Education Industry Trends

2023 KEY HIGHLIGHTS

The two largest deals of 2023 were both take-private transactions. These included the acquisition of Kahoot!, a Norwegian online gamebased learning platform, led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and BPEA EQT’s acquisition of Benesse Holdings, Inc., Japan’s leading education and nursing care provider, for $1.6 billion and $1.27 billion respectively.

There were 101 financially sponsored transactions in 2023, with an aggregate value of $5.4 billion, representing 34 percent of the total volume and 60 percent of the total value, respectively.

2023 KEY TRENDS

Total transaction volume in 2023 decreased by 23 percent over 2022, from 449 to 346.

Total transaction value in 2023 decreased by 53 percent over 2022, from $19 billion to $9 billion.

The median revenue multiple in 2023 remained the same over 2022, at 1.6x.

M&A MARKET OVERVIEW

Berkery Noyes tracked 1,263 Education transactions between 2021 and 2023, of which 208 disclosed financial terms, and calculated the aggregate value to be $47.27 billion. Based on known transaction values, we project values of 1,055 undisclosed transactions to be $11.94 billion, totaling $59.21 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 2.3x revenue and 8.4x EBITDA.

Over the past three years, deals in the $10-$20 million range received a median enterprise value multiple of 1.2x revenue compared to 6.3x revenue for those in the $160 million and above range.