Q1 2020 Online & Mobile Industry Trends

Online & Mobile transaction volume saw a two percent decline over the past three months, from 740 to 728. Deal value decreased 43 percent, from $98.9 billion to $56 billion, but nearly doubled during Q4 2019, which was its peak throughout the last five quarters.

The industry’s top three largest deals in Q1 2020 each occurred in the finance vertical. Along these lines were Morgan Stanley’s announced acquisition of E-Trade, an online brokerage company, for $13.1 billion; Intuit’s announced acquisition of Credit Karma, a personal finance company that offers free credit reports, scores, and insights, for $7.1 billion; and Visa’s announced acquisition of Plaid Technologies, which develops and creates API’s for banking data, for $5.3 billion. These three transactions, with a combined value of $25.5 billion, accounted for 46 percent of total industry value year-to-date.

Rounding out the top five largest deals in Q1 2020 were two transactions in the security sector: a Symphony Technology Group led consortium’s announced acquisition of Dell Technologies’ RSA Security business for $2.1 billion; and Advent International and Crosspoint Capital Partners’ announced acquisition of ForeScout Technologies, which develops device visibility, control, and cybersecurity solutions, for $1.7 billion.

As for specific industry markets, deal flow remained about constant in the SaaS & Cloud, E-Commerce, and E-Content segments on a quarterly basis. E-Marketing & Search volume decreased four percent, returning to its Q4 2019 level. The number of transactions in the Communications segment, after rising 13 percent in Q4 2019, declined eight percent.

Meanwhile, M&A activity in the mobile application sector rose five percent over Q4 2019. The largest video game related deal in Q1 2020 was Stillfront Group AB’s acquisition of Storm8, a mobile mash-up game developer, for $304 million.