Category: technology stocks

Fear and uncertainty

Mark Fontecchio

by Brenon Daly

When investors flipped their calendars from October to November, they were also hoping to turn the page on the worries that knocked US stocks last month to their worst monthly performance in six years. They looked through last week’s political instability – the divisive midterm elections in the US, which, appropriately enough, produced a divided Congress – in favor of market stability. Calm had descended on Wall Street once again.

And then came this week. Stability eroded and confidence evaporated, prompting investors to dump stocks in early-afternoon trading today and, even more so, on Monday. Stock market indexes that had hung close to the level where they opened the month in the first week of November suddenly plummeted into the red. Instead of a rebound from October, trading in November has turned into more of the same from last month.

Most market participants track uncertainty through the CBOE’s Volatility Index, which is known as the VIX. (Fast-talking traders shorthand everything.) Without going too deeply into the makeup and implications of the VIX, the index measures investors’ expectations about the direction of stocks. The index tends to move higher when stocks move lower.

We certainly saw that in last month’s bear market, when the VIX surged to roughly twice the level it held in the summer months. And while the so-called ‘fear gauge’ did ease significantly in early November as US equity markets recovered, this week’s rout has spurred it higher. The VIX is one-third higher now than it was last week, and is approaching last month’s levels.

As a mechanical measure of human emotion, however, the VIX has its shortcomings. Its utility is also limited because it is, necessarily, tied to every single tick of the market. That makes it difficult to base long-term strategy – whether a significant investment or a meaningful acquisition – on an index that fluctuates every second.

At 451 Research, we have our own version of the VIX. As part of a monthly survey, our Voice of the Connected User Landscape (VoCUL) asks over 1,400 respondents how they feel about the stock market. Specifically, we ask about the all-important sentiment of confidence in the market right now compared with three months earlier. Both the timing and the structure of our question is designed to draw out a more durable forecast than the more-reactive VIX.

So what does our survey say? Given the uncertainty that ripped through Wall Street in October, it’s probably no surprise that investor sentiment deteriorated notably in the latest VoCUL survey. Just one in eight respondents indicated that they had more confidence in Wall Street now than in August, when the stock market was roughly 10% higher. The most recent outlook – with the bearish views outnumbering the bulls almost three to one – is among the dourest outlooks of the past three years.

Sensitive ‘barbarians’?

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

Although private equity (PE) is often portrayed as heartless and hardened dealmakers, it turns out the group is actually quite sensitive. We don’t necessarily mean emotionally sensitive but rather economically sensitive. This hyperactive group of acquirers is far more attuned to interest rates, credit availability and other economic factors than rival corporate buyers. What happens outside buyout firms goes a long way toward shaping what goes on inside.

We’re seeing that right now in the tech M&A market. The just-enacted sweeping overhaul to the US tax code has changed some of the key calculations that buyout shops have to make before they can put their unprecedented pile of cash to work in tech deals. Under the new tax regime, PE firms are facing higher costs and potentially longer holding periods – both of which would weigh on returns. (Buyout shops are getting hit with numerous changes, the most significant of which is that they are now only able to deduct a portion of the interest payments for the debt they use to acquire companies.)

The tax changes, which were negotiated and passed in the final few months of last year, knocked PE almost completely out of the market during that time. Through the first three quarters of 2017, buyout shops were clipping along at an average of about $10bn in spending each month, according to 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase. However, spending plummeted to just $7bn for the entire fourth quarter. The aggregate value of deals in December – the month when the new tax code was approved – didn’t even reach a half-billion dollars, the lowest monthly total since early 2014.

Of course, this is only the most-recent case of macroeconomic conditions shaping PE activity. A far more vivid example of that came a decade ago, when the mortgage crisis effectively killed the first wave of tech buyouts. As we noted last summer on that unhappy anniversary, the last four crisis-shadowed months of 2007 accounted for just $7bn of the then-record $106bn in PE spending that year. The PE industry took until 2015 to reclaim the level of spending it put up in 2007, according to the M&A KnowledgeBase.

No one is suggesting the changes from the tax code will be anywhere as severe as the disappearance of credit, which is what we saw in the recession a decade ago. This time it’s more of a recalibration than a retreat.

No longer dour in Davos

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

As the World Economic Forum opens its doors today, we expect even more backslapping and bonhomie than usual among the business leaders, politicians and other TED-types that flock to the annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland. What’s got them all so excited? Well, unlike recent years at the conference, there are some pretty favorable winds blowing across the globe these days.

Stock markets around the world are at all-time highs, economic growth is accelerating and even fractious political rifts have been mended (at least temporarily) so governments can get on with the business of business. (Germany appears to be finally on track to forming a governing coalition, after last September’s election left the economic powerhouse of Europe without a government for the first time since World War II. On a smaller scale, US President Donald Trump jetted over to the Swiss mountains after Congress resolved for the moment a stalemate that had shut down the government of the world’s largest economy for a few days.) Not for nothing is the theme to this year’s gathering: ‘Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World.’

Of course, it’s a lot easier to get along when everyone is making money. And right now, people are making money because of the world economy rather than despite it, as has been the case for the most part since the end of the recession. In past years at Davos, economic growth and confidence had been elusive, or at least not evenly distributed. This year, in both the formal presentations and the hallway chatter, there’s a bullishness that’s been missing recently.

As an indication that business around the world is picking up, consider that one in six respondents to a recent 451 Research Voice of the Connected User Landscape said their companies are bumping up Q1 sales projections because of the global economy. That’s twice as many businesspeople as said the macro-economy is putting a crimp in their sales pipeline. For comparison, around the time of Davos last year, slightly more respondents to our survey said the world economy was dampening their sales outlook than boosting it.

What to look for in tech M&A in 2018

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

As we look back on 2017 and ahead to 2018, 451 Research has published its annual forecast for tech M&A, highlighting the trends that we expect to shape deal flow and the markets that we think will see much of the activity. The 2018 Tech M&A Outlook – Introduction serves as an overview of the broad M&A market, setting the stage for the upcoming publication of our comprehensive report that features analysis and predictions for eight specific IT markets on what deals are likely in 2018.

The full report, which we think of as an ‘M&A playbook’ for the enterprise IT market, has insightful forecasts for activity in application software, information security, mobility and other key sectors. The 80-plus-page 2018 Tech M&A Outlook report will be published at the end of January. It will be available at no additional cost for subscribers to 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase Professional and Premium products, and will be available for purchase for 451 Research clients and others that don’t subscribe to our M&A KnowledgeBase products. (If you’re interested in purchasing the full 80-plus-page report, contact your account manager or click here.)

In the meantime, our introduction provides insights on some of the overall dealmaking trends that are also likely to shape activity and valuations in sector-specific transactions. Key highlights in our overview of the broader M&A market include:

  • After tech M&A spending in both 2015 and 2016 topped a half-trillion dollars, what happened that knocked the value of deals in 2017 down to just $325bn?
  • Many of the tech industry’s biggest buyers printed only half as many deals as they have in recent years. Is that the new pace of M&A at these serial acquirers, or will they rev up again in 2018?
  • The pending tax overhaul will likely add billions of dollars to the treasuries at major tech vendors. Why don’t we think that will necessarily lead to more M&A? If they don’t spend it on deals, what are tech companies going to do with the windfall?
  • Which tech markets are expected to see the biggest flow of M&A dollars in the coming year? Enterprise security tops the forecast once again, but what about emerging cross-sector themes such as machine learning and the Internet of Things?
  • How did private equity (PE) move from operating on the fringes of the tech industry to become the buyer of record? PE firms accounted for an unprecedented one out of every four tech transactions last year. Why do we think their share of the market will only increase?
  • VC portfolios are stuffed, as the number of exits in 2017 slumped to its lowest level since the recession. What challenges loom for startups and the broader entrepreneurial community without the return of billions of dollars from those investments?
  • For startups, will venture capital be flowing freely in 2018? Or will the polarized VC market (fewer rounds, but bigger rounds) continue this year?
  • Despite nearly ideal stock market conditions, why don’t we expect much acceleration in the tech IPO market in 2018? What needs to happen – to both supply and demand – for the number of new offerings to take off?

For answers to these questions – as well as other factors that will influence dealmaking in 2018 – see our just-published 2018 Tech M&A Outlook – Introduction.

Every reason to shop, yet tech companies still empty-handed

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

As tech companies said goodbye to 2017, most of them did so with fond memories of the past year. Public companies nearly all saw steady gains on Wall Street, with more than a few hitting record highs. Record amounts of venture money flowed to startups, while more-established companies looked ahead to their already-stuffed treasuries getting even fuller when the benefits of the recently passed tax program kick in. And probably most importantly, customers are saying they are ready to spend on tech like they haven’t been since the recent recession.

In a November 2017 survey by 451 Research’s Voice of the Connected User Landscape, fully 50% of the 872 respondents said their company is giving a ‘green light’ for IT spending. That was the highest reading since 2007, and 13 basis points higher than the average survey response for the month of November for the previous five years. During that 2012-16 period, in fact, respondents unanimously said their companies were more likely to cut their IT spending than increase it.

All in all, the end of last year was a good time for publicly traded tech companies to do business. And they did, except in one crucial area: M&A. Tech acquirers announced one-quarter fewer deals in Q4 2017 compared with the final quarter of the previous three years, according to 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase. Meanwhile, spending on tech and telco acquisitions in the October-December period slumped to the lowest quarterly level since Q2 2013.

Historically, there has been a relatively tight correlation between overall IT budgets, company valuations and M&A activity. To some degree, activity in all three of those markets is determined by a single shared characteristic (confidence), so it follows that there would be some interdependence in the trio. And yet, as we step from 2017 to 2018, that connection appears to be breaking down. Tech companies are enjoying record levels of confidence from customers and investors, yet are rather timid when it comes to shopping.

Mainstays missing in the tech M&A market

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

A number of the mainstay acquirers that had helped boost the tech M&A market to recent record levels stepped out of the market in 2017, clipping spending on deals by more than one-third compared with 2016 and 2015. The value of tech and telco acquisitions around the globe in the just-completed year slumped to $325bn, after topping a half-trillion dollars in each of the two previous years, according to 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase. Last year’s M&A spending ranks as the lowest in four years.

The primary reason for the drop in 2017 is that tech giants – the companies that had set the tone in the overall M&A market over the past decade – didn’t shop like they once did. For instance, Oracle and SAP have, collectively, announced 16 acquisitions valued at more than $1bn since 2010, according to our M&A KnowledgeBase. However, only one of those deals printed last year. (More broadly, Oracle took an uncharacteristically long eight-month hiatus from deal-making in 2017. The prolonged absence of corporate acquirers such as Oracle was one of the primary contributors to last year’s overall M&A volume slumping to a four-year low, according to our count.)

Also weighing a bit on 2017’s totals is that free-spending Chinese buyers, who had turned tech into a favorite shopping ground, all but disappeared from the top end of the market last year. Our M&A KnowledgeBase lists just one $1bn-plus acquisition by a China-based buyer in 2017, down from nine transactions in 2016 and seven in 2015. Currency restrictions imposed by China’s authorities in early 2017 drastically reduced the ability of Chinese companies to put money to work outside their country. Also, the simmering trade fight and sparring over currency policy between Beijing and Washington DC slowed M&A between the world’s two largest economies.

On the other hand, last year saw the full emergence of a new, powerful – and largely underappreciated – force in the tech M&A market: private equity (PE). As corporate acquirers retreated, financial acquirers accelerated. PE firms announced a record 876 transactions last year, more than twice the number they did just a half-decade ago, according to 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase. Deal volume, which has increased for five consecutive years, jumped nearly 25% in 2017 from 2016, even as the number of overall tech acquisitions posted a mid-teens decline year on year.

Small software buys big, but…

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

The little brothers of the software industry have stepped in front of their bigger brothers in the M&A market. Medium-sized public software companies have been inking uncharacteristically large acquisitions this year, even as the well-known vendors have been fairly reserved. And while these midmarket software firms have been big spenders recently, the deals are often missing a zero or even two compared with prices the industry bellwethers have paid in years past for some of their purchases. That has helped knock overall software M&A spending to its lowest level in four years, according to 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase.

As an example of the shift in buyers, consider Oracle. The software giant has averaged at least one transaction valued at more than $1bn each year over the past decade, according to the M&A KnowledgeBase. Yet this year, it hasn’t gotten anywhere close to doing a 10-digit deal, and, in fact, hasn’t announced any acquisitions since April. On the other side, several software companies that have only a fraction of the size and resources of Oracle have thrown around a lot more money on recent transactions than they ever have before. A few prints captured over the past few months in the M&A KnowledgeBase clearly show the trend of M&A inflation among the midmarket software buyers:

-At $275m in cash and stock, Guidewire Software’s reach for Cyence in October is $100m more than the SaaS provider has ever spent on any other transaction.
-Both of the largest purchases by security software vendor Proofpoint have come in the past month. Its $60m pickup of Weblife.io in late November and $110m acquisition of Cloudmark in early November compare with an average price tag of just $20m on its previous 12 deals done as a public company from 2013-16.
-Doubling the highest amount it has ever paid in a transaction, serial acquirer CallidusCloud spent $26m for Learning Seat earlier this month.
-In a pair of deals announced earlier this year, RealPage dropped more than a quarter-billion dollars on both of its targets, after not spending more than $100m on any of its previous two dozen acquisitions.
-Upland Software announced in mid-November the purchase of Qvidian for $50m, which is twice as much as the software consolidator has spent on any of its other nine acquisitions since coming public in November 2014.

These deals by midmarket software vendors (as well as other similarly sized buyers) go some distance toward making up for the missing big names. Yet they won’t fully cover the shortfall this year. Partially due to this change in acquirers, spending on software M&A in 2017 is tracking roughly one-third lower than it has been over the previous three years, according to the M&A KnowledgeBase.

November tech M&A slumps to pre-boom levels

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

Dealmaking in 2017 is going out with a whimper. Acquirers in November spent just $15.7bn on tech transactions across the globe, the lowest monthly total in three years, according to 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase. The sluggish November activity comes after a similarly anemic October, with both months coming in only about half of the average monthly spending for the first nine months of 2017. Also, the number of deals announced in the just-completed month slumped to its lowest level of the year.

Even as November featured a decidedly lackluster level of overall M&A activity, a few transactions stood out, including:
-After entirely sitting out the wave of semiconductor consolidation in recent years, Marvell Technology Group shelled out $6bn in cash and stock for Cavium. The deal stands as the largest tech transaction in November, topping the collective spending on the next four biggest acquisitions last month.
-The information security industry saw its largest take-private, as buyout firm Thoma Bravo paid $1.6bn for Barracuda Networks in a late-November deal. A single-digit grower that throws off $10-20m in free cash flow each quarter, Barracuda has long been considered a candidate to go private as it works through a transition from on-premises products to cloud-based offerings.
-Richly valued startup Dropbox stepped back into the M&A market in November for the first time since July 2015, purchasing online publisher Verst. From 2012-15, the unicorn (or more accurately ‘decacorn’) had inked 23 acquisitions, according to the M&A KnowledgeBase.

The recent tail-off in acquisition spending has left the value of announced tech transactions so far this year at just $302bn, according to the M&A KnowledgeBase. With one month of 2017 remaining, this year is all but certain to come in with the lowest annual M&A spending since 2013. This year is tracking to a 34% decline in deal value compared with 2016 and an even-sharper 45% drop from 2015.

Bull market bypasses tech IPOs

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

Although there’s still a month remaining in 2017, most startups thinking about an IPO – even those already on file ‘confidentially’ – have already turned the calendar to 2018. The would-be debutants want to have results from the seasonally strong Q4 to boast about during their roadshow with investors, as well as toss around a bigger ‘this year’ sales figure to hang their valuation on. There’s no compelling reason to rush out an offering right now.

That’s true even though the tech IPO market has been pretty active recently. By our count, a half-dozen enterprise-focused tech vendors have come public in just the past two months. (To be clear, that tally includes only tech providers that sell to businesses, and leaves out recent consumer tech companies such as Stich Fix and CarGurus.) The total of six enterprise tech IPOs since October is already higher than the full Q4 2016 total of four offerings.

While there has been an uptick in IPO activity, shares of the newly public companies haven’t necessarily been ticking higher, at least not dramatically so. There hasn’t been a breakout offering. Based on the first trades of their freshly printed shares, not one of the recent debutants has returned more than 20%. Half of the companies are trading lower now than when they debuted. Meanwhile, investors who aren’t interested in these new issues can’t seem to get enough of stocks that have been around a while, bidding the broad market indexes to record high after record high this year. The much-desired IPO ‘pop’ has gone a little flat here at the end of 2017, which might have some startups slowing their march to Wall Street in early 2018.

 

Thoma Bravo goes fishing, lands a Barracuda

Brenon Daly

Contact: Brenon Daly

After four underwhelming years as a public company, Barracuda Networks will step off the NYSE in a $1.6bn take-private with Thoma Bravo. The all-cash transaction, which is expected to close within three months, is one of those rare deals that appears to fit both the buyer and the seller in equal measure. With $17bn sloshing around, private equity firm Thoma Bravo needs to put money to work and has made the information security market a favorite shopping ground, having previously taken four infosec vendors private.

For Barracuda, the proposed leveraged buyout (LBO) wraps a period of not truly finding a home on Wall Street. As a public company, Barracuda posted just one-third the return of the Nasdaq Composite over the same period. The $27.55 per share that Thoma Bravo is paying represents the highest price for Barracuda stock in two and a half years. At one point in 2015, shares of Barracuda changed hands above $40.

Part of the reason why Barracuda fell out of favor with investors is the company’s ongoing transition from an on-premises business to more of a cloud focus. The so-called ‘legacy’ revenue – much of which is tied to appliances – has been shrinking every quarter, but still represents roughly one-third of sales. Deemphasizing that business has boosted Barracuda’s operating margins, but has slowed overall revenue growth to the single digits. Going private to complete the transition to a higher-margin software business, while continuing to throw off $10-20m of free cash flow each quarter, makes sense for Barracuda.

On the other side, Thoma Bravo pays essentially a market multiple for a company that has figured out a way to turn a profit selling into the underserved SMB market. (The enterprise value of Thoma Bravo’s bid stands at $1.48bn, or 4x trailing 12-month sales at Barracuda. That roughly matches the 4.4x TTM sales/EV multiple that Thoma Bravo paid in its most recent infosec LBO, Imprivata.) Further, Thoma Bravo has some growth opportunities once it adds Barracuda to its portfolio, both in terms of products (for instance, the target’s managed security service) and markets (Barracuda still generates 70% of its revenue in the US).

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