by Brenon Daly
Each January, we look back on deal flow over the previous year and look ahead at what we expect in the coming year. Our Tech M&A Outlook: Introduction provides a broad overview of acquisition activity in the tech market and the trends that shaped – and will shape – the multibillion-dollar tech M&A market. A few of the insights from the report include:
Both strategic and financial acquirers printed a record number of billion-dollar deals in 2018, with their combined pace topping two big-ticket transactions announced every week last year, according to 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase. Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP, Adobe and IBM all inked billion-dollar acquisitions last year, after not one of the tech giants announced a blockbuster print in 2017.
With its broad applicability for buyers across the tech landscape, machine learning (ML) cemented its standing as the fastest-growing trend in the tech M&A market. The number of deals has increased roughly 50% every year since the start of the decade, our data shows. And no slowdown is expected in 2019, since bankers told us they have more ML transactions in their pipelines than anything else.
VC has turned into an industry characterized by ‘fewer, but bigger.’ That’s true in funding as well as exits. The M&A KnowledgeBase tallied the sale of just 603 startups in 2018, the second-fewest exits in the past half-decade. Proceeds from those deals, however, smashed all records. Last year’s total of $83bn in announced or estimated deal value almost eclipsed the total for the three previous years combined.
Additionally, we look at the prevailing trends in M&A pricing; the unprecedented activity of private equity that’s reshaping the tech landscape; and what the outlook is for the other exit, IPOs.
The overview serves as an introduction to our full, 100-page report that covers the outlook for M&A activity in six key enterprise IT markets, including application software, IoT and cloud. The full report, which will be available next week, is included in all subscriptions to 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase, and is also available for purchase.
