What a pair of startup sales tells us about the recession

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 22:38:11 +0000

If there was any doubt that the M&A climate has warmed since the beginning of this year, consider the relative exits for a pair of database-monitoring startups. Back in February, when venture funding was hard to come by and wind-down sales were plentiful, Tizor Systems sold to Netezza for just $3m. Fast-forward nine months, and Guardium sells to IBM for an estimated $230m. Viewed another way, Tizor returned just one-tenth the amount of venture funding it raised, while Guardium returned more than 10 times the funding it raised.

Granted, the relative returns of Guardium and Tizor probably have more to do with the business performance of the two rivals than what was going on in the economy. After all, Tizor was limping along with just $2m in sales, while Guardium was sprinting along at around $40m. (Both companies were founded in 2002.) That said, we’re pretty confident that the fact that the US is no longer (officially) in a recession certainly didn’t hurt the valuation of Guardium, a company we have thought has been in play for some time.

Indeed, as we look down our list of recent IT security deals, we can’t help but notice that the three largest transactions – all of which saw marquee tech companies paying above-market multiples – have come in the past four months. In addition to the sale of Guardium to IBM at an estimated 6x trailing sales, we’ve also seen Cisco Systems pay the same multiple for ScanSafe and McAfee pick up MX Logic for an estimated 4x trailing sales. A few more of these types of deals and we may start to believe that we are indeed out of the recession.

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M&A goes MIA in Q2

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:18:42 +0000

With the second quarter wrapped up, we’ve been busy tallying the deal flow from the period. As you might guess, M&A levels for the past three months mirror the dour economic climate. The quick numbers: Overall tech M&A fell 40% in the second quarter, year-over-year, dragged down by private equity players that have been knocked out of the market by the credit market turmoil. The total shopping bill of $148bn is a sharp decline from the $241bn in the same period last year, putting it only slightly above the $122bn recorded in the second quarter of 2006.

A number of trends shaped M&A in the quarter, including the continued use of bear hugs to pressure reluctant sellers, the frozen IPO market and the rise of consolidation deals. Of course, the single largest crimp on deal-making in the second quarter was the utter disappearance of tech buyouts. The value of tech LBOs in the second quarter fell more than 90% compared to the same period last year, when credit was flowing freely. In the just-completed quarter, we recorded some $7bn worth of tech buyouts, down from $85bn in the year-ago period. Looked at another way, LBOs accounted for just 5% of all tech M&A spending in the second quarter, after representing a full one-third of total spending in the same period last year.

Deal flow breakdown

Quarter	PE deal value	Corp. deal value	Total deal value
Q2 2006	$13bn	$109bn	$122bn
Q2 2007	$85bn	$156bn	$241bn
Q2 2008	$7bn	$141bn	$148bn

Source: The 451 M&A KnowledgeBase

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economy – Inorganic Growth

What a pair of startup sales tells us about the recession

M&A goes MIA in Q2