The Year of The Pig was a bit of a snorter. UK Tech M&A activity was up 20% to a new record number of deals in 2019, driven by strong interest from both PE backed buy-and-build and overseas buyers. With interest rates looking set to remain 'lower for longer' then we expect the wave of cheap money to again fuel healthy M&A activity in the Tech sector in The Year of The Rat.
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Overall volumes may be slightly down but valuations remain high, with Microsoft, Google, Cisco, OpenText, Workday, RELX, SAP, Adobe, IBM, Temenos, Docusign, Salesforce and PayPal all having paid more than 10x revenues for recent acquisitions.
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Increasing M&A activity by trade acquirers and financial sponsors has created a very favourable environment for sellers across the speciality materials sector. Additionally, carbon composite M&A continues to grow with 5 strong quarters in 2017 and 2018, due to some highly significant industry deals, robust growth rates, substantial value propositions and sustainable margins remained attractive incentives for strategic buyers and financial investors.
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Technology M&A deal volumes in the UK were up 12% in the first half as a wave of overseas acquirers continues to drive the market. The bull market shows no sign of slowing down. Some of the exit valuations have been spectacular. It's clearly a great time to own a technology company.
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2017 was another excellent year for Technology companies. While the number of M&A deals fell 8% globally, the valuations remained at near record levels and in UK we saw a record number of overseas acquirers, with 41% of deals being cross border. Almost all the drivers that made 2017 another active year in M&A remain in place and so we look forward to the Chinese Year of The Dog with confidence.
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The number of Technology M&A deals is down so far this year, although comparison is with a very strong 2016. A key trend in the UK was the increase in cross border deals to 43% of the total in the first half of this year, up from 35% in the same period last year, despite sterling rallying. Valuations remain at record levels as investors acquired high growth/high price assets in AI, IoT and cloud software.
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The Technology sector continues to outperform as investors continue to search for growth in a low growth world. 2015 was the sixth consecutive year in which the number of Technology M&A deals has increased and the year of the largest ever Technology deal.
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With post Brexit impact looming there is concern that UK confidence could be dented. Far from it, since Brexit sterling has fallen but equity markets have soared to near record levels. UK Technology M&A activity also remains robust with a wave of deals closing. In fact, we have seen the biggest ever tech deal in Europe when SoftBank (Japan) acquired ARM for £24.3bn.
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