Technology M&A

Certain businesses are open again, while others remain shuttered. Some activities are still off-limits, while others are permitted. But in the tech M&A market, there's not even the slightest recovery: Nobody is buying much of anything.

Some restaurants are back open, sports are starting to get played again and even a handful of traders have returned to the NYSE. But even as some of the broader business restrictions from March start to get lifted, the tech M&A market remains in lockdown.

After years of operating with a move-fast-and-break-things mantra, tech vendors are slowing down and being conservative in the pandemic. It's an understandable effort to 'de-risk' business. But the shift in strategy will likely have repercussions that will linger long after COVID-19 diminishes as a threat to the public health.

Despite trillions of dollars in lost economic activity and tens of millions of lost jobs because of COVID-19, shares of most tech companies are currently trading where they were before the outbreak.

While COVID-19 could delay the next round of transactions, the spread of the virus only underscores the rationale behind acquisitions in this emerging corner of the healthcare tech market.

All tech acquirers are feeling the hit from the coronavirus pandemic. But financial buyers are proving to be the more at-risk population during the current crisis.

Spending on tech deals in April plummeted to one-tenth the typical monthly level, as the health and financial risks brought on by the coronavirus pandemic devasted dealmaking. This month's dire spending total is the lowest since the previous recession bottomed out in February 2009.

As consumer spending shrinks and shifts amid the COVID-19 crisis, valuations are expanding for many e-commerce vendors. Wall Street has been rewarding online shopping businesses with higher multiples as the health emergency has deepened. But that's not likely to boost acquisition multiples. The shift that's benefiting many of the largest online players is decimating offline retailers – the buyers that have been most willing to pay up for e-commerce startups.

First the coronavirus pushed tourists out of New York City, London and Tokyo. Now it's likely to push them off Sand Hill Road. As startup and tech valuations soared in the now-ending bull market, corporate investors plowed into venture capital, many coming from markets far afield of tech.

According to 451 Research's M&A KnowledgeBase, the coronavirus pandemic and accompanying economic slowdown has knocked tech M&A spending in the first half of April to just $2bn.

With economies around the globe at a standstill and complex M&A negotiations curtailed by quarantine, tech investment bankers don't have much going on during the current coronavirus pandemic.

According to 451 Research's M&A KnowledgeBase, spending on CX&C targets fell almost in half during 2019 and continued to slow through the first quarter.

As the coronavirus pandemic ripped around the globe, the modern workaday world went into lockdown. Businesses shuttered, restaurants emptied and travel ceased. The COVID-19 crisis broadened and deepened as the opening months of the new decade went along, infecting hundreds of thousands of people and stifling trillions of dollars of economic activity around the globe.

After a mostly business-as-usual start to the new decade, the world got increasingly bleak as Q1 went along: More infections and more deaths from coronavirus, along with more restrictions and more disruptions from the efforts to combat it. Hope dwindled rapidly as the plague spread rampantly.

The pandemic didn't create remote working, online ordering or distance learning, yet it's created a surge in demand for technologies that enable digital interactions among people and businesses.

The economic contraction from the coronavirus pandemic has already hurt business around the globe, and a lot more pain is coming. However, it isn't going to be evenly distributed. Certain industries – notably hospitality, energy and retail – have already been walloped pretty hard and appear likely to get roughed up even more.

The bull market for stocks that started its run after last decade's financial pandemic has died. The cause of death: Complications from a viral infection. Now dealmakers are waiting to see if the deadly contagion takes out their market, too.

As the coronavirus outbreak has kept China mostly locked inside its borders, companies based in the world's second-largest economy have broken off virtually all M&A negotiations with the outside world. So far in this virus-infected year of 2020, China-based buyers have reached outside their home country for just one single tech acquisition, according to 451 Research's M&A KnowledgeBase.

The M&A Outlook 2020 report represents 451 Research's comprehensive analysis of recent M&A activity and our forecast for trends that are expected to shape dealmaking in the coming year. All acquisition data comes from 451 Research's M&A KnowledgeBase, the industry's only technology-specific M&A database.

Watch the replay of the 2020 Tech M&A Outlook webinar, presented by Brenon Daly, Research Vice President at 451 Research.

Big things are forecast for the Internet of Things. IoT spending is expected to nearly quadruple over the next five years, topping a half-trillion dollars. To get a place in that massive market, acquirers have gone on an unprecedented shopping spree so far this year.

After more than eight months of review by regulatory officials around the globe, Big Blue officially owns Red Hat. The $33bn deal stands as the largest software acquisition in history – almost twice the size of the second-largest deal in the space, according to 451 Research's M&A KnowledgeBase.

After bulking up in recent years in part to fend off the ever-expanding influence of the cloud suppliers, web hosting and managed service providers are now going it alone. For the most part, they've closed the M&A playbook, or at the very least, dramatically scaled back their acquisition ambitions.

Europe's underdeveloped venture industry, combined with its slowing economic activity overall, is turning the Continent into a bargain market for tech M&A. Over the past half-decade, Western European acquirers have consistently paid roughly one turn lower than their North American counterparts.

The summer holiday came early to the tech M&A market. Dealmakers around the globe announced nearly 15% fewer tech and telecom acquisitions in Q2 than in recent quarters, according to 451 Research's M&A KnowledgeBase. And they didn't spend much on the deals that they did get done.

We've seen a major surge in blockchain M&A activity in 2018 where companies are making strategic investments to boost their position in the market.

Software and information security startups dominate B2B IPOs and the pipeline tracked by 451 Research