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Acquisition Trends

See the most relevant buyers in a market

Raihan Ashraf avatar
Written by Raihan Ashraf
Updated over a month ago

The Acquisition Trends section is available on the Markets page. This allows users to see the most relevant buyers in a market and how recently they’ve been acquiring in the space, based on any market you define.

Where Can I See This?

You can find this positioned below the Comps sections and above the Fragmentation section

Financial Sponsors & Strategic Buyers

Financial Sponsors show the most active PE firms in the space while Strategic Buyers show the most active strategics in the space (note that PE backed strategics are included within the trends of the Financial Sponsors subsection above)

The Bar chart shows market data from most recent 10 years

The table shows all acquirers and the count of all acquisitions they’ve made within the defined market

  • Select specific sponsors and buyers to see trends for that specific acquirer

  • Filter on Yearly (default) or Quarterly for more granularity in recent acquisition trends

  • When in Quarterly view, you can view the acquisition counts when you hover your mouse over the chart

  • You can expand either financial sponsor or strategic subsection for a more focused full-screen view

M&A Concentration

In addition to number of acquisitions you can also see the “M&A Concentration”

  • This takes all historical acquisitions in the market and divides this number by all historical acquisitions of the acquirer

  • Note that the “Acquisitions Made” table on the profile does not include past acquisitions if they are not in the current ownership tree

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Who has access to this?

    • This is only available to customers paying for Market Research

  • Can I export this data?

    • We don’t currently support exporting, but this section is designed to be easily screenshotted for any slides or documents where this information is pertinent. You can click the “Expand” button in the top right corner of each section to see a full screen view. You can also narrow or widen your screen to change the view from having the bar chart to the left of the table to having the bar chart on top of the table.

  • Why don’t I see PE Backed Strategic Buyers?

    • Acquisition Trends currently aggregates on ultimate buyer, so PE Backed Strategic Buyers will count toward an acquisition for a Financial Sponsor

    • We will update to include all buyers in a future roadmap

  • Does this capture growth equity events?

    • Not currently, although we plan to add growth equity events within the Financial Sponsors section in a future roadmap

  • Can I change the time range?

    • We don’t support this from within the Acquisition Trends section, but you can use the existing “Years Since Last Ownership Event” in the “Additional Filters” section to refine the time frame that the acquisitions events are calculated from

  • Can I see trends specific to an acquirer?

    • Yes, you can click on any individual checkbox in the tables to see acquisition trends for that specific buyer. We do not currently support selecting more than one buyer at a time.

  • I want to see which companies make up the “Acquisitions” column number or one of the numbers in the bar chart within a year/quarter – how can I see these companies?

    • We don’t yet support a click-through from the “Acquisitions” column to make it easy to see these directly from this section, but the alternative steps are as follows:

      • Go to the Companies page

      • Add the same filters as what you entered in the Markets page

      • Add the acquirer to the “Ultimate Parents” filter in the “Ownership & Funding” section

      • To narrow down based on time frame, adjust the “Years Since Last Ownership Event” filter in the “Ownership & Funding” section (e.g. 0 to 1 will give you acquisitions of the ultimate owner in the past year)

      • Note that the Companies page will show you currently owned companies and will not include any that the ultimate parent had previously owned, which are counted in the “Acquisitions” column number in the Markets page

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