Buy or build? It’s the question at the heart of most business decisions as companies consider growing their revenues and earnings. Understanding who is in buy mode has obvious importance for those in the deal industry—not least, investment banks, potential targets and rival acquirers. We jumped into the PitchBook Platform to see what public companies might have recently decided to change from more of a build to a buy strategy.
To determine if a company has shifted strategies, we looked at their M&A activity over the last 12 months as a share of their five-year total. The results? These 16 companies have all made more than 50% of their total acquisitions since January 2012 within the last 12 months:
M&A Bug
In total, these 16 companies have acquired 107 targets since last January. And six of the acquirers have pursued all or all but one of their total acquisitions for the last five years in just the last 12 months. That could have something to do with the bulk of acquisitions coming in B2B, as companies can pick up and repackage existing product lines for new purposes or new markets with ease compared to building them up from scratch.
B2B represents the preponderance of recent targets
With over 50 companies changing hands, Europe has represented the ripest region for targets at almost half of the total.
Europe dominates geographic distribution of recent targets
?PitchBook Platform users can click here to view the list of 16 companies for further analysis.
Article by Adam Putz, Adley Bowden – PitchBook
