News
Number of Deals & Buyers — 5 year summary
Key
Buyers
Deals
100
selling as seven industrial exhibitions
to Endeavour. Centaur disposed of most
of their exhibitions outside of their
marketing portfolio, selling their travel
shows to Northstar, HR shows to DVV
Media and their Engineering portfolio
to Mark Allen Group.
One prediction that didn’t come
through was an acquisition by a non-
traditional media business, so the
speculation about whether data-driven
organisations such as Facebook, Google,
or Ali Baba will move into our sector
continues.
One trend that I wasn’t expecting was
the number of early-stage companies
attempting to take advantage of a
buoyant M&A market by trying to
sell too early, often without proof of
concept or market leadership, and
predictably, the buyers didn’t bite.
However, this has prompted Mayfield to
launch the Event Entrepreneurs’ Club,
partly so that early-stage companies can
compare experiences about scaling their
businesses and learn when is the right
time to sell.
Other notable transactions in 2019
included Reed’s acquisition of Mack
Brooks at the start of the year and
Hyve’s acquisition of Shoptalk and
Groceryshop at the end, as covered
above, which is also significant as it
continues their trend away from Russia
and Central Asia with 22% of their
revenues now coming from the UK.
Multiples will continue to be high
for PE entry platforms, as evidenced
by the price paid by Charterhouse for
Tarsus and for larger strategic private
assets such as Shoptalk. There is some
resistance from the larger organisers
towards paying similar prices for
smaller businesses, but multiples
remain higher than they were four
to five years ago and I don’t see this
changing in 2020. It looks set to be
another fascinating year with more
surprises.
87
82
80
73
68
60
60
53
51
40
33
39
29
20
0
2016
2015
Acquisitions by Geography
2017
Key
2018
Other
50
2019
Emerging
UK/USA
50
44
40
33
30
24
20
21
20
18
17
17
10
0
2014
2018
2019
February — 09