Dealmakers
Steve Monnington
Managing Director
Mayfield Media Strategies
Dealmakers
2019 M&A activity started strongly with Reed Exhibitions’
acquisition of Mack Brooks, and also finished strongly as The
Hyve Group made their second major acquisition since Mark
Shashoua took the reins.
Hyve has splashed out US$145m on Shoptalk and Groceryshop
- two leading conferences in the retail and grocery sectors. It’s
a young business – Shoptalk was launched in 2015 followed by
Groceryshop in 2018 – but one that has already reached $12.2m
EBITA in 2019, meaning that Hyve has paid a historic multiple
of just under 12x. The co-founders Anil Aggarwal and Simran
Aggarwal launched Money 2020 and sold it to i2i Events (now
Ascential) in 2014 when Shashoua was CEO there.
This brought the total number of transactions in 2019 to 82,
just five short of 2018’s record of 87 transactions with 51 different
purchasers (2018: 53). It’s clear that the last two years have
marked a step change in M&A activity with significantly more
transactions and buyers than in previous years.
In my review of 2018 I noted that the type of buyer had
changed, with Reed and Informa/UBM slowing down their
activity. In 2015 they acquired 25 businesses which represented
36% of total transactions. In 2018 this dropped to 11 (13.5%) and
in 2019 decreased further to 7 (8.5%), mostly by Reed. Private
Equity-owned organisers – primarily Clarion, CloserStill Media,
Comexposium and Emerald (still 65% owned by Onex) were
joined in 2019 by Tarsus and accounted for 18 transactions (22%)
between them.
2019 saw Charterhouse re-enter the sector with the acquisition
of Tarsus Group, after disposing of their stake in Comexposium in
2018. We also saw two new private firms enter the sector. Apiary
Capital backed Roar Techmedia, with a team primarily taken
from Clarion and led by Duncan Kirk, acquired several shows
from Prysm and Graphite Capital acquired conference organiser
Hanson Wade.
We saw a lot of non-core disposals. Clarion sold to Endeavour
Business Media more than 20 media brands and related events
that came with their acquisition of Pennwell, and also sold their
w w w.exhibitionworld.co.uk
German manufacturing exhibitions to EasyFairs. Informa sold
several of the UBM Life Science Media brands to MJH Associates, as
well as selling seven industrial exhibitions to Endeavour. Centaur
disposed of most of its exhibitions outside of its marketing portfolio
selling its travel shows to Northstar, HR shows to DVV Media and the
Engineering portfolio to Mark Allen Group.
2020 has already started brightly, with acquisitions by Questex
and Messe Munich and an announcement by Comexposium of the
intention to create a 50/50 JV with VinExpo in France. This is part of
its ambition of becoming the world’s leading organiser of wine and
spirits events.
Transactions during the two months to November 2019:
Buyer
Business
Country Sector
Hyve Shoptalk/Groceryshop USA Retail
Emerald Expositions G3 Communications USA Retail
Endeavour Media Informa shows USA Industrial/Automation
Questex LDI USA Design
Tarsus BizBash USA Events/Meetings
Tarsus Smarter Shows USA / Germany Manufacturing, Space
Tarsus Tyrexpo Singapore Automotive
Apiary Capital/
ROAR Techmedia Prsym shows UK Various
CRETech FUTURE Proptech UK Property
Terrapinn EIE UK Infrastructure
Easyfairs Untitled Exhibitions Germany Automation
Comexposium Europa France Medical
Comexposium VinExpo (Intention for JV) France Wine
Reed Exhibitions Inter-ads/MackBrooks
(remaining 50%) India Various
Messe Munich
India World Tea and Coffee Expo India
Tea/Coffee
Issue 1 2020
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