Dear Clients and Friends,
Below is a link to our January 2013 Market Update. As you will see, it provides our sense of M&A values, activity and trends for the dozen plus technology, information and healthcare sectors that we follow.
2012 was the strongest in our ten-year history. Thanks to you, we added staff, opened a San Francisco office, won several awards and advised on significant transactions. With your support, we hope to have an even stronger 2013.
Click here for our Market Update
The last month of 2012 saw a flurry of M&A activity, including IntercontinentalExchange’s agreement to acquire NYSE Euronext and Elliot Management’s acquisition of Compuware. In the Healthcare IT domain, we saw multiple services-related transactions, including Physicians Interactive’s acquisition of InfoMedics; Sutherland Global Services’ acquisition of Apollo Health Street; and Mediware’ acquisition of MediServe.
December saw a continuation of a theme that we have observed all year, with a few larger deals but the vast majority of transactions well under $200M. We also continued to observe the increasing demand for firms with recurring revenue models including, of course, SaaS-based solutions. (Is the software license/maintenance model dead?) One recent example was Oracle announcing its intent to acquire Eloqua only four and a half months after the company completed its IPO, for 9.7x revenue and break-even EBITDA.
Some other notable recent deals include:
- IntercontinentalExchange (NYSE:ICE) agreed to acquire NYSE Euronext (NYSE:NYX) for $10.5Bn;
- Elliot Management Corporation agreed to acquire Compuware Corporation (NASDAQ:CPWR) for $2.2Bn;
- CVC Capital Partners acquired Cerved for €1.13Bn ($1.49Bn) from Bain Capital and Clessidra;
- Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) agreed to acquire Eloqua (NASDAQ:ELOQ) for $871M;
- NASDAQ OMX (NASDAQ:NDAQ) agreed to acquire the IR, PR and Multimedia Services Businesses of Thomson Reuters (TSX:TRI) for $390M;
- Sutherland Global Services acquired Apollo Health Street for $184M;
- CCC Information Services agreed to acquire Injury Sciences for an undisclosed amount;
- VeriFone (NYSE:PAY) agreed to acquire EFTPOS New Zealand for $59M and Sektor Payments for $8M; and
- MphasiS Limited (BSE:526299) agreed to acquire Digital Risk LLC for approximately $202M.
Additionally, we are pleased to announce that we advised three companies on transactions that closed in December of 2012:
- Our client, XcitekSolutionsPlus (XSP), of Birmingham, Alabama, a leader in automated end-to-end Corporate Actions solutions, was acquired by SunGard Data Systems Inc.;
- Our client Knovel, of New York City, a provider of a leading web-based application that integrates technical information with analytical and search tools for engineers, was acquired by Reed Elsevier; and
- Our client SR Labs, of New York City, a leading provider of high-performance electronic trading solutions for the global financial services industry, raised $53M in capital from Insight Venture Partners.
With your support, Marlin & Associates has become one of the most active investment banking and strategic advisory firms providing strategic and financial advice to worldwide buyers and sellers of middle-market technology firms. The firm is headquartered in New York, NY and has additional offices in San Francisco, CA; Washington, DC; Toronto, Canada; and Hong Kong, China serving companies that provide information and technology to a wide range of communities including those that serve the banking, capital markets, insurance, marketing and healthcare arenas.
We trust that you will find this month’s newsletter useful. If you would like more information on these transactions or on our sense of the market, please feel free to call or write.