As we reported in our year-end review: Top 10 Industries for PE Platform Investments in 2020, Software was the #1 industry of interest for private equity firms in 2020, as a percentage of all PE platform acquisitions.
The graphs below show the steep increase in private equity acquisitions in both Software and SaaS companies.
While private equity firms acquired considerably fewer companies in 2020, PE investments in healthcare, as a percentage of total PE platform acquisitions, increased significantly in 2020, now pushing 9% of total PE platform acquisitions.
The trending private equity investment sectors for December 2020 are highlighted below with a few example transactions.
Private equity firms are increasingly interested in scalable companies with lower CapEx requirements. Consequently, private equity acquisitions of manufacturing companies has steadily declined as a percentage of the total number of private equity platform investments.
We used our database of private equity portfolio company transactions to determine the most active law firms advising private equity transactions in 2020….
We reviewed our private equity database for 2020 platform acquisitions to determine the top investment banking firms closing deals with private equity acquirers. Here are the top 10, ranked by number of deals that were PE platform acquisitions…
We reviewed all private equity platform investments in 2020 and ranked them by industry. The following Top 10 industries represent nearly a third of all private equity platform deals in 2020:
TOP 10 INDUSTRIES
The trending private equity investment sectors for November 2020 are highlighted below with a few example transactions.
The trending private equity investment sectors for October 2020 are highlighted below with a few example transactions.
We last updated the median private equity portfolio company holding period in May 2020 because I wanted to mark this metric (mostly) before the effects of COVID. In May, the median holding period was 4.8 years, the lowest since 2014.
I revisited the holding period study again this month (November) to measure any changes since May. It ticked up, but only slightly, to 4.9 years.
At first glance, this may seem surprising that COVID-effects are not more profoundly seen in the data. But there’s a good reason for this. There haven’t been that many exits to move the needle on this metric. Private equity portfolio exits are down considerably compared to recent years.
With private equity firms holding portfolio companies through the COVID uncertainty, we will almost certainly see an increase in the median holding period going forward.
2020 YTD Median Holding Period = 4.9 years
Min = 3.0 years (early 2000’s) and 3.5 years (2008)
Industry Trends Report
