Recapping the results from our bi-annual PE survey.
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Recapping the results from our bi-annual VC survey.
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The second part of the Peerscale poll results, where we dive into the key insights and takeaways concerning M&A inbounds.
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In June 2024, Canadian tech executives provided insight to how they’re handling M&A inbounds in an exclusive Sampford poll stemming from the Peerscale annual retreat.
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Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) involve choosing between asset and equity deals, each with distinct advantages. Understanding these differences is crucial for a successful M&A process.
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Private equity is a form of financing where pools of capital are used to invest in or acquire privately held companies across various industries. The private equity model has been around for decades and has gained investor interest due to its history of high returns and unique risk profile.
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Software Initial Public Offering (“IPO”) valuations have skyrocketed over the past decade, climbing 430%+ since 2010, with a majority of the gains realized over the past 2 years. On the other hand, Venture Capital (“VC”) investments in the broader software space have always commanded elevated valuation expectations.
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Over the past decade a new term in the alternative investment space has seen quite the increase in usage – growth equity (GE). Falling under the umbrella of private capital, growth equity investments are often seen as a middle ground between traditional venture capital and private equity strategies.
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When Covid-19 hit North America in earnest in mid-March, its no secret that the M&A market saw a dramatic slow-down in activity. Three months on, and the M&A market has shifted dramatically again, this time for the better.
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Covid-19 has had a dramatic impact on the overall markets and especially the venture capital and M&A markets. And while the market has bounced back significantly from recent lows, many clients are asking what this means for the private markets like M&A and raising VC capital. As such, we keep getting questions from various software companies on what is the best course in these challenging markets.
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Since the markets began their freefall in mid-February, the global financial community has been looking to history for answers as to what comes next and how to best prepare for uncertainty.
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But what makes Canada a great country for investment? With the explosion of private capital availability in global capital markets over the last decade, Canadian technology companies have attracted venture capital investment at an annualized growth rate of 23% per year, far surpassing our southern neighbor’s growth rate of 15% over the same period.
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One sector where private equity has become more active over the past decade has been Software. Private equity’s share of total software M&A deals has nearly doubled from 2010 to 2019 and now accounts for over a third of all Software deals.
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October was a busy month and we saw a nice rebound in both the software VC and M&A markets. Let’s dive a little deeper into both.
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While it's been encouraging to see some of the big Venture Capital (VC) investments into Canadian technology companies over the last few months, the headlines cover-up a much more alarming trend. If you look at dollar volume of VC investments as a % of the activity in the US, the trend has actually been in the opposite direction - i.e. there is less money being invested today in Canada as a % of the money that's being invested in the United States that there was in 2012.
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We thought it was worthwhile to start blogging once a month on the topic of the tech VC and M&A markets, highlighting the trends we are seeing and how well the overall VC and M&A markets are doing in general.
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There’s no doubt that the SaaSNorth conference here in Ottawa was a huge success. With hundreds of different SaaS companies in attendance, in addition to many VC and PE firms, the conference fosters a diverse crowd where opinions are shared, challenged, and new insights are gained.
While at SaaSNorth, the Sampford team had the opportunity to sit in on a variety of discussions led by leading executives from various companies and investment funds and we’re pleased to present our key takeaways from the conference.
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With rumors continuing to circulate about an acquisition of Qualcomm by Broadcom for more than $100bn in what would be the largest chip deal, I thought it was time to reflect on tech exits so far this year and gauge the general health of the market for both tech IPOs and tech M&A.
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Over the last twelve months we have really been able to prove our thesis that technology firms in Canada are in desperate need of quality M&A advisory services. We started this journey with an idea that our 25+ years of combined Wall Street experience could be a significant asset for many technology firms in Ottawa that are looking to acquire other businesses or working towards an exit and that has been proved over the last twelve months...
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The Canadian tech merger market has started the year off very strong, with $5.1bn of transactions compared to $3.1bn in all of 2015. In Ottawa we have seen a similar trend with 9 M&A transactions as of the end of June versus 10 for the whole of 2015.
But what’s driving this increased activity? A sizeable proportion of this deal activity is driven by what’s known as inbound M&A.....
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