M&A Trends: strategische Deals und Large Cap Aktivitäten

M&A is back

Die letzten Wochen und Monate haben im Wesentlichen kleine strategische Deals geprägt. Heute las ich “M&A is back” auf Seeking Alpha. Auch dort werden die strategischen Deals gestreift. Bedeutender ist demgegenüber die Beobachtung, dass wieder höhere Premiums von 25 bis 40 Prozent gezahlt werden. Dahinter stehe eine positive Einschätzung der Marktlage. Daher sei M&A zurück:

“Merger activity tends to increase only when conditions are favorable, which requires the buyer to think they are able to get the acquisition done at a good price. Mostly, this means making payment with a currency thought to be expensive to acquire stock that is thought to be cheap.

Sometimes the “currency” that’s overvalued is debt, sometimes cash, and sometimes securities of one sort or another. When stock prices are high, it is unattractive to use cash or debt as the acquisition currency, so stock is used.

However, the acquiring company must sport a higher price earnings multiple than the acquired. These days, stock values are low, so many deals are being financed with cash or debt.

The implicit message of the pickup in merger activity is that both cash and debt are expensive or overvalued and worth using to pay for cheap stock.”

Feindliche Übernahmen bei Large Caps

Ähnlich optimistisch gibt sich Spencer Klein in einem Q&A Deal Journal. Danach prüfen Unternehmen, die die Finanzkrise überstanden haben, jetzt M&A Gelegenheiten:

“This is the time that companies are beginning to come out of their shells and realize that the deals that should have been happening during the last two to three years need to be done. There’s a structural need for M&A activity. That pent up demand for corporate assets is getting greater and greater. So as companies come out of the recession and increase their confidence and visibility, they will look more seriously and getting their important strategic deals done.”

Ferner ergeben sich auch im historischen Vergleich bemerkenswert viele feindliche Übernahmekämpfe, insbesondere unter Large Caps.

“We have definitely seen a greater trend toward hostile activity in the large-cap space in the last 12 months. Historically you have not seen a great deal of hostile activity against large-cap companies. We all get excited by hostile offers because they are so intriguing and newsworthy, but as a practical matter there is generally very little hostile activity in the market during any given year. Yet in the last year or so, you have seen a lot of the larger M&A deals start out as unsolicited offers. I think we are going to see that number trend upward as we see more hostile offers at the high end of the market between strategics.”

Update: Zur selben Zeit steckt PE weiterhin im Tief (Bloomberg.com via peHub).

Update 2: AlixPartners LLP sieht ebenfalls stärker werdende Unternehmen als Antreiber des M&A Markts (Reuters).