Darren Herman

I get a handful of people contacting me through this blog each week and I encourage it as much as possible.  I also try and get back to each legitimate request within 24 hours of submission.

Recently, someone from Peachtree Media Advisors, Inc., a boutique digital media investment banking firm based here in NYC reached out to provide me with their latest report about 1H 2009 M&A activity and I was glad to receive it.  I hadn’t heard of Peachtree before so this was a nice introduction to the company as they provided me with some valuable information.

If you want the report, you can download it here.
Here is a recap:

• 342 digital media transactions in 1H 2009, which is slightly below the number of transactions for the same period in 2008.
• Volume of transactions was down 12.3% in 1H 2009, transaction value was way below comparable 2008.  61% decrease in reported value in 2009 and would have been much worse had it not been for the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger creating $2.5 billion in enterprise value.
• Lots of spring cleaning and tuck-in acquisitions UGO/1UP, Disney/Kaboose, AMC/FilmCritic, etc.
• Average multiples of ad-supported digital media companies increased from 2.5x Revenue in April 2009 to 2.7x Revenue in June 2009.
• EBITDA multiples increased from 10.9x in April 2009 to 12.3x in June 2009
• The Mobile and Enabling, Analytics & Ad Serving sectors of digital media experienced the largest increase in deal volume in 1H 2009 versus 1H 2008.
• Largest drop in deal volume was social media (not sure how they define this though)

Anything standout to you?  I continue to think that 2009 is going to be a cleansing year and divestitures will continue and we may start to see some roll-ups emerging in Q3/Q4 2009 to take advantage of pricing opportunities.