Profile of owners of companies we have been engaged to find for Vivanti:

1. Owners who find the following attractive, fit the following profile and want to exit soon or now.
2. Owners who find the following attractive, fit the following profile, want to sell to Vivanti and grow with a larger, growing, organization.
3. Company owners whose consultants help their Clients re-architect and migrate apps to the Cloud, implement robust DevOps practices and processes, and facilitate better user experiences.

Target Expertise:

• Cloud Data Services
• DevOps Solutions
• Customer Engagement
• Artificial Intelligence
• Analytics & Data Management

Target Locations:

• Boston
• Atlanta
• New York
• Washington DC
• East Coast

Financials:

• People: Employs 25 – 35 FTE
• Revenue Range: $5mil – $12mil
• EBITDA: $500k – $1.2mil

What we’re looking for:

• A quick, honest transaction
• A win-win outcome: for you & your people
• Long-term clients
• In-demand skills sets
• Reliable services revenue
• Strong consultant utilization rates

Value Proposition to Company Owners who sell to &/or become part of & grow with Vivanti:

Most important: Can you relate to what the Founding Partners are building?

• Tony Nicol
• Mike Walker
• James Hunt

Watch the Welcome to Vivanti video below.

Our acquisition program is geared to two kinds of Owner Sellers:

• Those who want to exit now.
• Those who want to stay and grow.

These Leaders of Vivanti have a track record of having built and sold brilliantly.

Self-funded; well-funded

• The intention of doing the same again – building another great consultancy – without the threat of having to sell at the wrong time.
• Those who want to stay and grow. The chance to take advantage of a ‘double-bubble’ downstream. (IPO, etc.)
• The strength of being part of a much larger group and therefore protected from market uncertainties.
• Providing growth opportunities to those Owners Sellers that may not be within reach at the moment.
• If you relate to the video, website contents and what we are saying, and want more information, contact us.

Download Teaser

For more information, please download our teaser here.

If you’re interested, please contact:

Taylor Devine
Principal, Washington DC
taylor.devine@eatonsq.com
+1 703-754-8829

Andrew Light
Managing Principal, Toronto
andrew.light@eatonsq.com
+1 647-985-2639

Strong Growth in Mid-market Digital Agencies

As a consequence, we are seeing strong acquisition demand for mid-market digital agencies, digital marketing specialists and digital transformation service providers from multiple industry sectors, including:

• Major advertising agencies buying cutting-edge talent and strategy implementation capabilities
• IT Services players, adding ‘demand generation’ and deep UX capabilities to their suite of ‘digital transformation’ services
• Other media businesses jostling to capture and influence an increased share of rapidly changing media spend.

These players are also seeking technology services companies that are able to integrate the systems required to deliver the promised customer experience and offerings.

Rapid evolution in technology and social attitudes to media is also driving C-level interest in acquiring skills in emergent areas such as programmatic buying, Big Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Robots and other areas with the potential to transform the customer interaction journey.

This buoyant market is increasing profitability and margins, driving higher multiples as international buyers compete for attractive firms.

Interestingly, most buyers are cross-border acquirers.

Target Company Type

According to an R3 study, there was a 42% increase in demand for martech and adtech companies in 1H 2018. There was also an increase in the acquisitions of digital full-service agencies (7%).

2019 is shaping up to be an attractive time to test the market, particularly for businesses founded in the early 2000 post dot-com period, who have achieved scale and growth.

Earn-outs are common in the sector as a means of bridging the valuation gap between buyers and sellers. Earn-outs can run for two to three years making it particularly salient to sell when client demand is strong.

If you are interested in what this demand for digital services acquisitions could mean for your shareholders, we would be happy to talk to you.

Patricia Glovsky
Principal

Patricia E. Glovsky is a technology investment banker with more than 30 years of corporate finance investment banking (M&A and capital raises (private placements, debt and IPOs)) experience.  Through her career she worked primarily on technology M&A and private placement transactions and developed a unique focus on “Visual Computing technologies across industries”.

patricia.glovsky@eatonsq.com
Ph: +1 415 775 3300

Eaton Square a cross-border M&A and capital services firm focused on services, technology and growth companies in the US, Canada, Australia, Asia and Europe.

Key Reasons Driving Demand for IT Services

1. The desire for acquisitions is also being driven by C-level interest in emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain while CIO’s are taking advantage of the cloud to reallocate IT budgets back into development and supporting service innovation.
2. This buoyant market is increasing profitability and margins, driving higher multiples as international buyers compete for attractive firms.
3. In addition to interest from more North American and European buyers, strong growth in the Chinese and South-East Asian markets has broadened the pool of acquirers.

2019 is shaping up to be an attractive time to test the market, particularly for businesses founded in the early 2000 post dot-com period, who have achieved scale and growth.

Earn-outs are common in the sector as a means of bridging the valuation gap between buyers and sellers. Earn-outs can run for two to three years making it particularly salient to sell when client demand is strong.

Buy-side Deals in IT Services

Recently, we have been contacted by PE Funds and Corporates who are actively looking for acquisition targets in the IT sector. In our October 2019 Buy-side Deal Book, we’ve listed a couple of opportunities for business sellers and we can confirm that IT still remains a highly attractive industry. You may review a full list of opportunities in our Deal Book page.

If you are interested in what this demand for IT Services acquisitions could mean for your shareholders, we would be happy to talk to you.

Patricia Glovsky
Principal

Patricia E. Glovsky is a technology investment banker with more than 30 years of corporate finance investment banking (M&A and capital raises (private placements, debt and IPOs)) experience.  Through her career she worked primarily on technology M&A and private placement transactions and developed a unique focus on “Visual Computing technologies across industries”.

patricia.glovsky@eatonsq.com
Ph: +1 415 775 3300

Eaton Square a cross-border M&A and capital services firm focused on services, technology and growth companies in the US, Canada, Australia, Asia and Europe.

Key Forces Driving the Demand for Video Editing Firms

1. Content Marketing Driving Demand

   There are two main reasons for this demand. The first is the significant increase in the use of video content in marketing. Whether it be targeted ‘mini videos’ as part social media-based campaigns or the addition of video messages to company invoices, companies are exploring many new and innovative ways to use video to communicate with their customers. All this video needs editing and production and some estimate this market will grow from $15b to over $22b by 2022 in the US alone.

2. Need for Video Archiving

   The second and more recent driver of video editing demand is corporations desire to convert their video archives for easier use internally. Most large corporations have amazing archives of data and information sitting idle in fire-walled intranets that never see the light of day. In many cases, these data sources can be mission-critical, or even regulatory essential, such as safety and license-dependent materials. Corporations are now seeking video editors and technologies to reuse and repackage these archives efficiently.

These key forces are making video businesses highly attractive acquisition targets. The acquirers include global ad agencies and marketing services firms, large IT services players, Chinese and Asian unicorns, private equity and venture capital investors, as well as more traditional Management Consultancies and even large Engineering enterprises. Interestingly some global corporations are also interested in buying these firms to take over their internal requirements.

If you are interested in what this demand for video editing acquisitions could mean for your shareholders, we would be happy to talk to you.

5G mobile networks represent a significant and revolutionary moment in history. 5G will bring data speeds of 100–200 times faster than 4G; it means the enablement of business and use cases that have been impossible until now.

Industries as diverse as agriculture, manufacturing, energy, education, government services and healthcare will be affected.  The ability to access remote areas with powerful data using real-time always-on access will make applications, for example, remote surgery, viable and efficient.   The media world will be changed forever; outdoor ‘live’ events and broadcasting have a major bottleneck at the moment–data bandwidth–and as that is removed with 5G be prepared for traditional services to be replaced with modern 5G alternatives.

What You Should Know About 5G

Compared to its predecessor, 5G promises to deliver:

• 100x increase in wireless network speed
• Substantially lower latency from 10ms down to 1ms
• Over 10x more connected devices
• Reduced energy consumption overall

With the advent of 5G, limitless opportunities abound in the field of smart cars, robotics, healthcare advancements and further enablements in the Internet of Everything (IoT).

Source: BMO 5G Report June 2019

How 5G Will Impact M&A

We expect that this will generate M&A activity across the board for multiple industries; not least anywhere that can be impacted by robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, Internet of Things, and even drones.  Industries such as Real Estate (estimates suggest 5G will require 10 times as many cell towers as 4G) will also be impacted.

M&A deals in the media and telecommunications sector are believed to have exceeded 3,000 deals in 2018 and are likely to be surpassed in 2019 and beyond owing to the relentless opportunities generated by 5G.  Some deals were for very large mergers, but over 70% are believed to be in the sub-$100m range. In Canada alone, BMO predicts 5G could potentially deliver $13b over the next 10 years.

As organizations will need considerable capital outlay to make successful business cases in a 5G World, they are likely to look to complementary, competitive services and partnerships to make ends meet.  This will be important in the M&A space as making the right choices about whom to align with will be crucial to achieving overall ambitions and success.

Opportunities driven by 5G

IT Services, Digital Agencies, and Video Post-production firms will become attractive acquisition targets as international services companies search for the skills and scale to enable their clients to benefit from the new business opportunities powered by 5G.

While 5G is still in the early stages, it’s ideal to start analyzing how your business can take advantage of this innovation. If you’re interested to discuss how to strategically ride the 5G wave or acquire 5G services firms, feel free to contact andrew.light@eatonsq.com or reece.adnams@eatonsq.com.

Reece Adnams
Global Managing Principal

Reece Adnams is the CEO and Global Managing Principal of Eaton Square, a Mergers and Acquisitions and Capital Services firm founded in 2008. His industry expertise incorporates IT Services, Engineering, Management Consultancies, Software and Technology and HR Services.

E: reece.adnams@eatonsq.com
P: +61 0400 360 439

Based on Eaton Square’s international reach and focus on the mid-market sectors, here are four M&A markets that are ‘hotter’ than normal right now.

1. IT Services & Management Consulting

Driven by client demand for digital transformation and new packaged enabled change, IT Services and consulting firms are in demand.

Key areas in IT include: Cyber Security, AI, Machine Learning, Analytics, Industrial Internet of Things and Large Enterprise SaaS Applications: Workday, Salesforce & ServiceNow.

We are also seeing demand for SAP and Oracle cloud platform transformation services.

Importantly, Private Equity’s recent ability to gain banking support for IT Services acquisitions has also added a new player into any acquisition mix. This provides sellers with the ability to partially exit and remain exposed to the continued growth of their business with a new capitalized partner.

2. Engineering Services

Global consolidation of engineering sector continues. All larger players are looking for acquisitions across North America, Asia Pacific and Europe.

Key areas of interest include infrastructure (particularly with public sector clients), resources (as mining and oil & gas recover) and companies with innovative digital technology.

North American PE interested in backing roll-ups across State borders. Strong opportunity for cross border acquisitions especially between US, Canada, Australia and Western Europe. South East Asian engineering companies are especially in demand!

3. Software / SAAS

Two types of software companies in great demand. Fast-growing SAAS firms are attractive to investors. Especially those where customers ‘can pay on a credit card’ and demonstrate they have ‘cracked the code’ of favourable unit economics based on cost of customer acquisition, lifetime customer value profitable and retention rates. Multiples can be very attractive.

Secondly, significant opportunity for ‘boring’ long-term stable software > $10m revenue. Does not need to be high growth or very profitable, just predictable revenue. PE attracted to stable customer base and revenues. 100% cash upfront deals.

4. Digital Agencies

Acquisitions in the digital marketing services sector is changing with buyers cherry picking niche and difficult to replicate capabilities including user experience, big data and analytics.

This is an important time for smaller sellers to act before larger players shift their focus to building in-house capabilities organically. Key IP and Tools based businesses will continue to be highly attractive.

Interestingly, large global consumer brands are also acquiring specialized marketing agencies to gain a distinctive competitive advantage.

If you are interested in discussing how to sell your firm and would be interested in understanding the market, please feel free to contact us for a free one-hour discussion about the market:

Patricia Glovsky
Principal

Patricia E. Glovsky is a technology investment banker with more than 30 years of corporate finance investment banking (M&A and capital raises (private placements, debt and IPOs)) experience.  Through her career she worked primarily on technology M&A and private placement transactions and developed a unique focus on “Visual Computing technologies across industries”.

patricia.glovsky@eatonsq.com
Ph: +1 415 775 3300

Eaton Square a cross-border M&A and capital services firm focused on services, technology and growth companies in the US, Canada, Australia, Asia and Europe.