Direct marketing M&A activity took a nosedive during the second quarter, according to Petsky Prunier.
There were 223 transactions with an aggregate value of $13.2 billion during the quarter. The dollar amount was 10% lower than last year’s, and the number of transactions down by 32%.
According to Petsky Prunier, this is consistent with conditions in the overall business world.
“Corporations are not straying too far afield and private equity players are still not able to tap debt markets to leverage their deals,” the company said in its second-quarter report. “All of this will change, but only time will tell when.”
But some direct marketing segments saw a high level of activity. For example, business-to-Business DMers conducted 13 deals, totaling $1.9 billion. And there were 16 deals worth $2.2 billion in the CRM space.
In the fulfillment area, seven deals were completed for an aggregate of $362 million. The transaction processing business saw seven deals worth $424 million.
Meanwhile, consumer service direct marketers conducted six deals, including two involving insurance direct marketers, for $657 million. And interactive service marketers had nine deals for $5.2 billion. The top deal interactive deal was InterActiveCorp’s acquisitions of Expedia, Hotels.com and LendingTree.
Several deals involved relatively new market entrants like InterActive Corp., eBay and Autobytel. However, several more traditional companies also pursued M&A activity, including NEBS, Taylor Corp., NBTY, Brady Corp., Vertis, R.R. Donnelley and Banta.
Petsky Prunier is a New York-based investment-banking firm.
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