MWCN: 2022's equity deals way down from 2021

The value of Utah’s 2022 equity-related financial transactions — including mergers and acquisitions, public deals and private placements — took a step back after two record-breaking years, but total deal volume remained high, according to the annual Deal Flow Report from MountainWest Capital Network (MWCN), released recently. The report is an annual in-depth analysis of publicly disclosed financial transactions throughout the state.

Utah businesses continued to see a{mprestriction ids="1,3"} strong market for transactions in 2022, in spite of growing economic uncertainty across the country, the study said. MWCN tracked 423 total publicly disclosed deals, in line with 435 in 2021 and demonstrating a consistent recovery from COVID-related challenges which contributed to only 289 in 2020.

Total deal value in 2022 was approximately $12 billion, a significant decrease from 2021, when deal value reached an all-time record of approximately $31.2 billion. MWCN pointed to a lack of public transactions and large leverage buyout deals with disclosed values in 2022 as the driver behind the change.

“Our report highlights a great deal of resiliency in volume of deals during what was otherwise a challenging year,” said Kady Reese, MWCN’s Deal Flow chair and M&A partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP. “After the total publicly disclosed value dropped from a historic year in 2021 for deals — both locally and nationwide — we are encouraged to see a continuing drumbeat of both mergers and acquisitions and private placement deal activity. Utah continues to rank among the top states for business and employment, and this resiliency is the driving force that keeps us there.”

Tech and software development continue to drive the state’s investments, with approximately 52 percent of the total deals coming from enterprise/SaaS organizations, up from approximately 41 percent in 2021. Consumer and retail/e-commerce dropped to approximately 17 percent from a high of approximately 31 percent the previous year. Healthcare likewise dropped to approximately 10 percent in 2022 from approximately 14 percent in 2021.

MountainWest Capital Network is a nonprofit organization, created to foster a dynamic flow of information about capital formation and distribution. It does not report on transactions that were either confidential or otherwise not publicly disclosed and some transactions were not included due to lack of sufficient publicly disclosed information.

The full report can be viewed at https://www.mwcn.org/deal-flow/.{/mprestriction}