In an event held in London, Plural co-hosted the launch of this year’s ‘Media Acquisition Report’, with Collingwood Advisory. The report aims to uncover the macro M&A trends among Trade buyers and private equity (PE) firms in the Media sector. The outputs give potential sellers a set of guidelines and benchmarks, and a sense check on acquisition criteria and valuation ranges.


Media valuations

Media valuations have held up well over the last 12 months, with many media businesses displaying strong recurring revenues, macroeconomic
resilience, revenue diversification, scalable models and high margins and cash generation. In addition, live events have returned, and many businesses continue to transition to premium omnichannel, media-neutral models. Combined with a widening buyer pool, this has increased competition for quality assets, also impacting valuations upward.

Integration trends

Value creation

Fear of getting the integration wrong is part of the upfront discussion and decision vs a post close concern for the integration team

Trade buyer

Challenges

How to successfully integrate different business models

We spoke to buyers to understand critical challenges faced when integrating an acquired business which has a different model to the core. The challenges are:

Highlights of the Media Acquisition Report 2022

See the latest report

Media Acquisition Report 2023