VentureOne, a reporting service of Dow Jones & Co. released their 3rd Quarter report on M&A and IPO activity according to yesterday's VentureWire Alert. 82 U.S. venture-backed companies were acquired for $6 billion - off a bit in the number of deals (102) and very slightly in value ($6.2 billion) from year-ago quarter. But the median paid to acquire a company was almost $60 million, considerably up from $24 million from this last year's 3rd quarter. For the last quarter more was paid to acquire IT companies than health-care or other type companies.
The number of IPOs for the quarter were up 70% over the prior quarter! Of course when last quarter only reported 10 events, this quarter's 17 IPOs is significant but definitely not anything to get excited about. Just consider the thousands of investments made in 1999-2000 which should be hitting the exits about now. There were 14 IPOs in the year-ago quarter. The IPOs raised almost $1 billion but were off considerably from last year's 3rd quarter when $1.7 billion was raised (but don't forget that period included a little help from Google's $1.2 B IPO - yeah it's been a year!) Health care was the leading IPO candidates with 7 ($413 million) during the period, followed by IT with 5 ($325 million) and 3 product and service companies ($183 million).
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