Commercial Print Awakes from M&A Slumber – June 2022 M&A Activity

Commercial Print M&A Activity Falls During Covid Period

In the three years leading up to the pandemic that broke out in early 2020, M&A activity in the commercial printing segment, as we define it,* averaged 43 transactions per year. For the past two years, the number of M&A transactions in the commercial printing segment has fallen to 25 and 26 in each year, respectively, or otherwise stated, approximately two per month.

During the prior twelve months leading up to the end of the second quarter of 2022, there was one month with no M&A deals in the segment and four months with only one deal that we counted in the commercial printing segment. Of the 26 transactions in the twelve months ended June 2022, five of those occurred in just the past month. These numbers contrast with what we found in 2013, two years after we started the Target Report, when the average number of transactions in the commercial printing segment was close to 6 per month, every month.

It is too soon to tell whether this might portend a return to the norm of the pre-pandemic era, however, the nature of the transactions suggests some trends that are likely to continue even if the deal count does not.