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PwC Report: Romania's M&A market down 12 pct in 2018 to 5 bln euro
The worth of Romania's M&A market was 5 billion euro in 2018, down 12 pct year-on-year, shows the PwC Romanian M&A Outlook report presented on Wednesday at a specialist conference.
According to the document, the decline recorded in comparison to 2017 was in line with the evolution of the Central and Eastern European market.
In terms of volumes, the more than 170 transactions registered last year in Romania stood at an aggregate of about 5 billion euro; the figure takes into account the transactions made public, as well as estimates and projections of the values, for the cases where price data was not available from public sources.
The number of transactions is on the rise compared to the previous years, when 130-140 transactions per year were registered on average.
"The large number of transactions recorded in 2018 reflects the market's effervescence that was for everybody to feel. In 2017 and 2018 Romania has seen the highest value of trading activity, outperforming the previous peak from the period 2006 to 2008. Current financing and growth opportunities for Romanian companies are both in the capital market and in the M&A area (private transactions). The partial or total sale of the business to an investor with both financial strength and openness to markets that couldn't be addressed by the time of the transaction is a growth path increasingly more Romanian companies are contemplating," said Anda Rojanschi, partner, D & B David and Baias.
The PwC Romania report reveals that the most dynamic areas in 2018 were IT & C, medical and pharmaceutical services, real estate and industrial production. A year ago, financial services were also among the top dynamic sectors.
About 15 transactions of over 100 million euro have been recorded yearly in the last years, with these deals massively influencing the total value of the market, the document shows. The annual average per transaction was around 30 million euro; large-scale transactions excluded, the average stands around 14 million euro per transaction.
PwC Romania experts anticipate for 2019 a development similar to that in the past two years, both in terms of market value and the number of transactions. "There are projects already underway in several sectors, and their successful completion largely depends on the country's economic and legislative stability. If these elements are met, we see a very good year for the M&A market," said George Ureche, M&A Leader at PwC Romania.
The PwC Romania M&A Outlook report was prepared based on public information on transactions registered in 2018. The authors of the report point out that where no public data was available, estimates and projections based on developments in the respective companies' activity sector have been used.
PwC Romania organized on Wednesday in Bucharest the conference on "The Pulse of 2018 Transactions. 2019 Outlooks".
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