About halfway through this year, we published an article predicting the rate of audio visual acquisitions (including integrators and manufacturers) to outpace last year’s rate. Now, we can say with full confidence that 2019 outpaced 2018 in terms of AV acquisitions.
We wrote about 20 separate AV acquisitions & mergers in 2018. As of late December 2019, we published 32 M&A-related stories.
To find this data, I combed through the Commercial Integrator website’s back-end and tallied all the stories we published on individual M&A events this year. Obviously, this doesn’t include EVERY audio visual company acquisition which took place this year, just the ones we wrote about.
But given we’ve stayed true to our mission on covering the AV industry with a business perspective — and given the relationships we’ve built with acquisition-heavy integration firms and manufacturers over the years — we stand firm in our assessment that this is very expansive, fair coverage.
After all, it would be impossible to cover every single acquisition event in the last year, since some of them are presumably private affairs.
Related: State of the Industry 2020: Global Growth & Acquisitions
Business resources about AV acquisitions
I think I can speak for everyone here at CI when I say that writing about all of these AV acquisitions is a bit of a sensitive topic. After all, we were acquired last year by a pretty large events and media company.
While we’ve been adjusting really well to our newly-corporate situation, we must admit that there’s always a few things that take some getting used to.
I thought it might be useful to aggregate some of our best business advice involving the buying and selling of AV businesses, just in case you feel your company is nearing a deal — no matter which side of it you’ll be on:
- Quick Tips for Integrators on Buying and Selling Your AV Business
- Someone Wants to Buy Your Audio Visual Business: Now What?!
- AVI-SPL Acquisition of Interactive Solutions Proves AV Acquisitions Don’t Have to Be Scary
