24 M&As in Storage Industry at Mid-Year 2017

Since 1998 we analyze the merger and acquisition trends in the worldwide storage industry, which has allowed us the proper perspective from which to gauge the evolution over time.

At mid-year 2017, there were 24 M&As in the worldwide storage industry to be compared to a total of 48 in 2016, the pace being exactly the same.

In 2016, the average price of an acquisition was $754 million when the figure was known for 14 deals. Since the beginning or the year, total amount is $2.7 billion for 6 deals or an average of much lower $447 million.

Since last January the record is $1,090 million for the acquisition of Nimble Storage by HPE. It was $5,900 million that was put on the table by Broadcom to get Brocade last year.

Only one firm, NetApp, bought more than one company: small Immersive Partner Solutions and Plexistor. And, as in 2016, absolutely no one by leader Dell EMC, this latter being known as the most voracious in the industry with 81 acquisitions since 1994.

In 2006, there was a record of 104 M&As. Since 2012, the number of deals decreased yearly to reach 48 in 2016 compared to 51 the former year, and 65 being the average per year since 1998. The lowest figure was 45 in 2002.

The consolidation in the industry will continue, but at a slow pace, because some publicly-traded companies are in bad shape and there are too many storage start-ups trying to survive with only two goals: to be acquired or die.

Furthermore a trend is not going to stop: storage giants invent about nothing in new killing storage technologies and prefer to get them by acquiring start-ups. It’s less expansive than investing in their own R&D.

We will probably continue to see several M&As in the most demanding storage sectors: cloud, software-defined software, hyperconverged system and SSD where there are too many companies, but also in the channel for consolidation.

Acquisitions From January to June 2017