Corporate Development Deal Flow

For those of you in corp dev, what is your deal flow like in a given year? How many teasers, CIMs, management meetings, and closed transactions?

Edit: I guess it would be appropriate to include my personal experience. We're looking at maybe 5 CIMs in a month and meeting with a management team on 40% of those CIMs. We close ~1-2 transactions in a year and I work for an industrials company.

 

My company is highly acquisitive (we've closed 10+ deals in the past 5 years, excluding alliances). Our team is currently looking at 10-15 active deals and as of this year we've probably evaluated 30-40 potential acquisition opportunities (sourced from bankers, reached out to on our own, etc.) But being in pharma, most of these deals end up getting killed and we usually only end up closing around 3-4 deals a year

 

A lot. 3 - 4 CIMs a week. 3 - 4 management presentations a month. There's a lot of consolidation going on in pharma, particularly in generics.

“Elections are a futures market for stolen property”
 

Wow 3-4 management presentations a month sounds like a lot. So people from your group are traveling most weeks out of the month it sounds like. How big your team? Synthesizing 3-4 CIMs a week plus senior folks traveling to meet with companies sounds like a lot of work even if 95% of the CIMs get thrown out in less than a day.

Listen, here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker.
 
Best Response

Yeah, we're highly acquisitive (or at least attempt to be). I can't get into too much detail but my team is very small and we're looking to grow. On top of the heavy BD activity, we support management with financial forecasting and planning for financing activity (debt capacity) as well as strategy (my boss is more active in this area). By strategy, I mean our strategic focus (degree of vertical integration, partnerships with CMOs, therapeutic area/formulation focus, litigation challenges, etc.).

But yeah, decent amount of travel.

“Elections are a futures market for stolen property”
 

Would love to hear some insight on how you guys go about sourcing?

Are you a big enough name that you get a lot of in-bounds or do you target bankers directly or go straight to companies you want to acquire?

I work on a small two man team for a business that has not been historically acquisitive. We do not have relationships with bankers so most of the opportunities arise organically from business heads.

We are closing 1-2 deals a year but see very few opportunities in the form of teasers/CIMs. Looking to change that but having some difficulty getting a foothold.

 

Same boat, we just got did a market scan to identify targets and currently reaching out to executive management directly.

Also, since the industry we are looking into is a bit fragmented (smaller mom & pop shops,)a lot of these companies aren't on banker's radars (typically too small).

So it's a bit of leg work on my end but I think it's a good skill set to build - being able to originate.

 

Currently about 40 Deals in Pipeline (Including sales, greenfield projects, partnerships and M&A).

10-15 deals per year get closed, mostly consolidation play.

Size: from $1m acquisitions to $1b deals.

Pros: A lot of transactional experience, a lot of contacts and connections. Cons: When it gets too transactional, the strategic mindset can sometimes be lost. I find vertical integrations and new market entries more interesting; consolidation plays can get intellectually boring.

 

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