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SNL Kagan: Broadcast Deal Volume Picks Up in Q3
RADIO ONLINE | Thursday, October 1, 2015 |
SNL Kagan reports that broadcast station mergers and acquisitions volume reached $3.04 billion in the third quarter of 2015. Radio reached $422.1 million while TV registered deals worth $2.61 billion. The total is more than twice the combined amount registered in the previous three quarters. Year-to-date, at the end of September, radio registered a total of $663.4 million while TV deal announcements amounted to $2.75 billion.
Between Q1 2013 and Q3 2014 SNL Kagan registered seven consecutive quarters with deal volumes above $1 billion, mainly driven by large TV consolidation deals. Starting in Q4 2014, deal activity slowed dramatically. Between October 2014 and August 2015, the firm did not register a single deal above $100 million. In the past quarter, five such transactions were announced.
Q3's top M&A news from the radio sector was the merger of Alpha Media and Digity LLC. Alpha Media paid $264 million for Digity's 116 stations, which SNL Kagan estimates translates to year-forward seller's cash flow multiples of 6.8x for the FM and 6.3x for the AM stations.
The radio sector's largest Q3 deal aside from the Alpha-Digity merger was a station swap between Bonneville International Corp. and Entercom Communications Corp. SNL Kagan estimates deal values of $25 million for Bonneville's KEPN-AM and $20 million for the four Entercom stations.
The only other radio deals in a similar range of about $20 million were the radio part of the Gray/Schurz deal, to which SNL Kagan allocated $22 million and Educational Media Foundation's $21.7 million acquisition of four Florida stations from non-commercial American Public Media Group.
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