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The Beauty Care M&A market finished 2018 with 29 transactions in Q4’18, bringing total transactions to 111 for the year, a 6% increase over 2017. This also signified the third straight year with deal volume over the century mark. Deal volume remained strong in Q4’18 with the second highest number of quarterly beauty care deals in the last five years, just behind the record volume experienced in Q4’17. Although the quarter lacked high profile or mega deals, strategic buyers remained active and new private equity capital continued to invest in the sector.
While people may be a little nervous as we head into our 11th year of a bull market, we remain optimistic about the beauty care M&A sector. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, we are forecasting more of the same positive momentum in 2019. All the strategic buyers remain active, private equity continues to target the beauty care sector, more private equity platforms have formed and our beauty care backlog looks great.
We hope everyone had a prosperous 2018, and we look forward to another good year for beauty care M&A in 2019.
Q4’18 Beauty Care M&A highlights include:
- Deal volume increased 12% from Q3’18 and remained relatively flat with Q4’17 (which was a
record quarter). - Strategic acquirers remained active including announced deals from Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson and Laboratoires Expanscience.
- New private equity continued to enter the beauty care sector with investments from Cathexis Holdings, Silas Capital, Cornell Capital and Transom Capital.
- The hair care M&A market was active with deals involving Walker & Co., Bellami Hair, Fekkai Brands and Beauty Industry Group.
- Contract manufacturing continued to witness high M&A activity with acquisitions of Knowlton Development Corporation and Cosmetic Essence Innovations.