The 2024 Recruitment Services & HR Technology M&A Recap.

There were some really big staffing deals and several well-funded TA/HR tech platforms who went on buying sprees in 2024. Global M&A deal volume was down across all industries, recruitment and HR tech included, yet despite the slowdown, outlook for 2025 is optimistic. Here is a recap of 2024 M&A activity:

Total U.S. (some EU) Deal Volume:
We tracked approximately 230 acquisition announcements within the recruitment services and HR tech industries, this year.

Types of Acquirers:
95% of all transactions were from strategic acquirers. 5% from private equity.

Deals by Quarter:
Q1 - 48
Q2 - 94
Q3 - 51
Q4 - 40

Industry Verticals With The Most Transactions:
HR Tech, IT, Healthcare, Executive Search, General staffing, Talent Marketplaces.

The Most Acquisitive Companies:
Vensure HR (5)
Health Advocates network (4)
The Access Group (4)
ZRG (4)
Atlantic International (3)
Bullhorn (3)
Deel (3)
Freelance.com (3)

Largest (publicly available) M&A Announcements:
1.) First Advantage Corporation acquires Sterling Check Corp for $2.2B
2.) Cognizant acquires Belcan for $1.3B
3.) HeadFirst acquires Impellam Group for $615M
4.) Aya Healthcare acquires Cross Country Healthcare for $615M
5.) Kelly Services acquires Motion Recruitment Partners for $485M
6.) FalconPoint Partners acquires Jennmar for $250M
7.) Payoneer acquires Skuad for $61M
8.) Atlantic International acquires Lyneer Staffing Solutions for $35M
9.) BCforward acquires TSR for $29M

Deal of note:
The most recent and one of the largest announcements of the year was the all-cash acquisition of industry veteran Cross Country Healthcare for $615M by the largest US healthcare staffing firm, Aya Healthcare. Aya expands their non-clinical offerings via CCH’s home health and education staffing business and both companies benefit from access to more jobs for all the clinicians and professionals they work with. The deal is set to finalize in H2 2025. Could this be the start to a more active 2025 healthcare staffing M&A market?

Valuations:
As reported by Pitchbook for all US & EU acquisitions, the median multiple for the multi-billion dollar transactions is 9x EBITDA. A drop from 11x in 2021. The median multiple for the sub $100M deals is 1x revenue (EBITDA data is not as reliable for these smaller transactions).

That is all for 2024! Please reply if you would like any further details on the M&A market or to share any insights we may have overlooked. We look forward to sharing more M&A news with you in the New Year!

More deals to come.

ALSO, if you ever want your company name to appear in one of these headlines, The LongBoard Group would love to help you acquire a great company!

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