MERGERS & AQUISTIONS: ROUNDTABLE.

• Position: Roundtable

Every month, Utah Business Magazine hosts roundtables on a variety of topics. This month's topic was mergers & acquisitions. We invited Cheri Waldron of MountainWest Capital Network to moderate, and industry experts to participate in the discussion. Here are a few of the highlights.

Moderator: Cheri Waldron, MountainWest Capital Network

Attendees: Paul Skeen, Mike Bellin, Matt Bartholomew, Rob McGee, Drew

Yergensen, Curtis Roberts, Spence Hoole, John Dunn, Steve Keiffer, Greg Lindley

Overall, what has the landscape been like for deals in Utah over the past year, and what is your outlook for the rest of 2018?

Mike Bellin

If you think about the number of the deals over '17, it's been significant. Based on our MoneyTree report, we had 56 Utah companies raising $818 million in venture capital during 2017, which is a 30 percent increase over last year just in VC dollars alone. During Q1 2018, that trend has continued. We continue to see a lot of money come in from local companies, as well as outside of Utah.

I think we are going to continue to see that throughout '18, into '19. The market here is strong. You've got an educated populous. You've got a very entrepreneurial spirit here. You've seen success. It's exciting to see.

Spence Hoole

What we're seeing more is Utah companies that used to be the acquirees are becoming the acquirers and scaling. In the past, it was pretty easy to be a tech company and grow to one hundred million in Utah. It was really difficult, though, to get to 500 million in revenue. We're seeing some small emerging growth companies becoming true middle-market players, and eventually maturing into true industry leaders. That's really nice to see in our ecosystem.

Curtis Roberts

One thing that we've historically seen is that companies tend to get built differently in Utah. They are not just acquiring users and raising huge amounts of capital and trying to scale as quickly as possible without having yet figured out how to actually make money. Companies here are the real deal.

Rob McGee

For us, deal flow has been very strong this year. We've been able to be involved in a number of transactions with companies that are based in Utah acquiring businesses that are outside the state, as well as companies that are based outside of the state acquiring businesses in Utah. So both sides of the transaction. We don't see any signs of that slowing down.

Drew Yergensen

If you look at the national data on M&A, it shows up about nine or ten percent. If we look at the deal flow data from earlier this week, on M&A alone, we went from 202 transactions to 264. That's about 30 percent. So you see a faster growth in Utah that supports a lot of the stories we're hearing.

What sectors are showing the most activity?

Greg Lindley

For us, it's been the tech side. We're seeing just an amazing amount of deals that have been going on that are both raising money, and some exits as well.

Mr. Hoole

Tech is doing great, but you know what's making a resurgence is life science. It's probably the strongest it's been since the early '90s. Companies like Recursion, which has raised a lot of money. Another company is PolarityTE, a public company that relocated here recently. Life sciences is becoming relevant again, beyond just some seed-stage companies that get gobbled up quickly.

Mr. Bellin

We are seeing the most deals in the technology...