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For the second year in a row, Louisiana merger and acquisition activity declined.  The state saw 171 transactions involving a Louisiana target, buyer, or seller announced or closed in 2024.  This is an 8.6% decrease from 2023, when Louisiana had 187 transactions, and a 17.8% decrease from 2022, when the state showed 208 deals.

Louisiana’s 2024 performance flew in the face of the broader US market, which showed an estimated 7% rise over 2023 levels for deals over $30 million in value, according to Dealogic.

Six greater New Orleans area companies were sold or made acquisitions in the month of February. New Orleans-based ChapterSpot, the leading provider of CRM and member management software for fraternal and chapter-based organizations, sold to Michigan-based Billhighway, a provider of financial management solutions for fraternal organizations and associations. ChapterSpot founders Joe McMenemon and Brendan Finke are Tulane alumni who chose to keep their startup in the Crescent City, opting for the benefits of New Orleans’ Idea Village incubator program. The decision paid dividends, with ChapterSpot going on to win the Coulter IDEApitch competition at New Orleans Entrepreneur Week in 2013. The company participated in the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business program, and grew to be utilized by over 6,000 organizations in the U.S., Canada and the U.K.

Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center (MBPCC), the largest cancer care organization in Louisiana, announced in January that it has entered into a strategic alliance with Shreveport-based MD Clinics. The transaction is significant because it will expand MBPCC’s services into north and central Louisiana, including rural clinics that are a model for delivery of patient care close to home. MBPCC has agreed to acquire MD Clinics’ network of eight cancer clinics and certain other assets in a transaction that is expected to close in April. The clinics will transition to MBPCC locations, with physicians and team members continuing to provide care to their patients from their existing clinic locations. The terms of the purchase were not disclosed.

Louisiana merger and acquisition activity dropped in 2023, mirroring a disappointing global M&A market. Overall, the state saw 187 deals in 2023 involving a Louisiana target/buyer/seller announced or closed. This represents an 11.2% decrease from the 208 deals struck in 2022. Global M&A volume for deals done below $500 million value, the largest segment of deals by some margin, saw a decrease of 6%. The biggest reason for the drop appears to be buyers and sellers disagreeing on price. Higher interest rates made debt financing more expensive, and lowered buyers’ estimated enterprise value for potential transactions. Sellers were seeing the higher equity values indicated by 2023’s stock market. Buyers also were holding off on deals until they had more clarity on the economy and the availability of financing.

Louisiana witnessed three significant acquisition transactions making headlines in November. Baton Rouge-based Marucci Sports sold again, this time to Fox Factory Holding Corp for $572 million. The deal, which closed on November 15, saw Fox purchase the renowned sports equipment manufacturer’s parent company, Wheelhouse Holdings Corp. from its parent, Compass Diversified Holdings and others. Marucci Sports was co-founded in 2009 by Kurt Ainsworth, a former Major League Baseball and LSU pitcher, and Joe Lawrence, former Toronto Blue Jays second baseman, along with Jack Marucci, the former LSU athletic trainer who built the first bat in his backyard shed in 2004.

Louisiana is home to some of the most dynamic and innovative energy and energy-adjacent companies in the country, and they have been busy making deals. Notable transactions that were announced or closed last month involved Bernhard Capital Partners, a private equity firm which frequently deals in energy; Entergy, one of Louisiana’s public utility companies; and IMTT, a bulk liquids storage and logistics provider serving the energy and petrochemical industries.

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