Image Credit: Getty Images
By Heather Landi – January 6, 2025
Healthcare proved to be a resilient market for mergers and acquisitions in 2024, despite deal volume declining 9% from 2023.
While health services deal volumes declined year-over-year, activity stayed robust throughout 2024, with annual deal volume through November 15 remaining nearly 70% higher than the pre-COVID trendline, according to a yearly PwC report published in mid-December.
There were 1,373 health services deals in 2024 compared to 1,506 the year before, 1,708 in 2022 and 1,525 deals in 2021. But that compares to 814 health services deals in 2020 and 828 M&A deals in 2019.
“We had crazy years of volume in ’21, ’22, leading into a certain extent a little bit into ’23, and the resiliency and the step-up function that we experienced and have been experiencing since the post-COVID-related markets has been tremendous. The base tends to be around 1,300 to 1,400 announced transactions a year, which is a huge step function,” Nick Donkar, PwC’s Health Services Deals Leader, said in an interview with Fierce Healthcare.
Health services M&A deal value ticked up slightly in 2024 compared to the year prior, from $63 billion to $69 billion. That compares to $88 billion and $56 billion in deals value in 2019 and 2020, respectively. M&A deal value hit a high of $197 billion in 2021 and then dipped to $101 billion in 2022.
