In case you have missed it we covered the Equifax second quarter results in the July issue of the BIIA Newsletter. Please find below a recap of the Equifax charts for comparison.  BIIA Newsletter 07-07 2007 Pages 6 and 7.
   
VALUE OF INFORMATION :
 

0BVALUE OF INFORMATION:  WILL CURRENT MULTIPLES LAST?
D&B CEO Steve Alesio commented in a recent shareholders and analyst conference call that prices for acquisition candidates were too high to be accretive.  Indeed until recently it was a good time to sell information companies.According to Berkery, Noyes, a leading independent investment bank, 2006 was a year of record numbers of transactions, many in the upper ranges of valuation multiples.  However Berkery, Noyes noted that there were correspondingly high numbers of deals that failed to close.  The gap in valuations between the seller and buyer was unbridgeable.

 A rising tide of private equity capital and a renewed appetite for acquisitions among strategic content companies has driven up EBITDA multiplies to new highs.  In the recent climate, there were more buyers competing for good properties.  Strategic content buyers paid over 12 times EBITDA for content properties in 2006 versus 10 times in 2005.  Private equity financed yielded about 11 times EBITDA in 2006 versus 10 times in 2005.  Private equity appetite for information content companies has been strong.  There were 136 deals in 2003 at a value of US$ 17bn involving private equity firms; in 2006 there were 288 deals valued at US$ 72bn.  Given the current liquidity crunch will the M&A boom last?  Time will tell.  Source Berkery, Noyes & Co. LLC.  http://www.berkerynoyes.com 

BIIA Newsletters September – 2007 Issue