Being in the home appliances industry, I find that the government support provided in Europe has kept a lot of companies that without this help would have declined into financial distress during last spring/summer when demand shrunk significantly. This led to very few companies in distress situations available for M&A, and the well-performing companies waiting out the storm (it would have been difficult to agree on valuations in that uncertain situation). With the demand rebound in Q3, as well as some companies benefiting from the pandemic situation e.g. people buying a new coffee machine for the home office, more companies have appeared on the M&A market as they can present a positive picture of rebound. It is a mix of high quality assets and some companies with a short-term increase of sales from the pandemic – the valuations do not seem to have come down…
