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ROTH Capital Partners, an investment bank focused on identifying growth opportunities for corporate and institutional clients, has just published its second annual Trends and Truths in the New Mother Market, a survey and report examining current trends, demographics and spending patterns within the Infant, Juvenile and Toy industry.

“We believe there are underlying positive demographic and psychographic trends that will support increased demand for Infant, Juvenile and Toy products,” said Elizabeth Pierce, CFA, Senior Research Analyst at ROTH. “These trends combined with a stable/expanding economy will set the stage for an improved industry outlook. We expect industry consolidation to continue and the long-term fundamentals of this sector to remain compelling.”

Highlights from the 2012 ROTH/Mom365 Report

• An improving economy should help increase the birthrate — 42.3% of mothers reported that the economy factored into their plans to start or expand their family.
• Underlying positive demographic trends bode well for increased demand for Infant, Juvenile and Toy products going forward including the rise of the Echo Boom generation, an increase in the average age of first time parents, a rise in the number of single child households and the “grandparent effect.”
• Baby gift registries are still an important “rite of passage,” with 88.4% of new moms registering for their baby, enabling families to have a voice in the gift giving process.
• Smartphones and/or tablets have become a “must have” item for moms. An average of 63% of moms owned a smartphone and 16.3% owned a tablet.
• Brands do matter, especially when it comes to safety while price matters when safety is less of a concern.
• Moms are increasingly utilizing social media and blogs to seek out the advice of other moms and professionals while researching baby products.

“The report and survey provide interesting insights into the Infant, Juvenile and Toy industry and today’s mothers and what’s important to them,” said Joe Schimmelpfennig, Managing Director of the Consumer Investment Banking Group at ROTH.” “We expect continued interest from public and private investors in the sector and further M&A and financing activity as companies look to enter new categories and geographies and as retailers consolidate their purchases with fewer vendors.”

The survey was conducted in collaboration with Mom365 includes questions from Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association members and includes proprietary survey results from Mom365’s email database of 2,500,
000 mothers.

ROTH Capital Partners is an investment bank focused on identifying growth opportunities for corporate and institutional clients. The firm is headquartered in Newport Beach, CA, with offices throughout the US, Hong Kong and Shanghai (www.roth.com).

Mom365 is the relationship marketing division of Our365, the country’s largest newborn photographer with a 60% market share (www.mom365.com).

For more information on the Trends and Truths in the New Mother Market contact Joe Schimmelpfennig, a Managing Director at Roth.

The second annual study examining private equity investment by country, state, and congressional district shows that nearly 500 more companies benefited from private equity investment in 2011 compared to 2010.

“This report shows that despite the challenging economic environment private equity continues to be a critical source of capital for U.S. companies looking to grow or retool,” said Steve Judge, President of the PEGCC. “Over the next several months, we expect the general election to amplify the conversation about private equity, but one thing is clear, private equity drives economic activity and growth across the U.S. economy. These numbers are an unambiguous reminder that, at its core, private equity is about investing in and strengthening American companies.”

Private equity firms invested more than $144 billion in 1,702 U.S.-based companies in 2011, according to the data from the Private Equity Growth Capital Council. The top five states in terms of investment were Texas, New York, California, North Carolina and Oklahoma. Additional states that made the top 20 include Florida, Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, and Nevada. More than $20 billion was invested in 206 companies in Texas, the most of any state during 2011. Oregon rounds out the top 20 with 16 companies receiving more than $1 billion. Overall, 20 states received more than $134 billion in private equity capital during 2011.

This is the PEGCC’s second annual report examining the geographic dispersion of private equity investment, providing new information about the number of companies infused with capital from private equity investors, the number of active private equity firms and the total deal value by region, country, state and congressional district. For more information on the geographic dispersion of private equity investments in 2011 go to www.pegcc.org.

Aggregate deal value of global technology mergers and acquisitions fell 12% year-on-year to $25.1 billion in the first quarter of 2012. This was only half the value decline of M&A in all industries, as ongoing economic uncertainty continues to take its toll on global deal-making. Private equity deal values for technology, meanwhile, climbed 171% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2012, despite falling significantly in all other industries, according to the latest Ernst & Young’s Global technology M&A update.

The total unit volume of transactions in Q1 was 756 up just 1% from 748 in 2011. Quarterly deal volume appears to have reached a plateau after two years of strong growth in 2009 and 2010 — for the last five quarters the number of deals has ranged from a low of 722 to a high of 756.

“Even though technology M&A activity is down year over year, it’s doing a lot better than M&A in other industries. During the first quarter of 2012, the same disruptive megatrends that have been fueling global technology M&A since 2009 are now sustaining technology M&A against the continuing macroeconomic pressures that are holding back other industries. And the long-term outlook for technology M&A remains positive because those megatrends represent the driving force of disruptive innovation that is revitalizing and reshaping the technology industry,” said Joe Steger, Global Technology Industry Transaction Advisory Services Leader at Ernst & Young.

According to Mr. Steger there are five long-term “megatrends” that are generating disruptive innovation in technology and leading to technology-enabled innovation in other industries. They are smart mobility, cloud computing, social networking, “big data” analytics and a growing sense of “blur” and convergence, as technology sectors come together and the technology industry enters other industries as enabling innovation. In addition, all five megatrends are driving increased information security requirements.

Online video, SaaS deals surge
Though the Q1 technology report details many influential deal-driving factors, the biggest increases in transaction volume came from deals targeting online video technology and SaaS companies. These also generated the largest deals of Q1 by dollar value. These were a $5 billion transaction targeting technology that can relay video to mobile devices and a $2 billion deal targeting a provider of workforce management SaaS. In China, meanwhile, the country’s largest video website announced a $1.1 billion agreement to acquire its chief rival.

At the same time, a multitude of smaller transactions demonstrated that both online video and SaaS deal-driving trends have widespread strength, according to the report. Similar deal volume strength was seen in mobile applications, health care information technology, advertising/ marketing technologies, patents, social networking and “big data” analytics deals.

Despite a typical fourth-to-first-quarter dip, the report shows that the year over year value of disclosed private equity deals soared 171% to $5.8 billion, mostly in three big-ticket deals. This continues a three-year private equity growth trend.

The increasing reliance on technology of companies throughout the economy, combined with the developing maturity of technology companies themselves, is attracting more private equity firms to technology transactions. Increasing private equity activity is changing the global technology M&A landscape by increasing the competition for deals and by providing better exit opportunities for corporate divestiture of non-core assets, according to the report.

“The decline in first quarter deal value confirms our expectation that macroeconomic pressures will hold global technology M&A activity to flat or slow growth in 2012,” said Mr. Steger. “But the fact that technology M&A is off to a much stronger start than in most other industries demonstrates once again that ‘social-mobile-cloud,’ ‘big data’ and ‘blur’ are driving strategic transactions and enabling innovation throughout the global economy. And over the long-term, M&A growth will remain a relatively safe bet for the technology industry because of these megatrends,” added Mr. Steger.