Happy New Year everyone, and we think most are very happy to put 2023 behind them. It was a difficult year for dealmakers, having to adapt to quickly changing capital markets, sometimes fickle lenders, buyers and sellers, and lower overall inventory of facilities to sell or finance. It would be hard to imagine a more challenging year, barring some catastrophe yet unknown to us. Sorry for putting that out there.
And yet, believe it or not, seniors housing and care M&A transaction totals in 2023 only failed to surpass 2022’s total of 556 deals, which blew the previous record out of the water. We recorded 489 publicly announced deals in 2023, which is still a preliminary number that should rise. That is a 12% decline, year over year, but a 7% increase over 2021’s 456 transactions. Spending, meanwhile, halved from 2022 to 2023, based on disclosed prices, but that was unsurprising given the pullback in liquidity, lower prices and smaller deals done last year.
We will dig deeper into the figures in the upcoming January issue of The SeniorCare Investor and the annual Senior Care Acquisition Report, but that deal total is a stronger-than-expected benchmark to beat in 2024. And we think it will be beaten, easily.
