The Latent Purchasing Power in the SaaS Acquisition Market

Public SaaS companies have accumulated $8.5B in cash and seen market capitalizations increase 28x over 10 years, creating approximately $29.5B in latent acquisition purchasing power. Potential acquirers have been delaying M&A activity pending tax reform, but when they resume acquisitions, this capital concentration could trigger a highly acquisitive market environment. The analysis reveals that even conservative assumptions about deployment of stock and cash reserves could fund roughly 30 enterprise unicorn acquisitions, excluding the purchasing power of mega-cap tech companies.