North America’s drinks industry saw a drop of 23.4% in overall deal activity during Q4 2020, when compared to the four-quarter average, according to GlobalData’s deals database.

  • Embed this chart

    Embed this chart into your website

    Copy and paste the code below into your website to display the chart.

A total of 49 deals worth $3.64bn were announced for the region during Q4 2020, against the last four-quarter average of 64 deals.

Of all the deal types, venture financing saw most activity in Q4 2020 with 26, representing a 53.1% share for the region.

In second place was M&A with 19 deals, followed by private equity deals with four transactions, respectively capturing a 38.8% and 8.2% share of the overall deal activity for the quarter.

In terms of value of deals, private equity was the leading category in North America’s drinks industry with $3.2bn, while M&A and venture financing deals totalled $308.01m and $132.49m, respectively.

North America drinks industry deals in Q4 2020: Top deals

The top five drinks deals accounted for 98% of the overall value during Q4 2020.

The combined value of the top five drinks deals stood at $3.57bn, against the overall value of $3.64bn recorded for the quarter.

The top five drinks industry deals of Q4 2020 tracked by GlobalData were:

1) Apollo Global Management’s $3bn private equity deal with Anheuser-Busch InBev

2) The $300m acquisition of SweetWater BrewingInc by Aphria

3) Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (CDPQ)’s $200m private equity deal with ZEVIA

4) The $51m venture financing of Kate Farms by Goldman SachsLLC and Kaiser Permanente Ventures

5) Anthony Pritzker, Brett Eldredge, Bryan Ezralow, Daniel Yergin, Jonathan Glaser, Kevin Love, Michael Meldman, Neal Moritz, Richard A. Gephardt, Stephen Curry and Victor Coleman’s venture financing of OXIGEN Beverages (USA) for $15m.

Verdict deals analysis methodology

This analysis considers only announced and completed deals from the GlobalData financial deals database and excludes all terminated and rumoured deals. Country and industry are defined according to the headquarters and dominant industry of the target firm. The term ‘acquisition’ refers to both completed deals and those in the bidding stage.

GlobalData tracks real-time data concerning all merger and acquisition, private equity/venture capital and asset transaction activity around the world from thousands of company websites and other reliable sources.

More in-depth reports and analysis on all reported deals are available for subscribers to GlobalData’s deals database.