Telecommunications industry is steadily growing though in a (very) slow pace, expected to grow by CAGR 2.9% and reach $1.3T by 2028.

Nearly 60% of the world has now access to mobile internet, and while high-income regions saturated, emerging markets growth is clearly visible.

5G commercialisation picks up pace and by 2028 5G will account for over a half of all mobile subscriptions.

5G already accounts for over 50% of mobile connections in North America, China and developed APAC, emerging markets still way to go but expected to follow (cheaper phones and new spectrum assignments).

Data demand is sky-high, driven by generative AI craze, increase in IoT devices, cloud computing growth, and the explosion in digital content.

Money flows into data centers infrastructure, global DC supply expected to reach 60 GW, while demand projected to hit 53 GW by 2027.

IoT space is rapidly growing, driven by smart cities initiatives, digitization of logistics and connected automotive tech.

Data center comps trade at premium, riding the AI wave, benefitting from increasing cloud computing needs, rapidly growing data usage.

Flat revenue multiples for mature verticals (telco service providers), but more growth across satellites, data centers and IoT hardware.

Data centers and IoT represent critical infrastructure for next-gen tech: superior growth, expanding margin profile and operational leverage (data centers); platform economics and ecosystem lock-in (IoT)

Public IoT companies significantly outperform the broader telecom sector, grew EBITDA multiple by 62% in the last five years.

Asian and American telcos trade higher than European counterparts.

Even bigger gap with EBITDA multiples, American and APAC-based valuations grew while European telco multiples slightly compressed.

Data centers valued the highest by public markets.

'Hot' telco sectors like IoT and satellites trade profitability for growth, mature verticals (TSPs, infra) highly profitable but flat top-line.

Very little spend on marketing initiatives, opex is the biggest cost factor for all telco subverticals.

Largest stock price 'gainers' and 'losers' in the last three months.

Telco is a mature market: flat exit revenue multiples, few deals valued at premium (mostly software/hybrid solutions with lower capex needs and bigger monetization upside).

Median EV/EBITDA remain relatively stable, data centers and IoT tend to command higher multiples on the high profitability promises.

Fairly flat exit revenue multiples but declining EBITDA-based metrics in the last 12 months

Biggest M&A deals in telco are happening in the US, followed by Europe.

Strategic buyers dominate telco M&A due to scale economics and operational synergies.

Overall funding into startups disrupting communications sector is down 28% year-on-year.

Half of the venture capital went to communications startups raising mega rounds - $100M and above.

Space and satellite communications make up the largest portion of venture capital flowing into communications sector.

Gap between the US and Europe is widening again, nearly 70% of all VC dollars went to America in the last quarter.

Declining number of rounds each quarter since Q1 2023, down over 100% from two years ago

3/4 of all rounds across communications were early stage (pre-seed, seed and series A)

Underlying data

Multiples is a proprietary valuation software database. Public markets data is powered by FactSet and Morningstar, harmonized and enhanced by us. Private transaction data is multi-sourced, aggregated from harvesting public information, agreements with 3rd party providers, proprietary sourcing and data engineering. All data is verified and provided with an extensive manual process (no AI involved). This report is built on data that is available at multiples.vc. For more information, please visit multiples.vc or contact us at hi@multiples.vc.

Public Companies

The foundation of our public comps are analyst estimates and historical financials, powered by FactSet (consensus analyst estimates) and Morningstar (historical data) APIs. Analyst estimates are provided by FactSet by taking input from 50+ equity research analysts (the highest amount across all financial data providers). Data points are calendarized to December where relevant: retrieved data on financial year ends (e.g. FY, FY+1 etc.) are mapped to calendar years (2024A, 2025E etc.) before the appropriate month weights are then applied to prior/future fundamentals. We emphasise valuation multiples and operational ratios, any raw figures are harmonised to USD for comparison purposes.

Private Transactions

We source deal data from 3rd party databases, company filings, press releases and our own proprietary data sets built over years of investment banking career. Sourced data is harmonized and unified in-house, to form a unique data set of disclosed transactions. We triple-check deal data through a proprietary red-flagging system, compare with other verified online sources, and sense-check with our investment banking team. We exclude undisclosed, unrealistic or suspicious-looking data points. Our dataset is continuously monitored for accuracy. EV calculation: if data permits, we apply our own logic to get to the EV. For example, for a large M&A deal with available information on target's net debt, we might adjust a valuation to fully reflect an accurate EV. In all others cases, we take reported valuation as numerator. Financials: we source LTM revenue and LTM EBITDA data from company filings, press releases or other verified sources. If LTM data is unavailable, we take the next best-fit period (run-rate or calendar year), provided it makes sense in a given case. For example, if a deal happened in November 2024, we might take full-year revenue as a revenue benchmark.