2024 Mid-Year Review: Leading the data room market through innovation and expansion

As we cross the midpoint of 2024, Virtual Vaults is thrilled to share insights into our performance and the trends shaping our industry. This first half year has been marked by significant achievements and strategic expansions, highlighting our commitment to providing leading virtual data room (VDR) services. 

Continuous Growth in VDR Openings 

In the first half of 2024, we witnessed a 16% year-over-year increase in the number of new VDRs opened on our platform. This growth demonstrates the strong demand and confidence M&A professionals have in our services. Despite the trouble in M&A (12.1% less deal volume in the EU in Q1), the increase in data room openings, coupled with stability in closures, mirrors last year's trends and underscores our continued upward trajectory. While the number of data rooms opened has grown, the number of data rooms closed has remained consistent with last year. This indicates that deals take a bit longer to close, even though we see more deals have been prepared in Workspaces (+43% YoY). This expansion is significantly contributing to an overall increase in data room activities within these regions. 

Expanding Our Market Reach 

Our leadership in the Benelux region remains unchallenged, with about 80% of the market share, but we're pushing forward. This year, our strategic market expansion initiatives in Germany and the Nordic countries have had significant results. This has increased our data room activity in these regions, contributing to our overall growth and helping us to reach new customers in different markets. The German market has responded particularly well to our competitive offerings, especially our fixed VDR pricing and unlimited data usage, which ensure transparency and eliminate penalties for additional uploads. The first half of 2024 have seen recurring German customers opening multiple deals on our platform. Many dealmakers have switched to our platform from other top-tier providers, attracted not only by our pricing and the all-in-one solution with self-service options but also by our product features such as our deal preparation tool, which has a 98% customer retention rate. 

Anticipating Increased Deal Closures 

With the improvements to our platform and the integration of our deal preparation tool, Workspaces, we've streamlined the deal-making process. Based on the increased activity we've seen, we are optimistic that deal volume in the second half of 2024 will exceed that of the first half. This improvement is a step up from last year, when we already saw an upward trend in deal preparation, with more than half of deals being initiated in our data rooms after the use of Workspaces. 

Sector Insights: M&A and Real Estate 

Despite broader challenges in the M&A sector across the EU, we've observed a resilient interest in small and medium-sized deals. This resilience is expected to drive continued growth in this segment. The real estate sector, while facing its own challenges with a steady decline over the past eighteen months, is ready for a revival due to the recent decline in interest rates across the EU. We expect real estate transactions to pick up as the market adjusts to more favorable financial conditions. Although some recovery was seen in Q2 of 2024, activity levels are still below those of early 2023, with the German market in particular struggling to recover.  

Looking Forward 

As we move into the second half of the year, Virtual Vaults remains committed to leveraging technology to improve efficiency and drive growth. We continue to expand and solidify our presence despite the challenges of the M&A market. Our goal over the next two years is to become a leader in the German M&A sector while maintaining our leadership position in the Benelux. 

Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to lead and innovate in the VDR space, enabling our clients to execute transactions with speed, security and efficiency.