After a down 2023, the M&A market rebound has been real this year.

M&A activity through September increased 19% YoY, both in deal value and volume, according to a recent EY report. EY projects M&As will finish 2024 ahead of last year in both corporate volume and private equity transactions.

Some organizations might be feeling rusty after a couple of slow years, or may be new to M&As. To help CFOs jump back into the M&A game, CFO Brew asked experts what finance teams should expect leading up to and after a transaction takes place.

Deals rising. Kati Penney, corporate transactions leader at CrossCountry Consulting, said she expects “M&A activity to increase and a lot more candidates to go out to market,” in part because private equity firms have been holding onto companies for longer than normal. Hold periods have been longer because of economic conditions generally and high interest rates specifically, she added.

“But at some point there needs to be a realization on those investments, so hence they will go to market,” Penney told CFO Brew. “As a result of that, I do expect…an increase in M&A activity.”

Click here for more on M&A prep.—AZ

If earnings season had a fleet week, this would be it. A bevy of defense contractors began reporting quarterly results Tuesday, and Lockheed Martin, RTX, and GE Aerospace all beat Wall Street expectations for earnings per share.

RTX, which was known as Raytheon until mid-2023, also beat analyst forecasts for revenue, while Lockheed and GE Aerospace missed revenue expectations. Lockheed’s bottom line suffered as it negotiated with the US government over F-35s to be delivered in 2026 and 2027. While they haggle, Lockheed isn’t getting reimbursed for orders of parts it uses in its planes, according to Reuters—and that’s eaten into both sales and profit.

Meanwhile, Reuters also reported that GE’s filing shows slowing sales growth for both military and commercial businesses, according to Robert Stallard, analyst with Vertical Research Partners. A strike by machinists at Boeing, which buys GE-made jet engines, “has not had a ‘significant’ impact thus far on its revenue, earnings and cash flows,” according to Reuters.

RTX’s financial results were clouded ahead of time by news on Oct. 16 that it would “pay more than $950 million to resolve allegations that it defrauded the government and paid bribes to secure business with Qatar,” ABC News reported.

Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have been good for the companies that make the planes, bombs, guns, and other hardware used in those places, according to US News. Lockheed and RTX stock prices hit all-time highs this week, Investor’s Business Daily reported.

Continue reading here.—GD

Hurricanes Helene and Milton impacted insurers’ Q3 earnings, which will likely have a downstream effect on insurance buyers’ rates, according to industry earnings reports.

“While it is too early to know the ultimate insured losses from hurricanes Helene and Milton, we expect there to be an impact on 2025 property insurance and reinsurance pricing,” John Doyle, president and CEO of insurance broker Marsh McLennan, said during an earnings call last week.

In an Oct. 15 earnings release, insurance company Progressive said its catastrophe losses related to Helene totaled $563 million last month. This included $401 million in vehicle losses (including boats and RVs) and $162 million in property losses.

As of Oct. 14, Progressive estimated that it would rack up about $325 million in vehicle losses from Milton and that losses from its property business would not exceed the $200 million reinsurance threshold. It cautioned that these estimates “could change materially” as it continues to process claims.

Insurance company Travelers reported $939 million in pre-tax catastrophe losses in the third quarter, “more than half of which relates to Hurricane Helene,” CFO Dan Frey said during the company’s Q3 earnings call on Oct. 17. “For Travelers, the financial impact of Helene was greater in Georgia and the Carolinas than in Florida,” he added.

For more on potential insurance price hikes, click here.—AZ