Working with a smaller market with few well-suited potential transaction partners can be challenging, but at MotionHall, we believe that if the product stands up to diligence, you can always win. The key is to know the market for your deal and plan your process well.

As transactions are sensitive strategic processes, names of companies and executives in all MotionHall case studies are anonymized.

Scenario One: Oakbough Partners Runs a Best-in-Class Traditional Process for a Phase 3 Transaction

Oakbough Partners, an investment bank, took on a promising Phase 3 asset for out-licensing. Relying on their long history in the industry, their unique relationships, and their databases, Oakbough pieced together nearly 50 potential partners for the deal. But when it came time to reach out to these prospects they had trouble advancing conversations or getting to a negotiation.

Committed to closing the deal, they redoubled their efforts and added another 150 companies to their strategic outreach. Over the next two years, Oakbough Partners would contact all 200 companies with no success.

With their client running out of cash and no serious competition for the deal, they were forced to cut an unfavorable M&A deal with a lesser-known European pharma.

The CEO at the client company was furious!

Benchmarking with OutMatch Professional: Out-Licensing and Sell-Side M&A

Late in the deal cycle, Oakbough Partners challenged MotionHall's Method and Model to identify and predict the most likely partners for this difficult deal.

MotionHall’s OutMatch Professional, using the Model, runs unique deals like a data-rich puzzle piece across every other company around the globe, looking for interlocking signals of transaction likelihood on a relevant timeframe and quality of fit.

OutMatch returned 80 matches for the deal, but notably, only two of these were highly ranked and well-matched. The top match at 92% was the real-life final buyer, the European pharma.

The second best match for this Phase 3 asset was Pfizer, however Pfizer had been neglected by the team at Oakbough Partners. Why? One analyst held the opinion Pfizer wouldn’t transact based on a passing conversation with a contact there and had removed the company from outreach considerations. When the Partners at Oakbough looked more deeply at the specifics of the fit and matching, Pfizer was clearly a strong candidate for the deal, and Oakbough’s partners were upset not to have engaged Pfizer early in the process.

Oakbough Partners engaged MotionHall too late to turn the deal around, but they noted the results for the future. If the partners at Oakbough had clarity into the market for this deal earlier in the process, they would have opted to run a very different process to better their odds of success for themselves and for their client.

At the end of the engagement, Oakbough asked if they could buy not just access to the MotionHall Platform, but also buy the entire company as a proprietary advantage. As MotionHall’s mission is to serve the entire industry, we respectfully declined.

Scenario Two: Ember Biotech Leverages the MotionHall’s Model, Method and Platform to Set a Thoughtful Process for a Narrow Market

Ember Biotech accessed the MotionHall Platform to expand their knowledge of potential M&A buyers for a Phase 3 asset.

Again, MotionHall’s OutMatch Professional, using the Model, ran this unique deal like a data-rich puzzle piece across every other company around the globe, looking for interlocking signals of transaction likelihood on a relevant timeframe and quality of fit.

Beginning with OutMatch Professional: Out-Licensing and Sell-Side M&A

“If there are only two really strong matches for our deal,” Ember’s CEO reasoned, “then we should know everything about them and play our cards very carefully to get the deal that we want on our target timeline.”

— Ember Biotech’s CEO

At the end of the analysis, OutMatch returned 52 plausible matches for the deal. This included 16 matches Ember Biotech had not previously considered. The more valuable information, however, was that similar to Oakbough’s deal, only two of these were strong matches. Ember Biotech responded to these results by reconsidering its M&A strategy prior to engaging the outreach process.

“If there are only two really strong matches for our deal,” Ember’s CEO reasoned, “then we should know everything about them and play our cards very carefully to get the deal that we want on our target timeline. This may be a slower process and one that requires more precision in stakeholder management.”

Working with MotionHall’s Strategy Consulting team, Ember Biotech and their CEO set a strategy to reach and nurture the right companies, developing the market for their deal and improving their odds of success with the final transaction.

At the time of this writing, Ember Biotech was in late-stage deal conversations and happy with the way their deal process is advancing.