SPACs could drive $900 billion of dealmaking over the next 2 years despite the boom slowing, Goldman says

• SPACs could drive $900 billion in dealmaking over the next 2 years, Goldman Sachs said.
• The boom in blank-check companies has slowed, but there is plenty of cash swilling around.
• Goldman estimated there is currently $129 billion of SPAC capital searching for a target.

The boom in special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, may have slowed of late, but it could still drive $900 billion of dealmaking over the next two years, according to Goldman Sachs.

"We estimate $129 billion of SPAC capital is currently searching for a target," Goldman analysts, led by David Kostin, said in a note on Wednesday.

"In spite of the issuance slowdown and sell-off, SPACs could drive a total of $900 billion in M&A enterprise value in the coming 24 months." Enterprise value is the total value of a company, including its market capitalization, cash and debt.

A record 277 blank-check companies issued shares in the first quarter, raising $91 billion from investors. It helped power the strongest first quarter for dealmaking in 40 years, topping even the dotcom bubble of 2000.

A SPAC is an entity that exists solely to list on the stock exchange to raise money, in the hope of finding and merging with a target company to take it public. They can be incredibly lucrative for early supporters, and offer companies a less onerous and costly way of listing on the stock exchange.

On April 13, Asian ride-hailing company Grab agreed to go public through a $40 billion merger with the Altimeter Growth Corp SPAC. Trading platform eToro will also list through a $10 billion SPAC deal.

But the SPAC boom has slowed in recent weeks. Just six new SPACs have come to market so far in the second quarter, Goldman said, compared to 55 at the same point in the first 3 months of the year.

Goldman said signals from US regulators that they are concerned about various aspects of the SPAC frenzy, including the reporting, accounting and governance of SPACs, has been the key factor weighing on the market.

Nonetheless, there were 394 SPACs seeking companies to take public as of Wednesday, with $129 billion of equity capital, Goldman said.

The bank's estimate that blank-check companies could drive $900 billion in dealmaking over the coming years assumed active SPACs find targets and close deals, and that future acquisitions are structurally similar to transactions announced so far in 2021.

Goldman Sachs itself has been a key driver of the SPAC boom. The blank-check phenomenon helped power record investment banking revenues in the first quarter.