Introducing “Finding Liquidity in a Drought: Understanding Southeast Asia’s Consumer Exit Landscape.” This report cuts through the noise around exits in Southeast Asia, unpacking what has happened across nearly three decades of consumer M&A and IPO activity and what it means for founders, investors, and operators navigating today’s constrained liquidity environment.

Against a backdrop of historically low private equity sentiment and a sharply contracted deal market, DSG Consumer Partners undertook a data-driven effort to build a clearer, more realistic picture of consumer exits across the region. Analyzing over 2,300 consumer-sector exits from 1995 to 2024, the report decodes how exit pathways, buyer archetypes, and valuations have evolved across Southeast Asia.

We examine exit outcomes across key consumer categories and markets, moving beyond anecdotes to surface structural patterns in liquidity. Despite recent headwinds, the data tells a more nuanced story: exit activity has increased 1.7x in the last decade, larger transactions above USD 20 million have doubled over successive decades, and median exit valuations across consumer sectors are meaningfully higher than a decade ago.

The report focuses on three core lenses:

• Where exits happen – Clear divergences by market, with Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines dominated by single-market outcomes, while Singapore and Malaysia see a higher share of multi-market exits.
• Who buys – Regional strategics account for the largest share of acquisitions, reshaping realistic buyer expectations across sectors and geographies.
• What gets acquired – Consumer sub-sectors show sharply different valuation and volume trajectories, underscoring the importance of category selection and scale at exit.

Exits in Southeast Asia are uneven, selective, and increasingly shaped by geography, asset quality, and buyer fit. As public markets remain largely closed and financial sponsors cautious, understanding these dynamics is no longer optional.

For founders, this report offers a grounded view of what “exitable” really means in today’s SEA consumer landscape. For investors, it provides a fact base to recalibrate exit assumptions, underwriting discipline, and portfolio construction.

This report is a living view of Southeast Asia’s consumer exit landscape. Given the gaps and inconsistencies in regional M&A data, we welcome collaboration from investors, founders, and ecosystem partners to validate insights, surface missing transactions, and strengthen this shared understanding of how exits really happen in SEA.

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