ATA Creativity Global
AACGACTIVE ACQUIRERQUIETATA Creativity Global reads as an Active Acquirer (composite 48/100); Transformational Buyer deploying $2B across 0 disclosed transactions, down 59% vs the prior cycle · primary market Media & Education, ranked #2 on disclosed spend.
Lens
Disclosed M&A capital (2023–2025)
$2.1B
vs $5.1B in 2020–2022
Disclosed transactions
N/A
1/3 active fiscal years in window
Buyer archetype
Transformational Buyer
Episodic but very large disclosed transactions drive the profile.
Composite score
48
Active Acquirer dominates · Quiet
Behavioral posture, nine reads.
Each index scores the issuer 0–100 against an EDGAR-anchored definition. Scores ≥ threshold elevate the issuer into the index's constituent set; the dominant index drives the masthead label.
Active Acquirer
DominantCompanies actively deploying disclosed capital into M&A
- $8.8B disclosed buyer spend
Buyer Cadence
Buyer-side companies with recent filing activity
- Filed within 56d
Target Probability
Issuers showing target-side patterns from filings
- 16 activism filings
Spin/Carve
Issuers showing spin-off, carve-out, or sum-of-parts posture
- 16 activism filings
Pressure Watch
Issuers facing activism, governance, or control pressure
- 16 activism filings
- Latest activism 6y ago; heavily discounted
Distress Watch
Issuers showing financial-distress filing patterns
- Missing recent 10-Q
- 16 activism filings
Restatement Risk
Issuers with accounting-integrity flags from filings
Capital Velocity
Issuers with the highest filing-activity intensity
Quiet Power
Large issuers with low signal volume and clean disclosure cadence
- Enterprise value $87M
- 2 active signals
Capital cadence.
Ten-year disclosed M&A activity. Bars show spend ($MM); ticks show recorded transaction count. Disclosure tier annotated where v6 audited corpus carries an entry.
Disclosed spend $MM Disclosed transactions (right axis)Peak spend year: $5,127M · Peak count: 1
| FY | Disclosed buys | Disclosed spend | Avg ticket | Audited tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| 2024 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| 2023 | N/A | $2.1B | N/A | N/A |
| 2022 | N/A | $5.1B | N/A | N/A |
| 2021 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| 2020 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Strategy posture.
The buyer's playbook in terms of strategic archetype: what each disclosed move says about how they're deploying capital.
Archetype mix
- Bolt On25%
- Geographic Expansion25%
- Technology Acquisition25%
- Platform25%
Strategy keywords
Terms recurring across recent 10-K acquisition disclosures.
- bolt_on
- geographic_expansion
- technology_acquisition
- platform
Filing language.
Direct excerpts from acquisition disclosures and strategy sections: the verbs the buyer chose, in the filings they signed.
“As part of our business strategy, we may seek to broaden our service offerings, obtain additional clients and strengthen our service quality by acquiring other companies or businesses or making strategic investments.”
“Our ability to implement our acquisition strategy will depend on a number of factors, including the availability of suitable acquisition candidates at an acceptable cost or at all.”
“However, our ability to implement our acquisition or investment strategy will depend on a number of factors, including the availability of suitable acquisition candidates at an acceptable cost or at all, our ability to compete effectively to attract and reach agreement with acquisition or investment candidates or joint venture partners on commercially reasonable terms, and the availability of financing to complete acquisitions or investment or joint ventures as well as our ability to obtain any required government approvals or licenses.”
“However, our ability to implement our acquisition strategy will depend on a number of factors, including the availability of suitable acquisition candidates at an acceptable cost or at all, our ability to compete effectively to attract and reach agreement with acquisition candidates or joint venture partners on commercially reasonable terms, and the availability of financing to complete acquisitions or joint ventures as well as our ability to obtain any required government approvals or licenses.”
Market context.
Where this issuer sits inside its SE-Cluster rollup wedge, with disclosed-spend rank plus trading comparables against the public peer set.
Primary market
Media & Education
- Market spend (2023–2025)
- $31.8B
- Market spend (2020–2022)
- $74.8B
- Recent vs prior
- −57%
- Issuer rank in market
- #2 of 114
- Share of market capital
- 4.4%
Valuation positioning
AACG trades at a -16.8-turn discount to the Media & Education peer median of 12.1×.
- EV / Revenue
- 0.3×
- Net debt / EBITDA
- N/A
- Peer median EV / EBITDA
- 12.1×
Trading comparables
FMP market data · 2026-05-10
| Company | EV / EBITDA | EV / Rev | Net debt / EBITDA | Revenue | M&A 2023–2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21.6× | 2.0× | -0.2× | $8.8B | $55M | |
| 19.2× | 1.5× | -3.6× | $25.6B | $196M | |
| 4.9× | 1.8× | 2.2× | $37.2B | $100M | |
| 3.0× | 0.2× | 14.1× | $2.1B | $14M |
Trading multiples from FMP market data; disclosed M&A spend from the SE-Cluster EDGAR 10-K corpus. Peer set = top disclosed buyers in Media & Education. Bars scaled to the highest EV/EBITDA in the set.
Target landscape.
Public-issuer targets that fit this buyer's archetype and target categories from filing-derived signal. Scores reflect cross-signal fit; reasons cite the EDGAR-anchored facts that drove the match.
No qualifying public-issuer targets surfaced from the current signal mix.
Stated target categories
No target categories enumerated in the audited corpus for this issuer.
Filing activity & signal stream.
Filing cadence and event-driven signals visible on EDGAR. The signal stream below is curated from restatement / spin-carve / activism categories, providing context for any near-term call.
Filing cadence
- 10-K (annual)202026-03-31
- 10-Q (quarterly)0N/A
- 8-K (event)0N/A
- Proxy / DEF 14A0N/A
- Activism (13D / DFAN / PREC)162020-05-21
Signals on file
- elevated
Activism on file
2020-05-2116 activist filings on file (13D, DFAN14A, PREC14A series).
- info
Signal
Serial acquisition history
- info
Signal
10-K strategy themes
Audited corpus.
No audited record on file for this CIK in the current v6 corpus.
This issuer has not been extracted into the v6 audited acquirer corpus yet. The brief above pulls from ranking-level aggregates and issuer-index signal only.