5 Technology Investing Trends for 2023

Industrial companies in the automotive, energy and construction sectors are just starting to use systems that offer help managing physical assets and that connect disparate parts of value chains.

There are numerous opportunities for industrials to increase efficiency with such solutions. For an energy company, for example, helpful connectivity solutions might offer an overview of all physical assets as well as features such as pipeline safety notifications that automatically assign workers to investigate and address issues, said Bjoern Crombach, a Morgan Stanley banker who specializes in industrial software. For a car manufacturer, technologies might automate reordering paint once supply runs low to help the company keep up production.

“Industrial companies are demanding software that helps manage their different stages of day-to-day business,” Crombach said. Private companies are offering a number of promising solutions, and thus attracting the attention of large public companies interested in acquisitions, he said.

Compared to industrials, technology is in further stages of development for the insurance sector (known as “insurtech”) as proliferation and use of software applications in the industry has been growing for five years, Ares said. “A significant number of businesses have emerged in insurtech with meaningful revenue growth and attractive profitability,” he said.

Investors are interested in whether insurtech could be the next fintech. Insurtech technology spans data analysis, Internet of Things (IoT)—i.e., physical devices—and AI, and it aims to facilitate cost savings and efficiencies in processing claims, evaluating risks and underwriting policies. With mainstream adoption of open banking and payments apps in the last decade, fintech has become the poster child proving the value of networks that connect and manage various sources and forms of data, “an incredibly sticky proposition for any industry,” Ares said. Companies offering tailored technology solutions in verticals such as insurance are betting that apps and online platforms can catch on, similar to how they did in consumer banking and financial services.

Healthcare is an industry lagging behind in its adoption of technology, so opportunities abound to improve patient outcomes and accessibility to healthcare amid caregiver labor shortages and the rising cost of care in Europe and the U.S. One method is complete data sharing between patients’ doctors and care locations (i.e. clinics and labs): “Data-centric healthcare requires technology embedded throughout the continuum of care,” said Marie-Gabrielle Bui, a Morgan Stanley banker who specializes in healthcare technology. “A patient’s doctors and patients themselves should be able to easily access secure data that is privacy-compliant across care locations.”

Another lever is to move chronic patients from emergency care, which is extremely expensive, to preventative care, which is more affordable, Bui said. One example is healthcare technology that helps diabetic patients by continuously monitoring their glucose levels, warning them when levels are too high and scheduling doctors’ appointments and follow-up when necessary. Other avenues include artificial intelligence (AI)-backed symptom checkers and gamified apps for patient engagement or chatbots providing tools for psychological support, such as cognitive behavioral therapy.

Given wide demand for healthcare technology, companies are looking to acquire businesses that offer healthcare software or digital health tools because M&A—even across country borders—may cost less than fully developing solutions in-house, Bui said. In particular, European companies are interested in acquisitions to capture more geographic market share, despite different local regulations.

Data consumption by businesses and consumers is continuing to grow exponentially, driving demand for all types of digital infrastructure—notably fiber, data centers and mobile towers. In recent years, this has also driven high levels of M&A activity and valuations, with lower-cost capital providers becoming increasingly comfortable with future growth prospects.

Nevertheless, the current macroeconomic environment is a test for the asset class, said Max Thiele, a Morgan Stanley banker who specializes in digital infrastructure: “While the investment case for digital infrastructure continues to be very strong and demand for quality assets is high, companies and investors are carefully scrutinizing the impact of inflation, power prices and the risk of recession, including if and how certain cost drivers can be passed through to customers.”

In addition, market participants are searching for the next adjacent infrastructure growth and capital deployment opportunities, Thiele said. “This includes investments in tier 2 cities and markets, infrastructure deployments in preparation of new exciting use cases, such as edge computing, and also asset classes that have historically not been considered classic infrastructure but have proven highly predictable and economically resilient.”

Companies across industries are looking to technology to streamline internal functions such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and human resources (HR), said Leila Harestani, a Morgan Stanley banker who specializes in ERP and HR technology.

In ERP, one of the biggest trends is cloud for deployment, in which software is hosted on vendors’ servers and accessed through a web browser, generally at a lower cost than the alternative on-premises software, which is installed locally on a company’s computers or servers. As cloud-based ERP proliferates, more small- and medium-sized businesses may adopt these solutions, but vendors will have to prove they have prepared for security risks, such as who can access sensitive data and potential data theft by malicious actors, Harestani said. Another important theme is the use of AI to identify and learn from data patterns, which offers widespread applications for forecasting and modelling, supply chain tracking and customer service.

In HR, AI is useful for recruiting, onboarding and employee engagement, and companies are also investigating how the blockchain could enable better data security through encryption, according to Harestani.

Emerging private companies are the frontrunners offering these ERP and HR capabilities, and that has led to M&A interest from bigger companies, Harestani said. “The more innovative and advanced technology solutions are coming from start-ups, and existing players in the market—larger companies and private equity firms—may look to acquire them.”