Over half of US IVF now runs through private equity
What platform consolidation means for independent fertility clinics, what buyers value, and what owners can do in the 12 months before a transaction.
ReadResearch & news
Sector analysis
What actually determines value in the businesses we cover, what diligence finds, and how acquirers behave. Written for owners who are still deciding.
These notes are drawn from transaction work rather than compiled from secondary sources. They describe the structural features of each sector that set the range a business will trade in, most of which are addressable well before a process begins and very few of which can be addressed once one is under way.
Sector research
Tools and reagents, diagnostics, pharma services, provider groups and health technology.
Catalog revenue and custom work are not the same asset
Two tools businesses with identical revenue and identical margins routinely trade several turns apart. The split between catalog and custom work explains most of the gap.
ReadThe regulatory label is the valuation
Research use only, analyte specific reagent and in vitro diagnostic describe three different assets that can look almost identical on a shelf.
ReadWhat a provider group is actually selling
The first question a serious acquirer asks about a practice is how much clinical capacity exists independently of the owner. The answer sets the structure, not just the price.
ReadEmbedded and adjacent health technology
Clinical software is valued on how difficult it is to remove. There is a simple diligence test for which side of that line a product sits on.
ReadSector research
Vertical software, infrastructure and data businesses.
Net retention is the number that survives diligence
Growth can be bought. Retention cannot, and every experienced acquirer knows the difference.
ReadCohort churn, not aggregate churn
A blended churn figure conceals the only pattern a buyer cares about. They will recompute it within a fortnight.
ReadWhat a vertical software moat actually consists of
In vertical software the defensibility almost never comes from the code. It comes from three things, and each one is examinable.
ReadRevenue recognition on multi-year implementations
The most common quality of earnings adjustment in software is also among the most avoidable. The cost of discovering it late is not the adjustment itself.
ReadSector research
Process and capital equipment, engineered components, industrial services, and water and environmental technology.
The quiet story under WEFTEC 2026
From PFAS and municipal funding to power, data centres and consolidation: what matters for water and air equipment owners at WEFTEC 2026.
ReadThe aftermarket is usually the business
In process and capital equipment, the ratio of aftermarket revenue to units in the field moves valuation more than almost anything else. It is also the figure owners most often understate.
ReadProject and recurring revenue do not deserve the same multiple
Where a business carries both, the discipline is to report them separately for at least two years before a sale. A buyer obliged to construct the split will construct it conservatively.
ReadProcess knowledge that lives in people
In specialty process businesses the operating knowledge frequently sits with a handful of long-tenured individuals. Everyone inside the business knows who they are. So will the buyer.
ReadEnvironmental history and performance guarantees
Two exposures reprice industrial transactions more often than any others. Both are discoverable at the outset, and both are cheaper to establish than to have established for you.
ReadContact
Thirty minutes, without materials or obligation. We will give you a considered view of value, of what is currently constraining it, and of whether this is the right point at which to act.
Where our view is that you should wait, we will say so.
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