Sources of post-acquisition operational improvements in European buy-and-build transactions
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School of Science |
Master's thesis
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Date
2024-12-27
Department
Major/Subject
Strategy and Venturing
Mcode
Degree programme
Master's Programme in Industrial Engineering and Management
Language
en
Pages
82
Series
Abstract
Buy-and-build strategies, where private equity firms buy a company and then build on that platform through one or more add-on acquisition, have emerged as an increasingly popular approach for private equity sponsors realizing the operational improvements as well as enhancing a credible narrative about future growth and margin expansion. This study explores the relationship between buy-and-build deal characteristics and post-transaction operational performance by analysing the effects of platform company’s and private equity sponsor’s prior experience on revenue growth and EBITDA margin improvement. Moreover, this study analyses the impact of cross-border and cross-industry transactions on post-transaction operational performance. The hypotheses are formed by synthesizing previous literature on buy-and-build strategies and tested by using regression analysis on a sample from Zephyr and Orbis M&A databases. The final sample consists of 408 European buy-and-build add-on transactions completed in 2014-2021. The regression results indicate that a platform company’s prior experience positively influences post-acquisition revenue growth but does not serve as an explanatory factor for improvements in EBITDA margin. Moreover, the results imply that private equity sponsor’s prior experience have no statistically significant impact on post-acquisition operational performance. The results also suggest that cross-border or cross-industry deals do not significantly affect operational performance compared to transactions within the same country or industry. The results indicate that prior experience of platform company improves the organisation’s ability to effectively manage the post-merger integration and hence be more successful at implementing revenue synergies, such as cross-selling.Description
Supervisor
Maula, MarkkuKeywords
buy-and-build, private equity, operational performance, value creation, M&A, strategy