Contents
Link to Webinar Recording from February 2025
Search Templates
Executive Summary
Tweaks to add to searches
Methodology and Data
Patents Footnote
Get in touch + Similar Articles
Watch our Webinar recording from February 2025:
Recording:
Search Templates:
Finding Companies
For potential tweaks to the above templates, see below
Finding People associated with these organisations
On top of the above People search templates, you'll need to add on the criteria "Collections contained in include" as follows:
1. Build the company search you want, and save it to a Collection
2. Build the people search you want - eg. founders with over 40% shareholding in a business
3. On the line that reads Add shareholding criteria OR Add company position criteria OR Add directorship criteria, add the criteria "Shareholding/Person/ Directorship is in a company where"
4. Scroll down to "Collections contained in include" and choose the company collection you built earlier.
Executive Summary
A brief summary of the findings and reasoning for the search templates
Companies that acquired another company in 2024 commonly:
Have scaled up (in either headcount or turnover), been mentioned in a high growth list, and had some form of equity or debt funding
Were based in the United Kingdom (particularly the South of England) or the United States
Had over 100 employees, turnover of over £30M, and over £1M in EBITDA, Operating Profit and Cash
Were valued at over £10M, and have received over £6M in equity funding
Companies that were acquired by another company in 2024 commonly:
Were based in the South of England or the North West
Had over £15M in revenue, but headcount varied greatly from a median of 22 to an average of 88.
Were valued at around £2.5-£3M, and for those who have received funding, they received around £1M.
Companies that have IPO'd since 2021 were commonly:
Receiving 3 or more fundraisings ahead of their exit - often totalling in excess of £10M
Valued at over £15M, with the mean average exceeding £250M, likely fuelled by the 4 companies valued at £1B+
Employing over 70 people, but this ranged greatly, and be turning over at least £10M
Surprisingly, EBITDA, Net Worth, R&D Expenditure and Grants received all varied greatly, to such a point where they seem to have played no large role in the company's image ahead of IPO.
Tweaks + Additional Criteria
These are potential ways that you can narrow down your searches to a cohort of companies that are more prevalent to the work you're undertaking.
Often, these elements may make a company more likely to be involved in an exit event.
Specialising in exits defined as having invested in more than 10 companies that have gone on to be acquired or IPO
This is a people search, for those who have worked at C-suite level at an organisation that was acquired or IPO'd, and now has an active C-suite role elsewhere
Methodology behind searches
The below is data taken from the Beauhurst platform, upon which the search templates have been built upon.
IPOs
The underlying data looks at all IPO events from the start of January 2021 until the end of January 2025.
Metric to 3sf | 2021-January 2025 Analysis of IPOs |
Latest Post-Money Valuation | £263m |
No. of Fundraisings Received | 3.86 |
Total Amount received in fundraisings | £76.7m |
Amount Received in latest fundraising | £18.7m |
Turnover | £71.8m |
Number of Employees | 271 72 |
EBITDA | -£1.1m |
Cash | £63.6m |
Acquisitions
The underlying data looks at all acquisitions in 2024 between January 1st and the 15th of November and covers 1184 acquired companies and 997 acquiring companies.
* Non-UK companies will not be filing financial accounts to Companies House!
** Companies that have not hit £10.2M in turnover are not required to file full accounts to Companies House, so some fields like Turnover or EBITDA may not be filed by all UK companies
Mean | Acquiring Companies | Acquired Companies |
Number of Accounts Filed* | 682 | 1171 |
Turnover** | £613M | £38.0M |
Operating Profit | £43.7M | £1.87M |
EBITDA** | £66.3M | £2.86M |
Cash | £45.3M | £1.63M |
Number of Employees | 2450 | 80.6 |
* Non-UK companies will not be filing financial accounts to Companies House!
** Companies that have not hit £10.2M in turnover are not required to file full accounts to Companies House, so some fields like Turnover or EBITDA may not be filed by all UK companies
Funding Analysis
Mean | Acquiring Companies | Acquired Companies |
Latest pre-money valuation | £181M | £14.5M |
Latest post-money valuation | £192M | £16.1M |
Latest Turnover multiples following the most recent fundraising | 29.7 | 28.8 |
|
|
|
Number of grants received | 0.31 | 0.13 |
Total amount received in grants | £1.09M £139,000 | £567,000 |
Number of fundraisings completed | 0.823 | 0.512 |
Total amount received in fundraisings | £52.2M | £4.05M |
Non-Financial Analysis
Signs of growth, innovation and risk
For more information on this, read this page about our Signals!
Signal | Acquiring Companies | Acquired Companies |
Equity Fundraising | 245 | 221 |
Debt Fundraising | 43 | 14 |
MBO/MBI | 97 | 34 |
Accelerator | 48 | 46 |
10% Scaleup | 381 | 349 |
20% Scaleup | 287 | 212 |
High Growth List | 255 | 142 |
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|
|
Academic Spinout | 1 | 6 |
R&D Grant | 25 | 29 |
Patent | 42 | 22 |
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|
|
Liquidation and insolvency | 4 | 26 |
CCJ | 11 | 7 |
Short Cash Runway | 50 | 0 |
Down Round | 11 | 13 |
Most common auditors
Acquiring Companies Top 10 | Acquired Companies Top 10 |
BDO, 37 | RSM UK Audit - 15 mentions |
Azets Audit Services, 16 | Azets Audit Services - 12 mentions |
Deloitte, 16 | PWC - 8 mentions |
PWC, 15 | Cooper Parry - 8 mentions |
EY, 14 | Grant Thornton - 7 mentions |
Grant Thornton, 14 | BDO - 7 mentions |
RSM UK Audit, 14 | CLA Evelyn Partners - 6 mentions |
KPMG, 12 | Forvis Mazars - 6 mentions |
Hazlewoods, 8 | Hazlewoods - 5 mentions |
Johnston Carmichael, 7 | KPMG - 4 mentions |
Most common headquarters location
On a country level, 71.2% of the Acquiring companies are based in the United Kingdom, followed by the United States (11.9%), Germany (3.8%) and France (1.9%)
For the UK-based acquiring companies, 26.7% are based in London, followed by the South East (14.2%), then the North West (12.3%), and Yorkshire and The Humber (7.8%).
Scotland represented 5.7% of companies, whilst Wales and Northern Ireland represented 4.2% and 1.2% respectively.
As for Acquired companies, 31.1% were headquartered in London, followed by the South East (13.1%), North West (9.1%) and the South West (6.8%).
Tracking Status
Of the Acquiring companies, 48.5% are Tracked, 45.3% are Not Tracked, and 6.1% are Ceased Tracking
Patents Footnote:
Of the 74 IPOs, 12 companies have an active patent (16%).
Whilst this is a relatively small sample size, the companies with at least one active patent, when compared to those without, saw greater valuations, market capitalisations, number and value of funding received.
Equally, they exited with a lesser turnover, EBITDA, cash in bank and number of employees - one could take from this that the presence of an active patent reduced the barrier to exit and helped increase the company's valuation.
If you haven't yet got access to Beauhurst's Patent data, speak to your Account Manager!
Metric Mean | Those with patents | Those without patents | How many times greater is this metric for companies with patents, compared to those without? |
Pre-Money Valuation | £450M | £191M £10.0M | 2.36 |
Post-Money Valuation | £490M | £205M | 2.39 |
IPO market capitalisations | £635M | £314M | 2.02 |
Number of fundraisings received | 7.33 | 3.19 | 2.30 |
Total amount of fundraising received | £161M | £56.9M £7.9M | 2.84 |
Turnover | £39.7M | £77.8M | 0.51 |
Pre-tax profit | -£22.9M | -£1.76M | 13.0 |
EBITDA | -£17.7M | £2.03M -£3,260 | -8.72 1,470 |
Cash | £38.0M £2.37M | £68.7M | 0.55 |
Number of Employees | 215 | 284 71.5 | 0.76 1.15 |
👋Get in touch with the team
For any more information on how to run similar searches yourself, what kind of data Beauhurst has, or how you can run similar analysis, please speak to your Support team - their contact details will be found in the Help tab on your account.
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