Private Equity Buy-and-Build (Roll-Up) Market Analysis

Private equity buy-and-build strategies, roll-ups that combine multiple smaller companies in the same industry into a single larger platform that can exit at a higher multiple than its parts were bought for, now dominate U.S. buyout activity by deal count: add-on acquisitions reached 75.9% of U.S. buyouts in Q2 2025.¹ The deepest public return study of the strategy found buy-and-build deals earned 31.6% average IRR against 23.1% for standalone buyouts, on mostly European deals exited 1998 to 2012.²

This report pulls together the buy-and-build data behind that dominance: deal volume, returns by add-on count and platform size, multiple arbitrage, financing, sector consolidation, and failure rates.

This report pulls together the publicly available data on buy-and-build deal volume, returns by deal configuration, multiple arbitrage, financing, failure rates, and sector consolidation across insurance, healthcare, home services, and other fragmented industries. The data rewards specific configurations rather than the strategy label. A practitioner estimate says many platforms miss synergy targets, platforms above $290M in enterprise value underperformed standalone buyouts in the BCG/HHL sample, and public return data is sparse enough that named-deal examples need to be separated from verified return disclosures.

Current market context: Add-on volume cooled modestly in 2025 while the strategy’s share of deal count stayed near record highs. PitchBook counted 4,509 U.S. bolt-on acquisitions in 2025, down from 4,950 in 2024.⁴ At the smallest deal sizes, add-ons have begun pricing above same-size platforms, which narrows the entry-multiple advantage the strategy is built on and puts more weight on integration and organic growth.⁴⁰

Metric note: The figures below come from different providers measuring different universes, and they answer different questions. Add-on share of count and add-on share of value move in opposite directions. The deepest return study (BCG/HHL Leipzig) covers mostly European deals exited between 1998 and 2012, so it is a structural baseline rather than a current reading. Many sector and deal-level statistics are disclosed-value subsets, not full populations. The named-deal table below is intentionally limited to public return disclosures rather than inferred return estimates. The methodology section separates these denominators instead of treating them as one series.

Contents

1. What a Private Equity Buy-and-Build Strategy Actually Is
2. Add-On Deal Volume: How Buy-and-Build Took Over PE
3. Buy-and-Build Returns: IRR by Deal Configuration
4. Multiple Arbitrage: The Mechanics and the Math
5. Why the Lower Middle Market Is Where the Returns Concentrate
6. Buy-and-Build Statistics by Industry
7. Named Buy-and-Build Deals with Public Return Disclosures
8. Failure Rates: What Kills Buy-and-Build Deals
9. How Add-On Acquisitions Are Financed
10. How Investors Access Buy-and-Build Deals
11. What This Data Tells Investors
12. Buy-and-Build Strategy FAQ
13. Methodology and Caveats

What a Private Equity Buy-and-Build Strategy Actually Is

A private equity buy-and-build strategy, also called a roll-up or consolidation play, is a method of acquiring multiple smaller companies in the same industry and combining them into a single, larger platform company. The acquiring firm, typically a PE fund or an independent sponsor, purchases an initial platform business, then executes a series of add-on acquisitions to grow the platform’s revenue and EBITDA.

The strategy works because of a structural feature of private markets: smaller companies sell at lower valuation multiples than larger ones. A $1 million EBITDA plumbing company might trade at 3 to 4x EBITDA. A $15 million EBITDA plumbing company, doing the exact same work in the same markets, might command 10 to 12x. The buy-and-build operator buys cheap, integrates, and exits at the multiple that scale commands. That gap between entry and exit multiples is called multiple arbitrage, and it is the primary return driver in buy-and-build strategies.

The same data is reported with several overlapping terms, which is the most common source of confusion when comparing numbers across providers. The table below separates them, because a sentence about platform multiples and a sentence about add-on multiples describe very different things.

Buy-and-build, roll-up, and consolidation play are used interchangeably across the sources in this article. Platform and add-on describe positions within a single roll-up, not separate strategies.

Add-On Deal Volume: How Buy-and-Build Took Over PE

Add-on transactions represented 75.9% of all U.S. buyout activity in Q2 2025, up 250 basis points from the prior quarter, 150 basis points year over year, and 340 basis points above the five-year average of 72.5%.¹ That dominance is the endpoint of a two-decade climb, but the historical readings below are a cross-provider comparison rather than one continuous dataset.

Sources: BCG/HHL Leipzig (2000 to 2012),² Bain (2022),³ PitchBook via Cherry Bekaert (2025).¹ This is a mixed-provider comparison, not a single-source time series; the 2000 and 2012 readings come from BCG/HHL, while the Q2 2025 reading is U.S. buyout data from PitchBook via Cherry Bekaert.

The absolute volume runs near 5,000 deals per year. PitchBook counted 4,950 U.S. smaller bolt-on acquisitions in 2024 and 4,509 in 2025.⁴

The intensity is also increasing within individual deals. Close to 50% of all global add-on deals now represent at least the fourth acquisition by a single platform company, up from 30% in 2019 and 21% in 2003. Serial buy-and-build is the norm.⁶

Europe runs the same playbook at lower intensity. Over 2019 to 2024, 55% of Nordic PE-backed companies carried out add-on acquisitions (averaging 4.7 per asset), compared to 53% in France, 48% in the UK and Ireland, 41% in the DACH region, and 35% in CEE. The all-Europe average is 48% of assets pursuing add-ons with 3.1 add-ons per asset.⁷

Buy-and-Build Returns: IRR by Deal Configuration

The most granular public study on buy-and-build returns comes from BCG and HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management. The return sample includes 121 deals exited between 1998 and 2012, drawn mostly from Europe and with no U.S. companies in the final return sample.² Buy-and-build deals generated an average IRR of 31.6%, compared with 23.1% for standalone deals. Multiple expansion contributed 15.3 percentage points to buy-and-build IRR versus 7.5 points for standalone deals, which is why entry multiple discipline matters so much in this strategy.

Source: BCG and HHL Leipzig, “The Power of Buy and Build,” mostly European deals exited 1998 to 2012, with 121 deals in the return sample.²

In that sample, more add-ons did not mean better returns. Complexity can erode the acquisition math when integration falls behind deal pace.

One caveat on the figures above: the data is old, mostly European, and based on 121 deals with return data. It remains the most granular buy-and-build return analysis available publicly, which is why it still gets cited, but it should be read as a structural pattern rather than a current return expectation.

Revenue growth scales with add-on activity

In PwC/Gainpro European data, PE-backed businesses with more than 5 add-on acquisitions achieved a 20.4% median five-year revenue CAGR, compared with 7.6% for companies with no add-ons.⁷

Source: PwC, European PE-backed companies, 2019 to 2024.⁷

Hold Charts 2 and 3 together and the picture sharpens. Heavy acquirers grow revenue fastest, but the more-than-2-add-on cohort in the BCG/HHL return sample earned the lowest IRRs. Top-line growth through acquisition only pays when integration keeps pace, and the two charts measure different things on purpose: revenue is the prize, IRR is whether the prize was worth the price and the effort.

Specialist funds outperform generalists

Specialist buyout funds (2010 to 2022 vintages) generated pooled IRRs of 17% versus 13% for generalists, with lower loss ratios (9% versus 12%). Specialists derived 4x more equity value from EBITDA margin expansion (43% of returns versus 10%) and relied far less on multiple expansion (5% of returns versus 35% for generalists).⁸

PE-backed middle market companies also grew employment at 9.0% year over year from July 2024 to July 2025, compared with 1.2% for the overall U.S. economy.⁹

Multiple Arbitrage: The Mechanics and the Math

Smaller companies trade at lower valuation multiples because they carry more key-person risk and attract fewer buyers at exit. Larger companies trade at higher multiples because institutional buyers compete aggressively for scale. The gap between these two tiers is the arbitrage.

The median EBITDA multiple for buyouts below $100M was 6.4x in 2022, versus 16.9x for mega-deals above $5B, a 10.5-turn gap.¹⁰

A Yale School of Management paper on entry multiples quantified the sensitivity. At a 5x entry with a 7x exit over five years (3% growth), the model produces 19% IRR and 2.2x MOIC. At 7x entry with the same exit, returns collapse to 10% IRR and 1.5x MOIC.¹¹ Entry price discipline matters more than almost anything else a buyer controls.

Why the Lower Middle Market Is Where the Returns Concentrate

In the lower middle market, buy-and-build accounted for over 80% of all deals in 2024, according to PitchBook data reported by Cherry Bekaert.¹² In that view, four out of five lower middle market PE deals were tied to add-on activity.

Academic work points the same direction. Gregory Brown and Lu Yi found that smaller deals generate an average MOIC of 3.88x versus 2.50x for large deals, a 55% premium.¹³ Cambridge Associates data on roughly 1,700 realized U.S. buyout companies (2000 to 2020) shows small-cap deals averaging 2.8x MOIC versus 2.4x for large-cap, with nearly 75% of the strongest revenue growers being small-cap at acquisition.¹⁴

The supply side is the other half of the story. The National Center for the Middle Market cites an American Investment Council estimate that roughly 15,000 middle market companies, about 7.5% of the segment, have received PE investment.⁹ Roughly 75% of U.S. private companies are expected to transition ownership over the next decade, with an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 lower middle market owners pursuing exits annually through 2035.¹⁵

For the full data set on the segment itself, including entry multiples, leverage, fund performance, and exit trends, see our lower middle market private equity statistics guide.

Buy-and-Build Statistics by Industry

Buy-and-build activity tends to concentrate where fragmentation is high, local operators are numerous, and revenue is recurring or repeatable. Insurance brokerage, healthcare, home services, car washes, waste, veterinary services, and pest control all show versions of that pattern.

Insurance brokerage: from 12% PE participation to 70%

PE involvement in insurance brokerage deals grew from 12% in 2008 to roughly 70% of all transactions by 2017 to 2022. The U.S. has an estimated 30,000 brokerage and insurance services businesses.¹⁶ Platform brokerage multiples reached 12 to 14x adjusted EBITDA by 2024, while bolt-on multiples rose from 6 to 7x to 8 to 9x.¹⁷

AssuredPartners shows how far the playbook can run. GTCR built the platform from scratch in 2011, completed 112 acquisitions in four years, and sold to Apax Partners in 2015 for approximately $1.7 billion. Apax completed 124 more acquisitions, doubled revenue and EBITDA, and sold back to a GTCR-led consortium in 2019 for $5.1 billion.¹⁸

The latest chapter: Arthur J. Gallagher acquired AssuredPartners for $13.45 billion in December 2024, described in the transaction announcement as the largest-ever sale of a U.S. insurance broker. Over its 13-year life, AssuredPartners completed more than 500 acquisitions.¹⁹

Hub International grew from a $4.4 billion acquisition by Hellman & Friedman in 2013 to a $29 billion valuation in May 2025, roughly 6.6x enterprise value growth over 12 years.²⁰

Healthcare: deal count tripled in a decade

U.S. PE deals in healthcare rose from 443 in 2012 to 1,318 in 2022, with total deal values rising from approximately $45 billion to $112 billion. PE physician practice acquisitions rose sixfold, from 75 deals in 2012 to 484 in 2021.²¹

Shore Capital Partners, targeting companies with $1M to $10M in EBITDA, has completed more than 1,300 deals. Across 14 realized exits as of mid-2023, Shore achieved a median sale return of 5.5x gross MOIC and average gross IRR of 77%, with a worst exit of 3.0x.²²

Single dental offices trade at roughly 5 to 8x EBITDA, while large dental support organizations command 9 to 11x or more.²³

Home services: a $657 billion market, 80% founder-led

The U.S. home services market is valued at approximately $657 billion, with more than 300,000 small to medium businesses and over 80% remaining founder-led.²⁴

Alpine Investors built Apex Service Partners from scratch in 2019, starting with seed acquisitions of Best Home Services and Frank Gay Services. By October 2023, four years in, Alpine closed a $3.4 billion single-asset continuation fund. The platform spans more than 107 brands, $2.2 billion in trailing revenue, and more than 8,000 employees across 43 states.²⁵

Technicians at PE-acquired HVAC businesses received a 20% average pay bump in the first year post-acquisition.²⁶

Neighborly (formerly Dwyer Group) passed through five successive PE sponsors from 2010 to 2021. TZP Capital acquired it in 2010 for approximately $150 million. Riverside re-acquired it in 2014, completed 11 add-ons, grew EBITDA 125%, and tripled enterprise value in 3.5 years. Harvest Partners bought it in 2018, then sold to KKR in July 2021 with 28 brands and $3 billion in system-wide sales.²⁷

Car wash, waste, veterinary, pest control

In car washes, only 2 of the top 10 chains were PE-backed in 2016. By 2023, all 10 were. Average sites among the top 10 grew from 51 to 213, yet 75% of car wash companies still operate a single location.²⁸

Leonard Green acquired Mister Car Wash in 2014 for approximately $520 million with roughly 190 locations, grew it to more than 550 locations, and took it public in June 2021. After a wave of sector expansion and public-market pressure, the stock fell sharply from its peak, and Leonard Green took the company private again in February 2026 at $3.1 billion, or 9x LTM EBITDA.²⁹

In waste services, financial buyers accounted for 55.1% of total deal flow by count as of 2025.³⁰ One common sector playbook, in hypothetical form: acquire a regional hauler, complete several smaller bolt-ons, lift margins through route density, and exit the combined platform at a premium to the blended entry multiple.

Latticework Capital built American Veterinary Group from a single South Florida clinic in 2015, completed more than 40 acquisitions to reach approximately 50 practices and 150 veterinarians across the Southeast, and sold at a confirmed 6.5x MOIC and 82% IRR.³¹

EQT acquired Anticimex (Swedish pest control) in 2012 for approximately $400 million, executed more than 240 acquisitions, expanded from 6 countries to 20, grew employees from 1,300 to 7,400, and achieved 19% revenue CAGR and 29% EBITA CAGR. EQT sold to its own longer-duration fund in 2021 at $7.2 billion and called it the best-ever capital gain for a single EQT fund.³²

Named Buy-and-Build Deals with Public Return Disclosures

Specific return figures for PE deals are difficult to verify. The table below is intentionally narrow: it includes only public return metrics that can be tied to a named disclosure or case source. Other named transactions in this guide are useful consolidation examples, but they are not presented as verified-return rows unless the return data is public.

Gross MOIC and gross IRR figures are not directly comparable with net investor-level returns after fees, expenses, taxes, allocation limits, or vehicle-level economics. Estimated returns derived only from entry and exit valuations were removed from this table.

Note that private equity holding periods may be extending in recent years, which lengthens the time between the entry math above and any realized exit.

Public company analogs are useful, but not comparable

Public serial acquirers such as TransDigm and Constellation Software show why acquisition discipline can compound over long periods, but their shareholder returns are not private equity deal-level IRRs. Public-market liquidity, indefinite holding periods, corporate capital allocation, and share-price re-rating make them useful analogs for operating discipline, not benchmarks for private buy-and-build returns.^{33, 34}

Failure Rates: What Kills Buy-and-Build Deals

An often-cited corporate-strategy warning says more than two-thirds of roll-ups fail to create any value for investors, according to Paul Carroll and Chunka Mui in Harvard Business Review’s “Seven Ways to Fail Big.”³⁵ The figure is widely cited but dated (2008), and it draws on general corporate strategy rather than PE-specific deal data.

A more recent practitioner estimate: 60% of PE-backed roll-ups fail to meet projected synergies within two years of acquisition, per Andy Silverman of Parkway Capital, drawing on roughly 250 independent sponsor deals reviewed per year.³⁶

Academic research complicates the return picture too. Acharya, Hahn, and Kehoe found that organic PE deals produce an average IRR of 48.5% with 15.8% alpha, while acquisitive deals produce 28.6% IRR with only 3.4% alpha, on a sample of 66 large UK deals.³⁷ Organic deals also exited faster, 3.3 years versus 4.5. Much of the raw buy-and-build return in that sample traced to debt and sector exposure rather than operational improvement.

The BCG data says the same thing from the other direction. Deals with more than 2 add-ons returned 19.9% IRR, below standalone buyouts at 23.1%.² What binds is integration capacity, not deal sourcing.

Regulation is the newer risk. More than 50% of PE add-on acquisitions fall below the HSR Act reporting threshold, meaning many serial acquisitions receive no pre-merger antitrust review,³⁸ and in May 2024 the FTC and DOJ jointly launched a public inquiry into serial acquisitions and roll-up strategies.³⁹

How Add-On Acquisitions Are Financed

In GF Data’s reported $1M to $10M TEV sample through the first three quarters of 2024, the average capital stack across all deals, a cohort heavily weighted toward add-ons, was 66.7% senior debt, 19.6% equity, and 13.7% subordinated debt. For platform-only acquisitions in the same size range, the mix flipped to 31.8% senior debt, 61.4% equity, and 6.8% subordinated debt.⁴⁰

Average pro forma debt for U.S. LBOs ran 5.2x EBITDA in 2024, up from a 13-year low of 4.9x in 2023, and 84% of 2024 LBOs were funded with private credit, up from 65% in 2021.⁴¹

One counterintuitive data point from the first three quarters of 2024: add-ons with enterprise value between $1M and $10M averaged 5.7x EBITDA, while platforms in the same size range averaged 4.5x. Add-ons commanded a premium over platforms, and 75% of reported $1M to $10M deals were add-ons. Demand for bolt-on targets at the micro-deal level is bidding away part of the arbitrage.⁴⁰

How Investors Access Buy-and-Build Deals

Most of the data above describes institutional PE. For individual accredited investors, the practical access points to buy-and-build strategies are narrower, and each carries different tradeoffs around diversification, selection, liquidity, and diligence burden.

Fund commitments. A blind-pool lower middle market fund gives diversified exposure across a portfolio of companies, many running buy-and-build playbooks. The tradeoff is that capital is committed before the investor sees the future deals, liquidity is limited, and manager selection carries the outcome.

Deal-by-deal co-investment. The alternative is selecting individual transactions. Many lower middle market buy-and-build platforms are led by independent sponsors, who source and close one acquisition at a time and raise the equity for each deal rather than drawing on a committed fund. This gives the investor more visibility into the specific platform, sponsor, and add-on plan, but less automatic diversification than a fund commitment.

CapitalPad is a private equity co-investment group that gives accredited investors deal-by-deal access to lower middle market private equity. CapitalPad lets accredited investors invest in individual buy-and-build and roll-up platforms rather than committing to a blind-pool fund. Participating investors generally invest through a deal-specific SPV.

Deal-by-deal selection matters for buy-and-build investing specifically because the dispersion is wide. The BCG/HHL data above shows deals with 1 to 2 add-ons outperforming deals with more than 2 add-ons by more than 15 IRR points, and sub-$70M buy-and-build platforms outperforming large buy-and-build platforms by roughly 40 points. An investor reviewing individual deals can weigh those factors, platform size, add-on pacing, sector focus, and sponsor experience, before committing. A blind-pool LP commits before any of the underlying deals exist.

Buy-and-build theses can fail in integration even when the entry math looks clean, and the failure data on this page applies to individual deals as much as to institutional portfolios.

What This Data Tells Investors

By count, the strategy is the market now. At 75.9% of U.S. buyout activity in Q2 2025 and more than 80% of lower middle market activity in 2024, buy-and-build is no longer a differentiated label by itself. The differentiation has moved inside the strategy, to platform size, add-on pacing, sector focus, and integration capacity.

Returns concentrate in restraint. The strongest pattern in the public return data is not acquisition volume for its own sake. In the BCG/HHL sample, small platforms beat large ones, 1 to 2 add-ons beat more than 2 add-ons, sector-deepening beat diversifying, and experienced operators beat less experienced ones. The table of public return disclosures is deliberately narrow because true deal-level return data is rarely public.

Integration capacity is the binding constraint. The clearest signal across the data is that the heaviest-acquirer cohort in the BCG/HHL return sample earned lower IRRs than standalone buyouts, while McKinsey’s specialist-fund data points to margin expansion rather than multiple expansion as a higher-quality source of value. Buy-and-build deals fail in the work after close: systems, people, pricing, controls, and customer retention across an expanding base.

The arbitrage is narrower at the smallest end of the reported market. In GF Data’s first-three-quarters 2024 sample, $1M to $10M add-ons priced above same-size platforms, while regulatory attention on serial acquisitions is rising. The entry-multiple gap that powers the model still exists, but it is not free money. Operators who win from here will likely need integration and organic growth on top of the arbitrage, not the arbitrage alone.

Buy-and-Build Strategy FAQ

What is a private equity buy-and-build (roll-up) strategy?

A private equity buy-and-build strategy, also known as a roll-up, is the practice of acquiring multiple smaller companies in the same industry and combining them into one larger platform company that can exit at a higher valuation multiple than its parts were bought for. The acquirer buys an initial platform, then completes a series of add-on acquisitions to grow revenue and EBITDA. By count, it is now the dominant structure in U.S. buyouts, with add-ons at 75.9% of buyout activity in Q2 2025.¹

What percentage of private equity deals are add-ons?

Add-on acquisitions reached 75.9% of U.S. buyout activity in Q2 2025. A separate BCG/HHL dataset shows add-on share rising from roughly 20% of PE deals in 2000 to 53% in 2012.^{1, 2} In the lower middle market the share is even higher, above 80% of deals in 2024.¹² Add-ons dominate deal count but only about 11% of deal value, because they are overwhelmingly small transactions bolted onto larger platforms.⁵

Do buy-and-build deals generate higher returns than standalone buyouts?

On average, yes, but the premium is uneven. The most granular public study found buy-and-build deals earned 31.6% average IRR versus 23.1% for standalone buyouts, on European deals exited 1998 to 2012.² That average masks a wide spread: deals with 1 to 2 add-ons earned 35.5%, while deals with more than 2 add-ons earned 19.9%, below standalone buyouts. The configuration matters more than the label.

Why do buy-and-build platforms with more add-ons tend to underperform?

Each additional add-on adds integration complexity, and integration is where most platforms break. In the BCG dataset, deals with more than 2 add-ons earned 19.9% IRR, below standalone buyouts.² A separate practitioner estimate puts the share of roll-ups missing projected synergies within two years at about 60%.³⁶ Heavy acquirers grow revenue fastest, but top-line growth only pays when systems, people, and pricing keep pace.

What is multiple arbitrage in a buy-and-build strategy?

Multiple arbitrage is the gap between the low valuation multiple paid for small companies and the higher multiple a larger combined company can command at exit. The median EBITDA multiple for buyouts below $100M was 6.4x in 2022, versus 16.9x for mega-deals above $5B, a 10.5-turn gap.¹⁰ A buy-and-build operator buys small at a low multiple, integrates, and exits the larger entity at a higher one, with debt amplifying the equity return.

What is the failure rate of buy-and-build strategies?

Estimates vary by source and definition. An often-cited Harvard Business Review figure puts the share of roll-ups that create no investor value above two-thirds, though it dates to 2008 and draws on general corporate strategy.³⁵ A more recent practitioner estimate finds roughly 60% of PE-backed roll-ups miss projected synergies within two years.³⁶ The common causes are overpaying at entry, overleveraging the platform, and underinvesting in integration.

Which industries have the most buy-and-build activity?

Buy-and-build strategies tend to concentrate in fragmented industries with recurring or repeat revenue. Insurance brokerage went from 12% PE participation in 2008 to roughly 70% of transactions by 2017 to 2022.¹⁶ Healthcare PE deal count tripled from 443 in 2012 to 1,318 in 2022.²¹ Home services is a roughly $657 billion market that remains over 80% founder-led.²⁴ Car washes, waste, veterinary practices, and pest control show similar consolidation patterns.

How can an individual investor access buy-and-build deals?

The two main routes are blind-pool fund commitments and deal-by-deal co-investment. A lower middle market fund offers diversification but usually requires a large commitment, locks up capital for years, and gives the investor no say over individual deals. Deal-by-deal co-investment lets an accredited investor review and select individual transactions, often led by independent sponsors. CapitalPad is a private equity co-investment group that gives accredited investors a way to review individual lower middle market private equity deals rather than committing to a blind-pool fund.

How are add-on acquisitions financed?

Add-ons are often financed through the platform’s existing credit facility, so they can require less incremental equity than platform acquisitions. In GF Data’s $1M to $10M TEV sample through the first three quarters of 2024, the average capital stack across all deals was 66.7% senior debt, 19.6% equity, and 13.7% subordinated debt, while platform-only deals in the same size band used 31.8% senior debt and 61.4% equity.⁴⁰ Across U.S. LBOs, average pro forma debt ran 5.2x EBITDA in 2024, with 84% funded by private credit.⁴¹

Methodology and Caveats

CapitalPad Research compiled the buy-and-build and roll-up data above from data vendors, consulting and bank research, academic studies, regulatory filings, sponsor disclosures, and CapitalPad’s public materials where the article discusses investor access. Because providers measure different universes, the article separates add-on share of count from add-on share of value, average from median, and public return disclosures from unsourced return estimates, rather than presenting them as one continuous series.

Count and value move in opposite directions. Add-ons are about 76% of deal count but only 11% of deal value, because they are mostly small transactions folded into larger platforms.^{1, 5} Any chart or claim that conflates the two will misstate how much capital the strategy actually represents.

The deepest return study is old and European. The BCG and HHL Leipzig configuration data covers 121 deals with full return data exited between 1998 and 2012, mostly in Europe and with no U.S. companies in the final return sample.² It remains the most granular public breakdown of returns by add-on count and platform size, which is why it is cited throughout, but it is a structural baseline rather than a 2025 reading. Where this page uses it, the configuration pattern is the point, not the precise IRR level.

Geography and universe differ by provider. Current add-on share is U.S. buyout activity (PitchBook via Cherry Bekaert); the configuration return and revenue-growth studies are mostly European (BCG/HHL, PwC/Gainpro); sector statistics mix U.S. and global sources. The same year can produce different readings across providers because they count different fund types, deal sizes, and regions. Each figure on this page states its source and period.

Many figures are disclosed-value subsets or estimates. Deal-level returns are rarely fully disclosed. The named-deals table includes public return disclosures only, and estimated return rows derived from disclosed valuations were removed. Sector multiple ranges are working ranges from advisory sources, not measured population statistics. The hypothetical examples are labeled as hypothetical and built from realistic inputs.

None of these caveats changes the central finding, which the data supports from several independent directions: by count, buy-and-build is now the default structure in U.S. buyouts, its historical returns are highly dispersed, and that dispersion tracks deal size, add-on pacing, sector focus, and integration rather than the strategy label alone.

Cite this research: CapitalPad Research, “Private Equity Buy-and-Build Research Report.” Reviewed June 2026. https://capitalpad.com/private-equity-roll-up-statistics/

Sources & References

1. PitchBook Q2 2025 U.S. PE data, reported by Cherry Bekaert, “Private Equity Mid-Year Trends in 2025.” Source
2. BCG & HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management, “The Power of Buy and Build” (2016). Source (PDF)
3. Bain & Company, “Private Equity Outlook,” Global Private Equity Report 2023. Source
4. PitchBook bolt-on data, reported by NEPC, Quarterly Private Markets Report Q4 2025. Source
5. Bain & Company, Global Private Equity Report 2025. Source
6. Bain & Company, “Building a Stronger Buy-and-Build,” Global Private Equity Report 2024. Source
7. PwC, “Unlocking Value with Buy-and-Build Strategies in the DACH Private Equity Market” (March 2025). Gainpro data. Source (PDF)
8. McKinsey & Company, “Private Equity: Clearer View, Tougher Terrain,” Global Private Markets Report 2026. Source
9. National Center for the Middle Market, “Private Equity in the Middle Market” 2025 Special Report; employment effects per Davis, Haltiwanger et al., American Economic Review (2014). Source (PDF)
10. PitchBook, “Middle-Market Buyout Funds Dominate Fundraising” (Q1 2023). Source
11. Yale School of Management, “On the Nature of Entry Multiples” (2025). Source (PDF)
12. PitchBook data, reported by Cherry Bekaert, “Private Equity Report: 2024 Trends & 2025 Outlook.” Source
13. Gregory W. Brown and Lu Yi, “How Do Private Equity Firms Create Value?” Source (PDF)
14. Cambridge Associates, “US Private Equity Looking Back, Looking Forward: Ten Years of CA Operating Metrics” (2024). Source
15. Ninepoint Partners, “A Strategic Case for Investing in U.S. Lower Middle Market Private Equity” (2024). Source (PDF)
16. KPMG, “Insurance Brokerage M&A” (2018). Source (PDF)
17. MarshBerry, “How Much Higher Can Insurance M&A Valuations Rise?” (2024). Source
18. Apax Partners, “Apax VIII Sells Its Stake in AssuredPartners to GTCR” (2019). Source
19. GTCR, “GTCR Announces Sale of AssuredPartners to Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. for $13.45 Billion” (December 2024). Source
20. Hub International, “$29 Billion Valuation” press release (May 2025). Source
21. OECD, “Serial Acquisitions and Industry Roll-ups,” DAF/COMP(2023)13. Source (PDF)
22. Harvard Business School, “Shore Capital Partners: The Next Ten Years,” Case 424-036 (2024). Source
23. FOCUS Investment Banking, “Dental Practice EBITDA Multiples” (2026). Source
24. Philip A. Saunders Advisory, “The Rising Tide of Private Equity Investment in Home Services” (2024). Source
25. Alpine Investors / Business Wire, “$3.4 Billion Single-Asset Continuation Transaction” (October 2023). Source
26. Wall Street Journal reporting (October 2024), via American Investment Council. Source
27. Franchise Times, “KKR Makes Winning Bid for Home-Services Franchisor Neighborly” (2021). Source
28. CarWash.com, “Where Is Private Equity Heading?” (2023). Source
29. PitchBook, “Mister Car Wash Is Once More in Private Hands” (2026); Yahoo Finance (2026). Source
30. Capstone Partners, “Waste & Recycling M&A Update” (August 2025). Source
31. Latticework Capital Management, “Latticework Sells American Veterinary Group.” Source
32. EQT Group, “How EQT Took Anticimex from Nordic Player to Global Pest Control Giant”; PE Insights (2021). Source
33. Bristlemoon Research, “TransDigm: The King of Aerospace Private Equity”; The Investor’s Podcast intrinsic value analysis. Source
34. Cantech Letter, “Constellation Software Has Delivered a 36,000% Return Since Its IPO” (2025). Source
35. Paul Carroll and Chunka Mui, “Seven Ways to Fail Big,” Harvard Business Review (September 2008). Source
36. Opus Connect, “Roll-Up or Roll-Over? A Seasoned Leader’s Insights” (2024). Source
37. Acharya, Hahn & Kehoe, “Corporate Governance and Value Creation: Evidence from Private Equity,” Review of Finance (2013). Source
38. American Economic Liberties Project, “The Roll-Up Economy” (December 2022). PitchBook-derived data. Source (PDF)
39. Federal Trade Commission, “FTC and DOJ Seek Info on Serial Acquisitions, Roll-Up Strategies” (May 2024). Source
40. GF Data, reported by Middle Market Growth (ACG), “Small Deals Big Factor in Middle-Market Private Equity in 2024” (January 2025). Source
41. LCD (Leveraged Commentary & Data), reported by PitchBook, “LBO Update” (2025). Source
42. Onex Corporation Q2 FY2017 earnings call transcript, discussing the sale of USI Insurance Services. Source