Welcome to the first issue.
Every two weeks this letter does one thing: it tracks what the world’s serial acquirers actually bought, what they actually paid, and what they did with the cash they didn’t spend. Sourced, linked, and when a number isn’t public we say “undisclosed” instead of inventing a multiple.
I run a decentralised software group modelled on Constellation. I read this letter because I need it. That’s the whole editorial policy.
The Ledger
14 announced acquisitions, 20 July – 2 September 2026
22 Jul · NL — Indutrade (Process, Energy & Water) → Controlin BV
Energy and power management plus industrial automation components for marine, infrastructure and utilities. ~EUR 12m revenue, 26 staff. Price undisclosed. Indutrade’s tenth deal of 2026.
27 Jul · US — TransDigm → Prince & Izant
Brazing alloys and specialty metal components for aerospace and defence. ~USD 360m expected CY26 revenue. ~USD 1.066bn cash, roughly 3.0× revenue. Pending US regulatory approval.
31 Jul · DE — Lifco (Demolition & Tools) → Mozelt GmbH
Generators and load-lifting magnet systems. EUR 2.6m revenue, 10 staff. Price undisclosed.
31 Jul · FR — Lifco (Environmental Technology) → ErgoPack France
Its own French distributor of ergonomic strapping systems. EUR 4.8m revenue, 9 staff. Price undisclosed.
4 Aug · IT — Röko (B2C) → CyTech / Elastic Interface
Global market leader in chamois pads for cycling apparel. EUR 27m revenue, ~190 staff. Bought from PM & Partners. Price undisclosed.
6 Aug · UK — Sdiptech (Supply Chain & Transportation) → A.U.T. Wheels and Castors
Specialist wheels and castors for logistics, industry and waste recycling. ~GBP 7m revenue. Price undisclosed.
14 Aug · NO — Lagercrantz (Control) → Skandinavisk Radoninvest
Radon measurement and mitigation, bolted under its Radonova subsidiary. ~NOK 17m revenue. Price undisclosed.
17 Aug · UK — Volaris (Constellation) → Alertacall
Tenant-engagement technology for social housing and retirement living; devices in 25,000+ homes, 60+ providers. Terms undisclosed. Founder stays through succession.
17 Aug · UK — Lagercrantz (Control) → bf1systems, 88%
Measurement systems for harsh environments — motorsport, defence, industry. ~GBP 18m revenue. Management retains 12%. Price undisclosed.
20 Aug · CA — Volaris (Security Portfolio) → LoginRadius
Cloud customer identity and access management — MFA, SSO, passwordless. Terms undisclosed.
24 Aug · BR — Volaris (Ricardo Pinho Group, Latam) → L5 Networks
Cloud corporate communications; first Cloud PBX-as-SaaS in Brazil. 1,000+ active customers. Terms undisclosed.
28 Aug · UK — Addtech (Addtech Industry) → RTL Materials
Composite structures, including deployable telescopic masts. ~GBP 11m revenue. Price undisclosed.
31 Aug · FR — Volaris (Southern Europe) → Biodiv-Wind
Bird and bat detection with automatic turbine shutdown for onshore wind. 700+ systems installed. Terms undisclosed.
1 Sep · UK — Sdiptech (Supply Chain & Transportation) → VALE Engineering, 91%
Equipment for road, public-space and sports-turf maintenance. ~GBP 5m revenue, 15 staff. Price undisclosed.
What the ledger says
One price in fourteen. Only TransDigm put a number on the table — and only because a USD 1.066bn cheque is material to a NYSE-listed balance sheet. Everyone else disclosed nothing. If you are building a valuation benchmark from public deal announcements, understand what you are working with: the disclosed set is a size-biased sample, not a market.
The median target is tiny. Of the nine deals outside TransDigm with a revenue figure, the median target does roughly EUR 8m of revenue (approximate FX, for comparison only). The compounding does not come from big swings. It comes from doing this fourteen times over six summer weeks, in the middle of the Nordic holidays.
Two of fourteen left the sellers in. Lagercrantz took 88% of bf1systems and left 12% with the managing director and BD director. Sdiptech took 91% of VALE. That retained sliver is a structure, not a rounding error: it keeps the operator paid on the next five years rather than on the closing date.
Volaris was four of the fourteen. No Harris, Jonas, Lumine, Vela or Perseus deal landed in this window — their July announcements fell just before it. And note LoginRadius: a horizontal CIAM product going into a Security Portfolio, not an industry vertical. Constellation has been quietly building horizontals for a while; this is another brick.
Nobody is buying growth. Everyone is buying obligation. Alertacall sells into a statutory duty on UK social landlords. Biodiv-Wind sells into wind-farm environmental permits. Radon mitigation sells into building regulations. VALE sells into municipal maintenance budgets. Prince & Izant sells spec-locked consumables into aerospace platforms. Regulation is the moat these buyers keep paying for.
Three deals worth your time
1. TransDigm / Prince & Izant — USD 1.066bn, ~3.0× revenue
The only deal in the window with a public price, and the purest expression of the model on the list: proprietary, spec-locked, consumable aerospace content bought out of PE (Industrial Growth Partners) at roughly 3× expected CY26 revenue, subject to US regulatory approval. No EBITDA multiple disclosed — which, for a business TransDigm wants, is itself informative.
Why it matters to you: this is the benchmark other people will quote back at you. It is also a reminder that the largest cheque in the window went to a business whose defensibility is a part number on a drawing, not a technology.
2. Lifco / ErgoPack France — buying back your own channel
Lifco has owned ErgoPack Deutschland since 2019. In July it bought ErgoPack’s French distributor: EUR 4.8m of revenue, nine people. This is not expansion. It is margin recapture — taking the distribution spread you were already paying, in a market you already understand, with a customer list you can already see.
Why it matters to you: the highest-IRR acquisition available to most groups is usually already inside the value chain they own. Before you screen a new vertical, screen your own distributors and resellers.
3. Lagercrantz / bf1systems — the 88% question
~GBP 18m of revenue, “strongly profitable”, motorsport and defence sensing. Lagercrantz took 88% and left 12% with two managers.
Why it matters to you: ask what the 12% actually buys. It buys a seller who cannot walk in month 13, a valuation argument deferred to a later put/call at a later multiple, and a decentralised group that does not have to install management it does not have. It also buys a minority shareholder in a subsidiary — with everything that implies for reporting, dividends and eventual exit mechanics. Lagercrantz does this repeatedly and on purpose. If you have never modelled it, model it.
Capital allocation watch
Constellation Software (11 Aug, Q2). USD 732m cash plus USD 160m deferred = USD 893m deployed in the quarter; USD 1,429m gross in H1, USD 1,273m net of cash acquired, with a further USD 818m already committed post-quarter. Free cash flow available to shareholders up 48% year on year to USD 1,078m in H1. Dividend held at USD 1.00 per share. No buyback, no dividend increase, no new operating group. The stated objective is unchanged: invest all of it in acquisitions that clear the hurdle rate. The uncomfortable arithmetic for everyone else — the fourteen deals above, added together, are almost certainly smaller than what Constellation did without issuing a single press release. Source
Topicus (5 Aug, Q2). EUR 40.2m of Q2 consideration, EUR 46.3m in H1. Modest by its own standards. Source
Bunzl (1 Sep, H1). Outlook raised, and a GBP 500m buyback. Two acquisitions completed in H1, with activity “expected to increase in H2”. A compounder that normally buys businesses is buying its own shares instead. Read that as a statement about the price of assets, not about Bunzl. Source
Halma (4 Aug). Sold NovaBone Products to Isto Biologics for USD 60m, having paid USD 97m in January 2020. A realised loss at one of the most admired serial acquirers in the UK — and worth more attention than most of the buying. The groups that compound are the ones that also prune, and that publish the round trip. Source
Balance sheets being loaded. Lifco issued SEK 750m of two-year unsecured paper at 3M STIBOR +45bp on 20 August after refreshing its MTN programme; Sdiptech is preparing a bond issue plus tender and early redemption; HEICO closed USD 1.2bn of senior notes just before the window. None of them raised that money to sit on it.
On the watchlist
Topicus / ReadyTech (ASX:RDY). The revised A$2.00 per share proposal from 1 June has not moved publicly since — no scheme implementation deed, no lapse. Still live, still unresolved.
Halma RNS, 2 September. An “Acquisition” announcement appears in Halma’s RNS history dated the day this issue closes, with no detail published yet. We will have it next issue.
Fasadgruppen (21 Aug). Eva Torberger appointed acting President and CEO. An acting CEO at a serial acquirer mid-programme is a deal-pace question, not just a governance one.
Volaris in Japan — unconfirmed, heard on LinkedIn. On 2 September a third party publicly congratulated Volaris on “the successful acquisition in Japan”. No target named, no release, nothing on the wires. The same day Volaris published its own note on the country: a six-person Tokyo M&A team under a VP of M&A who moved his family there, meeting companies almost daily, pointing at exchange-rule changes, corporate carve-outs and founder succession. Read the first as a lead and the second as the reason to expect more of them.
Method, and where this issue is blind
Window: announcements dated 20 July to 2 September 2026. Deals announced 1–19 July (Harris/TouchBistro, Lumine/Imagine and Synamedia, Teqnion, Volati, Instalco, Fasadgruppen/ProRakenne) fall outside it and will not reappear.
The ledger is the announced subset, not the deal count. Constellation’s own Q2 disclosure implies dozens of transactions that were never press-released. Lifco, Indutrade and Addtech announce only above materiality thresholds. Never read this list as “what the sector bought”.
August is the thinnest month in the Nordic calendar. Do not extrapolate the run rate.
Currency conversions are approximate and used only to make targets comparable.
One number circulating for CyTech — roughly USD 30.5m, via Dealroom — is not in Röko’s release, so it is not in our price column.
Jonas Software’s Delineate acquisition is dated only “July 2026” on Jonas’s own news page. We could not place it inside or outside the window, so we left it out.
This is the first issue to run a LinkedIn sweep alongside the newswires. A LinkedIn post is a lead, not a source. It enters the ledger only when a primary source confirms it; otherwise it sits on the watchlist, labelled unconfirmed, with no numbers attached. One such lead is in this issue.
Corrections run in the next issue, marked. Reply to this email if you have one.
Next issue: 16 September 2026.
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The Serial Acquirer is research and journalism — not investment advice, and not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. All figures are sourced and linked; undisclosed terms are labelled as undisclosed. Published by PW Business Consulting GmbH, Switzerland (UID CHE-114.549.793).