What A Buyer Wants: Series Launch
Home Our Services Transaction Services Lead Advisory Debt Advisory Virtual CFO & CFO Assist About Us Our Team Office Location Success Stories Blog Contact Us Home Our Services Transaction Services Lead Advisory Debt Advisory Virtual CFO & CFO Assist About Us Our Team Office Location Success Stories Blog Contact Us Published by Evolution Capital | IT/Telco M&A Specialists | 25 Years | 250+ Transactions Evolution Capital IT / Telco M&A · 25 Years · 250+ Deals M&A Survival Guide · Series Introduction What A Buyer Wants An M&A Survival Guide from the Trenches 25 Years in the market 250+ Transactions closed £250M Deal value advised “There is a moment in almost every IT services sale process where the seller says something that reveals how different their world is from the buyer’s.” Evolution Capital · From the trenches £2–5M Typical value gap between prepared and unprepared sellers 10 Articles covering what actually determines deal outcomes 100% IT & Telco focus no generalist M&A noise The information gap The asymmetry that costs sellers millions The IT services M&A market has matured dramatically. Buyers today PE funds running buy-and-build strategies, trade acquirers building scale, family offices deploying capital into managed services have often done this dozens or hundreds of times. They have detailed benchmarking data. They know what good looks like. They have seen every optimistic forecast, every balance sheet manoeuvre, every data room assembled in a hurry. Most sellers, even experienced entrepreneurs, have sold a business once. Maybe twice in a career. That gap costs sellers money. In our experience, the difference between a well-prepared seller and an unprepared one on a comparable business is typically £2 to £5 million on a £10 to £15 million transaction not because the underlying business is different, but because the preparation is. Why this series exists We keep seeing the same patterns. The same issues surfacing at the same stage of the same process. The same preparation gaps costing sellers the same kinds of money. This is our attempt to close that gap 25 years of pattern recognition, put into words. Who this is for Written for both sides of the table For Sellers IT services founders preparing to sell their business in the next 12–36 months. This series gives you the specific, practical preparation that buyers expect and that most sellers don’t have until it’s too late. For Buyers PE funds, trade acquirers, and family offices active in IT and Telco M&A. Whether experienced in the space or entering it for the first time, this series provides a grounding that generalist M&A knowledge doesn’t always deliver. What you’ll find here Not generic advice dressed in sector-specific language. Not theoretical frameworks applied to hypothetical businesses. Real situations, real numbers (anonymised), real consequences from 250+ transactions in this exact market. They cover revenue quality, cost structure, financial data, balance sheet mechanics, deal structure, management forecasts, and the hidden risks that surface when a buyer’s FDD team goes looking with fresh eyes. They are sometimes uncomfortably direct about the mistakes we see repeatedly and the money those mistakes cost. The Series Ten articles · Ten puns 01 Revenue QualityWhat buyers really mean when they ask how recurring your revenue is and why your answer probably needs work. 02 Cost StructureThe normalisation adjustments that inflate EBITDA on paper and what buyers do when they find them in diligence. 03 Financial DataWhy the quality and integrity of your management accounts matters more than the numbers themselves. 04 Balance Sheet MechanicsWorking capital pegs, completion accounts, and the cash that you thought was yours but isn’t. 05 Deal StructureEarnouts, deferred consideration, and the clauses sellers sign without reading until they bite. 06 Management ForecastsThe pipeline conversation every seller dreads and how to have it without losing credibility. 07–10 More to comeCustomer concentration, people & TUPE, hidden risk, and the emotional reality of a founder sale process. Evolution Capital · IT/Telco M&A Specialists EC Analytics · Virtual CFO / Corporate Finance / FDD Read the series ↗ The short version: Ten articles on what actually determines outcomes when selling an IT services business. Built from 250 transactions. Written by the people who write the exam sellers need to pass, and those who have guided them through it. Everyone knows the basics of supply and demand. More buyers than sellers, prices go up. More sellers than buyers, they come down. Simple enough in a commodity market. But in an M&A process, the dynamics are rather more personal. How do you create demand for your specific business? How do you know what a buyer actually wants, beyond the headline metrics? How do you present what you have built in a way that answers the questions buyers are really asking, rather than the ones you think they are asking? How do you know what a buyer wants? That question is the reason this series exists. And it turns out that after 25 years and over 250 transactions in IT and Telco M&A, we have a fairly detailed answer. There is a moment in almost every IT services sale process we have been involved in where the seller says something that reveals how different their world is from the buyer’s. Sometimes it is “buyers care about EBITDA, not the balance sheet.” Sometimes it is “our pipeline is £3 million, basically all of it is going to close.” Sometimes it is “that customer dispute was three years ago, it’s ancient history.” And sometimes, most painfully, it is “I had no idea any of this was going to come up.” We are a small team. Corporate finance advisers and financial due diligence specialists, working exclusively in IT and Telco for the past 25 years. We have advised on over 250 transactions in the lower mid-market, the part of the landscape where founder-led IT businesses meet professional buyers for the first time. We have sat on both sides of the table: running sale processes for sellers, conducting financial diligence for buyers, and advising on everything in between. The trenches part of this title is not just a turn