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Private Equity Add-on Search Guide

This is the Mergr help guide for how to isolate private equity backed companies with add-ons

Updated over 2 weeks ago

One Mergr search feature is the ability to identify and focus on current PE-backed companies that have been active acquirers.

We've labeled this search page PE Add-on Activity and it's designed to provide a three-level view into,

  1. The Private Equity Owner (or owners)

  2. The Platform Company (including when it was acquired, for how much, etc.)

  3. The Add-ons of the platform company

Sample searches that you can do include - 

  1. Identify platform companies of a specific PE investor, for example The Blackstone Group, that have had an acquisition.

  2. List all US-based, Small private equity firms with platform companies that have had an Add-on in the Aerospace sector.

How Does it Work?

As shown below, the search interface is divided into three sections - Search PE Acquirers, Search Platform Companies, and Search Platform Add-ons.

The left Search PE Acquirers section allows you to search by private equity ownership criteria. You can filter by Name, Size, and Location

The middle search section labeled Search Platform Companies allows you to filter results by platform companies. You can filter by Name, Sector, and Location.

The right search section labeled Search Platform Add-ons allows you to filter the results table by add-ons to platform companies. You can filter by Name, Sector, and Location.

The search fields correspond to similarly labeled columns in the search results table. These are labeled PE Owner, Platform Company, and Total Add-ons.

In one consolidated view, you can view 3 levels of ownership, PE Owner > Platform > Add-on, and search and filter your results based on any or all these levels.

Sample Search 1

  1. List all Platform Companies of The Blackstone Group that have acquired

In our first sample search above - identifying all the actively acquiring platform companies of The Blackstone Group, to accomplish this search, enter Blackstone Group in the PE Firm Names field.

Performing the above will deliver all Blackstone's platform portfolio companies with at least 1 add-on. The add-ons to are listed in the add-ons column and results are delivered by 'Add-on Acquisition Date - Most Recent First'.

As highlighted in the shown in the second row above, in one view - we see that The Blackstone Group acquired Team Health Holdings at the end of 2016 for $6.1B via a Take Private transaction.

Since that acquisition, Team Heath has acquired 1 new company.

However, prior to Blackstone's acquisition, Team Health had 35 prior acquisitions. These are segmented out and listed under 'Prior Add-on(s)' given they occurred before Blackstone.

Sample Search 2

2. Search all US-based, Small Private Equity Firms with platform companies that have acquired in the Aerospace sector.

To do this search,

A. Select Small in the PE Firm Size dropdown.
B. Select East US, Midwest US, South US, and West US in the HQ Region dropdown.
C. Select Aerospace in the Sector dropdown within the Search Platform Add-ons criteria block.

The list above shows all recently acquired add-ons in the Aerospace sector by small US-based private equity firms.

Sorting Your Results

By default, results are delivered by the 'Add-on Acquisition Date (Most Recent' first, however you can also sort your results by 'Total Add-ons' (high to low), and 'Total Add-ons (last 24 months)'. 

These last two sort options help identify the most acquisitive PE-backed companies and may be more useful in your searches.

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