The Next Wave: Platform Growth, Silver Tsunami and Extended Closing Times
GF Data’s core mission is to illuminate middle-market deal trends so sellers, sponsors and advisors can act with clarity. In the recent webinar recap by Middle Market Growth, several themes emerged that point to how 2025 could unfold for private-equity-sponsored deals in the $10 million to $500 million total enterprise value (TEV) range.
Key Insights
- GF Data tracked 379 transactions in 2024, the highest since 2021’s 501 deals — yet market sentiment among deal-makers was that “nothing happened.”
- The share of add-on investments surged: in the first two quarters of 2024, 44% of deals were add-ons, compared with 35% in 2023.
- For the full year 2024, GF Data observed an average multiple of 7.1× trailing-12-month (TTM) EBITDA for companies with TEV between $10 million and $500 million — slightly down from 7.2× in 2023, yet above the long-run historical average of 6.8×.
- The so-called “Silver Tsunami” — a growing volume of founder-led companies now seriously considering sale due to demographic and generational transition — is expected to be a key driver of deal flow in 2025.
- Closing timelines have lengthened materially: from the fast-tracked deals of 2021 to 2024’s deals now undergoing “unbelievable” levels of due diligence.
What This Means
- For business owners, the “Silver Tsunami” points to a growing pipeline of founder-led companies preparing for a sale, while extended closing cycles and heightened diligence underscore the need for thorough preparation.
- For private-equity sponsors, the rise in add-on activity highlights the increasing importance of scale-and-buy strategies over standalone platform creation in the 2025 landscape.
- For M&A advisors and intermediaries, sustained valuation levels alongside intensified diligence and longer timelines signal the importance of setting clear expectations around process, structure and timing.
These trends as a signal that the middle-market is shifting into a new phase: platform-driven growth, demographic-driven deal supply, and execution complexity that rewards readiness. Though deal flow in 2024 was high in count, the sentiment gap shows that structure and quality still matter more than volume alone.