Our Acquisition Criteria

Our
Acquisition Criteria

Acquisition Criteria

What New Mills is looking for

The firm pursues established, profitable UK businesses that meet or exceed the following criteria:

Established

20+ years of continuous trading — a business that has already proven it survives downturns

Healthy Profits

EBITDA of £0.75M+

Management In Place

An ambitious team with a positive culture and an ethical approach

Strong Cash Conversion

Recurring, contracted revenue that converts to cash

Recession-Proof

Demand that holds through the cycle, not with it

Limited Concentration

Customer concentration <25%; supplier concentration <40%

Asset-Backed

Tangible assets, ideally including owned premises

Motivated Seller

A genuine reason to sell — retirement being the most common

Location

Ideally within two hours of Edinburgh; willing to acquire UK-wide

The Thinking Behind Them

Why these criteria, and not others

01

Management in place is the linchpin

The firm runs as an investor-owner. A capable management team in place is therefore non-negotiable — it is what allows every other criterion to do its job.

02

Earnings that hold through a cycle

Recurring contracted revenue, a diverse customer base and a recession-proof model are what make forecast earnings believable rather than hopeful.

03

20+ years is a proxy for resilience

A business that has traded for two decades or more has already been tested by recessions, rate cycles and shocks. That history is evidence no financial model can substitute for.

04

Asset-backed works for the seller too

Owned premises and machinery are a significant advantage. The buyer controls the site the business operates from and the equipment it runs on — the two things hardest to replace and most damaging to lose.

A NOTE FOR BROKERS

The criteria above are all that is needed to start scoring deals. Where a business meets most but not all of them, bring it anyway — the shortfall is a structuring question, not an automatic no.

WHY OWNERS SELL TO US

A decision about a life’s work, not a process

Most of the businesses we buy have never been sold before. The owner has spent twenty or thirty years building something, employs people they know by name, and has watched a competitor get bought and hollowed out. They are not running a process — they are making a decision about what happens to their life’s work.

A name, not a recruitment plan

We are frequently the only bidder who can answer “who is actually going to run this on Monday?” with a name and a face.

Our own capital

We write our own equity checks and we close on the terms we opened with. No syndication risk, no fund timetable, no borrowed conviction.

No eleventh-hour renegotiation

We do not renegotiate on the eve of completion because a credit committee got nervous. The price we agree is the price we pay.