Buyer shortlist
The 25 acquirers most likely to buy a business like yours
Ranked from 11,330 recorded transactions: who has bought in your sector, who has bought at your size, how recently, and who is active in the sectors next to yours. The score is published below, and the first three buyers for your choices are free to see.
Your business
Comparable size: deals of $3m to $50m.
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The first three of your 25: Information Technology, $5m to $25m deal value
1,604 buyers on record in Information Technology and its adjacent sectors (Internet Software and Services, Software, Technology Hardware, Information Services), ranked by the score below. Archive as of 2026-10-14, 11,330 recorded transactions.
- Type:
- Strategic, based in Canada
- Deals:
- 6 in Information Technology, 21 adjacent, 18 at your size
- Recorded deal sizes:
- $2m to $138m
- Latest:
- 2025, 3Gtms (Software)
- Source:
- no filing link in the archive for these deals
Score: sector 35, size 25, recency 18, adjacent 10- Type:
- Strategic, based in Canada
- Deals:
- 4 in Information Technology, 1 adjacent, 4 at your size
- Recorded deal sizes:
- $7m to $50m
- Latest:
- 2025, eVerge
- Source:
- no filing link in the archive for these deals
Score: sector 28, size 17, recency 18, adjacent 2- Type:
- Strategic, based in Tennessee
- Deals:
- 3 in Information Technology, 6 adjacent, 6 at your size
- Recorded deal sizes:
- $2m to $88m
- Latest:
- 2023, eeds
- Source:
- no filing link in the archive for these deals
Score: sector 21, size 18, recency 14, adjacent 10
Buyers 4 to 25 are in the paid list, with the method and the as-of date.
Get all 25, ranked for your business
$149- Delivered immediately, on a private page that prints to PDF, and by email
- Every buyer's deals in your sector, deal sizes, latest acquisition and filing link where there is one
- Credited against the advisory fee if you later engage us
How the score works
Every point is a count from the archive, capped so that one prolific buyer cannot swamp the list. The same inputs always give the same 25 buyers in the same order, and the free top ten on each sector page (ranked by deals in the sector alone) lets you check the first component by hand.
| Component | How it is counted | Up to |
|---|---|---|
| Deals in your sector | 7 points per recorded acquisition in your sector, counting up to 5. | 35 |
| Deals at your size | 5 points per acquisition in your sector, and 2 per acquisition in an adjacent sector, whose disclosed value falls between half the bottom of your size band and double the top, up to 25. | 25 |
| Recency | 20 points if the buyer's latest acquisition in your sector falls within a year of the newest deal in the archive, 2 fewer for each further full year. If it scores more, its latest acquisition in an adjacent sector counts at half: 10 points, 1 fewer per year. | 20 |
| Adjacent sectors | 2 points per acquisition in an adjacent sector, counting up to 5. | 10 |
| Region (only if you choose one) | 10 points if the buyer is headquartered in your state or has bought a business based there; 5 if either is true of your wider US region. With no region chosen, nobody scores here and the order is unchanged. | 10 |
| Total | 100 |
- Only buyers with at least one recorded acquisition in your sector or an adjacent sector are ranked.
- Adjacent sectors, up to four: the sectors in the same broad group that share at least one buyer with yours, most shared first, then any other sector sharing at least three buyers, provided they are at least 3% of the larger sector's buyers.
- Ties go to the buyer with more deals in your sector, then the more recent last deal, then alphabetical order.
- Name variants of one buyer (Inc, Corporation, Ltd, a (PE) tag) are counted together, as on the sector pages.
- Type is the source's own label. Buyers it tags as private equity show as Private equity; buyers it lists without the tag show as Strategic, which will include the occasional financial buyer the source did not tag. Buyers known only from SEC filings carry no label and show as Type not stated.
- Based in is the state or country of the head office recorded with the buyer. Buyers known only from SEC filings have none recorded.
- Recorded deal sizes span the buyer's deals in your sector and the adjacent ones whose value was disclosed. Source links point to the SEC filing where the deal came from one; the rest of the archive carries no filing link.
What you get
- 25 named acquirers, ranked
- Scored for your sector, your size and, if you choose one, your US state or region. The score for each buyer is broken down so you can check it.
- Each buyer's record
- Its deals in your sector and the adjacent ones, the deals at your size, the range of its recorded deal sizes, and its latest acquisition with the year and the target.
- Type and head office
- Private equity or strategic where the source says so, and the state or country of the head office where it is recorded.
- A source for the SEC-sourced deals
- A link to the filing behind every deal that came from one.
- The method and the as-of date
- The score, the adjacent sectors used and the newest deal in the archive, printed with the list.
On a private page that prints cleanly to PDF, and by email from hello@fairlyvalued.com. If the list cannot be delivered or is materially wrong, we correct it or refund it (see the terms).
What it is not
Contact details
The list names firms, not people to call.
A forecast
The archive records completed acquisitions. It cannot say which buyer is acquiring this quarter.
Every buyer in the market
Private deals that were never announced are not in the archive.
A valuation
For what the business is worth, start with the free estimate.
Need the people as well as the firms? PEStore's researched buyer shortlist adds verified deal-team contacts, $1,450.
After the list
A list says who has bought before. Whether they would buy yours, and at what price, is the next question. If you engage our advisory team, what you paid for the shortlist is credited against the fee.
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Your range in a document you can hand to a partner, a lender or an accountant: the sector band with its date, comparable disclosed transactions, a sensitivity table and what would move your multiple.
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