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title: "Why I stopped answering \"what is my company worth\""
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The multiple is a scorecard, Julian Riedlbauer on selling IT services companies, and 5 Deals That Matter | Stay Ahead in IT Edition August 2026 ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­    ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­  

| View in browser IT Capital Partners Edition August 2026 Stay Ahead in IT The monthly briefing for IT services founders, investors, and M&A advisors. In This Edition Last month I answered the questions founders ask me when the slides are closed. One question kept returning: what is my company worth? This edition is the answer. Drake Star’s new MSP data shows the market splitting into two tiers, 5 to 7 times EBITDA at one end and 16 to 18 at the other, and I spoke with Julian Riedlbauer, the first sell-side M&A advisor in this series, about what actually moves a company from one end of that range to the other. The full playbook is in our new whitepaper. Five minutes. That is all you need. Let's go.   What I See Right Now · Your multiple is a scorecard, not a price   Expert Spotlight · Julian Riedlbauer on selling IT services companies in 2026   Featured Whitepaper · The Multiple Is a Scorecard, the 24-month exit playbook   Deal Radar · Fresh DACH deals that prove the point, plus a status check   On My Radar · The data behind the conversation, and where I will be   What I See Right Now Your Multiple Is a Scorecard, Not a Price Last month I published the questions founders ask me when the slides are closed. One came up more often than any other: what is my company worth? I have come to believe it is the wrong question. Or rather, the right question asked in the wrong order. The multiple you will eventually be quoted is not a market price that happens to you. It is a scorecard of the risks a buyer has to underwrite and of the growth they believe they are buying. Worth is an output. The inputs are yours. Look at the numbers as they stand in mid-2026. Drake Star counted 111 MSP transactions in Q2 alone, up nine percent on the quarter, with IT services making up 95 percent of deal flow. Capital is available and the consolidators are organised. But the same data shows the market splitting into two tiers. One market, two tiers · EV/EBITDA, managed services, mid-2026 5 to 7× small MSPs below $1.5m EBITDA 16 to 18× scaled platforms above $15m EBITDA with strong contracted revenue Same market. Same services. Often the same customers. It is tempting to read that spread as a scale premium, full stop. From my side of the table, across the owner conversations and diligence processes that fill my calendar, that reading is wrong, and expensively so. Scale is the visible variable, but it is a proxy for what buyers actually price: predictability. When I compare two companies with identical revenue, the gap between their multiples always has names. Founder dependence. Customer concentration. Contract quality. Numbers that survive twelve weeks of diligence. And since this year, sharper than everything else: AI proof instead of AI claims. Every one of those is a discount a buyer applies. Every one is also a discount a founder can remove. That makes the distance between the two ends of the range the largest single value lever a founder controls, larger in most cases than another year of organic growth. The honest horizon for the work is 24 months, which is exactly why the time to start is before you think you need to. So this edition looks at valuation from the other side of the table. I asked Julian Riedlbauer, one of the most experienced sell-side tech M&A advisors in the DACH region and the first banker in this interview series, what founders misjudge, where deals die, and what to do 24 months out. And I have written the full playbook into a new whitepaper: five levers, a phased plan, and a 20-point scorecard you can run on your own company this week. “Worth is an output. The inputs are yours.”   Expert Spotlight The View from the Other Side of the Table Julian Riedlbauer on selling IT services companies in 2026 Julian Riedlbauer Partner, Drake Star · Berlin LinkedIn → Julian Riedlbauer is a Partner at Drake Star, a global tech investment bank, where he is responsible for M&A and growth equity fundraising advisory out of Berlin. Before moving to the sell-side, he was an operator himself: Managing Director of the comTeam Systemhaus group with more than 300 member companies, and later of ElectronicPartner Deutschland. He built his own advisory boutique, sold it to GP Bullhound, and led the firm’s DACH advisory business for over a decade. Across his career he has led around 80 mandates, including the sale of Infinigate to H.I.G. and the sale of InnoGames to MTG at a valuation of EUR 260 million. IT Capital Partners: You ran the comTeam Systemhaus group and ElectronicPartner before you became a banker. When you sit across from an IT services founder today, what do they typically misjudge about their own company that you only see from the other side of the table? Julian Riedlbauer: Most founders overestimate what their revenue is worth and underestimate what their dependencies cost. They see twenty years of customer relationships; a buyer sees customer concentration, a contract book, a churn rate, and the question of what happens when the founder leaves. Having run a group of more than 300 IT companies, I know how much of a Systemhaus lives in the head of its owner. The founders who achieve the best outcomes start seeing their company through a buyer’s eyes two years before any process starts, not two weeks into due diligence. IT Capital Partners: Drake Star’s Q2 2026 MSP update counted 111 transactions, up nine percent on the quarter, with IT services at 95 percent of deal flow. After a record 2025, what is keeping the momentum going, and who is actually buying? Julian Riedlbauer: The consolidators have institutionalised the process: the ten most active buyers have each closed four or more deals since mid-2024, and they run acquisition as a repeatable operating discipline rather than a one-off project. Behind them, three structural drivers have not changed: capability buying in security, cloud, and automation; succession pressure across the DACH Mittelstand; and private capital that sees managed services as one of the few genuinely recurring models in tech. None of that is cyclical, which is why volume holds up even in a choppier macro environment. In addition, Mittelstand and enterprise clients are currently investing heavily in AI projects, with IT services companies providing the strategic consulting and implementation. That gives the sector an additional boost. IT Capital Partners: Your Q2 update shows a striking split: small MSPs trading at five to seven times EBITDA while scaled platforms command 16 to 18 times. What actually moves a company from one end of that range to the other? Julian Riedlbauer: Scale is the visible variable, but it is a proxy for what buyers really price: predictability. A platform above $15 million EBITDA with strong contracted recurring revenue, professionalised management, and integrated delivery is simply a different risk profile from a founder-led shop that might carry key-man risk and customer concentration, even in the same market with the same services. The levers that move a company up the range are recurring revenue share, customer diversification, a second management level, and, increasingly, evidenced AI in delivery. The multiple is not a market price you receive; it is a scorecard of the risks a buyer has to underwrite and of the growth potential the buyer expects. IT Capital Partners: Your team’s headline finding this quarter: buyers are no longer paying for AI claims, they are paying for AI proof. What does proof look like in diligence, and what happens to companies that only have the claim? Julian Riedlbauer: Two years ago, an AI slide in the deck was enough to justify a premium valuation. Today, buyers underwrite AI the way they underwrite recurring revenue: show me where it sits in delivery, what it does to cost per ticket or utilisation, and what the margin bridge looks like. An MSP that has embedded AI into service operations gets credit for it in the price. One that merely resells AI as a service line gets treated like any other reseller. The gap between those two positions is now one of the largest single valuation drivers in the sector, and it is widening every quarter. IT Capital Partners: You see dozens of processes a year. Where do sell-side processes in IT services actually fail, and how much of that is avoidable? Julian Riedlbauer: Deals rarely fail at the letter of intent; they fail in the last eight weeks. The classic patterns: underperformance versus budget, numbers that shift during due diligence, a key customer contract that turns out to be terminable, a founder who has not decided what they actually want. Almost all of it is avoidable with preparation. The paradox of sell-side work is that the transactions which look effortless are the ones where the hard work happened a year before the first buyer was contacted. IT Capital Partners: A founder reading this is perhaps 24 months away from starting a process. What should they do now? Julian Riedlbauer: Three things. Make yourself replaceable: build a second management level and document what only you know. Clean up the revenue: push contracted, recurring share up and reduce any customer above 20 percent concentration. And put AI to work in your own delivery before a buyer asks about it, because they will. Then, when the time comes, run a structured sell-side process with real alternatives, meaning several seriously committed parties. The difference between a negotiated deal with one buyer and a structured process is regularly the largest single value lever a founder controls. “The multiple is not a market price you receive; it is a scorecard of the risks a buyer has to underwrite and of the growth potential the buyer expects.” Julian Riedlbauer · Partner, Drake Star   Featured Whitepaper New Whitepaper The Multiple Is a Scorecard The valuation split, decoded · the five levers · the 24-month plan · where deals die · the Exit Readiness Scorecard Every month founders ask me what their company is worth. This paper answers the better question: what will it be worth in 24 months, and what decides the difference. Including the 2026 lever that moves prices faster than any other, and twenty statements you can score yourself against the way a buyer would. Free download. Download the Whitepaper One small experiment this month: run the scorecard, honestly, and simply reply to this email with your number. I will tell you where the discount lives. No pitch, no sequence, just a straight answer.   Deal Radar My picks since the July edition closed on 27 July, cross-checked against the last five issues so nothing repeats, plus a status check on last month’s two headline offers. 🤝 accompio buys techbold and DENWERIT (Germany and Austria)  • two deals within days, 31 July and early August 2026 Vienna’s techbold spent a decade acquiring 18 companies; now it sells itself to the German accompio group at a reported valuation of just under 40 million euros, roughly 1.4 times its 28 million euros of revenue, with closing pending antitrust clearance. Founder Damian Izdebski, whose DiTech insolvency made national headlines in 2014, calls this his comeback, and he built it properly: more than 170 specialists, around 1,400 customers, and a months-long selection process to find the right strategic partner instead of taking the first offer on the table. Days later accompio added DENWERIT, a Munich carve-out specialist founded only in 2022, whose founder stays on inside the MidMarket unit. The EOS Partners-backed group now runs roughly 900 people across 22 sites in Germany, Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria. Julian’s advice in this edition, in the wild, and a reminder that the buyer across the table has almost certainly done this before. 🏥 q.beyond acquires 51 percent of GITG (Germany)  • August 2026 GITG has barely 40 people. It also owns GS-H, the turnkey S/4HANA successor to SAP’s IS-H hospital system, which SAP retires in 2030 and which more than 500 DACH clinics, over 20 percent of all hospitals in the region, still run. With one signature, Cologne-based q.beyond buys a leading position in an entire vertical. The lesson for founders: the scorecard prices scarcity and IP, not headcount. The smallest company in this list holds the strongest strategic position, and gets paid for it. 🌍 collana acquires Netwise (Germany and Poland)  • 13 August 2026 If you want this month’s argument compressed into a single transaction, this is it. Warsaw-based Netwise, founded in 2008, is a seven-time Microsoft Dynamics 365 Partner of the Year with around 120 people serving clients in more than 40 countries. It sells to collana, the Ufenau-backed DACH group of roughly 500 people, in an advised process, and the selling shareholders reinvest a significant part of their proceeds back into the group. Founder Jakub Skałbania describes a deliberate search for a partner that fit on market presence, culture and entrepreneurial mindset, not only on financial strength. Prepared asset, structured process, partner chosen on fit, seller still holding the upside. That sequence is the whole playbook. 🌐 Cognizant acquires Astreya (US) for $600 million  • 22 June 2026 Announced in the gap between our June and July editions, and the anchor of the Drake Star data this edition leans on: Cognizant pays 600 million dollars for Astreya, a 2,600-person managed IT and cloud services provider, the quarter’s largest disclosed MSP deal by far. What Cognizant is buying is AI infrastructure delivery for enterprise clients at scale. Read it next to the 16 to 18 times end of the valuation split: this is what the top of the scorecard looks like when a strategic buyer underwrites it. 🏠 Connexta adds MüritzComp (Germany)  • August 2026 Founded in 1990 in Waren an der Müritz, MüritzComp brings around 40 people, two sites and roughly 700 customers, with a defensible niche in DATEV and ELO document management for Mittelstand companies and tax firms. It is Connexta’s third group accession of 2026 and takes the Fremman Capital-backed group to 21 German locations. The succession detail is the point: co-managing directors Martin Evert, son of one of the founders, and Birger Hänsel, who started there as a student in the 1990s, both stay on and keep running the company under its own name. At the small end of the market, the buyer is underwriting continuity as much as capability. 📈 The Bechtle signal  • July and August 2026 Not a transaction, but read it like one. Bechtle’s second quarter delivered 18.1 percent business volume growth to 2.3 billion euros, EBT up 20.1 percent, a record order book of 3.5 billion, and a raised full-year guidance. Two details matter more for founders than the headline. Headcount rose by 810 to 16,418, and that growth was entirely acquisition-driven; organically the company shrank 1.4 percent. And on 1 July, Bechtle placed a 450 million euro Schuldscheindarlehen, upsized from a planned 250 million after the order book reached 864.5 million, with the CFO tying it explicitly to the international growth and acquisition strategy. The largest consolidator in DACH is growing by buying, and has just refinanced to keep doing it. ⏳ Status check on July’s headline offers Both landmark offers from last month are now in the BaFin review stage. Persistent’s 81 euro per share offer for Nagarro targets closing in Q4 2026 to Q1 2027. VINCI’s 67.50 euro per share offer for All for One, with 54.7 percent of shares already committed, expects completion in Q4 2026. The acceptance periods begin once the offer documents are approved. Those premiums were not a summer anomaly; they are working their way through the system. Also noteworthy: Software Partners Group adds WeAreGroup for software engineering, applied AI and cloud-native delivery in the DACH Mittelstand • Apax-backed Odin Group buys Hamburg’s sysmind for its Previder arm, a third German acquisition after Log in Consultants and Heymanns (28 July) • DPE-backed TKD Solutions completes its purchase of Warsaw Apple lifecycle specialist Jupiter-Integration, its first step beyond the German-speaking core markets (10 August) • Rivean-backed Dataciders adds Berlin process mining and BI consultancy DATANOMIQ, months after folding its German companies into one organisation (12 August) • the family-led Dierck Group takes Munich security consultancy Tanum Consult with its 20 experts, then opens a new Osnabrück unit in the same month • Spain’s listed knowmad mood enters Germany with MuniConS for SAP, Salesforce and Veeva work in life sciences and insurance • Sonio buys PCProfi Informatique to build out managed services in French-speaking Switzerland • Claranet acquires Six Degrees, the 2,000-person UK managed cloud and security group (June) • PROM12 takes a majority in Metrics Holding, the European IT sourcing and benchmarking advisor, as the platform investment of its newly closed Fund II • and Citadelle Systems folds BTC Heidenau, a small Dresden-area system house founded in 1990, into Masterplan IT. The Pattern I See Run this list against the scorecard and every entry lands on a lever. Prepared sellers set their own terms: techbold ran a months-long search and sold at a reported 1.4 times revenue, Netwise picked its group on culture and reinvested alongside it. Scarce IP re-rates small companies: GITG’s 40 people command a strategic price for what they own. AI proof gets paid at every scale, from Cognizant’s 600 million dollars for AI infrastructure delivery down to a Berlin process mining boutique. And the buyer bench is deeper and better funded than a year ago: accompio closed two deals inside a week, Connexta its third of the year, and Bechtle grew its headcount only by buying, then refinanced 450 million euros to keep going. Every seller on this list was chosen from a queue. The ones who had done the homework chose back.   On My Radar The Data Behind the Conversation Worth Reading Drake Star, MSP Market Update Q2 2026 111 MSP transactions in the quarter, up nine percent, IT services at 95 percent of deal flow, and the valuation split this entire edition is built on: 5 to 7 times at the small end, 16 to 18 at platform scale. It is also the report behind this month’s interview. Read the report → Worth Reading EY, IT Services H1 2026 Deal Insights Report 449 transactions in the first half, almost exactly the 456 of a year earlier, but with roughly 14.8 billion dollars of disclosed value concentrated in seven large deals, Persistent and Nagarro among them. Strip those out and about 4.5 billion remains for everything else. Strategic buyers took 47 percent of volume, private equity roll-ups 36 percent. And the forecast reads like this month’s scorecard restated by a third party: as the 2020 to 2022 platform vintage moves into its exit phase, the assets that attract buyers will be the ones with scale, vertical depth, ecosystem relevance, and economics that stand on their own. Read the report → Worth Reading Lünendonk Study 2026, The German IT Services Market The operating reality behind the valuation argument: Germany’s leading mid-market IT consultancies grew just 1.9 percent in 2025, and forecasts for 2026 have already been revised down. If organic growth alone will not close the gap to the top of the multiple range, preparation has to. Free download. Read the study → Where I Will Be CCX Cloud Computing Conference 2026 · 29 to 30 September, Heidelberg On 30 September I will open day two of Vogel IT-Akademie’s CCX conference at the ATLANTIC Hotel Heidelberg with a keynote: “Machbare Souveränität statt Marketing: 17 Cloud-Anbieter im unabhängigen Vergleich”. Readers of the March and May editions will recognise the material: the Sovereign Cloud Compass, sovereignty washing in both directions, and what CADA and sovereign AI mean for evaluating European cloud offerings. If you are attending, come say hello. Agenda and registration →   A Note From Me Which side of the table I sit on A whole edition about what buyers price deserves the usual transparency note, because I am one of them. IT Capital Fund I is a DACH small-cap buyout fund: Eike and I acquire profitable IT services companies with 5 to 30 million euros of revenue and build them into European champions through operational excellence and programmatic Buy and Build. The playbook comes directly from scaling Cloudflight from 25 to 100 million euros of revenue and exiting at 400 million to Partners Group. Nothing in this edition is neutral advice from the sidelines, and you should read it accordingly. Current status: tecRacer, our AWS platform, has fully integrated its first add-on, KAWA commerce. Further add-ons are in active discussion, and fundraising continues toward a Q4 2026 close. IT Capital Fund I DACH small-cap buyout · operator-led · fundraising toward a Q4 2026 close Request the Fund Memorandum For professional and semi-professional investors.   If anything in this edition resonated, I would love to hear from you. Whether you are 24 months out, weighing an offer, or simply want a second read on a buyer who has come knocking, my door is always open. If you are building, integrating, or considering an exit in IT services, I have probably sat in a version of your seat already. Drop me a line. info.itcapital.de/joernpetereit → Or simply reply to this email. I read every response. Until next month, Jörn Petereit Managing Partner, IT Capital Partners GmbH joern@itcapital.de  •  LinkedIn  •  itcapital.de IT Capital Partners GmbH, Ballindamm 3, Hamburg, Hamburg 20095, Germany Unsubscribe Manage preferences |
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