Roll-Up
Definition
A roll-up is a strategy of acquiring many small companies in the same fragmented industry and combining them into one larger platform. The buyer gains scale economies, and the combined company is usually valued at a higher multiple than the pieces cost.
In practice
The roll-up industrializes multiple arbitrage: buy dentist practices or HVAC contractors at 4 to 6x EBITDA, and the assembled platform trades at 10x or more. Execution is everything; serial acquirers like Brad Jacobs and Mark Leonard built empires on it, and sloppy imitators built write-offs.