# Roll-up / add-on acquisition

Buying several small companies in a trade onto one platform.

The same strategy is called buy-and-build, a consolidation play, or a programmatic acquisition, and the buyer running one is often called a consolidator. It explains why some competing buyers pay prices that look aggressive: an add-on is worth more to a platform that can strip out duplicate overhead and buy scale than to a first-time owner running one location. Knowing a roll-up is active in your trade tells you both who you are bidding against and who might buy you at exit.

In numbers: A platform paying 7x [EBITDA](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/ebitda) for its anchor can pay 5x for a $500k-EBITDA add-on and still profit, because the combined company trades at the platform's multiple; a first-time buyer bidding 3.5x loses that auction without being wrong.

Source: https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/roll-up
Not dated: A definition is editorial: what a term means, why it matters, and an example. None of it reads a source that can go stale, so there is no date to take and a stamped one would be the build time wearing a costume.

Site index for machines: https://searchspheresource.com/llms.txt