Roll-Up Strategy
Also called: roll up, buy and build, platform acquisition
A roll-up acquires many small companies in a fragmented industry and combines them into one larger business. The financial engine is multiple arbitrage: buying at 5× earnings and being valued at 10× as a larger entity creates value on the spreadsheet before any operational improvement. It works when integration is real and fails loudly when the group is a collection of businesses that never actually merged.