Free preview · TIC M&A series · For sellers
Selling a TIC business
A free preview of the report on selling a Testing, Inspection, and Certification (TIC) business: its complete summary, its full contents, and pages from inside it. Nothing is held back behind a form, and there is no email to give. Read it, then decide.
Summary
A buyer pays for scope, people and customers that survive the sale, so prove each one before the first offer
This report is a toolkit for one route, selling a TIC business: eight AI skills, each with its prompt, its checks and a worked example. Part 1 gives the evidence the skills rest on. It is not a full market study, a valuation, or advice on a particular deal. For those, use your corporate finance, legal and tax advisers.
Buyers include large TIC groups, which publish where they want to grow, and private-equity buyers. In one adviser's count, private-equity buyers made 64% of TICC deals so far in 2026. In the same data, larger deals sold at higher multiples of profit (Chapter 2).
In our judgement, a buyer pays for what it cannot copy quickly. That means your accredited scope, the people it depends on, customers who stay after the sale, and records that stand up to checks. Review your business as a buyer would. Put right what you can, disclose the rest openly, and know the approvals and consents the sale needs (Chapters 3, 6, 8 and 10).
The skills do the reading and the sums. They tell the assistant to work only from what you attach and to write "not found" where something is missing. They give no verdict. You and your advisers check every material claim and decide (Chapter 4).
Derived: counted from the six firms' own reports (Exhibit 1.3) and from the nine deals we selected, checked at the companies' own releases (Exhibit 2.1). Benchmark (vendor): Aventis Advisors (2026a, revised 13 October 2026), median of 114 deals and share of about 3,700 deals; Houlihan Lokey (2026), mean, 2016–2026, number of deals not stated. Both sell deal advice. TICC (Testing, Inspection, Certification, and Compliance) is the wider group both advisers track.
Summary, page 4
How to read this report in 15 minutes, and how to weigh its evidence
Read this summary, the decision sheet that follows and the five findings in Chapter 2. Then go to the chapter for the skill you need next. Chapters 5 to 12 each set out one skill, with its prompt, and Chapter 13 shows what the buyer is checking. The deal and finance words the report uses are explained on page 6.
Every figure in an exhibit, a panel or a source line has one of four labels. The label shows how much weight the figure can bear. Exhibits that set out structure, checklists and templates present no measurement, so they carry no label. The running text cites sources by author and year, listed in full at the back. Letters after a year, such as 2026a, follow one list shared by both reports, so this report's list may skip a letter.
Deal statuses are as they stood on 11 October 2026, the research cut-off. One adviser, Aventis Advisors, revised its deal figures on 13 October 2026. The reports use the revised figures, read on 15 October 2026.
Four limits remain, whatever the report does:
- Adviser multiples come from firms that sell deal advice, so they are not independent.
- Company reports show what each firm chooses to disclose.
- Each accreditation body sets its own rules for a change of owner: ask yours before the deal.
- A skill is only as good as the files you attach.
Summary, page 5
One page for the owner before accepting an offer
Fill each line from the skill named beside it, and check it with your adviser. The owner, not a skill, sets the lowest terms they will accept, and makes the decision.
| Line | What the owner should see | Skill |
|---|---|---|
| Goals | Price, timing, your own role, the team and the name, written before any offer | S1 exit options |
| Route | The route chosen, and why it suits these goals better than the others | S1 exit options |
| Readiness | Accreditation, signatories, customer consents, records and claims. Each one put right or disclosed | S2 sale readiness |
| Value | What the business is worth on its own, and what a buyer might add by combining it with its own | M1 valuation self-check |
| Approvals | Every authority or body to tell or ask, and every customer consent, with the person responsible and a date | M2 approvals map |
| Buyers | Whom to approach, and in what order, from their own published words | S3 likely-buyer map |
| Customers | How much revenue rests on a few customers, which contracts let a customer leave when the owner changes, and an answer ready for each | S4 customer concentration and contracts |
| Sale story | Each claim in the information memorandum, linked to a document in the data room | S5 sale story and data room |
| Offers | For each offer: the cash at closing and the amounts held back. The part of the earn-out that may not be paid. What you keep after fees and tax, and how sure the offer is to close | S6 offer comparison |
| Lowest terms | The terms below which you will not sell, set before offers arrive | S1 and S6 |
Pages from inside
What it looks like.
Shown at reduced size, so the layout is visible without the body text being readable.
Contents
All 77 pages, listed.
- Summary3
- Words used in this report6
- Part 1 · Strategy and the market8
- 01Strategy in six questions9
- 02Five findings about TIC deals now16
- Finding 1: Large groups buy in growth areas and reshape their portfolios17
- Finding 2: Few deal announcements name accreditations: 10 of 75 did19
- Finding 3: In one adviser's data, larger deals sold at higher multiples of profit21
- Finding 4: Private equity is active in the largest deals23
- Finding 5: The main deal risks sit in accreditation, people, customers and the integrity of results25
- 03Why buy, and what makes a TIC business worth buying31
- 04How to use the skills safely36
- Part 2 · The eight skills41
- 05Skill S1 · Exit options42
- 06Skill S2 · Sale readiness45
- 07Skill M1 · Valuation self-check47
- 08Skill M2 · Approvals map50
- 09Skill S3 · Likely-buyer map52
- 10Skill S4 · Customer concentration and contracts55
- 11Skill S5 · Sale story and data room57
- 12Skill S6 · Offer comparison59
- Part 3 · The other side, and reference62
- 13What the buyer is checking63
- AAppendix A · Handover checklist65
- References69
- How this report was made75
Read enough?
The rest is the evidence, the eight skills and the worked example.
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