Dental Groups
Our Dental Portfolio Analysis (DPA) offers a comprehensive review of your practices, providing tailored strategies to enhance EBITDA, streamline operations, and maximise your group’s potential—whether you’re planning for growth or preparing for a successful exit.
Smarter Solutions for Multi-Site Dental Practice Owners
As the owner of multiple dental practices, we offer a service that goes beyond the standard health check typically available to sole dental practice owners. Our Dental Portfolio Analysis (DPA) provides a comprehensive review of your group, focusing on how to enhance its value. We make tailored suggestions that could improve EBITDA, improve value and simplify the process of a future exit.
It is often mistakenly assumed that selling a multi-site dental group as a single entity is the best exit strategy. However, this is rarely the case. A prudent multi-site owner should continually assess each individual practice within the group to ensure it performs as expected and justifies the effort required to maintain it—think of the 90/10 rule: 90% of the effort for 10% of the result.

Our Solutions
We evaluate and benchmark each practice against similar practices. As groups expand, cost management can become increasingly challenging, potentially eroding the group’s valuation over time. In some cases, we have advised practices to merge smaller sites into larger ones. While this might initially reduce group revenue, it often improves overall EBITDA, thereby enhancing the group’s efficiency and valuation.
Additionally, we consider scenarios where a small group that aimed for rapid growth has slackened it’s growth plans, resulting in excess infrastructure for its current size. This can significantly impact valuation. Drawing from our extensive experience selling groups to platforms—such as the sale of Alpha Dental Group to Apposite Capital (now operating under Riverdale Healthcare), Midland Smile Centres to Rodericks Dental Partners, and most recently Croydon Orthodontics to Dental Beauty—we understand the nuances of group valuations. Some infrastructure required for a small group should not always be factored into the valuation, while in other cases, it should.
We also offer recommendations for effective growth strategies, whether through raising finance or advising on suitable acquisitions and how to structure them. A DPA serves as the ideal starting point to guide your group’s development and maximize its potential.

Is selling as a group the best choice?
In some cases, selling an individual practice may yield a higher value than selling it as part of a group. This disparity occurs because, in a group sale, an overarching multiple is typically applied to the group’s EBITDA. For instance, consider a struggling practice that generates £30,000 in EBITDA. If the group is sold at a 10x multiple, this practice would contribute £300,000 to the overall exit value. However, using the owner-operator valuation method, where the adjusted net profit might be £120,000, the same practice could fetch a value of £480,000 with a 4x multiple. More critically, if a practice has negative EBITDA (LBITDA), you might even need to pay someone to take it off your hands!
Frequently Asked Questions
The DPA is a comprehensive review of your multi-site dental group, designed to identify ways to enhance its value. It includes tailored suggestions to improve EBITDA, streamline operations, and simplify a potential exit strategy.
The DPA uses available accounting information to determine the individual EBITDA of each practice within a group, its contribution to the overall exit value, and its estimated sale value as a standalone unit.
Selling as a single entity often involves applying an overarching EBITDA multiple to the group. This can undervalue individual practices, particularly if some perform better as standalone units or have negative EBITDA.
The 90/10 rule suggests that 90% of effort may only yield 10% of results. For multi-site dental groups, this means regularly assessing individual practices to ensure they justify the resources and effort required to maintain them.
In a group sale, a struggling practice with low or negative EBITDA can significantly reduce the overall valuation. However, if sold separately, it may achieve a higher valuation using owner-operator metrics.
Benchmarking compares each practice against similar ones, highlighting areas for improvement. It also helps identify cost-management challenges that could erode group valuation over time.
The DPA may suggest merging smaller sites, improving infrastructure efficiency, or adopting tailored growth strategies such as raising finance or making suitable acquisitions.
Yes, while merging smaller sites may initially reduce group revenue, it often improves EBITDA, enhancing overall efficiency and valuation.
Excess infrastructure in small groups with slowed growth plans can negatively impact valuation. Recommendations may involve optimising or restructuring operations to match the group’s current size.