Hi there,

For the last decade, growing a dental group in this country meant one thing. Buy a practice. Borrow. Buy another.

That era is over. And if you're still running the old playbook, you're about to find out the hard way.

Roughly 2012 to 2022 was a golden run for consolidation. Interest rates were close to zero, private equity poured into healthcare, and the maths was simple. A single practice might sell for four or five times earnings, but bolt enough together and the group could be worth nine, ten, eleven times. For ten years, the fastest way to create value wasn't to run a better practice. It was to buy more of them.

Then the music stopped. Four things, all at once.

The cost of money rose, so deals that looked clever at 2% look very different at 9%. Valuations fell back to roughly 2021 levels, leaving peak buyers sitting on businesses worth less than they paid. Brexit effectively shrank the available dental workforce by around 30%, so associates and hygienists are scarce and expensive. And patients are squeezed on both the NHS and private side.

Add NHS contract reform landing in 2026 and the Competition and Markets Authority watching the sector far more closely, and "buy fast, sort it out later" no longer works.

The market has stopped rewarding acquirers and started rewarding operators.

Picture two groups with the same revenue. One has been bolting practices together: messy numbers, owner dependent, high staff churn. The other has clean reporting, a strong team and low key person risk. The second is worth dramatically more.

In the video I lay out the four pillars of what I call an institutional grade group: engineered profit, one source of truth across every site, a team that isn't you, and defensible systems that hold up when due diligence starts digging. I also explain Exit 2030, the window where operators who built properly get rewarded and everyone else takes the haircut.

Watch: Buying More Practices Won't Make You Rich Anymore

This is the anchor of a short series, so subscribe to the channel to catch every part.

Build it properly,
Arun Mehra