of family firms concentrate ownership in a single shareholder, almost always the founder.
The Firm
We buy, join the board and stay
Five Birds Capital acquires and manages profitable Spanish companies whose ownership has reached the end of its cycle. It invests deal by deal, takes control and sits on the board of every company it buys.
Who we are
We come from family business and hands-on management
The team comes from family firms and operational management: acquisitions, integrations and running the core functions of growing companies. That background is deliberate.
That is why we are not a fund but an independent sponsor: we find the company first and raise the capital for that specific deal, one at a time. We don't raise blind capital, we don't charge for managing idle money and we don't buy to resell: the plan is to keep the company.
Whoever sells a family business is not selling an asset: they are selling what two or three generations have built. That conversation cannot be had from behind a desk.
Investment mandate
| Target companies | Spanish, family-owned and profitable |
|---|---|
| Normalized EBITDA | Between €0.5M and €3M |
| EBITDA margin | Above 15% |
| Balance sheet | No financial debt |
| Entry multiple | 4x normalized EBITDA |
| Stake | Control of the company |
| Holding period | Indefinite, with no sale date |
| Cash conversion | Above 70% of EBITDA |
Our approach
Value investing applied to a market with no screen price
| Principle | How it applies in private markets |
|---|---|
| Price versus value | You pay for demonstrated cash flow, not for a story about what the business might become. |
| Margin of safety | Entry below the next bracket's multiple and a company bought free of financial debt. After the purchase it carries debt of 1.5 times EBITDA. The cushion is in the price, not in optimism. |
| Circle of competence | We only buy what we understand. A new sector is learned before looking at a deal, not while reviewing it. |
| Horizon | Long-term hold: the company is not sold. Investors are paid through dividends every year. |
| Informed concentration | Few companies, known in depth and decided one by one. Diversifying into what you don't know is not deciding. |
| Where the edge is | Not in better modeling, but in looking where institutional capital doesn't and being able to wait for the right price. |
| Golden rule | Never lose the shareholder's money. Every deal is modeled with almost no growth and under fully stressed scenarios. |
Why we prefer the businesses others call boring
| Predictable business | Business in transition | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue visibility | The clients of three years from now are today's | It depends on adoption that hasn't happened yet |
| Valuation risk | The price is anchored to EBITDA with a history | The price is anchored to a projection |
| Debt capacity | Banks lend against demonstrated cash | Banks don't lend, or lend dear |
| Competition for the asset | Almost nobody looks at this size or these sectors | Several bidders and market multiples |
| What you must get right | The entry price and ordinary management | The future |
A predictable business is not a mediocre business. It is a business where the only variable you must get right is the price.
The market
Many companies without a successor, little capital looking at their size
Family firms are 92.4% of Spanish companies, 70% of private employment and 57.8% of private value added.
92.4%
of Spanish companies are family-owned. Most of their owners belong to the generation born between 1957 and 1977, which began retiring in 2023.
of companies with 10 to 250 employees have no succession plan.
survives the generational handover; the rest are sold, broken up or closed.
The disconnect
Institutional capital doesn't come down to where these companies live
A company with €0.5-3M of normalized EBITDA bought at four times is worth €2-12M. That bracket sits below the floor of almost every Spanish fund.
Five Birds Capital
€2-12M
€2-12M
Spanish private equity
€10-100M
€10-100M
0255075€100M
742 deals in 2025, an all-time high, with an average size of €25.5M. Private equity deployed over €3bn into deals between €10M and €100M.
Unspent capital at Spanish managers stands at around €8bn. Analyzing and governing a small company costs the same as a large one, and earns far less in fees.
In this bracket the price is agreed in a conversation between the buyer and the owners.
Pricing
The discount reflects size, not the quality of the business
Enterprise value over normalized EBITDA, in turns. The same company is worth more once it stops being small.
The size arbitrage
Buying at four times, in the bracket where almost nobody looks, leaves a margin against what the market pays for a company with professional management and audited accounts.
What backs that margin
Buying at four times leaves debt service comfortable and allows a dividend from the first year, without depending on a future sale. Selling to a third party is an alternative, not the plan.
Sources. Instituto de la Empresa Familiar, La Empresa Familiar en España 2025. Hiscox report on Spanish SMEs and the self-employed, 2025. SpainCap, 2025 year-end. Blue Mountain and Capital & Corporate, Spanish mid-market 2025. Capittal, multiples by sector in Spain 2026, midpoints of the 4-6x, 4.5-7x and 5-8x ranges.
Predictable businesses. Reasonable prices. Owners looking for a handover.
That is all there is behind Five Birds Capital.
Let's talk