2025 Outlook: What We Expect in Direct Investment

With the close of 2024 in sight, it is time to look ahead. What do we expect from the market in 2025? Where do we see the best opportunities? How will we adjust our strategy?

These perspectives are not predictions — humility obliges us to recognise that predicting the future lies beyond our capabilities — but rather an informed declaration of intentions shaped by our experience and our analysis of the environment.

The Macroeconomic Context

Spain will enter 2025 with moderate but positive economic growth, in line with consensus expectations. Inflation has normalised, interest rates have begun a downward trajectory — slower than many expected — and employment maintains historically high levels.

This context is favourable for middle-market investment for several reasons. Financing will become more accessible as the gradual reduction in interest rates improves acquisition financing conditions, unblocking transactions that were not financially viable in 2023-2024. The stability of 2024 results provides a solid valuation base. And after two years of expectation adjustment, sellers in the middle-market have accepted the new valuation paradigm, which should translate into a greater number of completed transactions.

Our Sector Priorities

Logistics: consolidation phase 2. Our logistics platform has completed its first consolidation phase — initial acquisitions, basic integration, minimum geographic coverage. In 2025, the priority is the second phase: deepening integration, investing in shared technology, and selective acquisitions adding specific capabilities or presence in strategic corridors.

Hospitality: repositioning and management. We will continue seeking hotel assets in quality locations needing investment and more professional management. The priority is not acquisition volume but execution quality in assets we already hold and those we incorporate.

Circular technology: scale and efficiency. The circular technology platform will enter an operational optimisation phase. Volume growth has been exceptional; now it is time to improve efficiency, automate processes, and prepare infrastructure for the next expansion phase.

Certus: applied AI and data. The Certus division will focus on investments in data companies with validated business models and on implementing applied AI solutions across portfolio companies. We will seek opportunities in vertical SaaS and middle-market cybersecurity.

Engineering and services: new platform. We are evaluating the opportunity to create a new consolidation platform in the engineering and industrial services sector — a fragmented sector with consolidation dynamics similar to logistics and a risk-return profile that fits our philosophy.

Updated Investment Criteria

For 2025, our direct investment criteria are: minimum EBITDA of 1 million euros, sectors we know (logistics, hospitality, circular technology, engineering, industrial services, data and software), Spain with selective openness to Portugal, majority acquisitions, buyouts, growth deals, and special situations, indefinite time horizon (patient capital), committed management teams capable of continuing post-acquisition, and preferred characteristics including family ownership, defensible competitive position, operational improvement potential, and cultural compatibility.

What We Will Not Do

Equally important is defining what we will not do. We will not invest in sectors we do not know — the temptation to diversify into attractive but unfamiliar sectors is real, but our competitive advantage lies in deep sector knowledge. We will not pay unjustified multiples — when competitive pressure pushes prices beyond reasonable levels, we will wait. We will not force speed — if suitable opportunities do not present themselves, we will not invest for the sake of investing. And we will not sacrifice culture for growth — every company we incorporate must fit with our philosophy, our values, and our management capacity.

A Message to Business Owners

If you are a Spanish middle-market business owner considering bringing in an investment partner — for succession, growth, professionalisation, or any other reason — we invite you to get to know us. We will not promise you the highest price. We will promise you the most honest conversation. Because in the Spanish middle-market, the best transactions are not the most expensive ones — they are those that generate a relationship of trust between investor and business owner that endures for years and creates value for everyone. That is our objective for 2025, as it has been every year since we started.