CompanyGraph
The current screener can identify a balance sheet shaped by past acquisitions and test consolidated cash generation. It cannot identify who is acquiring now or whether acquired units created the cash.
What is acquisition-driven growth?
Acquisition-driven, or inorganic, growth occurs when a company buys control of another business and consolidates its revenue and profit. Organic growth comes from the existing business selling more, raising price, adding products, or expanding internally. Reported growth can contain both.
The distinction matters because acquired growth consumes purchase consideration and creates integration, financing, and valuation risk. It may still be highly productive. The task is to separate what was bought from what the original business generated, then compare the acquired economics with the full cost.
What does goodwill reveal about past acquisitions?
Under IFRS 3, acquisition accounting recognizes identifiable assets and liabilities, with residual acquired goodwill when the accounting requirements produce it. Goodwill therefore provides evidence of past business combinations, but its closing balance is cumulative. It does not show when the deal occurred or whether the buyer is still active.
Other intangibles can include acquired customer relationships, technology, brands, and contracts. Some may also arise from separate purchases or qualifying development. A balance sheet dominated by intangibles is not automatically acquisition-driven; the goodwill components make the connection to business combinations more specific.
How does the intangible-concentration screen work?
CompanyGraph's Intangible Concentration interpretation requires three latest-annual observations:
- intangible assets divided by non-current assets scores highly on a mapping from 20% to 60%;
- goodwill divided by total assets ranks in the upper range against industry peers; and
- goodwill divided by shareholders' equity scores highly on a zero-to-1.5x mapping.
A match identifies a balance sheet with substantial intangible and goodwill concentration. It does not measure deal count, acquisition cash outflow, purchase price, integration, or current acquisition pace.
Intangible Concentration
Intangibles are a large share of total assets, goodwill is a large share of total assets, and goodwill is large relative to shareholders equity
How do you find current acquisition activity?
Read the cash-flow statement and business-combination notes. IAS 7 classifies aggregate cash flows from obtaining or losing control of subsidiaries or other businesses as investing activities. Reconcile gross consideration, acquired cash, deferred and contingent payments, debt assumed, shares issued, and transaction costs.
Build a deal schedule by date with target, ownership, consideration, funding, acquired revenue and profit, expected synergies, integration costs, and earn-outs. Compare the schedule with changes in goodwill and identifiable intangibles. Foreign exchange, impairments, disposals, and purchase-price adjustments can change closing balances without new deals.
Do not infer acquisition spending from total investing cash flow alone. Capex, investments, asset purchases, disposals, and acquisitions can all sit in that section. Use the note-level components.
Can consolidated cash flow validate an acquisition strategy?
The live Cash-Flow Ratios Elevated interpretation requires TTM OCF/revenue in the upper peer range, annual derived FCF/OCF in the upper peer range, and annual OCF/sales on a zero-to-30% mapping.
Cash-Flow Ratios Elevated
Operating cash flow margin, FCF as a share of operating cash flow, and operating cash flow to sales are all in elevated ranges
A match shows that the combined company currently reports strong configured cash ratios. It does not attribute cash to the legacy business or acquired units. A cash-rich original business can support weak deals for years, while integration costs can temporarily depress a sound acquisition.
Selecting both panels requires all observations to fire. The result narrows the universe to intangible-heavy companies with elevated consolidated cash ratios. It still does not show that acquisitions caused growth or created value.
How do you separate organic and acquired growth?
Use management's acquisition contribution where clearly reconciled, then test it against target financials, pro forma disclosures, segment results, and changes in consolidation scope. Calculate:
- reported growth;
- acquired contribution from each deal and the period owned;
- disposal and currency effects; and
- residual organic price, volume, and mix.
IFRS 8 disclosures can help identify which products, geographies, and segments generated growth and profit. Aggregation can still obscure individual targets, so use acquisition notes and management reconciliations where available.
How do you judge whether an acquisition created value?
Compare incremental after-tax operating profit and cash flow with the full capital deployed: cash, shares, assumed debt, contingent consideration, transaction costs, integration spending, and later restructuring. Adjust for revenue or cost transferred from the legacy business.
Track customer retention, employee loss, pricing, cross-sell, capex, working capital, and realized synergies against the original deal case. Management authority matters: acquired operations may have integration limits, minority owners, regulatory commitments, or customer contracts that restrict planned actions.
For serial acquirers, measure per-share outcomes and financing capacity. Total revenue can compound while ownership is diluted or leverage rises. A strategy also needs a continuing supply of targets at acceptable prices and enough people and systems to integrate them.
What do goodwill impairment and integration problems show?
IAS 36 requires acquired goodwill to be tested annually at the relevant cash-generating-unit level. An impairment indicates that carrying value exceeded recoverable amount under the standard's test; it is evidence about the recorded acquisition value, not a complete cash return calculation.
Review discount rates, growth assumptions, headroom, unit allocation, and actual results. Integration problems may appear earlier in customer churn, staff turnover, delayed systems, duplicated cost, working-capital build, or missed synergies. A lack of impairment does not prove the deal met its investment case.
What can the acquisition screens not tell you?
They cannot identify current buyers, distinguish organic from acquired growth, calculate deal ROIC, or judge management's integration ability. The first panel records accumulated balance-sheet composition; the second records consolidated cash ratios.
If a screen returns no companies, it means no current match was found in the evaluated preview universe. Preview coverage may be incomplete, and acquirers may have low goodwill because of deal structure, prompt impairment, or small transactions.
Use the screener to find the accounting footprint
The acquisition thesis must be built deal by deal. The panels help find intangible-heavy candidates and test the combined cash profile, but transaction records, organic-growth reconciliation, and acquired-unit economics determine whether buying growth created value.