There are 1,281 companies in Portugal waiting for a buyer. None of them is for sale.

Opinion by Joaquim Costa, co-founder and CEO of Closedata

In my last article I wrote that the best companies to buy in Portugal are hiding in plain sight. The question I got most afterwards was simple: how many are there, really?

I went to the data, using Closedata. I started with the universe. Portugal has around 51,000 active companies with revenue between €1M and €20M. This is where the real economy lives: too big to be a neighbourhood business, too small to show up on the radar of a fund or an investment bank.

One in three already shows signs of succession risk. That is more than 16,000 companies where the question “who takes this over?” still has no answer. But volume is not quality. So I applied the filters any sensible buyer would.

The filters

• Longevity: founded before 1996. Thirty years in business means they went through euro adoption, the troika and the pandemic, and are still here.
• Profitability: EBITDA margin of at least 12%.
• Solidity: equity above 60% of assets. Companies that fund themselves and don't depend on the bank.

3,078 remain

Now the question that matters to anyone who wants to buy: in how many of these is succession an open question?

1,281. Four in ten of the country's most solid companies, in the range where a private buyer can actually do a deal.

Almost none are for sale. None has a teaser circulating. Most have never spoken to an advisor.

An example

One of them is in central Portugal. It is over forty years old. It makes metal components for suppliers to the European automotive industry. It exports the vast majority of what it produces. It employs a few dozen people.

Last year it billed close to €8M, with EBITDA of around €2M. A margin above 20%. Sales grew three years in a row. The capital is almost entirely held by two partners over 50, with no signs of succession.

I have never seen it on any list of opportunities. It doesn't appear in rankings. Nobody is selling it. And yet, for an industrial buyer, a search fund or a manager who wants to stop being an employee, it is exactly the kind of company they spend years trying to find.

The problem isn't a lack of opportunities

The Portuguese SME M&A market has no shortage of companies. It has a shortage of people looking for them.

Buyers keep waiting for deals to come to them: through the bank, the accountant, the advisor, a friend of a friend. By the time they arrive, they have passed through ten pairs of hands. The price has gone up. The advantage is gone.

Meanwhile, the numbers are there. They are official, public and updated every year. They show how much each company bills, earns and owes, and who controls it. For a long time, reading them at scale took a team of analysts and weeks or months of work. Today three well-asked questions are enough.

Over the next five to ten years, thousands of these founders will step away. Some will hand the company to their children. Others will sell it to whoever arrives first. Many will simply close, because nobody knocked on the door in time.

Whoever arrives first won't be the one with the best contacts. It will be the one who asked the best questions.

Originally published

Opinion piece originally published in Portuguese on Link to Leaders on 12 November 2026: https://linktoleaders.com/ha-1-281-empresas-em-portugal-a-espera-de-comprador-nenhuma-esta-a-venda-joaquim-costa-closedata/

Frequently asked questions

How many solid companies with an open succession question are there in Portugal?

1,281, among companies with €1M–€20M revenue, founded before 1996, with an EBITDA margin of at least 12% and equity above 60% of assets.