The 18 international exits in 2025 delivered outstanding results

Last June, we published a kind of “market analysis” compiling data on past exits, trying to dig through 20 years of history (knowing that we probably missed a few deals).
The article was: A recent wave of International SF exits highlights the success of this asset class – Search Funds News

The idea was to illustrate that the SF asset class, particularly in Europe and Latin America, was experiencing strong growth and that we were moving toward the kind of remarkable returns seen in North America over the past 40 years.

Diving into the micro-level details and providing timely updates on emerging trends confirmed our view: there was a clear and growing trend of increasingly positive outcomes in international SF exits.

Key takeaways from our analysis of the 2025 exits:

• 18 exits in 2025 (excluding certain liquidity events consisting purely of share buybacks).
• Including the exits from 2024, the past two years have produced roughly the same number of exits as the entire 2004–2023 period (20–25 exits took place over those 20 years up to the end of 2023).
• The aggregate ROI and IRR achieved mainly in Europe and Latin America over the past two years have been incredibly strong, demonstrating that outcomes similar to those in North America are achievable.
• Several deals achieved multiples above 5x and IRRs above 50%.
• Holding periods were relatively short, with the majority around 4–5 years and several deals completed in less than 2–3 years.
• By location, the Iberian Peninsula (mostly Spain) accounted for more than half of the exits in 2025; four exits occurred in Brazil and two in Poland.

Below is a list of the exits we identified in 2025 (full information is available in our database section):

These exits have clearly validated the SF model in Europe and Latin America and have enabled many pioneer investors to raise new funds over the past 18 months thanks to the strong results achieved with their previous vehicles (which may also help explain the shorter holding periods, as many needed to demonstrate their ability to deliver successful returns on their portfolios).

Our prediction is that 2026 should be another great year for exits worldwide, as the SF market has been booming since 2020 and many companies are now ready to be sold.

The SF asset class should continue to be one of the highest-performing alternative investments, outperforming both VC and PE.