The Next M&A Wave: What PPS 2025 Is Signaling for PT Owners
Reporting directly from the floor at PPS 2025, Paul highlights the key trends pointing toward the next M&A cycle, and why PT owners who prepare early will be best positioned to benefit.
Full transcript
Generated from the episode audio and lightly edited for readability.
Hello everyone. This is Paul Martin here at the private practice section conference in Orlando. I just wanted to take a few minutes to give you a deeper recap of what I'm seeing, what I'm hearing, and what I believe it means for physical therapy business owners over the next 12 to 24 months. I'll start with something that really stands out this year. Staffing seems to be somewhat stabilizing. For the past two to three years, every conversation began and ended with staffing challenges, shortages, burnout, recruiting costs, turnover, you name it.
But this year, for the first time, I'm hearing a surprising number of owning owners saying that they're actually fully staffed or very close to being fully staffed. That changes the game. When staffing improves, everything else opens up. Growth planning, margin improvement, acquisitions, even just the ability to catch your breath and focus on running the business instead of fighting fires of therapists leaving and not being able to replace them. It's not perfect everywhere, but the tone is different and more hopeful than it's been in a long time.
Second big theme is what acquirers are doing. And very honestly, it's one of the clearest signals of where this market is headed. Buyers are here in force and they are having a lot of conversations and they don't seem to be just surface conversations, real conversations, exploratory meetings with companies of all sizes. When acquirers widen the funnel like this, it usually means one thing. They are preparing for a more active market. They're gathering information, evaluating markets, building relationships, and getting ready to move. And this lines up perfectly with what I've been talking about today in my session.
If you want to maximize your value, you must prepare before the market heats up, not after. Think about it this way. In every merger and acquisition cycle, the companies that prepare early get the best deals with the best structure and with the best partners. The late comers get whatever's left. And in this environment with interest rates dropping and private equity re-engaging, being prepared isn't optional anymore. And that brings me to what I think is the most significant factor driving all of this. The Fed rate cuts and the broader economic shift that we're seeing right now.
Cheaper capital changes buyer behavior. Debt becomes more accessible. Private equity firms get pressure from their LPs to deploy capital. Strategic buyers gain confidence. And all of that translates into more active acquirers, more competitive bidding, and better valuations for the companies that are ready. This is why my core message this year is so simple. Preparation is the key. Clean financials, reliable margins, strong clinic operations, charge capture, scheduling discipline and recruiting systems. These are the things that acquirers are looking at right now and the ones who have their houses in order are the ones who will thrive in this wa next wave of activity.
Let me shift to the private practice section conference itself. Over 600 business owners here. This is one of the largest turnouts we've seen. And the conversations in the hallways have more energy, more optimism, and more strategic thinking than in recent years. People are talking about growth again, not just survival. That's a good sign for the entire industry. Now, something else I can't ignore, and you can't either, is the sheer volume of AI talk and AI products on the exhibit floor. Everywhere you look, somebody has a new AI enabled solution that promises to fix everything.
AI for documentation, AI for scheduling, AI for marketing, AI for building. It is everywhere. But here's the message I shared in my presentation and I'll share it here. Choose AI products wisely. AI is powerful, but it's also the new shiny object in healthcare. And if you're a PT business owner, the question you should be asking is this. Does this tool improve my margins? Does this drive real operational efficiency? And does this help me run a tighter, more profitable business? If the answer is no, it's probably not the right investment for you.
The products worth exploring are the ones that reduce administrative burden, improve charge capture, increase visit capacity, improve referrals, or give you better realtime visibility into your business. Those tools move EPIDA. Those tools matter. So to wrap up, PPS 2025 has been a very clear story emerging. Staffing is improving. Acquirers are active and preparing. Rate cuts are pushing buyers back into the game. Owners are shifting from survival to strategy. AI is everywhere, but you need to choose strategically. If you're here and you want to talk about how prepared your company really is or how to position yourself for the next phase of the market, stop by our Martin Healthcare Advis Advisors booth number 529 and let's have a conversation.
I'm happy to walk through what we're seeing across the country and what it means specifically for your market. Thanks for enjoying Thanks for joining us at the conference. Thanks for listening. And if you'd like to have a conversation with me, click below and let's talk. Thanks for joining and have a great weekend.
Want to talk about your own business?
Marlton, NJ 08053