Welcome to The Stepping Stone, Pasadera Capital's quarterly read on M&A activity in and around San Antonio. Each issue is a short, factual briefing on who is buying and selling in our market, written for the attorneys, CPAs, bankers, and wealth advisors who sit closest to owners. This inaugural issue covers the summer quarter, May through July 2026, along with the spring transactions that set the table. If a client or contact is weighing a transaction, we are always glad to be a confidential sounding board: you can now reach the firm at (726) 204-6027 or through the new contact form at pasaderacapital.com.
Deal trajectory
What surfaced, and what didn't
10tracked deals, 1H 2026
3in July alone
~2xJuly pace vs the 1H average
Q1 20265
Q2 20265
July 20263
Ten tracked transactions involving San Antonio-area companies in the first half, a steady five per quarter, then three more in July. Four of them were billion-dollar headlines; the rest, and the ones we care about, were founder-built middle-market companies finding sponsor and strategic buyers. The real count is higher than this: most deals our size close without an announcement.
Counts reflect announced or closed transactions involving greater San Antonio-area companies and assets on our tracked tape, compiled from public sources. July is a single month, not a full quarter. Year-over-year comparisons begin with our Summer 2027 issue.
What the quarter tells us
- Our market transacts quietly. Ten weeks of statewide deal roundups this summer turned up exactly one San Antonio item, a $1.8 million seed round. That is not because nothing sold here; it is because most middle-market sales in San Antonio close without a press release. The deals that did surface, Wunsch, Omega, Texas Coffee Partners, Calvetti Ferguson, are the visible edge of a much larger private flow. If you only count what gets announced, you will undercount this market badly.
- Founder-built companies are what buyers want. Every middle-market deal profiled here was founder- or family-owned on the sell side, and the buyers were sponsor platforms and strategics paying for Texas footprint, crews, and relationships. With McKinsey estimating millions of U.S. owner-operated businesses facing ownership transitions by 2035, the supply is coming; the buyers already have the dry powder.
- The advisor community is consolidating too. Cherry Bekaert's acquisition of Calvetti Ferguson brought CPA-firm consolidation into San Antonio. Referral networks are changing hands, which makes durable personal relationships, the kind this note is written for, more valuable, not less.
Middle-market deals this quarter
HVAC & Plumbing Distribution
San Antonio, TX · Founded 1985 · Announced January 30, 2026
Terms Price and multiple: not disclosed
Larry Wunsch & Associates, the San Antonio commercial HVAC and plumbing equipment representative and distributor founded in 1985, was acquired by Impact Climate Technologies, an HVAC holding company backed by the global investment firm Ardian. LWA represents hydronic products to engineers, contractors, supply houses, and military installations from facilities in San Antonio and Austin, and it keeps its name and leadership under the new owner.
This is the deal shape we see most often in our market: a founder-built company with four decades of relationships, sold to a sponsor-backed platform that wants the Texas footprint and will leave the operating team in place. If you advise a company like this, there is a buyer for it right now.
Read the announcement →
Building Services
New Braunfels, TX · Founded 2020 · Announced April 2, 2026
Terms Price and multiple: not disclosed
The Valcourt Group, a national exterior building services platform, acquired Omega Waterproofing of New Braunfels. Omega provides below-grade waterproofing and concrete and masonry repair across the San Antonio-Austin corridor down to Corpus Christi, and keeps its name and leadership under the new owner.
A company barely five years old drew a national buyer. Skilled-trades businesses with real crews and recurring commercial relationships carry genuine scarcity value, and platform buyers are paying for geography as much as for earnings.
Read the announcement →
Multi-Unit Consumer
Houston, San Antonio, and Austin locations · 15 units · Announced April 8, 2026
Terms Majority recapitalization · Price and multiple: not disclosed
Northern Shore Capital, a private equity firm focused on lower-middle-market healthcare services and consumer multi-unit businesses, acquired a majority stake in Texas Coffee Partners, a 7 Brew franchisee operating fifteen drive-thru coffee locations across Houston, San Antonio, and Austin. The sponsor framed it as a platform: capital and operating support to build more units and, likely, to fold in smaller franchisees across the state.
A majority recap rather than an outright sale: the operators keep a meaningful stake and a second bite at the apple. For a multi-unit owner who wants growth capital without walking away, this is the structure to understand.
Read the announcement →
Professional Services
Houston HQ with San Antonio office · Founded 2003 · Announced June 1, 2026
Terms Price and multiple: not disclosed
National professional services firm Cherry Bekaert acquired Calvetti Ferguson, the Houston-headquartered accounting and advisory firm with offices in San Antonio, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Nashville. Founded in 2003, Calvetti Ferguson built a middle-market practice spanning energy, real estate, private equity, and manufacturing. The deal used the now-familiar alternative practice structure, splitting attest and non-attest assets between the acquiring entities.
CPA-firm consolidation has fully arrived in our market. If a firm you work with has not yet had the call from a consolidator, it likely will, and the owners of those firms face exactly the valuation and structure questions their own clients do.
Read the announcement →
Commercial Vehicles
New Braunfels, TX buyer · Five Louisiana dealerships · Closed June 30, 2026
Terms Price and multiple: not disclosed
New Braunfels-based Rush Enterprises acquired the assets of Peterbilt of Louisiana: five full-service dealerships across Baton Rouge, Houma, Lafayette, Lake Charles, and New Orleans, plus a collision center and a PacLease franchise. A public strategic buying a privately held, family-owned dealer group, and one of our own Hill Country companies doing the buying.
The seller here is the interesting party: a multi-location, family-owned operator whose natural buyer was the dominant strategic in its industry. Dealer groups, distributors, and franchise operators across South Texas share that profile, and the strategics know where they are.
Read the company release (SEC) →
Healthcare Practices
Boerne, TX · Reported April 2026
Terms Price and multiple: not disclosed
Hulme Orthodontics and Beitchman Orthodontics combined their Boerne practices this spring, a small, local transaction of the kind that rarely makes a press release and almost never makes a national tracker.
We include it deliberately. Practice combinations, partner buy-ins, and retirements are the most common transactions in our market, and they come with real valuation and structure questions. They deserve the same rigor as a larger sale, scaled to fit.
Read the local coverage →
Headlines above our market
The billion-dollar transactions on the local tape. We note them as backdrop; our work, and this briefing, is about the companies above them.
- Clear Channel Outdoor, the San Antonio-based out-of-home advertiser, heads toward a Q3 close on its $6.2 billion take-private by Mubadala Capital and TWG Global; the company says it will stay headquartered here. Details →
- Magnolia Oil & Gas agreed to buy WildFire Energy from Warburg Pincus and Kayne Anderson for about $4.06 billion, consolidating a major Eagle Ford and Austin Chalk position across South Texas. Details →
- San Antonio's GulfTex Energy closed a $1.0 billion recapitalization led by Endurance Investment Partners, rolling its prior fund into a new vehicle with capital earmarked for acquisitions. Details →
- Prosperity Bancshares completed its $268.9 million all-stock purchase of Texas Partners Bank, thinning the roster of independent San Antonio lenders and reaching into Kerrville, Fredericksburg, and New Braunfels. Details →
Also on the tape, 2026 to date
Smaller transactions and notable asset moves, including property deals, compiled from public reports. Undisclosed means no price was made public.
Market pulse
- OCI Energy closed roughly $130 million in tax equity financing with Greenprint Capital in June for its 120 MW Alamo City battery storage project in Bexar County, contracted long-term to CPS Energy. Announcement →
- Sponsor appetite for skilled-trades and home-services platforms keeps climbing nationally, and it is reaching our market: Ardian’s Impact Climate Technologies platform picked up San Antonio’s Larry Wunsch & Associates this year, and a national buyer took out Omega Waterproofing in New Braunfels.
- Banking consolidation continued to thin the roster of independent San Antonio lenders, with Prosperity’s back-to-back acquisitions reaching into Kerrville, Fredericksburg, and New Braunfels.
Deal information is compiled from public sources and company announcements; Pasadera Capital was not an advisor on the transactions above unless expressly noted, and details are not independently verified.
