A Boutique Built for Behavioral Health
NAPLES, FLORIDA – most M&A advisory firms that work the behavioral health space do so as one vertical among several. Mertz Taggart was built differently: from inception, the firm oriented its practice around behavioral health services — ABA therapy, mental health, and substance use disorder — treating these sectors not as a niche within healthcare M&A but as the primary domain around which the entire firm’s expertise would be organized. That focus has made it one of two firms — alongside The Braff Group — that the ABA M&A market treats as a sector authority rather than a generalist advisor.
Mertz Taggart is led by Kevin Taggart, who serves as Managing Partner and is the firm’s most public-facing market voice. Taggart is consistently cited in trade publications covering ABA transactions — Behavioral Health Business, KFF Health News, and BreakingNewsABA among them — as a primary source on deal multiples, buyer appetite, and the conditions shaping behavioral health valuations at any given point in the market cycle. That media presence is not incidental: it functions as a market signal to potential sell-side clients that Mertz Taggart is embedded in the deal flow and has current information about what buyers are paying.
The firm’s behavioral health specialization extends across its staff. Unlike boutiques that assign a single sector specialist to healthcare deals within a broader generalist practice, Mertz Taggart structures its team around behavioral health verticals, meaning that ABA providers engaging the firm receive advisors whose day-to-day deal experience is concentrated in the same sector — and whose buyer relationships reflect that focus.
Mertz Taggart’s Q1 2025 process for one ABA client generated the highest number of offers the firm had seen since 2021 — a data point that signals robust buyer competition even as deal volume has moderated from the 2021 peak.
The Offer Record: What the Q1 2025 Data Signals
One of the most closely watched data points in recent ABA M&A coverage came from a Mertz Taggart deal in the first quarter of 2025. The firm reported that an ABA therapy company it was advising on its sale received the highest number of acquisition offers of any transaction Mertz Taggart had worked since 2021 — the peak year of the PE-driven consolidation wave in behavioral health.
The significance of that figure extends beyond a single transaction. The 2021–2022 period represented an inflection point in ABA M&A: historically elevated deal multiples, aggressive PE platform-building activity, and a competitive buyer environment that drove offer counts to levels that have been difficult to replicate in the more cautious market that followed. Rising interest rates, compressed PE fund returns, and increased due diligence rigor reduced both the pace and aggressiveness of ABA deal activity through 2023 and into 2024.
Against that backdrop, a Q1 2025 process generating offer counts not seen since the 2021 peak is a directionally meaningful market signal. It suggests that buyer demand for quality ABA assets has remained competitive even as the broader deal environment has normalized, and that well-run sell-side processes continue to drive outcomes above what sellers negotiating bilateral deals would typically achieve.
The advisory implication: Mertz Taggart’s willingness to report this data point publicly serves a dual purpose. For prospective sell-side clients, it communicates that the firm’s process execution generates competitive outcomes. For the broader market, it provides evidence that buyer appetite for ABA assets has not contracted to the degree that the interest rate environment and PE fundraising headwinds of 2023–2024 might have suggested.
The Quarterly Reports: Competing for the Data Standard
Mertz Taggart publishes quarterly behavioral health M&A market reports that compete directly with The Braff Group’s data products for the status of sector benchmark. Both firms track closed transaction counts, deal multiples, buyer type activity, and volume trends across behavioral health subsectors. The transaction distribution chart above, drawn from Mertz Taggart’s Q4 2023 reporting, illustrates the firm’s breadth of market coverage: 506 total healthcare transactions tracked in a single quarter, with behavioral health occupying a specialized but closely watched segment of that universe.
The reports serve the firm’s business development interests directly: a provider who reads Mertz Taggart’s quarterly data every three months for two years is a provider who has built a relationship with the firm’s brand well before any active sale process begins. In the ABA M&A market, where the decision to retain a specific advisor often precedes the formal engagement by 12 to 24 months, that sustained visibility is operationally significant.
The existence of two well-resourced firms producing competing data sets has, over time, improved the quality of market intelligence available to ABA providers and their advisors — each firm’s report provides a cross-check on the other’s figures, and discrepancies between them are themselves informative about deal classification methodology and subsector definitions.
How Mertz Taggart Positions Against the Competition
The competitive landscape for ABA M&A advisory includes The Braff Group, Provident Healthcare Partners, Harris Williams, and a range of regional boutiques and generalist middle-market banks. Mertz Taggart’s differentiation from this field rests on three elements: behavioral health exclusivity, current deal flow intelligence, and the specific buyer relationships that come from running active ABA processes rather than episodically advising in the sector.
The firm’s size — a focused boutique rather than a large advisory firm — means that ABA sellers retain senior attention throughout the process rather than being handed off to junior associates after the engagement letter is signed. Kevin Taggart’s direct involvement in deal execution, rather than purely in business development, is a selling point that resonates with founder-owners who have spent years building a company and want continuity of advisor involvement at the critical stages of a transaction.
For the ABA market’s current moment — a period of continued consolidation, recalibrated valuations from the 2021 peak, and active PE platform-building at the add-on level — Mertz Taggart’s combination of sector focus, market data, and senior-led process execution positions it well for the volume of deals that characterize the lower and middle market of ABA M&A activity.
AT A GLANCE
Firm: Mertz Taggart — Naples, FL
Managing Partner: Kevin Taggart
Sector focus: Behavioral health M&A exclusively: ABA therapy, mental health, substance use disorder
Market positioning: Lower and middle market behavioral health sell-side advisory
Key data product: Quarterly behavioral health M&A reports — principal competitor to The Braff Group’s data
Q4 2023 market data: 14 behavioral health transactions out of 506 total healthcare transactions tracked (Mertz Taggart)
Q1 2025 benchmark: ABA client received highest number of acquisition offers in any Mertz Taggart deal since 2021 (firm-reported)
Kevin Taggart’s role: Managing Partner; most frequently quoted ABA M&A source in trade media
Competitive advantage: Behavioral health exclusivity, senior-led process execution, current buyer relationship intelligence
Trade media presence: Taggart cited in Behavioral Health Business, KFF Health News, and ABA trade publications
Competitive set: The Braff Group, Provident Healthcare Partners, Harris Williams, regional boutiques
Website: mertztaggart.com
SOURCES & REFERENCES
1. – Mertz Taggart. Firm overview and behavioral health M&A advisory services. mertztaggart.com (accessed March 2026)
2. – Mertz Taggart. Health Care Transaction Distribution — Q4 2023 (506 total transactions). mertztaggart.com/behavioral-health-ma-report
3. – Mertz Taggart. Behavioral Health M&A Quarterly Reports. mertztaggart.com/behavioral-health-ma-report (recurring publication)
4. – Mertz Taggart. Q1 2025 deal announcement: ABA client receives highest offer count since 2021. mertztaggart.com (deal announcement, 2025)
5. – Behavioral Health Business. ABA M&A market coverage citing Kevin Taggart on deal multiples and market conditions. bhbusiness.com (multiple articles, 2022–2025)
6. – KFF Health News. Behavioral health consolidation and private equity coverage. kffhealthnews.org (multiple articles citing Mertz Taggart data)
