Collision repair acquisitions fell to their lowest first-half total in three years even as the widest field of buyers on record competed for deals, according to Focus Advisors' 2026 mid-year M&A review, published Aug. 20.
Excluding Gerber Collision & Glass's acquisition of Joe Hudson's Collision Centers, which closed in January, the Big Four consolidators, Established Consolidators, and New Entrant platforms tracked by Focus Advisors added a combined 81 locations in the first half of 2026, according to the report. That compares with more than 300 locations added in the first half of 2024 and more than 200 in the first half of 2025. Including Joe Hudson's 258 locations, the H1 2026 total reaches 339.
Focus Advisors said it views the slowdown as a pause rather than a lasting trend, and expects M&A activity to pick up heading into the fourth quarter and through 2027.
Big Four favor organic growth over deals
Gerber closed its $1.3 billion acquisition of Joe Hudson's in January, adding 258 Southeast locations. Its other first-half growth came to 21 additional locations, more than half of them new construction, including the two-store Erie Lasalle group in February and the two-store Boyce Body Werks in June, both in Chicago, according to Focus Advisors.
Caliber Collision, Crash Champions and Classic Collision, the remaining members of the Big Four, together opened or acquired just 13 locations. Caliber added nine locations, two of them new construction, and closed several older sites in what Focus Advisors linked to discipline ahead of a planned IPO.
The company filed a confidential S-1 last July, and a deal for the five-shop Barnett's group in Mississippi closed shortly after the first half ended. Crash Champions opened two new developments, in Windham, New Hampshire, and Dade City, Florida, with most of its closed deals having been in the pipeline since 2025.
Classic Collision, which changed leadership during the period, added shops in Waco, Texas, and Hampton, Virginia, following its integration of the nine-shop Kendrick Paint & Body group bought in Atlanta the previous December. Toan Nguyen stepped down as CEO while remaining on the board, and Brad Anderson, the former CEO of Pilot Travel Centers, was named his successor in June.
The Big Four are also closing a smaller number of locations as they expand, typically stores that overlap with a nearby sister shop or whose lease has come up for renewal, which the report characterized as ordinary consolidation math.
Smaller, PE-backed platforms drive the growth
The mid-sized, mostly private-equity-backed platforms accounted for most of the industry's first-half growth, expanding at five to seven times the pace of the Big Four, according to Focus Advisors. VIVE Collision grew to 79 locations after 11 Northeast acquisitions, starting with the five-store Carstar Scott Hotalen group in New York and pushing into western Pennsylvania for the first time in June with the purchase of Klapec in Pittsburgh.
Puget Collision brought on nine new stores to reach 72 locations, a run that started with Fix Auto Portland in March and culminated in May with a six-shop Southern California group operated by Richard Fish under the Fix Auto banner.
CollisionRight grew to 130 locations after acquiring Batt and Stevens in Defiance, Ohio, and Cunningham Collision in Elkins, West Virginia, while also transitioning leadership, with board member John Robinson named CEO in June. Quality Collision Group sat out acquisitions entirely, opening two ground-up locations in Fort Worth and Grapevine, Texas, instead. On Aug. 11, it announced a deal for California's Tracy Collision, its first purchase in nine months.
G&C Auto Body picked up seven shops to bring its total to 63, keeping it the country's biggest MSO without institutional ownership, and made its first move outside Northern California, into Nevada, in June. Chilton, backed by Trive Capital, likewise stepped beyond Northern California for the first time, picking up locations in Los Angeles and Modesto. OpenRoad added three locations in Oklahoma to reach 40 shops. Kaizen, a 45-store platform, made no acquisitions in the first half, and BrightPoint, a heavy buyer throughout 2025, closed on just one shop.
Newer entrants also gained ground. Collision Partners, led by Earl Johnson IV, acquired K&M Auto Body in Hickory, North Carolina, in late July, following January acquisitions in South Florida. Minuteman Collision, run by former Gerber M&A chief Jason Hope, launched with four shops around Boston. Collision Leaders grew to 13 stores, and Driving Force Collision grew to seven after an April acquisition.
Capital still flowing, just distributed differently
Focus Advisors counts more than 130 private equity firms currently evaluating collision repair deals, with more than $9 billion deployed into the sector since late 2023. With few sizable platforms up for sale, capital has instead gone toward assembling smaller roll-ups shop by shop, and toward new construction, according to the report.
A less visible factor now affecting price, per the report, is consolidator competition for favorable carrier agreements, as some insurers shift which shops hold DRP status within a market, adding uncertainty to the value of a seller's DRP revenue.
An operator considering re-entering the industry summed it up bluntly to Focus Advisors: "the collision industry's weird right now."
Industry fundamentals show signs of stabilizing
Industry revenue fell just under 5% year over year, Focus Advisors estimated, alongside continued affordability pressure on vehicles and climbing repair costs. Boyd Group's second-quarter 2026 investor materials pointed to those same cost pressures as the reason same-store sales growth has become tougher to deliver.
There were counterpoints, though. New-vehicle prices have eased since peaking last year, Boyd Group's second-quarter claims counts held flat year over year, and GEICO reported its own collision claims rose, according to the report.
Auto insurance premiums fell year over year even as vehicle miles traveled grew compared with both last year and pre-pandemic levels. Broader economic indicators were favorable as well: real GDP growth held steady, unemployment came in below last year's level, and consumer sentiment has climbed back since bottoming out in May, the report found.
Operators diversify beyond collision repair
Focus Advisors described operators sharpening their focus through store closures for renovation, personnel changes, and margin discipline, while also diversifying. As claims counts stopped falling as sharply as in 2025 and the average vehicle age climbed to a record 12.95 years, more operators moved into mechanical and maintenance work.
Texas Collision Centers moved into heavy-duty truck repair, Caliber Collision grew its fleet solutions business, and Body by Cochran expanded its 80,000-square-foot Pittsburgh-area parts warehouse, which supplies roughly 500 body shops, while shifting toward make-specific OEM certifications so technicians can specialize by brand, according to the report. Operators nationwide have also been pursuing Toyota and Rivian certifications, Focus Advisors found.
Tesla expands its own collision footprint
Tesla's collision repair network grew from 60 locations in January to 67 by July after seven large centers opened in the first half, with more slated for the second half, according to Focus Advisors. Projects underway include a 42,000-square-foot site in McKinney, Texas, and a planned 28,000-square-foot Jacksonville, Florida, location, with five more in the near-term pipeline. The expansion comes even as Cox Automotive reported an 11% decline in new Tesla sales in the first half of 2026 compared with a year earlier.
As Tesla pulls certifications from shops nationwide, buyers evaluating collision repair acquisitions are giving less weight to Tesla-tied revenue when they price their offers, according to Focus Advisors.
Beyond collision: aftermarket M&A stayed active
The broader aftermarket saw plenty of deal activity. In coatings, Axalta and AkzoNobel shareholders cleared their merger in August, and Carlyle finished buying BASF's coatings unit at the end of June, the business that relaunched as Surventis on July 1. In diagnostics, Repairify and Opus IVS completed their merger. Partly also raised $50 million for automotive-supply-chain AI infrastructure, and First Brands Group, in Chapter 11 since last September, began selling assets through court-supervised sales in March and April, the report found.
Elliott Investment Management took a sizable position in CCC Intelligent Solutions in early July. CCC reported second-quarter revenue growth of 9.8% later that month, attributed in part to expanding AI estimating adoption. That same month, Icahn Enterprises agreed to sell Pep Boys to Mavis Tire Express Services for $700 million in cash, per the report.
Driven Brands turned down an $18-per-share buyout bid that ADW Capital Management had first made in April, rejecting it in early August. Certified Collision Group changed hands as well, sold by Incline Equity Partners to the Riverside Companies in January. Dealership transactions ran especially hot: Presidio Group's George Karolis counted 215 deals in the first half, up 23% from a year earlier, according to the report.
Where multiples stand and outlook for the second half
Collision repair valuations have in fact fallen, Focus Advisors said, but the report pushes back on the common explanation for why. Buyer pricing discipline for top-tier assets hasn't loosened, the firm found; the decline traces mainly to lower trailing-twelve-month earnings at target companies, not to lower multiples. As Focus Advisors' 2025 year-end review illustrated, using a 7.0x multiple as an example, a shop where revenue drops 10% could see its enterprise value fall by 20% or more.
Focus Advisors said the consolidators it talks with are reporting stabilized or growing revenue year over year, and that several larger, established platforms have secured new credit lines to resume acquisitions.
Deal volume should pick back up meaningfully between now and the first quarter of 2027, the firm predicts, though owners still valuing their shops at peak-year numbers should brace for a reset if trailing earnings haven't recovered to that level.
