Serbia’s 2025 mergers and acquisitions cycle did not look dramatic if measured purely by deal count. It did not resemble a classic boom year, nor did it deliver a long list of mid-sized financial buyouts. Yet, viewed through an investor lens, 2025 stands out as one of the most structurally important deal years of the last decade. Capital did not chase growth narratives. It chased control, throughput, and defensibility. In doing so, it quietly reset how Serbian assets are priced, what types of buyers dominate, and which sectors are likely to consolidate between now and 2030.
The right way to read 2025 is not as a collection of unrelated transactions, but as a scoreboard year. A year in which Serbia was stress-tested as a market under higher rates, tighter capital, sanctions risk, and regional geopolitical noise—and still attracted capital for the assets that mattered most. The scoreboard shows who won access to households, who locked in execution capacity, who positioned for sanctions-driven energy restructuring, and who is underwriting Serbia not as an isolated market, but as a South-East European platform.
At the top of the scoreboard sits the telecom and media reset driven by the carve-up of United Group’s Serbian assets. The sale of SBB to e& and PPF Telecom for €825 million was not merely the largest closed transaction of the year; it was a statement about what still deserves premium capital in Serbia. Fixed broadband households, bundled services, and predictable subscription cashflows remain assets that can support leverage, long-term capex planning, and strategic patience. This transaction was not priced on a speculative growth multiple. It was priced on resilience, churn control, and the buyer’s confidence that Serbian consumers remain anchored to converged connectivity and content.
Parallel to that, Telekom Srbija acquired NetTV Plus, the DTH carve-out of SBB, and Western Balkans sports broadcasting rights for €652 million, completing a broader restructuring of distribution and content power whose combined enterprise value was widely understood to be around €1.5 billion. Taken together, these transactions redrew the competitive map of Serbian telecom and media for the next decade. They also clarified pricing logic. Assets that control customer access and premium content do not trade at “CEE averages.” They command strategic premiums because they anchor entire ecosystems. In Serbia, this implies effective EBITDA multiples well into the high single-digit to low double-digit range, not because EBITDA growth is explosive, but because the downside is contained.
The telecom reset is important not only for what happened in 2025, but for what it blocks. Greenfield entry into mass-market fixed or pay-TV services in Serbia is now economically irrational. This pushes future M&A into adjacencies: enterprise connectivity, data centers, managed IT, cybersecurity, and content monetisation layers that sit above the access network. From 2026 to 2030, these segments will likely transact at more conventional 6–8x EBITDA ranges when they are service-oriented, but will command premiums when they directly enhance churn control or bundle economics for the dominant operators.
If telecom represented clean strategic capital, energy in 2025 represented conditional capital. The unresolved ownership restructuring around Naftna Industrija Srbije was not a closed M&A deal, but it shaped the entire market as if it were one. With refinery capacity of roughly 4.8 million tonnes per year, and an ownership structure still dominated by Russian shareholders alongside the Serbian state, NIS spent 2025 operating under sanctions-related uncertainty. This uncertainty is itself a form of deal pressure. It reprices risk, shortens counterparty tenors, alters working capital behaviour, and forces the state and strategic players to prepare for ownership change.
Market discussion during the year frequently referenced potential valuations in the vicinity of $2.5–2.7 billion for the business under normalized conditions, though such figures remain theoretical without clarity on sanctions, governance, and capital access. The real investor takeaway is not the number, but the mechanism. Serbia’s energy sector has entered an era where M&A is triggered less by commercial optimisation and more by regulatory and geopolitical alignment. Between 2026 and 2030, any transaction involving fuels, refining, storage, or large-scale energy infrastructure will price at a discount to “pure commercial” multiples unless and until ownership and sanction risk are fully neutralised. This implies headline EBITDA multiples that may appear low on paper, but with embedded option value once political constraints are lifted.
Running quietly beneath these headline stories was one of the most strategically telling transactions of 2025: the expansion of Hungary’s MVM Group to majority ownership, 60%, in Energotehnika Južna Bačka and Elektromontaža Kraljevo. On the surface, this looked like a mid-sized industrial acquisition. In reality, it was a purchase of bottleneck relief. Europe’s energy transition is not constrained by policy ambition or financing alone; it is constrained by the physical capacity to design, build, and commission grids, substations, and high-voltage assets. Serbian engineering and montage companies sit at the intersection of EU demand and cost-efficient execution.
These assets are not valued like typical contractors. Their strategic value lies in guaranteed throughput, schedule certainty, and margin protection on larger pipelines. While standalone EBITDA multiples for such companies might normally sit in the 5–7x range, strategic buyers routinely pay above that implied valuation because the real return is earned at the portfolio level. By locking in execution capacity in Serbia, buyers de-risk multi-billion-euro grid investment programs elsewhere. Between now and 2030, this logic is likely to intensify. Serbian grid engineering, electro-montage, and industrial energy services assets will increasingly trade at strategic premiums whenever backlog visibility and workforce depth are credible.
Healthcare and pharma transactions in 2025 reinforced a different, but equally durable, theme. Serbia continues to attract capital not for speculative biotech, but for distribution, manufacturing, and compliance-driven platforms. Fagron entered the Serbian market through acquisitions of Uni-Chem and SB Trade, buying regulatory readiness, customer relationships, and a base for compounding and hospital services. Meanwhile, Bulgaria’s Sopharma completed its phased acquisition of Pharmanova, reaching 100% ownership in 2025.
These transactions clarify pricing norms. Serbian pharma manufacturing and distribution assets typically trade in a 6–8x EBITDA range when they are purely local, with premiums emerging when brands, export exposure, or hospital channels add defensibility. The value creation model is not aggressive top-line growth; it is procurement scale, private-label expansion, and regional distribution leverage. From 2026 to 2030, consolidation in pharmacy retail, compounding services, and mid-sized manufacturers is likely to continue steadily, supported by Serbia’s regulatory alignment with the EU and its cost advantage in skilled labour.
Consumer and services M&A in 2025 offered a glimpse into how private capital increasingly underwrites Serbia. The investment by BlackPeak Capital into Kafeterija was not a bet on Serbian coffee consumption alone. It was a platform bet, with ambitions of 150 stores and €70 million in annual sales across the region. This reflects a broader shift. Serbia is no longer priced as a single-country growth story. It is priced as a headquarters and operating base for SEE expansion.
In these sectors, EBITDA multiples tend to cluster around 7–9x for scalable concepts with proven unit economics, with upside driven by regional rollout rather than domestic saturation. From 2026 onward, similar transactions are likely in foodservice, specialty retail, logistics-enabled services, and B2B platforms where Serbia offers management talent, cost efficiency, and cultural proximity to neighbouring markets.
Real estate transactions in 2025, such as the sale of the IN Hotel in New Belgrade, illustrated another dimension of the scoreboard. These deals are less about growth and more about balance-sheet repositioning and yield. Prime commercial assets in Belgrade continue to attract capital, but pricing is disciplined. Yield expectations are higher than in core EU cities, reflecting macro risk and liquidity considerations. Between 2026 and 2030, real estate M&A is likely to remain selective, with activity concentrated in logistics, mixed-use urban assets, and hospitality segments tied to business travel rather than mass tourism.
When these threads are woven together, a coherent picture emerges. Serbia in 2025 was not a market for indiscriminate capital. It was a market where capital paid up for assets that solve problems: customer retention, execution bottlenecks, regulatory access, or regional expansion. This sets the framework for the 2026–2030 pipeline.
Telecom and digital infrastructure will see follow-on consolidation in enterprise services, data centres, and managed IT, with pricing driven by how directly these assets enhance incumbent operators’ ecosystems. Energy M&A will remain conditional and episodic, with large value at stake but transactions gated by political resolution. Grid engineering and industrial energy services will attract increasing strategic premiums as Europe’s capex cycle accelerates. Healthcare and pharma will continue their methodical roll-ups at rational multiples. Consumer and service platforms will be underwritten as regional plays, not domestic ones.
Across all sectors, the key pricing distinction is clear. Assets that can be substituted trade on EBITDA. Assets that cannot be substituted—because they control access, capacity, or compliance—trade on strategy. In 2025, Serbia proved it has more of the latter than many investors previously assumed. The scoreboard reflects that recognition. The pipeline to 2030 will likely reinforce it.
