A working publication on ownership, succession, and permanent capital in Central Europe.
Aventin Studies is a quarterly research surface published by Aventin Group. Studies are short, footnoted, and designed to be useful to operators, advisors, and other long-horizon owners thinking about the same problems. They are signed.
The hybrid rule: Valuing Central-European SMEs that sell hardware, software, and recurring service in one envelope.
Three-quarters of the SK / CZ businesses we evaluate do not fit cleanly into one revenue archetype. They sell a piece of equipment, license the firmware that runs it, and service it for the next ten years. Treating them as hardware companies undervalues the recurring base; treating them as SaaS overvalues the install. This study proposes a working frame — the hybrid rule — built around a 60% recurring-revenue floor and a hardware-drop stress test, and applies it to a worked example from our own pipeline.
Read Study 04 →A note on method.
Each study is written from cases we are actively working — not generic theory. Numbers are rounded; identities are masked where consent has not been given; assumptions are stated in the footnotes. We publish what we believe and we sign it. When we are wrong, the next study will say so explicitly.
Studies are not investment advice. They are working notes from a holding company in Bratislava, written for colleagues thinking about the same problems.