Todays Dental: one lender, three facilities, thirty-six practices

The company

Todays Dental Group Limited was incorporated on 17 November 2021 to buy dental practices in England and Wales.³ Its first deal was a carve-out. In April 2022 it bought Simplyhealth Partnerships, eight practices of which four were joint ventures with their dentists, from the insurer's Denplan business for £7.76m in cash.⁵

The equity came from Lonsdale Capital Partners, a London private equity firm that invests in the lower mid-market, with a family business investing alongside.² The thesis, in Lonsdale's words, was to grow "the current platform of eight up to c. 50" practices over about five years.³ The management team, led by Rob Paxman, had between them bought more than 250 practices at larger dental groups.³ That claim matters more than any other fact in the story, as we will see.

The group says it is "focused on private dentistry".¹ NHS dentistry in England has spent the last few years under severe cost and workforce pressure, and the group's own accounts note that this is "pushing more clinicians into private dentistry".⁷

The first facility

By March 2023 the group had twelve practices and sixteen months of trading, with turnover of £6.98m and a small operating loss.⁵ It was paying for practices with equity and a modest £2m of loan notes. To reach fifty practices it needed a lender.

On 26 May 2023 Lonsdale announced that Todays Dental had raised "a £20.0 million committed acquisition facility from DunPort Capital Management".¹ The security had been registered a fortnight earlier. On 12 May DunPort, as security trustee, took debentures over four group companies, each with fixed charges, a floating charge over all their property and a negative pledge.⁴

DunPort is a Dublin manager founded in 2017. It lends to "established businesses with earnings between €1m and €10m" in Ireland, the UK and the Benelux countries, for buyouts, refinancings, acquisitions and growth.⁹ By May 2025 it had lent more than €1.3bn to 68 borrowers.¹⁰ Lonsdale's announcement said it was "delighted to once again be working with DunPort".¹ The two had done deals together before, and they did another, for Lonsdale's Irish dental group, in December 2025.¹¹

The accounts say what the money was for. It "enabled the group to settle its existing debt (£2.0m) as well as providing a committed facility to fund the next phase of growth through acquisitions and CAPEX".⁶ By December 2023 the group had drawn £10.83m of the £20m.⁵

What it cost

Most lower mid-market loans are never priced in public. This one nearly is. The accounts for the year to March 2024 describe two loans. One was £11.05m, "maturing in May 2029", with interest at "7.5% above a compounded reference rate". The other was £13.48m, maturing in 2032, at 10%.⁶

The accounts do not name either lender. We read the first as the DunPort facility, for four reasons. It did not exist at March 2023. It appeared after the DunPort charge. It matures six years after that charge. And its balance matches what the group had drawn. The second is the sponsor's own loan notes, which were on the books before DunPort lent.

That puts the senior loan at a margin of 750 basis points over a compounded overnight rate, which in 2023 and 2024 meant an all-in cost of roughly 12% to 13%. Arrangement fees of £920,000 were netted against the loan, about 4.6% of the commitment. Both are in the normal range for a single-lender facility to a sponsor-backed company of this size. Neither is cheap.

The structure

By March 2025 the group's financing looked like this, from the most junior claim to the most senior.

Two details are worth noticing. The first is that the sponsor put in much of its money as a loan, not as equity. The 10% notes grew from £5.2m in 2023 to £15.9m in 2025.⁷ That is a common way for a private equity firm to fund a buy-and-build. It means the reported losses after interest overstate how badly the business is doing, because a large part of the interest is owed to the owner.

The second is the cap on the A and B shares. The confirmation statement says their returns are limited to "a maximum of 10% IRR".⁸ Above that, value passes to the subordinate share classes held by management and staff. The people doing the buying are the ones who gain most if it works.

How it grew

The facility did what it was for. The group bought twelve practices in the year to March 2024, including a five-practice group in Wales for £8.55m, and six more the following year.^6,7

The numbers grew together. Turnover went from £19.9m to £36.4m in a year.⁷ Practice-level EBITDA, a management measure, reached £6.9m, and the group put its annualised adjusted EBITDA at £5.8m.⁷ Borrowings reached £36.1m. Net liabilities were £6.7m, after amortisation of the goodwill on everything it had bought. The auditor reported no material uncertainty over going concern.⁷

One oddity deserves mention. The 2025 accounts were refiled in amended form. The amendment moved amortisation between cost lines, which raised reported adjusted EBITDA from £3.14m to £4.36m with the same operating loss. It also corrected the name of the ultimate controlling party.⁷ Nothing improper is implied. It is a reminder that "adjusted EBITDA" is a figure a company chooses how to present.

The second and third facilities

After March 2024 the group "raised an additional Mezzanine Debt Facility with our existing debt provider, DunPort Capital Management amounting to £2,000,000".⁶ By December 2024 it had drawn £16.84m of the combined £22m.

The bigger step came a year later. After March 2025 the group "negotiated a Debt Facility with our existing provider, DunPort Capital Management amounting to £40,000,000 with a further £20,000,000 of uncommitted funds".⁷ The strategic report in the same document describes a facility with "capacity up to £60million, of which £16million is uncommitted", so the committed figure is either £40m or £44m. Its margin, maturity and covenants are not disclosed.

In two years the commitment had doubled, and the total available had tripled, without the group changing lender or adding a second one.

Why it worked

On the evidence, three things made this financeable.

The first is the team. A lender to a two-year-old group with losses is not lending against the group's history, because it has very little. It is lending against the expectation that each practice bought will be bought at a sensible price and run better than before. A team that has done that 250 times is the best evidence a lender can get. Lonsdale put that claim in both announcements.^1,3

The second is the asset. A private dental practice has steady, mostly prepaid or insured revenue, loyal patients and a market for its sale. Christie & Co, the largest broker of practice sales, reported 1,241 practices worth £1.68bn sold or agreed in 2025.¹² A lender can value the collateral, and it can see how often practices change hands and at what price.

The third is the relationship. DunPort had lent to Lonsdale before. A lender that knows the sponsor, has seen its reporting and trusts its judgement on acquisitions can commit faster and increase its facility without starting again. Both upsizes came from the same lender within two years.

For comparison, the largest UK dental groups are financed in the same way at many times the size. Apollo was reported in 2025 to be leading a £600m private credit package for the buyout of Mydentist, which has more than 500 practices.¹³ Todays Dental is the same idea at the bottom of the market: a single private lender, a committed acquisition line, and a sponsor with a plan.

What we do not know

• Which DunPort fund lent, and on what terms the 2024 mezzanine and the 2025 facility were written.
• Whether the "May 2029, 7.5% over a compounded reference rate" loan is in fact the DunPort facility. The accounts do not say.
• Whether the 2025 commitment is £40m or £44m.
• The covenants: leverage, interest cover and how the accordion is triggered.
• The price Lonsdale paid in 2022, and the size of the co-investing family's stake.
• The multiples paid for practices. The accounts disclose consideration and goodwill, not multiples.
• Whether any debt adviser was involved.

Cite as: “Todays Dental: one lender, three facilities, thirty-six practices”, Norvian Review, 23 October 2026.