In the dog-eat-dog world of corporate acquisitions, taking more time between deals may yield more profitable outcomes.

That’s the finding of a comprehensive study co-authored by Jerayr “John” Haleblian, a professor of management in UC Riverside’s School of Business.

Published in the Journal of Business Research, the study examined how the timing between successive acquisitions—what researchers call “experience schedules”—affects company performance, measured by changes in stock value following the deals.

Challenging longstanding assumptions, Haleblian and his co-authors found that companies spacing out their acquisitions with longer intervals are rewarded by investors with higher stock values.

“Our findings suggest that gradually increasing the time between acquisitions can better position firms to learn and improve from each experience and thus get the most out of each buyout,” said Haleblian, who is one of UCR’s Anderson Presidential Chairs in Business.

The study’s findings run counter to previous research that favored even acquisition pacing as the most profitable strategy.

Acquisitions can boost a company’s profitability by adding talent, equipment, property, market share—or any combination of those. But Haleblian said it takes time to properly absorb and integrate these new assets into the corporate structure and culture.

The research team analyzed more than 5,100 acquisitions made by companies in the S&P 1500 over 20 years, from 1992 to 2012. They found that companies that steadily increased the time between acquisitions outperformed those that rushed into deals with shorter intervals.

Slower pacing allows top executives to better absorb lessons from earlier deals, Haleblian explained. The additional time helps integrate new employees and assets more effectively and gives managers a chance to refine internal processes. The study described this as a way to reduce the risk of “acquisition indigestion,” where rapid deal-making overwhelms a company’s ability to integrate new operations.

Extending the time between acquisitions also fosters organizational stability, giving leaders space to build the structures, rules, and routines that best support the newly acquired resources.

To gain real-world insights, the research team interviewed 17 senior executives involved in acquisitions across the chemical, energy, and technology sectors.

“If you have fewer deals and more time in between, you can really focus on extracting the value out of that, and it’s less of a strain on the running organization,” one executive said.

The message for acquisition managers is clear: slowing down may lead to greater long-term success, the authors found. Rather than racing from one deal to the next, companies could benefit from adopting a more deliberate, reflective pace as they build acquisition experience.

The study is titled “Experience Schedules: Unpacking Experience Accumulation and Its Consequences.” The co-authors include Christopher Bingham of the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Kalin D. Kolev of the College of Business Administration at Marquette University; and Koen Heimeriks of the University of Warwick Business School.