EBITDA Multiples by Industry & Company Size: 2024 Report

Last Updated: October 18, 2024

Our team recently conducted a meta-analysis of EBITDA multiples for small-to-midsized private businesses of <$250M in revenue, parsing the data by industry and company size. We drew from research published over the past 18 months (Q3 2022-Q1 2024) in M&A and private equity publications in order to get an accurate picture of the current marketplace. The tables below reflect an accurate picture of private company valuations in today’s M&A environment.

Apart from industry and EBITDA range, real-world valuations depend principally on 8 factors:

1. Recurring revenue
2. Revenue growth over last 12 months
3. Key employee turnover
4. Profit margin
5. Competitive advantages
6. Customer concentration
7. Strength of management team
8. Growth opportunities

The following tables represent EBITDA multiple averages; achieving these multiples depends on the investor’s weighting of the above factors, as well as the business’ strategic fit with the acquirer or portfolio. For a more in-depth calculation of your business’s valuation, see our Business Valuation Calculator.

NOTE: If you’re exploring selling your business, see our report on the Top M&A Advisory Firms in the US.

To make the data more meaningful, we’ve broken it down by two further dimensions: revenue growth in the last 12 months and key employee turnover. In addition to EBITDA range and recurring revenue, these tend to be the strongest considerations for acquirers when they’re evaluating a company. Definitions of “high” and “low” in the two categories vary based on acquirer and company size, but a healthy median for last 12 months revenue growth is ~25% and key employee turnover rate is ~5%.

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