BUYER POOL ANALYSIS
Selling a Specialty Contractor to Individual / Owner-Operator buyers
Owner-operators, SBA-financed independent buyers, and smaller management buyouts. Pricing reflects what an individual can finance (typically 10-25% down + SBA 7(a)) and operate hands-on. Below typical PE engagement size.
Quick answers
- What multiple does this buyer pool pay?
- Median EV/EBITDA 8.19x across 8 disclosed deals (P25: 6.24x, P75: 17.02x). Median EV/Revenue 0.46x across 15 deals. Median deal value: $13.1M.
- How many disclosed transactions?
- 16 deals total (6 from 2018+), filtered to Individual / Owner-Operator acquirers of specialty contractor businesses.
- Most active buyers
- F5 Finishes, Inc. (2) · SafeSpace Global Corporation (1) · McGrath RentCorp (1) · Bateman Litwin N.V. (:BNLN) (1) · LMI Aerospace, Inc. (:LMIA) (1) · Stantec Inc. (1)
Recent disclosed deals
Individual / Owner-Operator acquisitions of specialty contractor businesses with named target, named acquirer, and disclosed financials.
| Year | Target | Acquirer | EV | EV/EBITDA | EV/Rev |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Glass 8 Holdings, LLC | SafeSpace Global Corporation | $1.5M | — | 0.05x |
| 2021 | Design Space Modular Buildings Inc. | McGrath RentCorp | $267.0M | — | 3.21x |
| 2019 | Contract Carpet Systems Incorporated | F5 Finishes, Inc. | $8.9M | — | 0.46x |
| 2019 | D.S. Baxley, Inc. | F5 Finishes, Inc. | $9.8M | 6.1x | 0.29x |
| 2007 | Applied Process Technology International, LLC | Bateman Litwin N.V. (:BNLN) | $117.2M | 19.6x | 0.56x |
| 2007 | D3 Technologies, Inc. | LMI Aerospace, Inc. (:LMIA) | $57.8M | 6.8x | 0.87x |
What this buyer pool prices for
Individual buyers — owner-operators, SBA-financed independents, smaller management buyouts — price for what they can finance (typically 10-25% down with SBA 7(a) loans up to $5M deal value) and operate hands-on. Multiples are below PE / strategic because the buyer is taking the owner-operator role, not stepping in as institutional capital. Owner-dependency and seasonality matter more here than to a PE buyer.
Methodology note
Multiples shown are computed from disclosed M&A transactions in the ExitValue.ai database, filtered to specialty contractor businesses acquired by individual / owner-operator buyers. EV/EBITDA outliers outside the [0.5x, 60x] band and EV/Revenue outliers outside [0.05x, 25x] are excluded from medians. Where available, post-2018 transactions are weighted; otherwise the all-time sample is used. Deal counts shown reflect deals with disclosed financials only — total transaction count for this buyer pool is typically 2-3x larger. Full methodology
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