BUYER POOL ANALYSIS
Selling a Specialty Contractor to Private Equity / PE-Backed Roll-Up buyers
Private equity firms and PE-backed platform consolidators acquiring for roll-up, add-on, or platform plays. Pricing tends to lead the market for fee-viable scale, with multi-bidder competitive processes above the EBITDA floor.
Quick answers
- What multiple does this buyer pool pay?
- Median EV/EBITDA 8.62x across 13 disclosed deals (P25: 6.74x, P75: 14.43x). Median EV/Revenue 1.18x across 21 deals. Median deal value: $168.54M.
- How many disclosed transactions?
- 23 deals total (23 from 2018+), filtered to Private Equity / PE-Backed Roll-Up acquirers of specialty contractor businesses.
- Most active buyers
- TopBuild Corp. (2) · Powell Max Limited (1) · Shah Capital Management, Inc (1) · Stella-Jones Inc. (1) · Gamut Capital Management, L.P. (1) · WSP Global Inc. (1)
Recent disclosed deals
Private Equity / PE-Backed Roll-Up acquisitions of specialty contractor businesses with named target, named acquirer, and disclosed financials.
| Year | Target | Acquirer | EV | EV/EBITDA | EV/Rev |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | The Boston Solar Company, LLC | Powell Max Limited | $9.0M | — | 0.38x |
| 2025 | Emeren Group Ltd | Shah Capital Management, Inc | $90.6M | 12.4x | 1.77x |
| 2025 | Locweld Inc. | Stella-Jones Inc. | $47.3M | — | 1.18x |
| 2025 | Progressive Services, Inc. | TopBuild Corp. | $810.0M | 9.1x | 1.85x |
| 2024 | Airtron Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc. | Gamut Capital Management, L.P. | $500.0M | 8.6x | — |
| 2024 | POWER Engineers, Incorporated | WSP Global Inc. | $1780.0M | 18.0x | 2.12x |
What this buyer pool prices for
Private equity acquirers price for scale and roll-up arbitrage. They pay up for businesses that fit a platform thesis — recurring revenue mix above 30%, technician/professional depth, clean financials, and a management layer that survives integration. The same specialty contractor can command 1.5x to 2x the multiple of an individual-buyer transaction simply because the PE buyer is acquiring a platform piece, not an owner-operated shop.
Methodology note
Multiples shown are computed from disclosed M&A transactions in the ExitValue.ai database, filtered to specialty contractor businesses acquired by private equity / pe-backed roll-up 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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