Same size, same market: 2.6x or 6.1x

Scale doesn't raise your multiple. It protects your floor — and Axial names what decides the rest.

Most valuation data you see is a survey of opinion. This one isn't. Axial went back through its own closed transactions from Q3 2024 through Q3 2026 and published what actually changed hands — the full report is open, and every figure below is in it.

The headline is unremarkable: a median of 4.3x EBITDA, with the middle half of deals landing between 3.2x and 5.7x. Nearly half closed between 3x and 5x.

The interesting part is what doesn't move that number.

Size barely does. Median multiples ran 3.9x for businesses under $1M of EBITDA and 4.4x for those above $5M. Five million dollars of additional earnings bought half a turn.

What size actually buys is a narrower range:

Read the right-hand column as the risk of a bad outcome. At the smaller end, a third of owners sold below 3x in the same market where a quarter of their direct peers cleared 6x. Scale doesn't lift the ceiling much. It lifts the floor.

Sector moves it more than size does. Technology and software closed at a 5.8x median, healthcare at 5.7x, construction and trade services at 3.8x. That two-turn gap is larger than the gap between the smallest and largest businesses in the study.

So does who buys you. Private equity funds paid the highest median at 5.1x, and only 6% of their deals closed below 3x. Independent sponsors came in at 4.4x, strategics and holding companies at 4.3x, search funds at 4.1x, individual buyers at 3.8x. Family offices had the widest spread of any group — 2.3x to 8.1x — with 29% above 6x and 33% below 3x.

The part worth reading twice

Axial then does something most data providers won't: it offers an explanation for the spread, and it isn't flattering to the industry.

In their words, lower-middle-market multiples are influenced “not only by the quality of the underlying business, but also by the quality of the sell-side process and the judgment of the buyer,” with “meaningful variation in the sophistication and effectiveness of M&A advisors.” Their conclusion for owners: “selecting an experienced, capable M&A advisor may meaningfully influence where a business ultimately lands within the range.”

That is a neutral platform, using its own closed deals rather than a survey, telling business owners that advisor quality is worth turns of EBITDA.

We'd have said the same thing, and you'd have been right to discount it. It lands differently coming from the people clearing the transactions.

What an owner can actually change

Before a sale you cannot change your EBITDA band, and you certainly cannot change your sector. Both are largely fixed on the day you decide to go to market.

What remains in your control is which buyers ever see the business, and how the process is run once they do. On this data those two things carry more of the outcome than size does. A process that reaches funds competing against each other is playing for a different number than one that reaches a single strategic who knows there is no one else at the table.

One honest caveat on every figure above. These multiples count only what was paid at closing. They exclude earnouts — and in Axial's sample of 100 executed letters of intent, 38% carried one, at a median of 16.3% of total consideration. A headline multiple understates what a deal might eventually be worth, and overstates what is certain. We covered that gap in the last issue.