EBITDA Multiples for Lower-Middle-Market Manufacturing, Distribution and Logistics Companies

Owners ask us some version of the same question every week: what multiple does a business like mine sell for? Most answers online are a single range with no source, or a figure from a public-company screen that has nothing to do with a $30 million family-owned manufacturer. This post sticks to published data we could read and verify. Every multiple below comes with its source, its date, and what it actually measures.

The short answer: private equity buyers paid an average of about 7x trailing EBITDA for middle-market companies in 2025 and the first half of 2026. Deal size moves that number more than anything else. Companies under $25 million of enterprise value averaged closer to 5.5x to 6.7x, while companies between $50 million and $100 million averaged 8.7x. Industry, customer mix, margins and management depth decide where you sit inside your size band.

What an EBITDA Multiple Actually Measures

An EBITDA multiple is total enterprise value (TEV) divided by EBITDA. Enterprise value is what a buyer pays for the whole business on a cash-free, debt-free basis, before your debt is paid off and before working capital adjustments. EBITDA in these datasets almost always means trailing twelve-month adjusted EBITDA: the last 12 months of earnings, normalized for owner compensation, one-time costs and other add-backs a buyer accepts. If you need a refresher on how that number is built, start with our guide to calculating adjusted EBITDA.

Two things to keep in mind before reading any benchmark. First, the multiple is applied to the EBITDA the buyer agrees with, not the EBITDA in your management accounts. A half-turn swing in multiple matters less than a $500,000 disagreement over add-backs. Second, smaller owner-operated businesses are often priced on seller's discretionary earnings (SDE) instead, and SDE multiples are lower because SDE includes the owner's salary. Our post on EBITDA vs. SDE explains which one applies to you. Everything in this article is EBITDA-based.

Where the Private Market Sits Right Now

The most useful public source for private deal multiples is GF Data, an ACG company that collects completed-deal data from private equity firms on transactions between roughly $10 million and $500 million of enterprise value. Its full reports are subscriber-only, but it publishes headline figures in press releases:

• Full-year 2025: 7.2x trailing twelve-month adjusted EBITDA, across 297 completed transactions, unchanged year over year. Source: GF Data, "Year-End M&A Volume Hits Multi-Year Low," February 18, 2026.
• Q1 2026: 7.3x. Q2 2026: 7.0x trailing twelve-month adjusted EBITDA, on 85 transactions in Q2. GF Data said the dip was likely due to deal mix, with activity skewed toward smaller deals, rather than weaker bids. Source: ACG, "GF Data Reports Show Steady Middle-Market Deal Flow," August 27, 2026.
• 2023 and 2024: 7.2x each, per GF Data's first-half 2025 update. Source: ACG Insights, "GF Data Report: Valuations Holding Firm," September 10, 2025.
• 2021 peak: 7.6x for the full year, the top of the post-COVID run. Source: GF Data, "Private Equity's Five-Year Rollercoaster," February 13, 2026.

So the annual average has stayed in a narrow band, from 7.6x at the 2021 peak to 7.2x in each of the last three years. If you heard about a neighbor's 12x sale in 2021, it was an outlier even then, or it was a much larger company.

The Biggest Factor: Deal Size

The 7x average blends very different companies. GF Data's own breakdown by enterprise value shows how steeply multiples rise with size. These are platform buyouts by private equity firms, measured as TEV divided by trailing twelve-month EBITDA:

Sources: the $10 million and larger bands are from GF Data, "The Size Premium Returns to 2.8x," January 27, 2026, citing its Q3 2025 M&A Report. The two smallest bands are from GF Data, "Small-Deal Resilience," November 11, 2025, which covered 118 deals between $1 million and $25 million of TEV in the first half of 2025 and put the $10-$25 million tier at 6.2x to 6.7x over that period.

The same January 2026 GF Data piece put the gap between larger platforms ($100-$500 million TEV, 9.8x) and smaller ones (under $100 million, 7.0x) at 2.8 turns of EBITDA, above its long-term average of 2.6x. GF Data's explanation is that lenders are more willing to finance larger, more diversified companies, so buyers can pay more for them.

Note that these bands are enterprise value, not revenue. A $10-$100 million revenue company with a 10% EBITDA margin earns $1-$10 million of EBITDA. At $3 million of EBITDA and the 5.9x tier average, that is about $17.7 million of enterprise value. At $8 million of EBITDA and the 8.7x tier average, it is about $69.6 million. Moving up a size band changes both numbers at once.

Service businesses and companies under $10 million in revenue

A lot of searches ask about typical multiples for service businesses under $10 million in revenue. The closest published figure is in the same November 2025 GF Data release: business services companies made up 57 of the 118 small deals it tracked in H1 2025 and averaged 6.2x trailing EBITDA, above their long-run average of 5.8x. Keep in mind those are private equity deals for companies that already report clean EBITDA. Many businesses under $10 million in revenue sell to individual buyers on an SDE basis, where the multiple is lower because the earnings figure already includes the owner's pay.

Survey data points the same direction, with lower numbers. Pepperdine's 2025 Private Capital Markets Report, a survey of private capital providers, found private equity valuations averaging 5.5x EBITDA for companies with $10 million in earnings, according to BVWire's October 15, 2025 summary of the report. Survey responses and closed-deal averages measure different things, which is why we don't lean on any one number.

Multiples by Industry: Manufacturing, Distribution and Logistics

This is where honest sourcing gets harder. GF Data breaks out manufacturing, distribution and other sectors, but those tables are for subscribers. What it has published for free is directional: through the first three quarters of 2025, average multiples on manufacturing deals fell three-tenths of a turn compared with the prior year, while business services, with less tariff exposure, rose by the same amount (GF Data, February 13, 2026).

For sector-by-sector comparisons, the best free source is public-company data. Professor Aswath Damodaran at NYU Stern publishes EV/EBITDA multiples for US-listed companies by industry each January. The figures below are for companies with positive EBITDA, as of January 2026 (Damodaran, "Enterprise Value Multiples by Sector (US)," January 2026):

Do not apply these numbers to a private company. Public companies are far larger, their shares can be sold any day, and they have access to cheap capital. A private business with $10-$100 million of revenue trades at a steep discount to them, which is why GF Data's private averages sit around 6x to 9x while most of these public groups sit above 10x. What the public table is good for is the relative picture: how investors rank sectors against each other.

Manufacturing

The spread inside manufacturing is wide. Public machinery companies trade at 16.22x while auto parts suppliers trade at 6.43x. The difference tracks things buyers also look for in private manufacturers: proprietary products versus build-to-print work, aftermarket and replacement revenue versus a few large OEM programs, and pricing power versus contracts that get rebid every year. A contract manufacturer with two automotive customers and a precision-component maker with 200 industrial customers can both be called "manufacturing" and land a full size band apart. More on what buyers look for is on our manufacturing industry page.

Distribution

Distributors run on thin margins, so buyers look past the EBITDA margin to returns on working capital and how sticky the customer base is. Public distributors trade at 13.71x and food wholesalers at 11.08x, above many manufacturing groups. Value-added services, exclusive supplier lines and a large base of repeat accounts are what push a private distributor toward the top of its size band. Supplier concentration matters as much as customer concentration: losing one line card can cut revenue overnight. See our distribution industry page for the factors we work through with distribution owners.

Transportation and logistics

We could not find a free, published, verifiable dataset of private lower-middle-market logistics multiples, so we won't quote one. The public data shows the shape of the market: trucking at 10.41x and the broader transportation group at 12.55x. In private deals, the gap between asset-heavy and asset-light businesses is usually wider than that. An asset-based carrier has to keep reinvesting in tractors and trailers, and that capex never shows up in EBITDA, so buyers price it into the multiple. A brokerage or 3PL with contracted shippers and little equipment converts more of its EBITDA into cash. Our transportation and logistics page covers how buyers underwrite freight businesses.

What Moves a Company Up or Down the Range

Within your size band, these six factors decide whether you land at the low end or the high end. They are the same factors behind every valuation driver we discuss with owners.

1. Customer concentration. A customer above 15-20% of revenue is a risk a buyer prices in, through a lower multiple, an earnout, or both. Our post on selling with customer concentration covers how buyers react and what to do about it.
2. Recurring or contracted revenue. Service agreements, multi-year supply contracts, aftermarket parts and replacement cycles make next year's EBITDA easier to underwrite. Buyers pay for predictability.
3. Margins. Margins above your peers signal pricing power or a cost advantage. Margins that swing year to year signal the opposite. One caution from the data: GF Data found that companies with above-average financial performance earned only a 2% premium in its Q3 2025 data (7.3x versus 7.1x), the lowest spread in its tracked history (GF Data, January 27, 2026). Strong margins help, but right now they help less than size does.
4. Management depth. If every customer relationship and every quote runs through the owner, the buyer is paying for a business that may not survive the transition. A plant manager, a sales lead and a controller who can run the business without you are worth real money.
5. Growth. Three to five years of steady revenue and EBITDA growth supports a higher multiple than one strong year. A buyer prices the trend, not the peak.
6. Asset intensity. Two companies with the same EBITDA can generate very different free cash flow. Heavy maintenance capex, an aging equipment base or a fleet near replacement lowers what a buyer will pay per dollar of EBITDA.

Financing conditions matter too, even though you don't control them. GF Data's Q2 2026 release showed average total debt on platform deals falling to 2.9x EBITDA from 3.4x in Q1, with senior debt pricing up to 7.8% (ACG, August 27, 2026). Less debt per deal means more equity per deal, which puts a lid on what leveraged buyers can pay. Our post on how rates affect multiples walks through the math.

How to Improve Your Multiple Before Selling a Factory

Most of the work that raises a multiple takes 12 to 24 months to show up in the numbers a buyer will review. Our 12-month readiness checklist covers the full timeline. For a manufacturer or distributor, these steps usually pay off most:

• Defend your EBITDA before you defend your multiple. Document every add-back with invoices and payroll records. A sell-side quality of earnings review finds the problems before the buyer's accountants do.
• Spread out your customer base. Even moving a top customer from 35% to 25% of revenue changes how a buyer models risk.
• Put contracts in writing. Turn handshake relationships into supply agreements, blanket purchase orders or service contracts with terms a buyer can read.
• Build the second layer of management. Hire or promote the people who will run operations, sales and finance after you leave, and let them run it while you're still there.
• Catch up on deferred capex. Keep maintenance logs and equipment records. A buyer who finds a worn-out press line or an old fleet will deduct the cost of replacing it, usually with a cushion added.
• Grow into the next size band if you can. Given the gap between GF Data's $25-$50 million and $50-$100 million tiers (6.6x versus 8.7x), a tuck-in acquisition or a new product line that adds a few million of EBITDA can raise the multiple as well as the earnings.

Using These Numbers Without Fooling Yourself

Every figure in this post is an average of other people's deals. Your business will be priced against the specific buyers who look at it, their financing and their plans for it. Published multiples tell you whether your expectations are reasonable. They can't tell you what a competitive process will produce. The best use of a benchmark is to find the gap between where you are and the top of your size band, then work on the factors above that close it.

The multiple is not a fixed number for your industry. Buyers set it based on how much of your earnings they believe will still be there after you leave.