What multiple will my electrical business sell for?

The ranges run from roughly three times adjusted EBITDA for mixed installation work up to five to seven times for testing-led businesses with frameworks and depth of qualified staff. Where a particular business lands inside that spread depends on recurring share, client concentration, records and owner dependency rather than on turnover.

Is turnover relevant at all?

Mainly as a filter on which buyers can look. Price is set on adjusted EBITDA and its quality, so a larger turnover at a thin, project-led margin is frequently worth less than a smaller one built on contracted testing income.

How much difference does the workforce make to the number?

More than it used to, and the direction is one way. With apprenticeship starts falling and a national shortfall projected to 2030, a retained team of graded, currently certificated electricians is the hardest thing for an acquirer to assemble organically. Buyers price that scarcity, and they check it through cards, grades, length of service and attrition rather than taking the claim on trust.

Can I improve my multiple in twelve months?

Partly. Records, documentation and the adjusted EBITDA calculation can all be sorted inside a year. Moving the recurring share of revenue meaningfully, reducing client concentration and removing owner dependency take longer, usually two years, because they depend on renewal cycles and on other people taking over relationships rather than on effort alone.

What Multiple Do Electrical Contractors Sell For, and Why Yours Differs

The LadderWhat the published ranges actually say

Mixed installation and testing businesses, registered with NICEIC or NAPIT and carrying a moderate share of recurring income, are generally valued at three to five times adjusted EBITDA. Specialist testing and inspection firms with strong recurring revenue, public sector framework positions and retained qualified teams sit higher, in the region of four and a half times. Businesses with more than half their revenue in testing, established framework positions, certification and teams of thirty or more qualified engineers reach five to seven times.

Those are market observations rather than promises, and the spread inside each band is wider than the gap between them. Two businesses described identically on that ladder can be a full turn apart on the strength of client concentration alone. The ladder is useful because it shows the direction of travel, which is consistently towards contracted, certificated, repeatable income and away from project turnover won by the owner.

It is also worth being clear about what the multiple applies to. Adjusted EBITDA, not turnover and not the profit in the filed accounts. For most owner-managed electrical contractors the adjustment for the owner's own remuneration and personal costs is the single largest number in the calculation, and getting it wrong in either direction misleads everybody including you.

5x to 7x

Reported range where testing is more than half of revenue, with frameworks and thirty or more qualified engineers

The MechanismThe four things that move a business up the ladder

The first is the recurring share. Every rung on that ladder is really a statement about how much of next year's revenue is already scheduled. Fixed wire testing on a five-year cycle, periodic inspection and planned maintenance under written terms are the income a buyer can forecast, and forecastable income is what a multiple is applied to with any confidence.

The second is qualification and registration, which functions as a gate rather than an uplift. The third is framework and repeat client position, which is slow to win and immediately productive for a buyer, provided the call-off history shows it is genuinely producing work rather than sitting on a letterhead.

The fourth is the workforce, and it has become the scarcest of the four. The ECA reported in February 2026 that electrical apprenticeship starts had fallen by 5.5% despite rising demand, with fewer than one in five learners on government-funded classroom courses progressing into an apprenticeship or skilled employment across 2024 and 2025. Skills England estimate, reported by the ECA, that the country will need an additional twelve thousand electricians by 2030. A retained, graded, currently certificated team is the one thing on this list an acquirer cannot buy anywhere else.

Every rung on the ladder is really a statement about how much of next year's revenue is already scheduled.

The CautionWhy a published range is not a valuation

A range describes a market. Your business has one set of clients, one team, one owner and one set of records, and the price it achieves is decided by that particular combination meeting a particular buyer at a particular moment. Ranges are useful for calibration and misleading as expectations, which is why an adviser who quotes you a single multiple in the first conversation should be treated with some caution.

The things that drag a business below the range it looks like it belongs in are consistent and rarely surprising. One client carrying too much of the profit. Recurring work that turns out to be habit rather than contract. Records that cannot be produced. A team held together by the owner's personal relationships. Each is fixable, none is fixable quickly, and all four are known to the buyer by the end of the second meeting.

The honest way to use the ladder is backwards. Work out where the business sits today, identify the one or two features that separate that rung from the next, and decide whether closing that gap is worth eighteen months. Sometimes it plainly is. Sometimes the answer is that the business is what it is, the number is acceptable, and the better decision is to sell it well rather than to spend two years chasing a turn of EBITDA.

Find Your Own Rung

Working out which rung you are on takes your own figures rather than a published table. The valuation does that privately, and says what is holding you there.

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