Business valuation calculator for UK company owners
Twelve questions that decide what a buyer pays. You get a range rather than a number, the reasoning behind it, and the three things currently costing you the most.
The numbers
Use adjusted EBITDA if you have it. If you do not, work it out with the adjusted EBITDA calculator first, because the multiple gets applied to that figure rather than to statutory profit.
Your sector
The sector sets the band. Where you land inside it is decided by the twelve drivers below, and that spread is usually worth more than the sector choice itself.
The twelve drivers
Answer honestly rather than optimistically. A buyer will find the real answer in diligence, and the value of doing this now is seeing what to fix.
Indicative range
Updates as you answer. Nothing is sent or stored.
Costing you the most, in order
- Answer the drivers to see this
Guidance, not a valuation. Sector bands are indicative and wide. Every business is valued on its own strengths and weaknesses, and two companies with identical answers here can sell two turns apart. Without reading the accounts nobody can put a real number on it. Not financial advice.
The sector sets the band. You decide where you sit in it.
Most UK owner managed businesses change hands somewhere between three and eight times adjusted EBITDA. The sector narrows that, and the twelve drivers decide the rest. Indicative ranges for every sector are on the business sale multiples page.
Size moves the band before anything else. A business making two hundred thousand of EBITDA and one making ten million do not trade on the same multiple even in the same sector. Larger earnings mean lower perceived risk, more buyers able to transact, and better access to debt. This calculator shifts your band by size before the drivers are applied, which most online tools do not do at all.
The spread inside a sector is wider than the gap between sectors. Floor to ceiling within one industry is commonly two to four times. On a business making one and a half million of EBITDA, that is several million pounds of value decided entirely by how the business is built rather than what it does.
Which is why the weak drivers matter more than the strong ones. Buyers price risk. One client at forty per cent of revenue will hold a multiple down no matter how good everything else is. The list in the results panel is ordered by what is costing you most, because that is the order worth fixing them in.
What pushes a multiple up, and what drags it down.
Pushes it up
- Revenue that renews without being won again
- No single customer above ten per cent
- A management team that runs it without you
- Three years of consistent, explainable numbers
- Accreditations a competitor cannot quickly get
- Contracts that transfer cleanly on a sale
- Records that survive a quality of earnings review
- Active acquirers already buying in your sector
Drags it down
- One client carrying a third of the revenue
- The owner holding every key relationship
- Profit that moves for reasons nobody can explain
- Change of control clauses in your main contracts
- Key people who could leave and take work with them
- Year end accounts and nothing in between
- Skills you cannot recruit and have not trained
- A sector nobody is currently buying into
Business valuation, answered.
How accurate is this calculator?
It is guidance, not a valuation. It will put you in the right area and show you what is driving the number, which is genuinely useful. What it cannot do is read your accounts, look at your contracts or know which buyers are active in your niche this quarter. Two businesses with identical answers here can justify materially different prices.
Why does it give a range rather than one number?
Because a single number would be false precision. A price is whatever a specific buyer agrees to pay, and that depends on how badly they want it, how many others are interested, and how the deal is structured. A range with the reasoning attached is more honest and more useful than a confident figure that turns out to be wrong.
Should I use profit or EBITDA?
Adjusted EBITDA. Statutory profit includes interest, tax, depreciation and whatever arrangements the current owner has in place, none of which carry over to a buyer. If you have not worked out your adjusted figure, use the adjusted EBITDA calculator first, otherwise the multiple is being applied to the wrong number.
Does business size really change the multiple?
Substantially. Larger businesses attract more buyers, carry less key person risk and support more borrowing, so they trade higher. The same business at ten times the size would command a noticeably better multiple in the same sector, which is why this tool adjusts the band for size before applying anything else.
What is the fastest way to move up my band?
Usually reducing customer concentration and reducing dependence on the owner, because those two carry the most weight and are the two buyers probe hardest. Both take time, which is the argument for getting a view two or three years before you want to sell rather than three months.
Is anything stored or sent to you?
No. It runs entirely in your browser, there is no form, and nothing reaches us unless you choose to get in touch.
Which buyers, and what would they actually pay?
The range above is the market. The price is a specific buyer, on a specific day, with a specific reason to want your business. That takes a conversation and it costs you nothing to have one.
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