What EBITDA Multiple Will Your Essential Services Business Sell For in SEQ? (2026)

If you own an HVAC, electrical, fire protection, plumbing, pest control, cleaning or IT services business in South East Queensland, one question decides your retirement: what multiple will a buyer pay? Here's how that number actually gets set in 2026, and what genuinely moves it.

How does an EBITDA multiple actually work?

Buyers value a small or mid-sized business as a multiple of its maintainable earnings. Two inputs: your normalised EBITDA (the repeatable annual profit a buyer inherits) and a multiple (how many years of that profit they'll pay up front). A business with $500,000 of normalised EBITDA selling at 4.0x has an enterprise value of roughly $2 million.

Valuers use other methods too, like discounted cash flow or asset-based approaches. But for an owner-run trade business changing hands, an EBITDA multiple is what sets the price in the room. So that's what we'll focus on.

The word doing the heavy lifting is normalised. Buyers strip your reported profit back to what it'd be under professional ownership: adding back one-off costs, removing personal expenses run through the business, and adjusting your wage to what it'd cost to hire someone to do your job. Pay yourself below market and that gap gets added back. Pay yourself nothing and work 60 hours a week, and a buyer subtracts a market salary, because realistically they have to replace you.

What are the typical multiples by industry in SEQ?

Multiples vary by trade because the quality and stickiness of the revenue varies. The bands below are typical starting points for established SEQ businesses with clean financials, the same ranges our free business appraisal tool uses. Treat them as indicative. Individual deals routinely land outside these ranges in both directions. For the full benchmark tables (margins, recurring revenue and the operational numbers behind them), see our SEQ valuation benchmarks.

Why do compliance-backed businesses sell for more?

The biggest hidden driver of your multiple is where your revenue comes from. There's a simple test that separates the premium businesses from the rest:

When the answer is yes, your revenue is mandated rather than discretionary, and buyers pay more because it survives downturns, can't be talked out of, and is hard for a competitor to disrupt. Examples of statute- or standard-backed demand in Queensland:

• Fire sprinkler and system servicing: AS 1851 and the QLD Building Fire Safety Regulation.
• Emergency and exit lighting: AS/NZS 2293, tested 6-monthly under the National Construction Code.
• Backflow prevention testing: annual, under the QLD Plumbing and Drainage Act and council requirements.
• Test-and-tag of electrical equipment: AS/NZS 3760, often a workplace-safety and insurance condition.
• Thermographic switchboard inspection: frequently a condition of commercial property insurance.

This is also why project-led and construction-heavy trades sit lower, often in the 2.0x to 3.5x range. The revenue is one-off, lumpy and tied to a key person, so it has to be re-won every year. That gap is the whole point: the more of your revenue that's recurring and compliance-backed, the higher you climb.

The five things that actually move your multiple

Within any industry band, five things decide whether you land at the bottom or the top. They matter more than another point of raw profit.

• Recurring, contracted revenue. This is the number buyers look at first. Below roughly 40% recurring is a red flag. 65%+ is premium territory.
• Owner-independence. If the business can't run for 30 days without you, a buyer is purchasing a job, not an asset, and prices it that way. This is the single biggest lever, and we cover it in the owner-dependency guide.
• Customer concentration. If one client is more than 20 to 25% of revenue, that's a single point of failure a buyer prices as risk. Spread across many customers earns a higher multiple.
• Systems and data. A business running on a proper field-service platform (Simpro, Ascora and the like), with clean exportable job and contract data, proves it's systematised rather than held together in the owner's head.
• Margin and clean financials. Three years of accountant-prepared statements that reconcile to your BAS, with healthy, stable margins, remove the risk discount a buyer applies to murky numbers.

Does size change the multiple?

Yes, and it's well established that bigger businesses earn bigger multiples. The same business is worth more per dollar of profit as it grows, because it reads as lower-risk and more transferable. As a directional guide, a compliance trade business under $1M EBITDA tends to trade in the 3.5x to 5.0x area. Once a business reaches $2M+ EBITDA with documented systems, management independent of the owner and a majority-recurring base, it can attract 5.5x to 7.5x from larger buyers. The exact bands vary deal to deal, but the direction is reliable, and it's why owners who spend 12 to 24 months strengthening the business before selling tend to outperform those who list reactively.

How does your SEQ region affect the number?

Region is a real but secondary factor, and here I'm sharing what we see as active buyers rather than a published dataset. Brisbane and the Gold Coast tend to have the deepest buyer pools and contract density. The Sunshine Coast usually prices marginally below that, and Ipswich, Logan and Toowoomba lower again. The effect is modest, a fraction of a turn, compared with recurring revenue and owner-independence, which can move the multiple by a full point either way.

What should you do next?

If you're within a few years of selling, the highest-return move is to understand your starting position, then deliberately strengthen the levers above. Two practical steps:

• Run your numbers through our free business appraisal tool for an indicative value range and an exit-readiness score in a few minutes.
• Want a costed, prioritised plan to lift the number? A Business Audit gives you a buyer-grade view of your operations and a 30/90/180-day roadmap.

And the multiple is only half the story. How the deal is structured (vendor finance, earnouts, the handover) changes what actually lands in your pocket. We break that down in how a business sale can be structured.

Marcus Hahnheuser

Co-Founder, Lumina Ventures · RACQ, ex Virgin Australia, Swyftx & ATO

Sandi and Marcus are a Brisbane couple acquiring one essential services business in South East Queensland to own and run themselves. They also run hands-on Business Audits that help owners grow EBITDA and prepare for a sale.