Fri, 31 Oct 2025 | BUSINESS NEWS
Business Sale Report (BSR), the UK’s leading platform for private company M&A intelligence, has launched the BSR Deal Value Index, a new interactive benchmark that tracks actual acquisition values achieved across the UK private company market.
The Index plots achieved transaction values against company EBITDA to provide an indication of value “bands” at different scales. It is designed to help business owners, acquirers and advisers understand the importance of risk as the key influence on the transaction price of deals completed in the marketplace.
Information is sourced from publicly disclosed transactions, deal information from corporate advisors and from BSR’s internal research department. “The data confirms what experienced dealmakers already know: buyers pay a premium for certainty,” said Chris St Cartmail, CEO of Business Sale Report.
“Businesses that are de-risked, systemised and well-prepared for sale consistently achieve valuations at the top of their range. That’s where smart exit planning creates real value.”
The data reveals that valuation multiples on EBITDA are very volatile at the micro-business level, with ranges so wide as to make a market multiple approach to valuation almost meaningless. A company with net profits of £100,000 could be worth anything from zero to half a million pounds, as the true profit figure can be materially altered by a single item in the P&L.
As we move through the smaller end of the market, outcomes are still quite variable, reflecting higher risk profiles, owner-dependence and uneven earnings quality. As EBITDA reaches the £1 million level, the business is achieving greater scale and buyer risk decreases in inverse proportion. At this level, we see the cross-industry earning multiple begin to stabilise at around 4-6 times adjusted EBITDA. The achieved market multiple steadily increases as companies grow in size and profitability.
BSR’s analysis also highlights that “exit readiness” including financial transparency, reduced key-person risk, and operational robustness - is a key driver of whether a company sells at the upper or lower end of its value range.
A practical tool for business sellers and buyers
The BSR Deal Value Index is freely accessible here. It complements BSR’s long-standing coverage of business sales, distressed opportunities and small to mid-market deal flow, forming part of its mission to improve transparency in the UK private M&A market and increasing awareness of business exit planning.
The main index presents deals across industries, which although providing a very useful overview, masks some significant variance across sectors. Sector-specific indexes are being made available to BSR members in November 2025.
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