If you are valuing a business — to buy, sell or negotiate with a fund — you need one number first: your sector's multiple. Everything else — the DCF, the sensitivity analysis, the reconciliation of methods — is built on top of that reference point. A wrong multiple distorts the entire conversation that follows.
This table is the resource our team consults at the start of every valuation mandate. We update it with data from closed transactions in the Spanish market: public sources (TTR Data, ASCRI, Mergermarket, Refinitiv) complemented by our private database of M&A transactions in Spain. The ranges reflect the real mid-market — companies with EBITDA between €300K and €10M — not the averages from large corporate transactions that make headlines.
What an EBITDA Multiple Is and How It Works
The EBITDA multiple is the ratio between Enterprise Value (EV) and adjusted EBITDA. If a business has adjusted EBITDA of €800,000 and sells for €4.8M, the transaction multiple is 6x.
Calculating equity value — what the seller actually receives — involves three steps:
Step 1 — Enterprise Value: Adjusted EBITDA × sector multiple = EV
Step 2 — Equity Value: EV − net financial debt (bank debt minus cash) = shareholder value
Step 3 — Additional adjustments: In complex transactions, contingencies identified in due diligence are also deducted (employment liabilities, pending litigation, working capital adjustments).
A concrete example: a professional services business with adjusted EBITDA of €600,000, reference multiple of 6x, bank debt of €250,000 and cash of €80,000. Enterprise Value = €3.6M. Net debt = €170,000. Equity Value = €3.43M. That is the cheque the seller receives on completion day, before withholdings and post-completion adjustments.
The multiple is not a figure negotiated in isolation. It reflects the buyer’s perception of business risk, the visibility of future cash flows and sector attractiveness. Understanding your sector range — before sitting down to negotiate — is the first step in any valuation process.
Main Table: 15 Sectors in Spain 2026
The ranges below correspond to business sale transactions with EBITDA between €300K and €10M in the Spanish market. Companies above that size typically trade at the upper end of the range or slightly above. Very small businesses (EBITDA below €200K) attract additional discounts for size and illiquidity.
| Sector | EBITDA Multiple Range 2026 | Trend vs 2025 | Key Drivers of the Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|
| SaaS Technology | 8x – 15x | Up | ARR, churn < 5%, LTV/CAC > 3, NRR > 100% |
| Technology Services | 5x – 8x | Stable | Contract recurrence, retention of key talent |
| Food & Beverage | 6x – 8x | Stable | Own brand, national distribution, gross margin > 40% |
| Manufacturing | 5x – 7x | Up | Long-term contracts, CapEx condition, industrial reshoring |
| Retail & Distribution | 4x – 6x | Down | E-commerce share, net margins, stock turnover |
| Hospitality & Tourism | 3x – 5x | Stable | Seasonality, property ownership, ADR and RevPAR |
| Professional Services | 5x – 8x | Up | Recurrence, portfolio vintage, founder independence |
| Healthcare & Pharma | 7x – 12x | Up | Regulation, patents, demographics, insurer contracts |
| Renewable Energy | 8x – 12x | Stable | Long-term PPAs signed, installed MW, grid connection |
| Logistics & Transport | 4x – 6x | Stable | Fleet age, exclusive contracts, own routes |
| Construction | 3x – 5x | Down | Contracted order book, subcontractors, tight margins |
| Real Estate | NAV-based | Stable | Net yield, occupancy rate, location, asset type |
| Financial Services | 6x – 10x | Up | AuM, regulation, digitalisation, recurring client portfolio |
| Education & Training | 5x – 8x | Up | Online model, accredited certifications, retention rate |
| Agribusiness | 5x – 7x | Stable | Land and water assets, CAP subsidies, export capacity |
How to Read This Table
A range, not a fixed number. The lower end corresponds to higher-risk businesses: high founder dependency, few customers or a mature sector with no growth. The upper end corresponds to businesses with recurring revenues, a consolidated management team and demonstrable growth.
Trend vs. 2025. “Up” indicates that buyers are willing to pay more than twelve months ago for companies in that sector, generally due to greater competition amongst funds or an improved macroeconomic environment. “Down” reflects margin pressure, reduced buyer activity or deteriorating sector prospects.
Real estate does not use an EBITDA multiple. Property-holding companies are valued by NAV (Net Asset Value): market value of assets minus debt. EBITDA multiples do not capture real estate assets well because EBITDA can be low whilst the underlying asset is highly valuable.
Adjusted EBITDA vs. Accounting EBITDA
This is where business owners most often go wrong when valuing their company for the first time. The multiples in the table are applied to adjusted EBITDA, not the EBITDA shown in the profit and loss account. The difference can be 20%–40%, which at a 6x multiple means tens or hundreds of thousands of euros in the final price.
The most common adjustments our team applies in every valuation mandate:
Owner’s salary at above- or below-market rate. If the founder pays himself €200,000 a year and a replacement CEO would cost €90,000, €110,000 is added back to EBITDA. If he pays himself €30,000 to minimise income tax and a replacement would cost €80,000, €50,000 is deducted.
Personal expenses charged to the business. Personal-use vehicle, private travel, family life insurance, works at the owner’s home. In mid-sized family businesses, this adjustment typically ranges between €15,000 and €60,000 per year.
Non-recurring income and expenses. The sale of a property, a won legal dispute, an exceptional grant, the costs of a one-off redundancy programme. Anything that will not repeat in the coming years must be excluded from normalised EBITDA.
Property owned by the owner leased to the company at below-market rent. If the owner holds the industrial unit in his personal estate and leases it to the company at a nominal price, the buyer will have to pay market rent once the acquisition completes. That hidden cost is deducted from EBITDA. If market rent would be €70,000 and only €25,000 is charged, adjusted EBITDA is €45,000 lower than accounting EBITDA.
Working capital normalisation. In businesses with high stock or trade credit, inventory valuation policies and trade receivables and payables management can inflate or deflate EBITDA in a specific period.
For a detailed analysis of the EBITDA adjustment process and the eight sections a professional report must contain, see our article on the business valuation report.
Factors That Raise the Multiple
Two companies in the same sector with the same adjusted EBITDA can command very different multiples. The multiple a buyer is willing to pay reflects their perception of risk and growth potential. These are the five factors that most increase the multiple:
1. Contractual recurring revenues. A business with 60%–70% of revenues in annually renewable subscription or maintenance contracts has far greater visibility over future cash flows than one with purely transactional revenues. That visibility reduces perceived risk and buyers pay for it. In the current market, moving from 30% to 60% recurring revenue can shift the multiple by 0.5x to 1.5x.
2. Low customer concentration. The golden rule is that no single customer should exceed 10%–15% of total revenue. A portfolio of 150 active customers with a reasonable average ticket is consistently worth more than a business with three large contracts representing 80% of revenues. The loss of a major customer is a risk that buyers discount from the multiple.
3. Autonomous management team. If the business generates the same EBITDA when the founder is on holiday for three weeks, the buyer has confidence that they are acquiring the business, not the individual. Founder dependency is the single greatest value-destroyer in the Spanish SME market, with typical discounts of 15%–30% on the technical value.
4. Barriers to entry. Administrative concessions that are difficult to obtain, a dominant position in a specific niche, patents or proprietary software, high customer switching costs, exclusive certifications. The harder it is to replicate the business, the higher the multiple the buyer accepts.
5. Sustained organic growth. A business growing at 15%–20% organically — without acquisitions — in a mature market is a scarce asset. Buyers pay for future growth, not just historical EBITDA. Demonstrated growth over the previous three years is the strongest argument for defending the upper end of the sector range.
Factors That Compress the Multiple
By the same logic, these five factors compress the multiple and are the first things any experienced buyer’s due diligence team looks for:
1. Founder dependency. Already mentioned, but worth emphasis: if the owner is simultaneously the seller, the lead salesperson, the person who maintains key relationships with the three main clients and the one who signs important contracts, the business carries enormous execution risk for the buyer. The discount is real and quantifiable.
2. Customer concentration. A customer representing 35%–40% of revenue is a critical single point of failure. If they cancel or reduce orders, the business could lose nearly half its revenues in a quarter. Buyers apply discounts of 10%–20% on the multiple when concentration in a single customer exceeds 25%.
3. Significant pending CapEx. Machinery requiring immediate replacement, premises not compliant with current regulations, a fleet over ten years old. Buyers deduct the CapEx required over the next 24 months from the price, which in industrial sectors can reduce equity value by €300,000–€800,000.
4. Open litigation or contingencies. AEAT inspections in progress, employment claims, disputes with customers or suppliers, regulatory breaches. Even without a certain outcome, these generate price retentions at completion (escrow) or additional warranties in the sale and purchase agreement, which in practice reduces the amount received on completion day.
5. Structural sector contraction. The multiple discounts the sector’s future, not just the company’s present. A business with €1M of EBITDA in a sector declining at 8% per year cannot expect the same multiple as one with €700K of EBITDA in a sector growing at 12% per year. Rational buyers do not pay the historical multiple for a declining cash flow.
Spain vs. Europe: The Discount That Exists and Why
Multiples in Spain are systematically lower than in the United Kingdom, France or Germany for companies of equivalent size and sector. The difference is between 10% and 20% depending on the sector, and has three structural causes:
M&A market depth. The Spanish mid-market M&A market is smaller and less liquid than the markets of central and northern Europe. There are fewer active buyers per company for sale, which reduces competitive pressure in processes. Fewer competing buyers equals lower multiples.
Weight of family businesses. Spain has one of the highest rates of family-owned businesses in Europe, many of them with high founder dependency, informal governance and limited financial transparency. These characteristics add execution risk for the buyer, who discounts it from the price. Family businesses with sound governance — an active board of directors, market-rate director remuneration and audited financial information — can reduce or eliminate this discount.
Lower presence of institutional private equity in certain segments. In the United Kingdom or Germany, dozens of specialist funds compete for businesses with EBITDA of €500K–€2M. In Spain, most funds focus on the €3M–€10M EBITDA segment, leaving the lower segment with fewer sophisticated buyers and therefore lower multiples.
This discount is significant for businesses that can consider international sale processes or that can attract European strategic buyers. A German buyer in the same sector may be willing to pay a multiple 15% higher than a domestic buyer, because the Spanish business offers additional synergies and access to a market they already understand.
Data Sources
The ranges in this table are compiled from the following sources:
- TTR Data: M&A transaction database for Spain and Latin America, with multiple data for declared transactions
- ASCRI: Asociación Española de Capital Riesgo e Inversión (Spanish Private Equity Association), annual and quarterly reports
- Mergermarket / Refinitiv: European transaction data, filtered by size and sector
- BMC internal database: transactions in which we have acted as advisers over the past five years (anonymised data)
- Mercantile Registry: data on share transfers declared in the Spanish Companies Register
Ranges are reviewed quarterly. Significant market changes — interest rate movements, fund activity cycles, sector shocks — can shift ranges outside those published here. For specific transactions, we always recommend a point-in-time update of the comparable analysis.
These Multiples Are References, Not Recipes
A sector multiple is the starting point of the conversation, not its endpoint. The final price depends on who is on the other side of the table, what synergies the buyer has, how well prepared the business is to withstand external scrutiny, and the state of the market when the transaction closes.
A business owner who knows their sector multiple has a genuine advantage in negotiation: they can judge whether the offer they are receiving is reasonable, whether they have room to push further, or whether the buyer is paying above market (which typically signals strategic synergies worth understanding before making concessions).
A business owner who does not know that number depends on what the buyer tells them. And the buyer always knows it.
If you would like to assess the multiple applicable to your specific business — accounting for its particular characteristics in terms of recurrence, concentration, growth and founder dependency — our valuations and mergers and acquisitions team can conduct that analysis before you commence any process. We also recommend reading our business valuation guide to understand the full process from first meeting to final report.
