For businesses valued from $5M to $100M+
Considering selling your industrial services business?
Industrial and plant services companies are valued on the stability of their master service agreements and the share of work that recurs on a maintenance schedule rather than a project cycle.
- Master service agreements
- Recurring maintenance share
- Turnaround versus routine
- Customer concentration
- TRIR and EMR
- Certifications by site
- Fleet age and condition
- Backlog visibility
- Adjusted EBITDA add-backs
What industrial services buyers are actually underwriting
Master service agreements are the foundation. Work performed repeatedly under purchase orders, however long the relationship has run, is not contracted revenue and does not get valued as though it were.
Safety performance is the second gate, and it is unusually decisive here. Large industrial customers deselect vendors on safety metrics, so a buyer reads your TRIR and experience modification rate as a direct measure of whether your customer relationships survive.
Customer concentration in this sector is often severe, and buyers know it. What matters is whether the relationship sits at the site level, the plant manager level or the corporate level, and how many of your people hold it.
What gets examined closely
- Master service agreement count, term and renewal history
- Recurring maintenance work against turnaround and capital project revenue
- Customer concentration, and where in the customer the relationship actually sits
- Safety record, including TRIR and experience modification rate
- Equipment fleet age, condition and deferred capital expenditure
- Certifications and qualifications by site and by customer
- Backlog and visibility into the next twelve months
- Craft labor availability and crew retention in your markets
Who buys industrial services businesses
Private equity platforms and their add-ons
Industrial services platforms want MSA-backed recurring work and safety performance that passes customer audit. They will discount heavily for revenue that depends on a single plant or a single relationship.
Strategic acquirers
Larger industrial service firms buying customer access, geography or specific capability. A strategic already qualified at your customers' sites can move quickly and often values the relationship above the earnings.
Which type of buyer suits you depends less on the multiple than on what you want afterward: a clean exit, a second bite through rollover equity, or a few more years running the business with someone else's balance sheet behind it. That is worth deciding before you go to market rather than during.
- Work performed without an MSAPurchase order work is not contracted revenue, however many years it has repeated
- A safety record that will not pass customer auditIndustrial customers deselect on safety, and buyers price that risk before you can explain it
- Deferred equipment spendingA tired fleet is a capital expenditure the buyer simply deducts from the offer
Where industrial services owners lose value
Almost always in the same three places, listed alongside. None of them are inevitable, and all three are decided well before a letter of intent is signed.
Converting long-standing purchase order relationships into written master service agreements is the single most valuable thing an owner in this sector can do before going to market.
Request a confidential valuation.
An advisor who works in industrial services will review your business and give you a real range.
- No cost, no obligation, strictly confidential
- Grounded in what buyers in your sector are paying now
- Useful whether you sell next year or in five