Business Services
Valuations for B2B service firms — utilisation, billable hours, gross margin and recurring revenue mix.
Service businesses sit awkwardly between asset-light SaaS and asset-heavy industrials. The defensible value comes from a combination of recurring revenue (retainers, managed services), the productivity of the consultant base (utilisation, billable rate), and the durability of client relationships (concentration, average tenure).
EV/Revenue multiples for UK professional services run 0.5x – 2.5x, but the dispersion is enormous and depends almost entirely on the recurring-revenue percentage. A firm with 70%+ of revenue under multi-year retainer trades like a SaaS business; the same firm on project work trades closer to a staffing agency.
HMRC SVM expects an explicit discount for key-person dependency in service firms — if the founder generates more than 40% of billings, a 15-25% goodwill discount is typical. We disclose this transparently and model the founder-transition scenario.
We anchor every Business Services valuation on these inputs, with sensitivities run on the top three.
Based on UK-listed peer evidence, mid-2026. Indicative only — company-specific valuations require a triangulated football-field reconciliation.
EV / Revenue
0.5x – 2.5x
EV / EBITDA
5x – 12x
High-retainer / low-concentration firms cluster at the upper end; project-heavy or founder-dependent firms at the lower end.
We anchor on EV/EBITDA with explicit key-person and concentration adjustments, then triangulate against EV/Revenue (segregated by recurring vs. project) and a DCF that models utilisation and rate-card progression.
Every Business Services valuation we run triangulates DCF, comparable companies and precedent transactions — and adds LBO, asset-based and Monte Carlo where they materially affect the range. The methodology is documented in our methodology disclosure.
Hypothetical examples illustrating the kind of work we do. Identified case studies will replace these as engagements complete.
Anonymised hypothetical — partner-buyout valuation with explicit founder-transition modelling and key-person discount.
Anonymised hypothetical — supported a sale process by modelling the recurring-revenue uplift on multiple.
Free download
2026 B2B services deep-dive: retainer-mix vs. multiple correlation, utilisation benchmarks, and founder-dependency discount evidence.
Sector report
UK-listed peer comparables, multiples distributions, and sector-specific benchmarks. Watermarked for your team.
Try the free calculator for an indicative range, or request a quote for the signed report.