Who buys electrical contractors? The four buyer groups, what each pays, and which fits your company

Four groups buy electrical contractors: individual buyers financed with SBA 7(a) loans, including search funds; local and regional competitors; private equity-backed platforms; and public strategic contractors. Each group prices your company on a different earnings figure and screens for different risks, so the group you sell to sets both the multiple and the deal terms.

Smaller companies trade on seller's discretionary earnings (SDE): net profit plus one owner's full compensation plus documented add-backs. BizBuySell's valuation benchmarks for electrical and mechanical contractors sold from 2021 to 2025 show a lower quartile of 1.96x SDE, a median of 2.56x and an upper quartile of 3.15x. Median SDE in that data was $385,902 on median revenue of $1,724,323, and the median sale price was $950,000. The category blends electrical with mechanical contractors, so treat it as a close proxy rather than an electrical-only figure.

Larger companies trade on EBITDA, which is SDE minus a market-rate salary for the manager who replaces you. No public source publishes an EBITDA multiple specific to lower middle market electrical contractors, so any buyer quoting one is quoting its own model.

Every buyer in the table starts with the same question: what does this company earn without you? Clean up the answer first with a documented add-back schedule. Before you take a call from any of the four groups, have your last two fiscal years of financials and that schedule ready for a lender or sponsor to test.

Blackstone, Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Truelink Capital, Greenbelt Capital Partners and Stonebridge Partners have all backed electrical platforms recently. They fall into two camps: multi-trade residential platforms adding electrical to HVAC and plumbing, and sponsors building commercial and specialty electrical platforms.

Multi-trade residential platforms

• Champions Group (residential HVAC, plumbing and electrical). Blackstone announced an agreement to acquire it in February 2026, with Odyssey Investment Partners keeping a significant minority stake. Capstone's October 2026 Residential Services report estimates the deal at about $2.5B enterprise value, roughly 18.5x EV/EBITDA.
• Sila Services, backed by Goldman Sachs Alternatives, appears in the same report as a residential platform that includes electrical.

Commercial and specialty electrical platforms

• Prime Electric, backed by Truelink Capital.
• Bowe & Gant, a Northeast electrical and energy infrastructure services provider, backed by Greenbelt Capital Partners.
• CVM Electric, where Stonebridge Partners completed a recapitalization.

The Champions number is a price for a scaled, multi-trade platform. An add-on acquisition gets priced off its own EBITDA and its own risk. For all-industry context only, GF Data averaged about 5.5x TTM EBITDA for deals of $1M to $5M in enterprise value and 5.6x for $5M to $10M in the first half of 2025. Those figures cover every industry, so they are not an electrical multiple.

Platforms pay for what they can scale. The October 2026 report points to recurring service and maintenance agreements converted from one-off jobs, recruiting and training that work without the founder, and customer relationships held by the company. It also cites a Klein Tools projection of 107,000 to 224,000 unfilled electrician roles by 2030, which is why a trained, retained crew is worth so much in diligence. A PE recapitalization can let an owner sell a majority stake and keep a minority stake that pays out if the sponsor later sells.

Worked example: the platform tier (EBITDA multiple)

Take a company with $9,000,000 of revenue and $2,200,000 of EBITDA after a $150,000 general manager salary. Its SDE is $2,200,000 plus $150,000, or $2,350,000. A platform applies its multiple to the $2,200,000 EBITDA figure. Every turn of multiple is worth $2,200,000 on EBITDA and $2,350,000 on SDE, so a multiple applied to the wrong figure moves the price by $150,000 per turn. If diligence finds the van fleet or equipment needs replacing, that cost comes off the price once. It does not come off EBITDA before the multiple is applied.

If your EBITDA after paying a manager is close to the $2,200,000 example, the sponsors named above and their add-on teams belong on your buyer list.

Strategic buyers value an electrical contractor by what your crews, licenses, contracts and end markets add to their business, and they price that as a multiple of EBITDA. The public strategics and the local competitor across town use the same logic at very different sizes.

Public strategics

Capstone's August 2025 Construction Services report lists EMCOR's January 2025 acquisition of Miller Electric at $850.2M enterprise value, 10.6x EV/EBITDA. It also lists Sterling Infrastructure's June 2025 acquisition of CEC Facilities Group, an electrical and mechanical contractor, at $589.8M, 12.6x EV/EBITDA. Both targets brought data center, healthcare and mission-critical work at a scale no lower middle market contractor matches. Those multiples tell you what end-market exposure is worth at the top of the market. They do not set the price of a contractor doing a few million in revenue.

Local and regional competitors

A competitor in your market is buying capacity. It wants licensed electricians it cannot hire, your service agreements, your general contractor relationships, and sometimes your license qualifier. It may fold your trucks into its own fleet, close your office and retire your name, and it will price in the overhead it can cut.

Financing changes the math. A local electrical competitor buying with an SBA 7(a) loan may be treated as a Business Expansion or as an acquisition, depending on how its lender classifies the deal. SOP 50 10 8.1 sets a 1.15x historical coverage minimum only for a Business Expansion. An acquisition, including an Initial Acquisition by an outside individual buyer, needs 1.25x. Ask the competitor's lender which category it will use.

Ask any strategic buyer, local or public, to list in the LOI which employees, vehicles and service agreements it plans to keep after closing.

Yes. An individual can buy your electrical company with an SBA 7(a) loan of up to $5M, and search funds buy companies of the same size with investor capital, SBA debt or both. These buyers fit a company like the one in the example below, where the owner still runs the jobs and the earnings sit in the hundreds of thousands.

What the SBA requires of your buyer

• Coverage. SOP 50 10 8.1, in force since October 1, 2026, requires at least 1.25x debt service coverage for buying a business. The lender measures it on EBITDA from the last fiscal year or a two-year average. Projections cannot be used to meet it. A seller note on full standby is left out of the debt service.
• Equity. On a complete change of ownership, the buyer injects 10% of total project cost. Up to half can be a seller note on full standby for the life of the SBA loan, so 5% buyer cash plus a 5% standby note is a common structure.
• Valuation. Above a $350,000 purchase price, the lender orders an independent valuation from a Qualified Source. The SBA loan plus any seller debt not on full standby cannot exceed that valuation.
• Term and rate. The business portion amortizes over no more than 10 years. With the WSJ prime at 7.00% since September 17, 2026, the maximum variable rate on a loan above $350,000 is 10%.

Worked example: the SBA tier (SDE multiple)

Take a company with $1,200,000 of revenue and $280,000 of SDE. Apply the sold-business quartiles to SDE:

All three prices are above $350,000, so the buyer's lender will order an independent valuation. If that valuation comes in below your price, the gap cannot be filled with more bank debt or a seller note the buyer pays currently. It has to come from buyer equity or a note on full standby. The lender also tests coverage on EBITDA, so it subtracts a salary for whoever runs the company from your $280,000 of SDE before dividing by the new loan payments.

A search fund buyer plans to run the company personally and wants earnings that hold up without you, a crew that stays, and often a transition period where you help keep customers and suppliers. Every individual buyer also needs a license qualifier after closing, whether that is their own license, a licensed employee, or you for a defined period.

Run your last fiscal year's EBITDA through the SBA loan calculator at a 10-year term before you accept a price from an individual buyer.

The right buyer is the group that fits your earnings size first and your goals second. Size decides who can pay. Goals decide which of those offers you should take.

• Most cash at closing. If your company reports meaningful EBITDA after paying a general manager, a platform or strategic pays on EBITDA and does not need SBA approval. Below that size, an SBA buyer pays an SDE multiple, and part of the price may sit in a standby note that pays nothing until the SBA loan is repaid.
• Staying involved with a second payout. A PE recapitalization lets you keep a minority stake. It fits owners with a management team that can run day to day.
• Protecting your crew and name. An individual buyer or search fund keeps the company intact because it is buying a business to run. A local competitor may consolidate.
• Fewest conditions. A strategic or sponsor paying from its own capital avoids the SBA valuation cap and coverage test, though it will run its own quality of earnings review.

Check what your number supports before choosing. Our electrical contractor valuation page walks through the multiples. We run sell-side engagements for companies from $1M to $30M in enterprise value with no public listing: your company goes out as a blind profile, and only buyers who have signed an NDA and been vetted for capital and fit see the details. If your company matches one of our active buyer clients, that buyer pays our fee. If we run a confidential search, the fee is a success fee paid at closing with no monthly retainer, and the $5,000 engagement deposit is credited against it.

Plan on 3 to 6 months from the decision to sell to a signed LOI, then 60 to 90 days from LOI to closing, depending on financing and diligence.