What Is My Pest Control Company Worth? Pest Control Valuation Multiples in 2026

Buyers price a pest control company as a multiple of one earnings number, and which number they use depends on who runs the business. If you still run routes, sell the accounts and hold the customer relationships, buyers use seller's discretionary earnings (SDE). SDE is net profit plus one owner's full compensation plus documented add-backs. Once a paid general manager runs the company, buyers switch to EBITDA, which is SDE minus a market-rate salary for that manager.

The multiple applied to that number reflects how well the earnings will survive your exit. A buyer pays more for revenue that renews under contract on dense routes than for one-time treatments the founder sold personally. Early in the process, a serious buyer will ask for your revenue split into recurring service agreements, one-time jobs, and anything tied to a single commercial account.

When the buyer uses SBA financing, a third party also prices your company. Above a $350,000 business purchase price, the lender must order an independent business valuation from a Qualified Source, prepared for the lender. It cannot use a valuation prepared for you or for the buyer. The SBA loan plus any seller debt not on full standby cannot exceed that valuation, so the appraiser's number caps the financed dollars.

Capital needs are priced separately from earnings. If diligence shows trucks due for replacement or equipment past its useful life, that cost comes off the price. It does not reduce SDE or EBITDA before the multiple is applied, because only recurring operating costs change earnings. Push back on any buyer model that cuts SDE for a truck replacement and then deducts the same truck from the price a second time.

Sold pest control businesses traded between 1.69x and 3.00x SDE, lower to upper quartile, with a median of 2.04x, according to BizBuySell valuation benchmarks covering sales from 2021 to 2025.

Read those multiples against the size of the companies behind them. The median seller in that data had $124,184 of SDE. If your SDE is well above the $187,787 upper quartile, you are at the edge of the dataset, and the range gives you a starting frame, not a quote.

No linkable source publishes an EBITDA multiple specific to pest control. For companies large enough to trade on EBITDA, the closest context is all-industry. GF Data averaged about 5.5x trailing EBITDA for $1M to $5M TEV deals in H1 2025 and 5.6x for $5M to $10M. The IBBA and M&A Source Market Pulse for Q2 2026 reports 4.0x for $2M to $5M deals and 5.8x for $5M to $50M. That one is a broker survey, not a transaction database.

The largest disclosed pest deal, Rentokil's $6.7B acquisition of Terminix reported by Reuters in December 2021, was a strategic purchase, and Reuters did not state a multiple. It is not a comparable for an owner-operated company. Apply the 1.69x to 3.00x range only to SDE and the 4.0x to 5.8x all-industry figures only to EBITDA, and never mix the two.

Contracted recurring revenue, route density, customer retention and how little the business depends on you move the multiple. Sector research on residential services M&A also names recession-resistant demand and operational scalability. Here is what each one looks like in diligence.

• Contracted recurring revenue. Buyers want to see service agreements that renew, with billing history proving they renew. One-time jobs still count in earnings, but buyers give them less weight when they decide where in the range you land.
• Route density. Buyers plot your recurring stops on a map. Tight routes mean more stops per technician-day and lower fuel and drive time. Scattered accounts read as cost a buyer has to fix.
• Retention. Expect a request for cancellations by year and by service type. A clean retention record is the evidence behind the recurring revenue claim.
• Founder concentration. If commercial accounts call your cell phone and technicians stay because of you, the buyer prices that risk. Expect it to show up as a lower multiple, a longer transition, or part of the price moved into an earnout.
• Technician retention. Licensed, tenured technicians are the delivery system. Turnover in the trailing year gets questions about wages and workload.
• Applicator licensing. Pesticide applicator certification runs under a federal EPA framework (40 CFR Part 171), with operator and applicator rules set by state agencies. If you are the only certified person the business operates under, the buyer has to solve that before closing, and a lapsed certification can stop a deal.
• Add-back documentation. Every add-back you can document is multiplied into price, and every one you cannot is cut. See which add-backs a buyer will accept.
• Consolidation maturity. Many sponsor-backed platforms compete for add-ons, which helps an add-on seller. It also makes forming new platforms harder, which narrows the field for a company large enough to be a platform itself.

Before you go to market, pull the last two fiscal years of revenue split by contract type and map every recurring stop, because a buyer will ask for both early.

At the sold-business multiples, a pest control company with $400,000 of SDE is worth $676,000 to $1,200,000, with $816,000 at the median. Take a company with $1,500,000 of revenue that runs on its owner. Here is how the SDE is built.

Where you land depends on the drivers above. This company's $400,000 of SDE is above the $187,787 upper-quartile SDE in the sold-business data, so buyers will argue about your position in the range using contract share, route density and how much the customers depend on you.

Now test the add-backs. If a buyer rejects the $50,000 of add-backs, SDE falls to $350,000, and the median price falls to $714,000 ($350,000 × 2.04). That is $102,000 of price ($50,000 × 2.04) riding on receipts and ledger detail.

The EBITDA market: $1,600,000 of EBITDA

A second company has $6,000,000 of revenue and $1,600,000 of EBITDA after paying a $150,000 general manager. Its SDE would be $1,750,000 ($1,600,000 + $150,000), but buyers at this size price EBITDA. No pest-specific EBITDA multiple is published, so the table applies all-industry benchmarks as context only.

That value is above the $5,000,000 SBA 7(a) maximum, and at a business purchase price of $3,000,000 or more the SBA requires a quality of earnings report. The realistic buyers for this company are PE-backed platforms and strategics, not SBA-financed individuals. How far a pest control company trades above or below these all-industry figures is not published, and competition among platforms decides it.

If you are at $400,000 of SDE, you have a decision to make. You can sell now on SDE to an SBA-financed buyer. Or you can hire a general manager, accept that the salary comes out of earnings, and grow toward the EBITDA market. Run both cases through the business valuation calculator with your own SDE and a realistic manager salary before you choose a path.

A pest control sale is structured as cash at closing plus some mix of seller note, earnout and rollover equity. Which mix you get depends on the buyer. Buyers with different capital fit different sizes. SBA-financed individuals, search funds and local operators fit a company like the $400,000 SDE example. PE-backed platforms and public strategics compete for a company like the $1,600,000 EBITDA example.

The SBA buyer, worked through

At the median, the $400,000 SDE company prices at $816,000 ($400,000 × 2.04). That is above $350,000, so the lender orders an independent valuation from a Qualified Source holding an ASA, CBA, ABV, CVA or BCA credential. If that valuation comes in below $816,000, the buyer covers the gap with cash or debt on full standby, or you renegotiate. The SBA requires the buyer to inject 10% of total project cost. On this price that is at least $81,600 ($816,000 × 10%), and more once closing costs are added to the project. Up to half of the required injection, $40,800 on this price ($816,000 × 5%), can be your note on full standby. Buyer cash covers the other half.

Full standby means no principal or interest payments for the life of the 7(a) loan, documented on SBA Form 155. Interest may accrue and is paid after the SBA loan is retired. The acquisition portion of the loan amortizes over 10 years, so accept a standby note only for an amount you can leave in the company for that long.

The lender also tests coverage. SOP 50 10 8.1 requires at least 1.25x debt service coverage on historical results, measured on the last fiscal year or a two-year average, and projections cannot be used to meet it. A standby note is excluded from debt service. An interest-only seller note is amortized over no more than 10 years for the test. At the current 7% prime, the SBA's maximum variable rate on a loan over $350,000 is 10%, prime plus 3.0%. The coverage test runs off your reported historical earnings, which is why clean books matter before you list.

The platform buyer

Active pest control platforms include Greenix (Gridiron Capital, July 2025), PestCo Holdings (Thompson Street Capital Partners, formed November 2021), Fortress Pest Brands (Riverarch Equity Partners, 2026) and Certus Pest Control (Imperial Capital with Liberty Mutual Investments, May 2024). On the public side, Rollins acquired Romex Pest Control in April 2026, as reported by Pest Control Technology. These buyers run their own diligence, offer rollover equity, and use earnouts to share retention risk with you.

Munera represents sellers from $1M to $30M in enterprise value with no public listing. Buyers see a blind profile until they sign an NDA and are vetted for capital and fit. If your company matches an active Munera buyer client, the buyer pays the fee. Otherwise the fee is a success fee at closing, with a $5,000 engagement deposit credited against it. To see which buyer group fits your earnings, read who buys pest control companies before you take your first call from a platform or an SBA-financed buyer.