By Brooks Crankshaw, Managing Director, Forbes Partners 

My last article talked about how buyers evaluate commercial HVAC companies differently than they used to, rewarding recurring revenue, strong systems, and management depth over sheer size. The obvious next question is simple: what does that translate to in dollars? Most articles on this topic point to industry averages pulled from broad surveys. We took a different approach here. We looked at actual acquisitions made by publicly traded companies, the kind that are required to report exactly what they paid to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). That gives us a smaller set of examples than a broad survey would, but every number below comes from a real, named transaction rather than an estimate.

A Word on the Data 

Two public companies did almost all the buying we could verify in this space over the past two years: Comfort Systems USA (NYSE: FIX) and Limbach Holdings (NASDAQ: LMB). Private equity firms buy far more HVAC and mechanical companies than these two do, but they almost never tell anyone what they paid. Even the large private equity deals that do make the trade press were announced with the words “terms not disclosed.” Any specific dollar figures that surface afterward come from unnamed sources talking to reporters. The most trustworthy numbers available for a business in the $20 million to $100 million revenue range come from the smaller group of public companies required to show their work, not from the much larger volume of private equity activity. 

What the Disclosed Deals Show 

When people talk about what a business “sold for,” they usually mean a multiple of either EBITDA or total revenue. EBITDA is a common measure of earnings that leaves out certain financing and accounting costs, but in plain terms it is close to what the business actually makes from running its operations. An EBITDA multiple is the more useful number, since it is based on real profit rather than total sales, but not every disclosed deal tells us the profit. When it doesn’t, we show a revenue multiple instead. Revenue multiples are naturally smaller numbers than EBITDA multiples and cannot be compared directly. 

Buyer	Target (Year)	Purchase Price	Revenue	EBITDA	EBITDA Mult.	Rev. Mult.
Limbach Holdings	Kent Island Mechanical (2024)	$15.0M (+ up to $5.0M earn-out)	~$30.0M	$4.0M+	~3.75x	~0.5x
Limbach Holdings	Consolidated Mechanical (2024)	$23.0M (+ up to $2.0M earn-out)	~$23.0M	$4.0M	~5.75x	~1.0x
Limbach Holdings	Pioneer Power (2025)	$66.1M–$66.6M	~$120.0M	$10.0M	~6.6x	~0.55x
Comfort Systems USA	Century Contractors (2025)	$84.2M	~$90.0M¹	Not disclosed	n/a	~0.94x
Comfort Systems USA	Right Way Plumbing & Mechanical (2025)	$64.8M	$60.0M–$70.0M¹	Not disclosed	n/a	~1.0x
Comfort Systems USA	J&S Mechanical Contractors (2024)	$120.0M	$145.0M–$160.0M	$12.0M–$15.0M	~8x–10x	~0.79x

Why Bigger Deals Often Get Bigger Multiples 

Within Limbach’s own deals, the multiple gets bigger as the business gets bigger. Kent Island Mechanical, at roughly $30 million in revenue, sold for about 3.75x EBITDA. Pioneer Power, at roughly $120 million in revenue, sold for about 6.6x. J&S Mechanical Contractors, the largest business in the table at $145 million to $160 million in revenue, commanded the highest multiple of the group, 8x to 10x EBITDA. 

This is not a coincidence, and it is not unique to commercial HVAC. Buyers generally see a larger business as a lower-risk purchase. A bigger company usually has more customers, so losing any single one hurts less. It typically has a group of managers running day-to-day operations, so the business does not depend entirely on an owner. It often has more consistent financial reporting, simply because it has had to build the systems to manage more revenue. All of that lowers the buyer’s perceived risk, and buyers pay more for lower risk. A smaller business with the same profit margins and the same growth rate will often sell for a noticeably lower multiple, just because of its size, even if it is run just as well. 

Two Buyers, Two Playbooks 

Comfort Systems and Limbach buy businesses to make them part of a public company. For the deal to make sense to their own shareholders, it is typically funded mostly in cash at closing. The owner is paid, the business becomes part of a much larger company, and that is essentially the end of the story for the seller. 

A private equity platform is playing a different game. The individual businesses it buys along the way are often priced at an EBITDA multiple in the mid-to-high single digits, roughly five to eight times profit, because the private equity firm is hoping to profit later from the gap between what it pays for a small business today and what a much bigger, combined company can sell for down the road. That gap is essentially how the private equity firm makes its money on the whole strategy. 

Neither structure is better in every case. A strategic buyer like Comfort Systems or Limbach usually offers a faster, simpler transaction with more of the value paid in cash on day one. A private equity buyer may offer a higher total number on paper but may ask the seller to roll some of their proceeds into equity in the new, combined company, meaning stock in that company instead of cash, rather than taking all cash at closing. That rollover only pays off if the combined company’s eventual sale goes well. 

What This Means for Owners 

A few things follow from all of this for an owner thinking about a future sale. 

• Do not simply trust a headline multiple without asking where it came from. If it is attached to a specific, named public company transaction, it is real and it happened. If it is attached to a private equity platform deal, treat it as a description of that platform, not a promise about what your business would sell for. 

• Ask any buyer or advisor to be specific about how much of an offer is cash at closing versus an earn-out (money paid later, only if the business hits certain targets) or rollover equity (stock in the new company instead of cash). Two offers with the same headline number can be very different deals depending on how much of that number is certain today versus contingent on something happening later. 

• Size by itself can raise your multiple, separate from how profitable you are. A company with $60 million versus $20 million in revenue, even while holding margins steady, may attract a higher multiple simply because the size looks like a safer bet to a buyer.  

• Finally, none of this replaces having someone in your corner who has actually seen these structures play out. The right advisor helps you figure out which type of buyer, and which type of offer, fits what you are trying to accomplish, rather than chasing the biggest number on paper. 

Brooks Crankshaw is a Managing Director at Forbes Partners in Denver, Colorado. He advises owners of commercial business services companies, including HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and facilities services, on selling their business, raising capital, or growing through acquisition.