Public Company Valuation Multiples by Sector (October 2026)

Peer selection. For each of the eight sectors in which Laurent Capital advises, we list up to 15 companies that are headquartered in the United States or Canada, trade on the NYSE or Nasdaq, file 10-K and 10-Q reports with the SEC in US GAAP, and derive most of their revenue from the sector's core activity as described in their annual report. Where more candidates qualified, we kept the most direct comparables to lower-middle-market businesses: focused operators over diversified conglomerates. The selection is a judgment and is published in full; companies that fail a rule stay visible in the tables with the reason. Canadian companies that report under IFRS on Form 40-F are not included because their filings do not provide comparable quarterly XBRL data.

Exclusions from the statistics. A company is excluded when its equity value is below $300 million on the as-of date, when it has signed an agreement to be acquired (detected from merger proxy filings and confirmed by reading the proxy), or when a trailing-twelve-month figure cannot be built from its filings. Companies with zero or negative LTM EBITDA are excluded from the EV/EBITDA statistics only.

Last twelve months (LTM). For each company, the LTM period ends on the balance-sheet date of its latest 10-Q or 10-K filed by the as-of date. LTM figures equal the last fiscal year plus the current year-to-date period minus the prior-year year-to-date period, all taken from XBRL-tagged filings. Fiscal year-ends differ, so LTM periods differ by company; each row shows its own period end.

EBITDA. LTM GAAP operating income plus LTM depreciation and amortization from the cash flow statement. No adjustments are made for stock-based compensation, restructuring, acquisition costs or impairments. Where a company does not tag an operating income line, we use pre-tax income plus interest expense (ESE, KD, EHC, ACHC; identified in the CSV). Where depreciation and amortization cannot be taken from standard tags, EBITDA is shown as not available.

Enterprise value. EV = share price × shares outstanding + total debt + noncontrolling interests + preferred stock − cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments. Total debt includes the current portion of long-term debt, short-term borrowings and commercial paper, and finance leases where the company reports them within its debt total; operating lease liabilities are excluded. Balance-sheet items are taken at the LTM period end. Shares outstanding are the cover-page count from the latest 10-Q or 10-K; where the cover page does not give a single total that can be read from XBRL (usually because the company has several share classes), we use diluted weighted-average shares for the latest quarter; the CSV records which basis applies.

Statistics. Medians and quartiles are computed by linear interpolation between ranked values (the method used by Excel's QUARTILE.INC). All figures are in US dollars.

Limits. XBRL tags are applied by each filer and are not always consistent; we use a fixed order of standard tags and record the tags used for every company in the CSV. We do not adjust for cash held outside the US, pension deficits, or acquisitions closed after the LTM period end. This is Laurent Capital Research compiled from public sources; it is not investment advice and not a valuation of any company.