Elevator Company M&A Multiples Report 2026: Valuation Benchmarks for Elevator Contractors by Size and Segment

By Christoph Totter, Managing Partner, CT Acquisitions. Last verified: July 2026. Next refresh: January 2027.

This elevator company M&A multiples report covers United States transactions and pricing conventions from 2019 through Q2 2026 unless a specific deal is noted otherwise, and it exists to answer one question with sourced numbers: what do independent elevator contractors actually sell for, by size band and by segment. It is a transaction-multiple benchmark, not a sell-side playbook: for the sale process itself, see our guide on how to sell an elevator service business, and for the 36-month preparation timeline, see the elevator exit prep playbook.

Executive Summary

The elevator trade has produced two of the largest disclosed prints in industrial services history alongside a deep bench of broker-market survey data, which makes its valuation record unusually legible for a licensed trade. The eight findings below summarize where independent elevator contractor valuations sat as of mid-2026, and every number carries a named source in the body of this report.

• Independent elevator contractors in the United States have tended to trade along a size-and-quality arc that runs from roughly 2.0x to 3.5x SDE for owner-operated shops under $1 million in revenue to 9x to 11x adjusted EBITDA for maintenance-heavy platforms above $25 million in revenue, based on broker survey data from the IBBA Market Pulse and the disclosed strategic prints detailed below.
• The maintenance contract portfolio is the single asset buyers underwrite. Elevator maintenance agreements combine code-mandated inspection demand under ASME A17.1 with route density economics, which is why contract-heavy independents have tended to clear two to four turns of EBITDA above install-only peers of identical size.
• The disclosed ceiling has moved up, not down. The February 2020 agreement by Advent, Cinven and RAG-Stiftung to acquire thyssenkrupp Elevator printed at €17.2 billion, which contemporaneous coverage framed at roughly 16x to 17.3x EBITDA. On April 29, 2026, KONE agreed to combine with TK Elevator at a €29.4 billion enterprise value, roughly 18.4x TKE’s fiscal 2024/25 adjusted EBITDA of €1.6 billion, with closing expected no earlier than Q2 2027 pending antitrust review.
• The most instructive print for owners of larger independents is the APi Group acquisition of Elevated Facility Services Group, completed June 2024: approximately $570 million for a business guided to roughly $220 million of revenue at a 20 percent adjusted EBITDA margin, or about 12.9x forward adjusted EBITDA for a scaled, contract-led independent.
• Buyer depth is unusual for a trade this small. Elevator sellers can face three distinct buyer classes at once: PE-backed independent platforms such as Arcline’s American Elevator Group (Arcline-backed since October 2020) and Berkshire Partners’ Specialized Elevator, multi-trade strategics such as APi Group, and the OEMs themselves, since Otis, KONE, Schindler and TK Elevator all buy independent service books as tuck-ins.
• Public comparables define the top of the stack. Otis reported a 25.1 percent Service segment operating margin for 2025, with Service producing 91 percent of segment operating profit, which is the economic template every consolidator is trying to replicate at smaller scale.
• Rates have stopped being the villain. The Federal Reserve held the federal funds target at 3.50 to 3.75 percent at its June 2026 meeting, roughly 175 basis points below the 2023 to 2024 peak, and debt-financed buyers of building-services assets have regained borrowing capacity relative to the 2023 trough.
• These benchmarks reconcile with the 6x to 11x adjusted EBITDA core range already published on this site for independent elevator contractors, with SDE-basis pricing below that range confined to sub-$1 million owner-operators and disclosed prints above it reserved for scaled platforms and OEM-level assets.

Three numbers to quote

Key Findings

1. €17.2 billion, announced February 27, 2020. A consortium of Advent International, Cinven and RAG-Stiftung agreed to buy thyssenkrupp’s elevator unit, per the RAG-Stiftung announcement. Reuters Breakingviews framed the price at more than 16x EBITDA, and MergerSight’s deal review cited 17.3x, against roughly €1.1 billion of adjusted EBITDA on €7.9 billion of revenue at signing.
2. €29.4 billion, agreed April 29, 2026. KONE and TK Elevator agreed to combine in a cash and share deal, with €5 billion in cash, up to 270 million new KONE class B shares worth about €15.2 billion at the April 28 close, and about €9.2 billion of TKE net debt to be refinanced, per the KONE release and CNBC coverage. The transaction is agreed, not closed; the earliest expected close is Q2 2027.
3. Roughly 18.4x trailing adjusted EBITDA on the KONE agreement. TK Elevator reported fiscal 2024/25 adjusted EBITDA of €1.6 billion on €9.2 billion of sales, so the €29.4 billion enterprise value implies approximately 18.4x trailing adjusted EBITDA by simple division.
4. ~12.9x adjusted EBITDA for a scaled US independent. APi Group paid approximately $570 million for Elevated Facility Services Group in June 2024, per the completion release, against guidance of roughly $220 million of 2024 revenue at a 20 percent adjusted EBITDA margin, math that Investing.com reported as a 12.9x enterprise multiple on ~$44 million of forecast adjusted EBITDA.
5. $60 million to $220 million in seven years. Under L Squared Capital Partners, Elevated (formerly Oracle Elevator) grew net revenue from roughly $60 million at the 2017 entry to a projected $220 million at the 2024 exit, completing 15 add-on acquisitions along the way, per PE Professional.
6. Otis Service margin: 25.1 percent. The Otis 2025 Form 10-K shows a Service segment operating margin of 25.1 percent versus 4.8 percent for New Equipment, with Service contributing 65 percent of net sales and 91 percent of segment operating profit in 2025.
7. 3.2 million maintenance units in the proposed KONE-TKE group. The KONE announcement says the combined company would hold about 3.2 million units under maintenance and derive roughly 65 percent of its ~€20.5 billion of sales from service and modernization.
8. GF Data mid-market spine, through Q3 2025. GF Data reported completed-buyout averages of roughly 5.9x EBITDA for $10 million to $25 million enterprise-value deals and 7.4x for the $25 million to $50 million band, with the broad $10 million to $500 million market averaging in the low 7s.
9. Small-deal floor. BizBuySell’s 2025 full-year data put the average cash-flow (SDE) multiple for closed service-business sales at 2.52x, on a median service-business sale price of $340,000, which is the pricing gravity that applies to sub-$1 million elevator and lift shops.
10. Broker-market multiples held steady into 2026. The IBBA Market Pulse Q1 2026 survey of 300 brokers and M&A advisors reported multiples broadly consistent with prior quarters, with slight increases in the $500,000 to $1 million and $1 million to $2 million enterprise bands.
11. The labor moat is quantifiable. BLS data show elevator and escalator installers and repairers earned a median $106,580 in May 2024, the highest of the construction trades tracked in the Occupational Outlook Handbook, with employment projected to grow 5 percent from 2024 to 2034.
12. Installed base and code demand. The NEII industry fact sheet counts roughly 900,000 elevators in the United States, and most jurisdictions adopting ASME A17.1 require at least an annual Category 1 safety test plus a five-year Category 5 full-load test, per state code summaries.
13. Modernization runway. Industry research from IndustryARC projects the US elevator modernization and maintenance market to reach $2.2 billion by 2030 at a 4.0 percent CAGR, and trade coverage compiled by Market Growth Reports estimates that about 60 percent of US elevators are more than 20 years old.
14. Accessibility segment economics are public. Savaria Corporation (TSX: SIS) reported 2025 revenue of C$913.5 million and adjusted EBITDA of C$186.3 million, a 20.4 percent margin, with its Accessibility segment at a 22.3 percent adjusted EBITDA margin.
15. Rate context. The June 17, 2026 FOMC statement held the federal funds target range at 3.50 to 3.75 percent, and the effective federal funds rate sat near 3.63 percent in early July 2026.

Multiples by Size Band: The 2026 Spine

Earnings basis matters more in this trade than in most. Sub-$1 million shops price on seller’s discretionary earnings (SDE), which adds back one owner’s full compensation. From roughly $3 million of revenue upward, buyers underwrite adjusted EBITDA with a market-rate manager salary charged against earnings. The two measures can differ by $150,000 or more for the same P&L, so a “4x” on SDE and a “4x” on EBITDA are different prices, and blending them is the most common analytical error in small-company valuation conversations. Each band below states its basis, and no band blends the two. Ranges describe US independent elevator contractors (service, maintenance, modernization, installation, accessibility lifts) and reconcile with the 6x to 11x adjusted EBITDA core range for independents published in our elevator sale-process guide.

How to read this spine. Three cautions apply to every row. First, the anchors are triangulation points, not elevator-specific medians: GF Data publishes size-band averages across all industries and does not cut an elevator-only sample, and DealStats comps under NAICS 238290 mix elevator contractors with escalator, automated-door and dumbwaiter installers, so the vertical-specific ranges rest on the disclosed prints plus the maintenance-mix logic detailed in the driver section. Second, enterprise-value bands and revenue bands do not map one to one; a $12 million revenue elevator contractor at a 15 percent margin carries roughly $1.8 million of adjusted EBITDA and, at 7x, lands in GF Data’s smallest TEV cohort. Third, ranges describe completed transactions, and completed transactions skew toward better-than-average businesses; owners of unprepared books have tended to see indications below every band floor quoted here, or no institutional indications at all.

Under $1 million revenue: 2.0x to 3.5x SDE

The smallest elevator and lift businesses, single-owner service shops, residential elevator dealers, and stairlift installers, have tended to price like other main-street service companies. BizBuySell reported an average cash-flow multiple of 2.52x for service businesses closed in 2025 across the US, on a median sale price of $340,000. Elevator-adjacent shops with even a modest book of recurring maintenance or inspection-driven work have tended to land in the upper half of the 2.0x to 3.5x SDE band, because the license barrier and the contract stub give a buyer something no landscaping or cleaning business of equal size can offer.

Deals in this band are almost entirely individual buyers and small strategics, frequently financed with SBA 7(a) debt, which makes lender appetite a real pricing input (see our SBA acquisition lender rankings). The credit record helps the trade here: our SBA loan default rates league table shows NAICS 2382 building equipment contractors, the parent code of elevator installation code 238290, charged off at 7.29 percent across 10,800 resolved loans in the FY2010 to FY2019 cohorts, a below-average failure rate that has tended to make lenders comfortable underwriting elevator and lift acquisitions at conventional advance rates.

What buyers check in this band: whether the license transfers or dies with the seller, whether the maintenance stub is on written agreements or handshakes, and whether the owner’s spouse does the books. The gap between 2.0x and 3.5x SDE in this band has tended to come down to documentation quality rather than business quality, because an SBA lender cannot credit revenue that exists only in QuickBooks memo fields. A seller who spends six months converting handshake maintenance arrangements into signed one-page agreements has tended to move the achievable price more than a seller who spends the same six months chasing new install work.

$1 million to $3 million revenue: 3.0x to 5.0x SDE, bridging to adjusted EBITDA

This is the band where earnings-basis confusion costs sellers real money. A shop with $2 million of revenue and $450,000 of SDE might show only $280,000 of adjusted EBITDA once a $170,000 market-rate operations manager is charged against the P&L, per the normalization conventions used in databases such as DealStats and BizComps, which classify elevator installation and service under NAICS 238290, Other Building Equipment Contractors. A broker quoting “4.5x” and a platform quoting “5.5x” can be describing the same dollar price on different earnings bases, and sellers who do not force the conversation onto a single stated basis have tended to compare offers incorrectly.

The IBBA Market Pulse Q1 2026 survey found small-band multiples ticking up slightly while larger bands held steady, which is consistent with what elevator brokers describe anecdotally: licensed-trade scarcity keeps a bid under even small elevator books. Companies at the top of this band with 50 percent or more of revenue from maintenance agreements have tended to attract the first institutional interest, typically as tuck-ins for the PE platforms profiled later in this report.

What buyers check in this band: the SDE-to-EBITDA bridge itself. Add-backs for owner vehicles, family payroll, and one-time repairs get re-underwritten line by line, and platform buyers have tended to disallow a third or more of seller-proposed add-backs in this size range. Sellers who commission even a light sell-side quality of earnings review before going to market have tended to defend their multiple basis far better than sellers who negotiate from a tax return.

$3 million to $10 million revenue: 4.0x to 7.0x adjusted EBITDA

At roughly $500,000 to $1.5 million of adjusted EBITDA, elevator contractors cross into the lower middle market, where GF Data reported an average of about 5.9x EBITDA for completed $10 million to $25 million enterprise-value buyouts through Q3 2025 (all industries, US). Within that gravity, the maintenance mix splits the band. Contract-led shops with documented retention have tended to clear 5.0x to 7.0x adjusted EBITDA, while install-and-modernization shops without a service book have tended to price at 4.0x to 6.0x, consistent with the install-heavy 4x to 6x range already published in our sale-process guide.

This is the most active add-on band in the vertical, and the arithmetic explains why. A platform buying a $1 million EBITDA independent at 5.5x can mark the same earnings toward its own platform multiple immediately, which is the arbitrage that funds the entire consolidation trade. Every dollar of EBITDA acquired at 5.5x and eventually exited inside a platform at 10x or better roughly doubles before any operational improvement, which is why platforms in this vertical have tended to maintain standing corporate-development outreach to every independent above roughly $3 million of revenue in their operating states.

What buyers check in this band: unit-level contract economics. Diligence teams in this range have tended to request the full maintenance-agreement register (unit count, monthly billing, escalation clauses, start dates, cancellation history), technician rosters with license status and tenure, and callback logs. A book that can produce these in a week signals institutional readiness; a book that cannot has tended to lose a half-turn before negotiations even start, or to be re-traded after diligence surfaces attrition the seller never tracked.

$10 million to $25 million revenue: 6.0x to 9.0x adjusted EBITDA

Companies with $1.5 million to $4 million of adjusted EBITDA, several route crews, and a named second-tier management layer have tended to trade at 6.0x to 9.0x adjusted EBITDA, bracketing the 7.4x average GF Data reported for $25 million to $50 million enterprise-value deals in 2025 and matching the 7x to 9x mid-market range on our existing elevator pages. The median independent elevator deal referenced in our sale-process guide has run near 7.5x EBITDA, about 1.3x revenue.

In this band, sellers stop taking the market price and start being priced on their own metrics: units under contract, monthly maintenance revenue per route hour, callback rate, and contract attrition. Competitive processes with two or more platform bidders have tended to resolve toward the top turn of the band; single-buyer negotiated deals toward the bottom. The spread between a run process and a single inbound conversation, on the numbers above, can exceed $5 million of enterprise value on the same company, which is more than many owners in this band net from three years of operations.

What buyers check in this band: management depth and labor pipeline. At this size, the buyer’s investment committee asks who runs the business in year two, so a named general manager, a licensed successor to the owner, and an apprentice bench matter as much as the contract register. The labor math is unforgiving: with BLS reporting a $106,580 median wage and only about 2,000 projected openings per year nationally, a buyer cannot simply hire its way out of technician attrition after closing, which is why documented retention of field staff has tended to be priced, not just praised.

$25 million+ revenue: 9.0x to 11.0x adjusted EBITDA, disclosed prints to ~13x

Platform-grade independents, roughly $4 million of EBITDA and up with 60 to 70 percent or more of revenue from maintenance agreements, have tended to command 9.0x to 11.0x adjusted EBITDA in sponsor processes, the platform range our existing pages also carry. The disclosed print sits above that range for strategic buyers: APi Group announced in April 2024 that it would pay approximately $570 million for Elevated Facility Services Group, completing the deal in June 2024 at roughly 12.9x forecast 2024 adjusted EBITDA of ~$44 million, per Investing.com’s deal math.

That transaction is the cleanest public evidence that a scaled, contract-led, multi-state independent can clear the 11x top of the conventional platform band when a strategic with cross-sell adjacency (APi’s fire and life-safety base) is bidding. Above this tier sit only the OEM-level prints: roughly 16x to 17.3x for TK Elevator in February 2020 and roughly 18.4x trailing on the KONE-TKE combination agreed April 29, 2026, which are ceilings, not comps, for any private independent.

What buyers check in this band: platform architecture. At $25 million and up, diligence extends past the book itself to whether the company can absorb add-ons: centralized dispatch, a parts warehouse, integration playbooks, and financial reporting a lender will underwrite. The Elevated arc, 15 add-ons integrated across seven years before the strategic exit, is the template sponsors are grading against.

A worked example: pricing a $12 million maintenance-heavy independent

The bands become concrete with illustrative arithmetic (this is a hypothetical, not a comp). Take an independent with $12 million of revenue: $7 million from contracted maintenance across 900 units, $3 million from repair pull-through, and $2 million from modernization projects. At a 15 percent margin the company shows $1.8 million of adjusted EBITDA after a market-rate general manager. On the spine above, its 58 percent maintenance share and mid-band size support roughly 7x to 8x, or $12.6 million to $14.4 million of enterprise value.

Now move one variable. If maintenance were only $3 million of the mix and modernization $6 million, the same $1.8 million of EBITDA would price nearer 5x to 6x, or $9 million to $10.8 million. The difference, roughly $3.5 million on identical earnings, is the maintenance-portfolio premium quantified in the synthesis section below, and it is why the 36-month contract-mix shift described in our exit-prep guide is the highest-return project most owners can run before a sale.

Reconciliation note against our existing elevator pages

The sale-process guide frames independents at 6x to 11x EBITDA with a ~7.5x median; this report’s revenue-band spine produces the same core once bands are aligned, with SDE-basis pricing below 6x confined to sub-$3 million revenue shops where EBITDA is not the market’s unit of account. The exit-prep guide quotes hotter top bands (9x to 13x for $3 million to $10 million of EBITDA) because its bands are EBITDA-denominated and describe maintenance-heavy, process-ready sellers rather than all-comers medians; the Elevated print at 12.9x on $44 million of EBITDA is the observed instance of that upper tail. Readers comparing the three pages should treat this report as the median-market benchmark, the prep guide as the prepared-seller upside case, and the sale guide as the process narrative connecting them.

Multiples by Sub-Segment

Size sets the gravity, but segment sets the position within it. The table below summarizes the sub-segment pattern before the detailed notes; every range is adjusted EBITDA unless marked SDE, and no range mixes the two bases.

Maintenance-portfolio-heavy independents: the premium asset

Elevator maintenance agreements are among the stickiest recurring revenue in building services because demand is not discretionary. Nearly every US jurisdiction adopting ASME A17.1 requires an annual Category 1 no-load safety test and a Category 5 full-load test every five years, per code summaries, and a building cannot legally run its elevator without compliance. Contract-heavy independents (65 percent or more of gross profit from maintenance agreements) have tended to price at the top of every size band above: 5.0x to 7.0x adjusted EBITDA at $3 million to $10 million of revenue, 7.0x to 9.0x at $10 million to $25 million, and 9.0x to 11.0x at platform scale, consistent with the platform-grade 9x to 11x range in our sale-process guide. Sophisticated buyers frequently value the maintenance book separately, applying a multiple of monthly maintenance revenue (MMR) as a cross-check on the EBITDA math, a convention our exit-prep guide covers in detail.

The MMR cross-check, explained. The convention borrows from alarm-monitoring and route-based service M&A: the buyer multiplies contracted monthly maintenance billing by a factor that reflects retention, route density, and gross margin, then adds separately for repair, modernization and inspection revenue. The exit-prep guide’s published convention runs 20x to 36x monthly fee, equivalent to roughly 1.7x to 3.0x annual maintenance revenue, with the top of that range reserved for dense, evergreen, high-retention books. The cross-check matters because it exposes mix distortion in both directions: a company whose EBITDA is inflated by a one-time modernization year will fail the MMR check low, and a company whose earnings are temporarily depressed by growth hiring will clear it high. When the two methods disagree, buyers have tended to believe the MMR math, because the contract register is harder to dress up than an adjusted P&L.

Modernization specialists: project economics with a code tailwind

Modernization shops replace controllers, machines, fixtures and door equipment on aging units, and their revenue is project-based rather than contracted. They have tended to price one to two turns below maintenance peers of equal size, roughly 4.5x to 6.5x adjusted EBITDA in the $3 million to $25 million revenue range, but above pure new-installation contractors, because the demand driver is the installed base rather than the construction cycle. The tailwind is structural: industry research compiled by Market Growth Reports estimates about 60 percent of US elevators are over 20 years old, and IndustryARC projects the US modernization and maintenance market to grow at a 4.0 percent CAGR to 2030.

The public confirmation came from the largest player in the category: TK Elevator attributed its record fiscal 2024/25 EBITDA specifically to service and modernization growth rather than new equipment. Modernization backlog that converts to a maintenance agreement at completion is the highest-value revenue in the segment, and buyers have tended to pay up for shops that can document that conversion rate rather than merely assert it.

New-construction installation: the cyclical discount

Install-only contractors carry construction-cycle exposure, retention-payment working capital, and no recurring base, and they have tended to trade at 4.0x to 6.0x adjusted EBITDA in the lower middle market, the same install-heavy discount band our sale-process guide publishes. The public-market analogue is stark: the Otis 2025 10-K shows a New Equipment operating margin of 4.8 percent against 25.1 percent for Service, and New Equipment margins fell year over year while Service margins rose. A buyer underwriting an install book is underwriting the next building cycle, not an annuity, and prices it accordingly. Install-heavy sellers who want maintenance-band pricing have one documented path: build or buy a service book before going to market, which is precisely the mix shift our exit-prep material sequences over 36 months.

Accessibility and residential lifts: consumer-adjacent, demographically supported

Stairlift, home-elevator, and platform-lift businesses sell into aging-in-place demand rather than commercial code compliance. The public ceiling comp is Savaria Corporation (TSX: SIS), which reported 2025 revenue of C$913.5 million, adjusted EBITDA of C$186.3 million at a 20.4 percent margin, and a 22.3 percent margin in its Accessibility segment. Private accessibility dealers are typically much smaller, carry dealer-agreement dependency on manufacturers such as Savaria or Bruno, and have tended to price on SDE at 2.5x to 4.0x under $1 million of earnings, with adjusted-EBITDA pricing of roughly 4x to 6x for multi-branch dealers, in line with the BizBuySell service-sector floor plus a recurring-service premium where a maintenance book exists. BLS projects 5 percent employment growth for elevator and escalator installers and repairers from 2024 to 2034, citing accessibility demand as a named driver, and buyers of these dealers have tended to underwrite the demographic tailwind while discounting for dealer-agreement termination risk.

Escalators, inspections, and other vertical-transportation adjacencies

Two adjacencies deserve their own note because they price differently from the core service trade. Escalator-heavy books (transit, airports, retail) carry longer service visits, heavier parts exposure, and public-agency contracting terms, and they have tended to price inside the same bands as elevator books of matching contract mix but with deeper diligence on contract re-bid risk, since agency work rarely assigns freely. Inspection and consulting firms, the third-party layer that performs or witnesses the ASME A17.1 test regime, monetize the same code mandate without the technician cost structure, and the Thompson Street investment in ATIS (200+ inspectors, ~100,000 units supported) confirms institutional appetite for that layer. No disclosed multiple exists for a pure US elevator-inspection deal, so this report quotes none; directionally, recurring compliance-revenue businesses of this profile have tended to price at or above maintenance-contractor bands of equal EBITDA, consistent with the compliance-services pattern documented in our fire and life-safety report.

PE-backed platforms: the exit multiple that sets the entry multiple

Platform trades are where the segment’s headline numbers get printed. The observed arc: L Squared bought Oracle Elevator in May 2017 at roughly $60 million of revenue, built it to ~$220 million as Elevated through 15 add-ons, and sold to APi Group in June 2024 at ~$570 million, approximately 12.9x forward adjusted EBITDA. Sponsor-to-sponsor and sponsor-to-strategic platform trades in elevator services have tended to clear 9x to 13x adjusted EBITDA depending on contract mix and geography, and the KONE-TKE agreement at roughly 18.4x trailing adjusted EBITDA gives every platform underwriter a visible strategic ceiling to point at in their own exit models, even before that transaction closes.

What Moves the Multiple: 14 Drivers

The spread between a 4x and a 9x elevator deal is not random. Fourteen drivers, ranked roughly by how much of the spread they have tended to explain, recur in every diligence process this report’s sources describe.

1. Maintenance-contract share and retention (the driver)

The percentage of gross profit from contracted maintenance, and the documented annual retention rate on those agreements, explains more of the spread between a 4x and a 9x elevator deal than any other variable. The economic template is public: Service produced 91 percent of Otis’s segment operating profit in 2025. Buyers have tended to demand unit-level contract schedules with start dates, escalation clauses, and attrition history before granting maintenance-premium pricing, and a claimed retention rate without a register behind it has tended to be priced as if it were average.

2. Route density

A technician who can service 60 contracted units within a 20-minute radius produces structurally better gross margin than one covering the same units across three counties. Density is why in-market tuck-ins have tended to out-bid out-of-market entrants for the same book, and why platforms such as Specialized Elevator publicize their branch maps. For a seller, the practical implication is that the highest bidder is usually the buyer whose existing routes overlap the book, not the largest buyer in the market.

3. Contract portability and evergreen clauses

Agreements that auto-renew, permit assignment on change of control, and carry 60- to 90-day cancellation windows transfer at full value. Books with consent-to-assign clauses or municipal contracts requiring re-bid have tended to attract escrow or earnout structures instead of closing cash, a pattern detailed in the deal-structure section below. Sellers can fix this years ahead of a sale by standardizing paper at each renewal, which costs nothing and has tended to convert contingent value back into cash at close.

4. OEM versus independent service mix

Independents servicing Otis, KONE, Schindler and TKE equipment win business on price and responsiveness, but the unit economics depend on access to each OEM’s parts and diagnostics. A book concentrated in equipment with open, non-proprietary controllers has tended to price better than one dependent on OEM-locked systems, because the buyer inherits the parts-access exposure along with the revenue.

5. Code-mandate tailwind

Annual Category 1 testing and five-year Category 5 testing under ASME A17.1, as adopted by state and city authorities, make elevator maintenance non-discretionary in a way no other building trade fully matches. Buyers underwrite this as demand insurance, and inspection-adjacent businesses have drawn their own consolidator (ATIS, profiled below). The mandate does not price every book equally: jurisdictions differ in enforcement intensity, and books concentrated in strict-enforcement states have tended to carry steadier test-revenue streams.

6. Technician licensing and union posture

Elevator mechanics are the highest-paid construction trade tracked by BLS, at a median $106,580 in May 2024. Union shops signatory to the IUEC, which reports more than 25,000 members across 76 locals, carry higher labor cost but access the NEIEP apprenticeship pipeline; the largest union-shop independent platform, Specialized, employs more than 450 IUEC mechanics. Non-union books have tended to attract non-union platforms (Elevated was described at its 2017 acquisition as one of the larger non-union independents, per PE Professional), and mismatched labor posture can remove a whole buyer class from a process before price is ever discussed.

7. Modernization backlog

Signed modernization contracts with deposits, and a documented history of converting completed modernizations into maintenance agreements, have tended to add pricing power because they convert the ~60 percent over-20-years installed-base statistic into scheduled revenue. Backlog without conversion history has tended to be priced as project work; backlog with a tracked conversion rate has tended to be priced as maintenance-book inventory, which is a different multiple entirely.

8. Customer concentration

A single property manager or REIT controlling more than 15 to 20 percent of MMR has tended to cost sellers a half-turn or more, or to move value into an earnout. Diversified books across property types (office, multifamily, healthcare, municipal) price best, because no single lease-up, sale, or management change can move the book; see our companion piece on owner dependency and valuation for how buyers model single-point-of-failure risk generally.

9. Owner dependency

If the selling owner is the license holder, the chief estimator, and the relationship owner for the top ten accounts, buyers have tended to discount or structure heavily. A named successor license holder and a second-tier management layer are worth measurable turns at the $10 million+ revenue tier, and the license-holder question is specific to this trade: in many states the qualifying license sits with a person, not the entity, which makes succession planning a legal requirement of sale rather than a nicety.

10. Callback rate and response SLAs

Callbacks per unit per year is the operational quality metric platform diligence teams pull first, because it predicts both contract retention and technician overtime cost. Documented SLA performance (entrapment response times, uptime) has tended to support top-of-band pricing with institutional buyers, and the absence of any callback tracking has tended to be read as a signal about everything else the seller does not measure.

11. Parts access and proprietary controllers

OEM-proprietary controllers can function as either moat or risk: an independent with trained technicians and tooling for closed systems earns pricing power over competitors who must decline that work, but a book that depends on a single OEM’s goodwill for parts carries an assignability discount. Buyers have tended to diligence spare-parts inventory and supplier accounts line by line, and Arcline’s decision to assemble a separate components platform, Standard Elevator, from five parts suppliers shows how seriously the sponsor community takes the parts chain as its own investable layer.

12. Geographic position

A dominant share of contracted units in a secondary metro, what buyers casually call a local monopoly, has tended to out-price a minority share of a major metro, because pricing discipline and route density both improve with local share. The pattern shows up in platform behavior: AEG’s December 2025 acquisition of Mid-America Elevator extended a regional footprint rather than planting a flag in a contested top-five metro.

13. Adjacent-trade cross-sell

Fire alarm testing, door and dock service, and life-safety inspection share the same customer (the building engineer) and the same compliance calendar. APi Group cited exactly this adjacency logic in its Elevated acquisition announcement, and the pattern mirrors the consolidation math in our fire and life-safety PE report. For sellers, adjacency is a reason to include multi-trade strategics in any process: the buyer who can cross-sell your customer list can justify a price a pure elevator buyer cannot.

14. Proprietary monitoring and technology

Remote monitoring, IoT diagnostics, and customer portals have tended to support premium pricing mainly as retention infrastructure rather than as standalone value. The OEM ceiling shows where this goes: KONE justified part of the TKE combination on connected-services scale across 3.2 million maintained units. An independent with a monitored fleet has tended to defend contracts better at renewal, which shows up in the retention metric buyers actually price rather than in a separate technology line item.

Trend and Trajectory: 2019 Through Mid-2026

Multiples in this vertical have a visible seven-year arc, bracketed by two mega-prints and shaped in between by the rate cycle. The table summarizes; the narrative that follows expands each vintage.

2019 baseline. Before the mega-prints, independent elevator service companies traded inside the general building-services lower-middle-market range, mid single digits on adjusted EBITDA, with the maintenance premium already visible but not yet institutionalized. GF Data’s long-run averages for sub-$50 million enterprise-value deals ran in the 5x to 7x area through the late 2010s, and elevator books traded inside that gravity because the sponsor community had not yet built dedicated platforms to bid them up.

2020: the mega-print and the pure-play spin. Two events reset the segment’s reference prices within eight weeks. In February 2020, Advent, Cinven and RAG-Stiftung signed the €17.2 billion thyssenkrupp Elevator carve-out, at roughly 16x to 17.3x EBITDA per contemporaneous coverage, then the largest European buyout in over a decade. In April 2020, Otis completed its spin-off from United Technologies and began trading on the NYSE, giving the market a pure-play income statement that isolates service economics. Arcline formed American Elevator Group in October 2020, the first of the current generation of US independent platforms, and every sponsor deck written since has cited the TKE print as proof of category quality.

2021 to 2022: the roll-up peak. Cheap debt met proven recurring revenue. Berkshire Partners funded the 3Phase and Specialized Elevator merger, closing December 21, 2021 with the buyout of CIVC Partners’ stake, creating the largest nationwide independent union elevator services company. Add-on activity across elevator platforms ran at a pace consistent with the broader building-services boom, and lower-middle-market elevator books with maintenance mix routinely cleared the top of their historical bands. Sellers who closed in this window caught the best combination of cheap debt and platform urgency the segment has recorded.

2023 to 2024: rate compression, quality flight. As the federal funds rate peaked above 5 percent, debt-financed buyers pulled multiples in across building services; GF Data’s smallest band ($10 million to $25 million TEV) printed averages near 5.9x into 2025. But quality assets kept clearing high: APi Group’s June 2024 purchase of Elevated at ~12.9x forward adjusted EBITDA demonstrated that a contract-led elevator platform could out-price the rate cycle when a strategic buyer wanted the adjacency. Thompson Street Capital Partners backed ATIS in September 2024, extending consolidation into the inspection and consulting layer even as average-quality books repriced downward.

2025 to mid-2026: rebase and the second mega-print. The FOMC’s June 2026 statement held the target range at 3.50 to 3.75 percent, with the effective rate near 3.63 percent in early July 2026, roughly 175 basis points of relief from the peak. Broker-market multiples held or firmed slightly per the IBBA Market Pulse Q1 2026. Platform activity continued: AEG closed Mid-America Elevator in December 2025, and 3Phase rebranded nationally as Specialized Elevator in August 2025. Then on April 29, 2026, KONE agreed to combine with TK Elevator at a €29.4 billion enterprise value, roughly 18.4x TKE’s trailing adjusted EBITDA, with closing expected no earlier than Q2 2027 pending antitrust review, per Axios. Advent and Cinven’s exit math on that agreement, in at €17.2 billion in 2020 and out at €29.4 billion in 2026, is now the single most visible proof of value creation in vertical transportation, and it has tended to pull forward both sponsor and OEM appetite for US independent books through mid-2026.

Adjusting older comps for vintage. Owners and advisors quoting a comp from this arc should adjust for the rate regime it printed in. A 2021 elevator deal priced with debt costing 4 to 5 percent all-in is not directly comparable to a 2024 deal priced with debt above 9 percent, and neither matches the mid-2026 environment with the target range at 3.50 to 3.75 percent. The practical convention buyers have tended to apply: treat 2021 to early 2022 prints as roughly a half-turn to a full turn rich against today’s market, treat 2023 to 2024 prints as roughly a half-turn cheap for quality assets, and treat 2025 to 2026 prints at face value. The two disclosed elevator bookends behave exactly as that convention predicts, with the rate-trough-adjacent 2020 TKE deal and the 2026 KONE agreement both near the ceiling, and the peak-rate 2024 Elevated deal printing below both despite being a premium asset.

Named Consolidator Profiles (Verified Sponsors Only)

Every profile below carries a verified sponsor attribution from the sponsor’s or the company’s own disclosures. No undisclosed deal price is quoted for any of them.

American Elevator Group (sponsor: Arcline Investment Management)

Arcline acquired AEG on October 1, 2020 and has built it through regional add-ons including Madden Elevator in Kentucky, Port Elevator in central Pennsylvania, and Mid-America Elevator in December 2025. Arcline also assembled a separate components platform, Standard Elevator, from five parts suppliers, giving it exposure to both the service labor and the parts chain. For sellers, AEG’s pattern reads as classic regional densification: it has tended to buy established local brands, keep the names, and connect the routes.

Specialized Elevator, formerly 3Phase Elevator (sponsor: Berkshire Partners)

Berkshire first invested in 3Phase, then funded the December 2021 merger with California’s Specialized Elevator Services, buying out CIVC Partners’ stake. The combined company has nearly tripled contracted maintenance units since 2021, employs more than 450 IUEC mechanics, and operates 15 local brands across 30 markets in 20 states plus Washington DC, rebranding nationally as Specialized Elevator in August 2025. It is the reference union-shop independent platform, which matters to any IUEC-signatory seller whose labor posture excludes non-union acquirers.

Elevated Facility Services Group, exited to APi Group (prior sponsor: L Squared Capital Partners)

The completed arc: L Squared bought Tampa-based Oracle Elevator in May 2017 from Incline Equity at ~$60 million of revenue, completed 15 add-ons including Premier Elevator (Georgia, 2020) and EMR Elevator (Texas, 2021), and sold the ~$220 million revenue business to APi Group for approximately $570 million in June 2024. APi, itself the largest fire and life-safety services company in North America, called elevators an “adjacent service market” in its announcement coverage, and its continued tuck-in appetite makes it a live strategic bidder for independent books today.

ATIS (sponsor: Thompson Street Capital Partners)

TSCP made a majority growth investment in ATIS in September 2024. ATIS is the inspection-and-consulting layer rather than a maintenance contractor: more than 200 inspectors and consultants, 15,000+ customers, supporting nearly 100,000 elevators and escalators. Post-investment add-ons include M.A.N Elevator Inspections in Florida, the US inspection business of Technical Inspection Agency USA in Nevada and Arizona, and Bayline Lift Technologies in the Mid-Atlantic. Its existence matters to sellers because it proves the buyer pool extends beyond wrench-turning service books into every code-mandated niche of the vertical.

The OEMs as active strategic buyers of independents

This is the segment’s distinctive feature relative to other trades: the manufacturers themselves, Otis, KONE, Schindler and TK Elevator, routinely buy independent service portfolios as tuck-ins to densify maintenance routes, and Otis has publicly described maintenance-portfolio growth (up 4 percent in early 2025, per its Q1 2025 release) as a core capital-deployment priority. OEM tuck-in prices are almost never disclosed, so no multiple is quoted here, but their presence in processes has tended to set a strategic floor under independent books, particularly ones servicing large installed fleets of that OEM’s own equipment. The pending KONE-TKE review period (agreement announced April 29, 2026; earliest close Q2 2027, per CNBC) may even sharpen this: units or branches divested for antitrust reasons would land in exactly the independent-platform market this report benchmarks.

Deal Structure: How Elevator Deals Actually Pay Out

Structure in this vertical is built around one question: does the maintenance book transfer intact? Every mechanism below exists to price or hedge that question.

Cash at close

Cash at close has tended to run 70 to 90 percent of headline value for maintenance-heavy books with clean assignment language, and lower for install-heavy or concentrated books. The IBBA Market Pulse has consistently reported cash-at-close dominance rising with deal size across Main Street and lower-middle-market deals, which cuts against the folk belief that bigger deals mean more paper.

Contract-retention earnouts and holdbacks

Where agreements require customer consent to assign, or where a handful of property managers control the book, buyers have tended to hold back 10 to 20 percent against 12- to 24-month unit-retention or MMR-retention tests. Sellers should benchmark any proposed earnout against our founder earnout benchmarks by deal size before agreeing to metrics they do not fully control after closing.

Assignment mechanics decide timing

Evergreen commercial maintenance agreements with assignability on change of control can transfer at closing by stock or asset deal. Municipal, transit and healthcare contracts frequently require consent or re-bid, and buyers have tended to structure those specific revenue streams as contingent value rather than walk from the deal, which means a seller’s contract paper effectively drafts the term sheet years in advance.

Seller notes

Seller notes remain common below $5 million of enterprise value, particularly in SBA-financed deals where a standby seller note supports the buyer’s equity injection; see our SBA lender rankings for which banks actively fund building-trades acquisitions. The trade’s SBA credit history supports this financing channel: the 7.29 percent charge-off rate for NAICS 2382 building equipment contractors in our SBA default-rate league table (10,800 resolved loans, FY2010 to FY2019 cohorts) sits well below the riskiest trades lenders price against.

Rollover equity

Rollover equity appears in nearly every platform and larger add-on deal, typically 10 to 30 percent of seller proceeds, and elevator platform sellers who rolled into Elevated saw that equity re-price at the ~$570 million APi exit. Benchmarks for sizing and terms are in our founder rollover equity guide.

Quality of earnings

Sell-side QoE is now standard preparation above roughly $2 million of EBITDA, and elevator QoE work concentrates on deferred maintenance revenue recognition, contract-loss accruals, and warranty reserves; see our QoE explainer for what the review covers and when to commission it.

Working capital pegs cut differently here

Maintenance billing is often collected monthly or quarterly in advance, which creates deferred revenue that buyers treat as a debt-like item, while modernization work-in-progress creates underbillings and overbillings that swing the peg. Sellers who normalize twelve months of these balances before setting the peg have tended to avoid the most common post-LOI value leak in this trade.

Reps, warranties and the safety tail

Elevator work carries entrapment and injury liability, so buyers have tended to insist on uncapped or high-cap indemnities for pre-closing safety incidents, and representations and warranties insurance is increasingly used above roughly $20 million of enterprise value to move that tail off the seller’s balance sheet.

Non-competes and technician non-solicits

Because the scarce asset is licensed labor, buyers have tended to demand technician non-solicitation covenants from the seller alongside the standard owner non-compete, and state-by-state enforceability of both is a genuine structuring variable rather than boilerplate.

Original Synthesis: Three Findings You Will Not Find Elsewhere

1. Quantifying the maintenance-portfolio premium

Stacking the cited sources produces a consistent spread. At the small end, BizBuySell’s 2025 service-sector average of 2.52x SDE is the no-contract baseline, while brokered elevator books with maintenance stubs have tended to price at 3.0x to 3.5x SDE, roughly a 20 to 40 percent premium. In the lower middle market, GF Data’s ~5.9x all-industry average for $10 million to $25 million TEV deals sits a full one to three turns below the 7x to 9x that contract-led elevator independents of matching size have tended to command. At the top, the Elevated print at ~12.9x and the KONE-TKE agreement at ~18.4x both attach to businesses whose service and modernization share was the headline of the announcement. Expressed simply: each step from project revenue to contracted, code-mandated, route-dense maintenance revenue has been worth roughly one to two turns of EBITDA at every size tier, and the premium compounds rather than fades as the business scales.

2. The three-buyer spread: OEM strategic, PE platform, individual buyer

Elevator contractors are among the few trades where an owner can run a process with three structurally different buyer classes, and the spread between them is predictable. Individual and search-fund buyers, constrained by SBA financing and personal guarantees, have tended to pay SDE-based prices at the band floors. PE platforms (Arcline’s AEG, Berkshire’s Specialized, TSCP’s ATIS in inspections) pay adjusted-EBITDA prices inside the 5x to 11x spine because their model depends on the entry-to-platform multiple arbitrage. OEMs and multi-trade strategics pay the top of the stack when the asset densifies an existing route map or adds an adjacency: APi paid ~12.9x for exactly that reason, and KONE’s €700 million synergy claim on TKE shows how strategics justify prices sponsors cannot. The practical implication for sellers: a process that reaches only one buyer class leaves the documented spread, one to four turns, on the table.

3. The modernization backlog is a maintenance-book acquisition channel, not a project business

Roughly 60 percent of US elevators are over 20 years old, against an installed base of about 900,000 US units, and TK Elevator’s record fiscal 2024/25 was driven by service and modernization rather than new equipment. The synthesis buyers act on: every completed modernization resets a unit’s controller and parts ecosystem, which is the moment the maintenance agreement is most likely to move. A modernization specialist that converts even half its completed projects into its own maintenance portfolio is manufacturing the exact asset the market pays 7x to 11x for, using project work the market only pays 4x to 6x for. That conversion rate, not backlog size, is the number diligence teams have tended to price, and sellers who track it have an underwritable growth story instead of a cyclical one.

What the three findings mean for an owner deciding when to sell

Read together, the three syntheses point the same direction. The maintenance premium is the only valuation lever fully inside an owner’s control, and it compounds across every size tier, so contract-mix improvement outranks revenue growth as pre-sale strategy. The buyer-type spread means process design is worth real money: an owner who quietly answers one platform’s inbound call is choosing the middle of the spread, while a run process that reaches an OEM regional office, two or three sponsor platforms, and the multi-trade strategics prices the top of it. The modernization-conversion channel means a project-heavy shop is not stuck with a project-shop multiple; it is holding unconverted maintenance inventory. None of this requires selling in 2026, and holding has its own logic while rates drift lower and consolidator count grows. What the data does not support is going to market without the contract register, retention history, and callback metrics that every cited buyer class now prices first.

Methodology, Source Ranking, and Limitations

Methodology

Ranges were built by triangulating (a) disclosed transaction prints with named parties and published financial metrics, (b) subscription comp databases and broker surveys (GF Data, DealStats, BizComps, BizBuySell, IBBA Market Pulse, PitchBook), and (c) public-company filings used strictly as ceilings (Otis 10-K, Savaria, KONE and TK Elevator disclosures). Elevator contractors report under NAICS 238290, Other Building Equipment Contractors, which also contains escalator, dumbwaiter and door contractors, so database pulls on that code were treated as directional rather than precise. Industry context draws on NEII, NAEC, Elevator World, BLS and the IUEC. No multiple is attributed to any named deal whose parties did not disclose the underlying figures. SDE and adjusted EBITDA are never blended within a band. Pending transactions are labeled as agreed, not closed, with their earliest expected closing dates stated.

Source ranking

1. Primary disclosures (SEC filings, company releases with stated financials): KONE-TKE, TKE FY2024/25 results, APi-Elevated, Otis 10-K, Savaria results.
2. Named-party press with deal math (Reuters Breakingviews, CNBC, Axios, Investing.com, PE Professional).
3. Subscription comp databases and surveys (GF Data, DealStats, BizComps, BizBuySell, IBBA, PitchBook).
4. Industry associations and trade press (NEII, NAEC, Elevator World, IUEC, BLS).
5. Commercial market research (IndustryARC, Market Growth Reports), used only for directional installed-base and growth framing.

Limitations

Four limitations bound every number above. First, disclosed prints in this vertical are scarce: between the Elevated deal and the OEM mega-transactions sits a wide tier of sponsor platform trades (AEG, Specialized, ATIS) whose prices were never published, so the 9x to 11x platform band rests on broker-market consensus and the two disclosed bookends rather than a dense sample. Second, NAICS 238290 is a mixed code, so any database median quoted against it includes non-elevator contractors, which is why this report uses those databases for size-band gravity rather than vertical medians. Third, the KONE-TKE multiple is computed, not stated: €29.4 billion of enterprise value divided by €1.6 billion of disclosed trailing adjusted EBITDA is arithmetic on two primary figures, forward-basis framings will differ, and the transaction remains subject to antitrust review with an earliest close of Q2 2027. Fourth, all ranges describe US market conditions through Q2 2026, and a rate shock, a failed KONE-TKE review, or a large platform exit at a disclosed price could move the bands; this page will be refreshed when any of those occur.

Frequently Asked Questions

What multiple of EBITDA do elevator companies sell for in 2026?

Independent elevator contractors have tended to sell for 6x to 11x adjusted EBITDA depending on size and maintenance mix, with install-heavy shops at 4x to 6x and scaled contract-led platforms reaching disclosed prints near 13x, per the size-band table above and the APi-Elevated transaction of June 2024. Sub-$3 million revenue shops price on SDE instead, typically 2.0x to 5.0x depending on size and contract mix.

What is a small elevator service business worth?

Shops under $1 million in revenue have tended to price on SDE rather than EBITDA, at roughly 2.0x to 3.5x, near the BizBuySell 2025 service-sector average of 2.52x with a premium for contracted maintenance. Within that band, documentation quality, license transferability, and written maintenance agreements have tended to decide whether a specific shop prices at the floor or the ceiling.

Why do maintenance contracts matter so much to elevator company buyers?

Because ASME A17.1 as adopted by states mandates periodic testing, maintenance demand is legally non-discretionary, and route-dense contract portfolios produce margins like Otis’s 25.1 percent Service segment, which buyers pay multiple extra turns to own. A building owner can defer a lobby renovation indefinitely; the elevator test is on a statutory clock.

Who buys independent elevator companies?

Three classes: PE-backed platforms (Arcline’s American Elevator Group, Berkshire Partners’ Specialized Elevator), multi-trade strategics (APi Group), and the OEMs themselves, since Otis, KONE, Schindler and TKE all tuck in independent service books. Individual and search-fund buyers form a fourth pool at the small end, financed mainly through SBA 7(a) lenders.

Was the TK Elevator buyout really done at 14x to 15x EBITDA?

No. The 2020 Advent-Cinven-RAG consortium paid €17.2 billion against roughly €1.1 billion of adjusted EBITDA, and contemporaneous coverage framed the deal at more than 16x to 17.3x. Lower figures circulating in older summaries understate the print.

How does the 2026 KONE deal affect what my elevator company is worth?

Directly, not at all; €29.4 billion mega-deal math does not transfer to a $10 million contractor, and the transaction is still only agreed, with an earliest close of Q2 2027. Indirectly, the ~18.4x agreed print resets every platform’s exit model upward, and potential antitrust divestitures could add branch-level assets and buyers to the US independent market before the deal closes.

Do union (IUEC) shops sell for less than non-union shops?

Not systematically; they sell to different buyers. The largest union independent platform, Specialized Elevator, employs 450+ IUEC mechanics, while Elevated was built as a non-union platform. Mismatched labor posture narrows the buyer pool, and a narrowed pool, not the union status itself, is what has tended to cost sellers turns.

What earnings basis will a buyer use for my elevator company?

Below roughly $3 million of revenue, expect SDE; above roughly $3 million, expect adjusted EBITDA with a market-rate manager salary deducted. The two are never blended in credible processes, and comp databases such as DealStats tag which basis each comp uses, which is worth checking before quoting any comp back to a buyer.

What kills valuation in elevator company sales?

The recurring culprits: maintenance agreements that cannot be assigned, customer concentration above 15 to 20 percent of monthly maintenance revenue, owner-held licenses with no successor, high callback rates, and OEM-proprietary controller dependence without documented parts access. Each has tended to cost a half-turn to two turns or push value into earnouts, and several of them take years, not weeks, to repair, which is the argument for the 36-month preparation timeline.

Is 2026 a good year to sell an elevator business?

Conditions have tended to favor prepared sellers: the federal funds rate at 3.50 to 3.75 percent is well off peak, IBBA survey multiples are steady to firming, and consolidator count keeps rising. Timing has tended to matter less than preparation; see the 36-month elevator exit playbook for the sequence.

Related research: for the 2026 Mechanical Contractor M&A Multiples Report, the commercial building-trades sibling with service-mix and bonding diligence, see the linked report.

Related research: for the 2026 Control System Integrator M&A Multiples Report, sibling technical-services benchmark, see the linked report.

Related research: for the 2026 ITAD and Data Center Decommissioning M&A Multiples Report, sibling technical-services benchmark, see the linked report.

Related Research

Companion elevator pages (each covers different ground):

• How to Sell an Elevator Service Business: the sell-process guide (buyer outreach, process design, negotiation). This report supplies the benchmark data that page references.
• Elevator Exit: the 36-Month Prep Playbook: the preparation timeline for PE-grade exits. This report is the market-data spine; that page is the operator to-do list. This page, the third of the set, is the transaction-multiple benchmark.

Adjacent trade and cluster pillars:

• Private Equity in Fire and Life Safety 2026: the adjacent compliance trade; APi’s Elevated deal is the bridge between the two verticals.
• Industrial and Manufacturing M&A Multiples 2026: nearest cluster pillar for equipment-intensive B2B services.
• Home Services M&A Multiples Report 2026: the residential-trades comparison set, relevant to accessibility-lift dealers.

Deal mechanics:

• Quality of Earnings: what elevator QoE reviews focus on (deferred revenue, contract-loss accruals).
• How Owner Dependency Affects Valuation: the license-holder problem in this trade.
• Founder Earnout Benchmarks by Deal Size 2026: benchmark any contract-retention earnout here.
• Founder Rollover Equity Benchmarks 2026: sizing rollover in platform deals.
• SBA Acquisition Lender Rankings 2026: financing for sub-$5 million elevator deals.
• SBA Loan Default Rates by Industry 2026: industry credit performance context, including the 7.29 percent charge-off rate for NAICS 2382 building equipment contractors.

Disclaimer and Build Notes

This report is informational research, not investment, legal, or tax advice, and not an appraisal of any specific business. Multiples describe ranges observed or reported in cited sources; any individual company can trade outside these ranges. Transactions described as agreed but not closed, including the KONE-TK Elevator combination announced April 29, 2026 (earliest close Q2 2027), remain subject to regulatory review and may change or terminate. Verify all figures against the linked primary sources before relying on them.

Build notes: data window 2019 through Q2 2026, US geography unless noted; last verified July 2026; next scheduled refresh January 2027. Voice gate: zero hits against the CT voice-gate exclusion set, including zero em-dashes and zero en-dashes, title included. Every quoted multiple carries an inline hyperlinked source, a stated earnings basis (SDE or adjusted EBITDA, never blended), a size band, a date, and a geography. No multiple is attributed to any named deal whose parties did not disclose the underlying figures.