Most business owners approach valuation the same way: EBITDA times a multiple equals the price. It sounds logical. It is also dangerously incomplete. In this guide, I break down real EBITDA multiples by industry for the Polish and Central European mid-market in 2025 — and explain why the number that matters most never appears in any benchmark table.
Why Business Owners Get Valuation Wrong From the Start
I hear the same question at almost every first meeting with a business owner considering a sale.
“What multiple will I get?”
It is a reasonable question. Owners want a reference point. Something concrete to anchor their expectations before they commit to a process that will take 12 to 18 months and touch every corner of their business.
The problem is not the question itself. The problem is what happens next. An owner hears a number from a friend who sold a different company, in a different year, to a different buyer, in a different sector. That number becomes their benchmark. And when the actual offer lands somewhere else, the disappointment is real — even when the offer is objectively good.
Valuation multiples are sector-specific, time-specific, and buyer-specific. They are not a universal formula. The spread between the lowest and highest EV/EBITDA multiples paid in Central European mid-market transactions is enormous — from around 3x for a struggling traditional manufacturer to over 18x for a fast-growing SaaS business with strong recurring revenue.
Understanding where your business sits in that range — and more importantly, what moves it up or down — is the foundational knowledge every business owner needs before entering a sale process.
EBITDA Multiples by Industry: The Polish Mid-Market Benchmark (2025)
Let me be precise about what we are measuring. EV/EBITDA — Enterprise Value divided by Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization — is the most commonly used valuation multiple in M&A transactions. It allows buyers to compare companies across different capital structures and tax jurisdictions.
The ranges below reflect indicative benchmarks for sell-side transactions in the Polish and CEE mid-market with revenues between approximately PLN 10 million and PLN 200 million. They are not guarantees. Every transaction is different.
Traditional Manufacturing (3–6x EV/EBITDA)
Traditional manufacturing sits at the lower end of the valuation spectrum. This is not a judgment on the quality of these businesses — many are highly profitable and operationally excellent. It reflects the structural characteristics buyers assign a discount to: capital intensity, cyclicality, lower growth ceilings, and the physical constraints of production capacity.
Within this range, the spread is significant. A well-run manufacturer with diversified customer relationships (no single client exceeding 20–25% of revenue), documented processes, modern equipment with a clear maintenance schedule, and a management team capable of operating without the owner will command 5–6x. A business where the owner is the primary relationship with every key customer, where financial reporting is informal, and where the equipment is aging will sit closer to 3–4x.
The practical implication: in traditional manufacturing, value enhancement before a sale is more impactful than in almost any other sector. One to two years of focused preparation — reducing owner dependency, formalizing processes, stabilizing the customer base — can shift the multiple by a full point or more.
B2B Professional Services (4–7x EV/EBITDA)
Consulting firms, outsourcing providers, professional services businesses. The valuation range here is slightly higher than manufacturing, reflecting lower capital intensity and higher margins. But the variance within the range is equally wide.
The key driver is revenue quality. A B2B services business generating revenue primarily from long-term framework agreements, with a stable client base and low churn, looks fundamentally different to a buyer than one living project to project. The former is predictable cash flow. The latter is a business where next year’s revenue is genuinely uncertain.
Owner dependency is the single biggest discount factor in B2B services. If a business’s revenue depends primarily on the owner’s personal relationships, network, and presence — and those relationships do not transfer with the company — buyers discount heavily. I have seen well-run B2B services companies achieve 6–7x when the management team is strong and client relationships are institutionalized. I have seen similar businesses struggle to achieve 4x when the owner was effectively the product.
IT Services and Consulting (7–12x EV/EBITDA)
IT services — software development, IT consulting, systems integration — trade at a material premium to traditional services. The global median EV/EBITDA for IT services transactions was 8.8x in Q4 2025, according to data from Mergermarket and sector benchmarks. Polish and CEE transactions track broadly in line with European medians, though with some discount for market size and liquidity.
Within the 7–12x range, the differentiating factor is specialization. A generalist IT body-shop — staff augmentation, time-and-materials development for any client in any industry — sits at the lower end. A company with deep expertise in a specific vertical (financial services, industrial automation, healthcare systems) commands a premium. Buyers pay for defensible knowledge, not for headcount.
The other critical question buyers ask about IT services businesses: “What remains if the developers leave?” Companies with a strong delivery methodology, documented processes, proprietary frameworks, or any IP component are more valuable than those where the value lives entirely in the heads of individual engineers.
In 2024–2025, 29 M&A transactions were recorded in Poland’s IT sector, of which 12 involved companies operating on a SaaS or product model. The buyer universe in this space includes both strategic acquirers (larger IT groups seeking capability or market access) and financial buyers (private equity funds specifically targeting the IT services sector in CEE).
Software and SaaS (10–18x EV/EBITDA)
Software companies — and SaaS businesses in particular — achieve the highest valuations in the mid-market. The premium reflects a structural characteristic that buyers prize above almost everything else: predictable, recurring revenue.
Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) that renews automatically, grows through expansion, and churns at low rates creates a level of cash flow visibility that no other business model can match. A software business with strong Net Revenue Retention (NRR above 110%) is not just stable — it grows passively as existing customers expand usage.
Global data from the past decade shows software companies achieving a median EV/EBITDA of around 15x, with SaaS-specific multiples even higher during the 2021–2022 peak (and normalized but still elevated since). For the Polish mid-market, buyers typically apply a modest discount relative to global benchmarks, but strong SaaS businesses with demonstrated ARR growth can still achieve 12–15x and above.
The caveat I give every founder considering a SaaS exit: buyers have become significantly more sophisticated. “SaaS by name only” — a subscription billing model without genuine retention, ARR growth, or low churn — will not achieve premium valuations. Sophisticated buyers run cohort analyses. They decompose NRR into expansion, contraction, and churn. The numbers are not easy to hide, and attempting to present them misleadingly destroys trust fast.
What Actually Determines the Final Price
Here is the insight that changes how most owners think about valuation.
The multiples above are benchmarks, not outcomes. In my practice, I have seen businesses sell at 9x EBITDA in sectors where the benchmark is 3–5x. I have seen IT businesses achieve 5x when the benchmark suggests 8–10x. The multiple you achieve depends not on what industry you are in, but on who you sell to and why they want your business specifically.
For a strategic buyer, your business is worth what they can generate from it after the acquisition — not what a financial model says it is worth in isolation. New markets they can enter. Technology they can embed in their existing product. A customer base they can cross-sell to. A geographic footprint they lack. A regulatory license or certification they cannot easily replicate.
These synergies create a ceiling that is entirely decoupled from EBITDA-times-multiple arithmetic. When three strategic buyers compete for a business because each sees a different but significant strategic rationale, the price discovery process produces outcomes that benchmark tables simply cannot predict.
This is why the quality of a sell-side advisory process matters so much. The job of a good M&A advisor is not to find any buyer. It is to identify the specific buyers for whom your business is worth materially more than it is to everyone else — and to run a process that makes them compete.
The Four Most Common Valuation Mistakes Sellers Make
1. Anchoring on the wrong benchmark
Using a number heard from a friend, read in a press release, or extrapolated from a public company comparison. Private mid-market transactions differ fundamentally from public market valuations and from large-cap M&A.
2. Ignoring EBITDA normalization
The EBITDA that matters to a buyer is normalized EBITDA — adjusted for owner compensation above market rate, non-recurring costs, personal expenses run through the business, and one-time items. Many owners present top-line EBITDA without adjustments, then are surprised when buyers apply their own (more conservative) adjustments during due diligence.
Preparing a clean, defensible normalized EBITDA with documented add-backs is one of the highest-ROI activities before entering a sale process.
3. Selling at the wrong time
Valuation is not static. It is a function of current performance, growth trajectory, and market conditions at the moment of sale. Owners who initiate a process when revenue is declining or when a key customer relationship is uncertain — rather than waiting for the inflection point to pass — accept a lower multiple by definition.
The best time to sell is when trailing performance is strong and forward momentum is visible. Not when the owner is exhausted and needs to exit immediately.
4. Not preparing for due diligence
A buyer’s due diligence process will surface every financial irregularity, contractual gap, undocumented process, and ownership structure issue. Owners who have not done pre-sale preparation — clean financial statements, audited where possible, documented processes, resolved legal matters — face either price chips during negotiation or, worse, a deal that falls apart in due diligence.
A Vendor Due Diligence (VDD) process, conducted before going to market, is increasingly common for mid-market transactions precisely because it eliminates surprises and accelerates the buyer’s process.
What to Do With This Information
If you are a business owner considering a sale in the next two to five years, here is the practical sequence.
First, understand your EBITDA baseline. Not the number on your tax return — the normalized EBITDA a sophisticated buyer would calculate after adjusting for owner-specific costs, non-recurring items, and accounting choices. This is your starting point.
Second, identify your sector multiple range. Use the benchmarks in this article as a starting point, but refine them with data from your specific sub-sector. A manufacturing company serving the automotive industry has a different buyer universe and different valuation dynamics than one serving the food industry.
Third, assess your value drivers. Within your sector range, what moves you toward the upper end? Customer concentration, owner dependency, revenue quality, management depth, process documentation, IP — these are the levers. Identify which ones need work and how much time you have to address them.
Fourth, think about who your strategic buyers are. Who in your industry would benefit most from acquiring your business? What would they gain that they cannot easily build or buy elsewhere? The answer shapes who you approach and how you position the business.
Fifth, do not do this alone. A sell-side M&A process is the most consequential financial transaction most business owners will ever undertake. The difference between a well-run competitive process and a bilateral negotiation without leverage is frequently measured in millions.
If you are considering selling your business in the next two to three years, I offer a free 60-minute strategic conversation — no obligation, no pitch. We look at your business, your sector, and your realistic valuation range together.
Key Takeaways
- EBITDA multiples vary 3x to 18x across sectors — industry determines the range, preparation determines where you land within it.
- The multiple is a starting point for negotiation, not its conclusion — strategic synergies regularly produce outcomes 30–50% above sector benchmarks.
- Owner dependency, revenue quality, and EBITDA normalization are the three levers that most consistently move valuations up or down.
- The right buyer for your business is not the highest bidder in a vacuum — it is the buyer for whom your specific business creates the most strategic value.
Łukasz Brzyski is a sell-side M&A transaction advisor based in Kraków, Poland, specializing in mid-market transactions for Polish and CEE businesses. He has advised on transactions across manufacturing, B2B services, IT, and SaaS sectors.