How much is a concrete and paving business worth?

Short answer: this is one of the few trades here with a realized multiple — closed concrete businesses on BizBuySell averaged 2.54x SDE over the trailing five years. But the multiple is only half the story in paving: the fleet is the other half, and it gets appraised, not multiplied. Details on the Concrete & Paving page, and your own math in the valuation calculator.

The number

From BizBuySell's industry valuation multiples (closed sales, trailing five years through Q2 2026): Concrete Businesses — 2.54x SDE ("cash flow"), 0.61x revenue, median sale price $780,000. That is a realized number from actual deals, and it lines up with the size ladder: Size moves the multiple more than almost anything. The IBBA Market Pulse survey (Q2 2026) puts realized pricing at 2.0x SDE for deals under $500K, 2.8x SDE at $500K-$1M, 3.1x SDE at $1M-$2M, 4.8x EBITDA at $2-5M, and 5.8x EBITDA at $5-50M. Same trade, same margins — a bigger, less owner-dependent business simply gets a different multiple.

For an anchor, public companies in Engineering/Construction trade at 17.18x EBITDA — Damodaran Online, January 2026. The public paving platforms in this bucket own asphalt plants and quarries; you almost certainly do not, which is exactly why the proxy is an anchor, not a price. That is not your price. It is the opportunity-cost anchor a buyer measures your shop against: money parked in large, liquid companies earns that multiple, so a small, illiquid one has to be cheaper per dollar of earnings.

Worked example — shown math, assumptions labeled:

• Revenue: $1,500,000
• SDE margin: 20% — an assumption; fuel, hot-mix prices, and one rained-out month move this fast
• SDE: $1,500,000 x 20% = $300,000
• Multiple: 2.54x SDE — BizBuySell realized, concrete businesses, trailing five years
• Indicated value: $300,000 x 2.54 = $762,000 for the business — with the fleet question answered separately, below

How buyers actually value a concrete and paving business

Buyers split your company into two piles on day one. Pile one: earnings, priced on the multiple above. Pile two: iron — pavers, rollers, milling machines, screeds, dump trucks, trailers — appraised piece by piece on age, hours, and condition, because in this trade the fleet is often worth as much as the goodwill and a buyer will not pay a multiple for a machine with a market price. Then the real diligence starts. The WIP schedule: every open job with contract price, cost to date, billed to date, and cost to complete. Overbilled jobs and retainage you already spent are not earnings, and a WIP that does not tie to the bank account reprices the deal on the spot. Backlog, honestly aged: signed municipal and commercial work counts; a developer's verbal promise does not. Bonding: if your surety line is underwritten on you personally, the buyer has to re-earn it, and deals shrink to fit the bonding a buyer can actually get. Material supply: plant access, aggregate pricing, and hot-mix haul distance decide whether your margins survive a fuel spike. Public work versus private work changes the receivables clock too — buyers price 90-day government paper differently from a GC who pays when paid.

What raises the price — and what kills it

Raises it:

• Recurring lot work: sealcoating, striping, patching, and concrete repair contracts for property managers — the closest thing paving has to a subscription
• A WIP schedule that ties to the dollar, updated monthly, with retainage tracked job by job
• A fleet with maintenance records and no capex cliff — no three machines dying the same winter
• Municipal prequalification and a bonding relationship the buyer has already met
• An estimator or PM who prices work you never see

Kills it:

• Deferred maintenance dressed as margin — your SDE is high because the paver is dying
• One GC or one municipality carrying the season
• Retainage spent as operating cash
• Asphalt and fuel exposure with no escalation clauses in signed work
• Owner is the estimator, the foreman, and the bonding indemnifier

Move your number

Grow the maintenance pile. Parking-lot repair, sealcoating routes, and concrete maintenance agreements smooth the season and are priced kinder than one-off paving; getting those renewals and inspection reminders out on time is ClaroPro team work. Collect faster on slow paper. Progress billing done right, card or ACH options for private work, and deposit structures that cover material — the Finix payments team attacks the cost side of how a paving company gets paid. Put the WIP and fleet in a real system. Job costing, equipment hours, and backlog in one place is what makes your earnings believable to a buyer and a lender; a Nova engineering team builds it when the whiteboard stops working. Re-run your number in the calculator, prefilled for concrete and paving.

This page is an educational framework with shown math — not an appraisal. A real price is set by a real buyer on a specific day, after they walk your yard and read your WIP. The caveats are written for the owner: they keep you from overpaying for a fleet priced on hope, from underselling a backlog that is genuinely signed and bonded, and from signing a deal where the retainage math was never shown to you. Never invent, show the math, stay on the owner's side.