Facility Management

In brief: An owner-managed building services company in the DACH region changes hands at 4.1-6.9x adjusted EBITDA. The market only pays up to 8.1x once the business grows into the mid-cap class, is set up technically or is integrated across regions (DUB KMU-Multiples, Q3/2026). Buyers are PE-backed platforms such as Apleona under Bain Capital (completion 10/2025, Noerr), strategic consolidators such as WISAG and STRABAG PFS, and buy-and-build groups in the lower mid-market. From preparation to closing it takes 8 to 12 months.

Facility management market overview in the DACH region

The market for outsourced facility services in Germany stood at €68.7bn in 2025, up 2.7% on the previous year (Lünendonk study 2026, 23 July 2026). Austria reaches €7.2bn, up 2.9% (Interconnection Consulting, 07/2026), Switzerland CHF 13.9bn (Lünendonk study Facility Service in Switzerland, 2025). Together that is around €90bn awarded to external service providers in the DACH region. The 76 providers analysed for the Lünendonk study grew by 6.2% on average in 2025, and they expect annual growth of between 6.1 and 6.4% until 2030.

Beneath this sits a very fragmented market. The building cleaning trade alone has 34,824 businesses with 658,325 employees and €27.55bn revenue, which makes it Germany's largest trade by employment (BIV industry report 2025). Only part of it is organised: the BIV covers around 85% of market volume, its around 2,500 member companies employ 250 people on average (BIV industry report 2025), and the unorganised rest is considerably smaller. The private security industry looks similar: 4,517 companies share a market that grew from €6.96bn (2015) to €14.02bn (2024), with a forecast of €14.75bn for 2025 and 290,871 employees as of 30 June 2025 (BDSW, 2026). Even in Austria, the most consolidated of the three markets, the ten largest providers together account for only 23.3% of revenue (Interconnection Consulting, 07/2026).

What is growing is single-source contracting. 59% of clients prefer bundled or integrated contracts, 28% stick to individual contracts (PwC Facility Management Monitor 2025). For Germany, PwC expects integrated contracting models to grow by 24% to US$8bn by 2027, against 22% for bundled and 14% for individual contracts. Anyone able to deliver several trades from one source sits in exactly this part of the market. The bottleneck sits right next to it: 78% of German study participants name staff shortages and missing qualifications as their biggest challenge (PwC 2025).

The pressure to sell comes from demographics. By the end of 2029, around 545,000 Mittelstand companies in Germany are seeking a successor, around 109,000 a year, against around 114,000 planned closures a year (KfW Succession Monitoring 2025). In 2025, 57% of Mittelstand owners were 55 or older, three points more than a year earlier; 20 years ago the figure was 20%. How strongly this wave affects the Mittelstand as a whole is shown in the succession statistics for the DACH region (in German), and where private equity fills the succession gap (in German) can be observed particularly well in facility management right now.

For clarity: this page covers the operation of buildings and operator responsibility, meaning infrastructural, technical and commercial facility management. The trade work on the building itself, meaning planning, installation, maintenance and inspection of systems, is covered under Building Technology & Fire Safety. Technical industrial services at plants and production sites are covered under Industrial Services.

Who is buying now

The buyer field became visibly denser in 2025 and 2026. In the European technical services universe, Investec counted 67 transactions in Q1 2026 alone, roughly the average of the four previous quarters, while the share of cross-border deals rose to 40%, against around 33% in the two previous years (Investec Business Advisory, Q1 2026). So buyers are not choosing less, they are choosing more broadly and more precisely.

PE-backed large platforms. Bain Capital acquired Apleona from PAI Partners, and completion of the transaction valued at €4bn was announced on 1 October 2025 (Noerr, 10/2025). With around €3.2bn revenue in Germany and growth of 8.1%, Apleona leads the Lünendonk list 2026 (Lünendonk, 06/2026) and keeps acquiring. In September 2025 its Apleona Wolfferts division added the Smart Energy Group, with around 260 employees at six sites (immobilienmanager.de, 09/2025).

Strategic consolidators. SPIE ranks second on the Lünendonk list 2026 with an estimated €2.85bn and growth of 7.5%, with the acquisitions of PIK and Cyqueo contributing to growth (Haufe, 06/2026). In May 2025 WISAG bought all shares in the family-run Stampfli AG in Subingen, with around 2,500 employees, and the owner handed over operational management (WISAG Newsroom, 20 May 2025). On 2 October 2025 STRABAG PFS signed the acquisition of the Kagerer Group in Pasching and Vienna, more than 120 employees, around €23m annual revenue, explicitly with all jobs retained (STRABAG PFS, 9 October 2025).

Buy-and-build platforms in the lower mid-market. This is where the consolidation that affects a €5m business takes place. The Dr. Hoffmann Facility Services Group, advised by Beyond Capital Partners Fund II, acquired Munich-based ABRAXA Gebäudereinigungs- und Service GmbH in full in October 2025; the group has quadrupled its revenue in four years, is close to €100m annual revenue, has more than 3,500 employees at eight sites and aims to move from the top 20 into the top 10 within 24 months (Beyond Capital Partners, 10/2025). The founder then stayed on in an advisory role during the handover, a common pattern in the sector.

Alongside these sits a fourth group that now pays just as well: technology and automation buyers. On 5 June 2026 Elevion and Techem signed the sale of Techem Solutions GmbH, with 2,278 energy plants and around 539 MW of installed heat capacity (Techem, 5 June 2026). In 2025 Trane Technologies acquired BrainBox AI and took a 49% stake in Kieback & Peter (Investec, 17 March 2026). Then there are family offices and Mittelstand companies from related sectors. They buy without a fund term, hold longer and can offer softer structures, but rarely appear in public and therefore do not show up in any market statistics. What the choice between financial investor and strategic buyer means for price, structure and your own role is set out in the comparison PE investor vs strategic buyer.

EBITDA multiples in the sector

Valuation starts from adjusted EBITDA, not from the statutory accounts result and not from revenue. The basis for the following classification is the DUB KMU-Multiples for the sector real estate services & facility management, as of Q3/2026, with micro-cap at 4.1-5.0x, small-cap at 5.0-6.9x and mid-cap at 6.5-8.1x EBITDA.

Data basis: DUB KMU-Multiples (dub.de/kmu-multiples), Q3/2026, sector real estate services & facility management; subsegment classification and analysis: SourcingClub, with the EBITDA bands smoothed for quarterly swings and therefore not identical to the DUB raw values in every segment (methodology (in German)). Full ranges by size class: EBITDA Multiples DACH.

These DUB bands are the SME reference for owner-managed businesses in the DACH region. Platform transactions sit above them: for Q1 2026, Investec cites a sponsor recapitalisation in European facility management of around €4bn at an estimated 12-13x EBITDA (Investec Business Advisory, Q1 2026). That order of magnitude applies to billion-euro assets, not to a family business. The same survey supports the upper half of the technical band: buyers pay premiums for technology mix and recurring contract quality, while pure staffing service exposure remains marked down. In building automation, companies with a high software share or their own BMS systems achieve higher EBITDA multiples, and the segment grows by 8 to 12% a year (Investec, 17 March 2026). DUB does not list catering and food services as a separate sector, so this subsegment appears here without a figure.

What raises the multiple and what lowers it

Sources for the figures in the table: wage agreement for building cleaning, wage group 1 from 1 January 2026; Investec Business Advisory, Q1 2026. Classification: SourcingClub.

One point is still barely taken in the competitive field. 11% of the facility service providers surveyed use AI-based or automated solutions in building operations, at 30% operational services run on an integrated system landscape, and another third works with standardised digital process chains (Lünendonk study 2026). A business that keeps site data, scheduling and quality records digitally stands out from the field in the data room.

Valuation example: a regional building services company worked through

The following example is fictitious and typical in size for a business in the DACH lower mid-market. Starting point: €12.0m revenue in 2025, around 310 mostly part-time employees, service mix of 70% maintenance cleaning, 20% glass and special cleaning, 10% caretaker and grounds services. One site plus two outside depots, top 3 customers at 41% of revenue, average remaining contract term of 14 months.

Step 1, adjust EBITDA. Reported EBITDA €780k, which is 6.5% of revenue. Plus €120k, because the owner draws €300k and an employed managing director at market rates costs €180k. Plus €36k, because the owner's building is charged at €96k instead of the market rate of €60k. Plus €45k one-off legal and advisory costs from a closed legacy case. Minus €80k for two positions a buyer has to fill and which the owner covers today, commercial management and a second site manager. Adjusted EBITDA: €901k, which is a 7.5% margin.

Step 2, determine the multiple. Small-cap band of 5.0-6.9x according to DUB Q3/2026. Placed in the lower third, because the top 3 customers at 41% are above the 30% threshold, the remaining contract term of 14 months is short and there is no technical division. Applied: 5.4x.

Step 3, enterprise value. €901k times 5.4 gives €4,865k, rounded €4.87m enterprise value.

Step 4, bridge to equity value. Minus bank loans and vehicle leasing of €1,150k, plus cash of €420k, gives €730k net financial debt. Minus €150k working capital shortfall against the 12-month normal level, as receivables are outstanding for 68 instead of 55 days. Minus €180k holiday and overtime provisions, which the buyer treats as debt-like. Equity value for 100% of the shares: €3,805k, rounded €3.8m.

That equals 0.32x annual revenue. Succession planners in the German Mittelstand aim on average for a purchase price of 1.2 times their annual revenue, on average €499,000, median €375,000 (KfW Succession Monitoring 2025). The gap between expectation and multiple is the normal case in facility management, because a 7% margin produces little EBITDA per euro of revenue. It is also the most common reason why talks break off before they have really begun.

Step 5, possible structure of an add-on. 75% at closing, which is €2.85m. 10% vendor loan over five years, €0.38m. 15% earn-out over two years, linked to adjusted EBITDA, €0.57m. Warranties covered by W&I insurance instead of a cash retention, a two-year transition phase for the owner with fixed pay.

Sensitivity. Half a multiple turn is €450k of enterprise value. If you reduce top 3 concentration below 30% before the process and extend the average remaining contract term to more than 24 months, a multiple of 6.2x is realistic: €5.59m enterprise value, €4.53m equity value. That is 19% more without one additional euro of revenue, achieved in the 12 to 24 months before the process, not in the process.

The sale process in the sector

Expect 8 to 12 months from the first step to closing: 2 to 4 months of preparation and financial preparation, 2 to 3 months of approach and negotiation up to the letter of intent, 3 to 4 months of due diligence and contract negotiation. These ranges are experience values from the DACH lower mid-market, not surveyed data. If you only start when the pension notice arrives, you negotiate against your own clock.

Customer contracts first. Change-of-control clauses are the most common single risk point in facility management. They give the client a special right of termination or consent when the shareholder changes, so the contract analysis must cover the top customers in full and the approach to key customers must be scheduled between signing and closing. Public clients are a special case: changes of shareholder and restructurings must be notified and often supported with new proof of suitability, so a high share of public contracts lengthens the process and belongs on the table early.

Transfer of staff. § 613a BGB works in both directions. In a share deal only the shareholder changes, in an asset deal the employment relationships transfer by law, with a one-year ban on worsening terms and an information and objection procedure that becomes a workstream of its own with several hundred employees at different language levels. A particularity of the sector: a transfer of business can also arise without a company purchase. If the successor provider of a lost site takes over a part of the deployed workforce that is significant in number and expertise, this can amount to a succession of contract, because the value of the economic unit lies in its staff and not in machinery.

Compliance in personnel matters. Anyone using subcontractors is liable like a guarantor for their minimum wage payments under the Posted Workers Act (AEntG). Buyers therefore review subcontractor agreements, evidence processes and the audit history of the Financial Control of Undeclared Work. On top of that come mini-job ratios, working time records under § 17 MiLoG and the supplements of the generally binding framework collective agreement. Back-payment risks are as a rule deducted from the purchase price as a debt-like item, so a cleanly documented subcontractor process is real money in facility management.

What you clean up beforehand. Set owner salary and property rent at market levels, because a non-market rent distorts EBITDA and is corrected in the adjustment anyway. In a GmbH & Co. KG, the general partner GmbH explicitly belongs in the purchase agreement, and a pure holding or administration company is never the operating target. The target is the entity that holds customer contracts and employment relationships.

Typical deal structures

The share deal is the standard case. It keeps customer contracts, permits and employment relationships with the same legal entity and avoids the information procedure under § 613a BGB, and for tax purposes it is usually also the better route for you, especially via a holding structure, which however has to be in place years before the sale. An asset deal occurs when only individual sites, locations or one division change owner, or when the buyer does not want to take on legacy risks from social security and taxes.

On the purchase price, typically 60 to 85% of the equity value is paid at closing in the lower mid-market. The rest is split between an earn-out of 10 to 25% over two to three years, a vendor loan of 10 to 20% with a term of three to seven years and often one to two repayment-free years, and, in platform deals, a rollover of 5 to 20%. If someone offers you 100% at closing, it is worth asking what you give in return; usually it is a lower total price.

The rollover is the real lever if you want to keep working for a few more years. Through the platform's second exit, this stake can exceed the initial proceeds. In an add-on, the multiple applies to the stand-alone EBITDA of your business, and synergies and the later platform multiple stay with the buyer. If you want a share of that, you negotiate a rollover, not a higher purchase price.

For pricing itself, the Mittelstand has settled on the locked box with a fixed reference date, interest mechanism and leakage clause, W&I insurance from a transaction volume of about €5 to 10m with a premium of around 1.0 to 1.5% of the insured amount, a non-compete and non-solicitation covenant over two to three years, and a handover phase of 6 to 24 months with a clear role and pay. Deducted from enterprise value are bank loans, vehicle leasing, shareholder loans and debt-like items such as holiday, overtime and litigation provisions.

The ranges given are customary structures in the DACH lower mid-market; classification: SourcingClub.

What PE investors calculate in the sector

The consolidation logic in facility management is intact, but it works differently from high-margin sectors.

Fragmentation meets succession pressure. 34,824 businesses in the building cleaning trade alone (BIV 2025) and around 109,000 intended successions a year in the German Mittelstand (KfW 2025) produce an acquisition list that will last for years.

Regional density beats size. Profitability rises with the density of sites within driving radius, because travel times fall and crew utilisation rises. An add-on in the same metropolitan area has a stronger effect on the margin than one in the neighbouring country. The mechanics behind this are set out in detail in the article on buy-and-build strategy in the DACH region (in German).

Multiple spread, but capped. According to DUB Q3/2026 there are just under three turns between micro-cap and mid-cap, and in the billion-euro segment the market asks 12-13x (Investec, Q1 2026). The arbitrage comes from integration, not from adding up revenues.

On top of this comes demand that does not depend on the economic cycle but on the statute book. § 71a GEG requires operators of non-residential buildings with systems above 290 kW to install building automation, and from 2029/2030 the threshold falls to 70 kW under the EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (Directive (EU) 2024/1275). Since 2025 the EnEfG has required companies with annual consumption of 7.5 GWh or more to run an energy or environmental management system (§ 8 EnEfG).

The headwind is in the same figures. A 6.9% EBITDA margin, 4.8% growth and 2.2x net debt/EBITDA make the listed FM peer set the laggard in the Technical Services Index, which trades at 12.5x EV/EBITDA overall (Investec, Q1 2026). 78% of German study participants name staff shortages and missing qualifications as their biggest challenge (PwC 2025). Investing here means buying a personnel organisation, not assets. How I work and what access I offer on the buyer side is set out under For Investors, the current market situation in the DACH M&A trend picture for H2 2026 (in German).

From my sourcing work

In facility management I see three things as decisive for price, and none of them is in the profit and loss account. First, whether the business can calculate per site and not only in total. Second, whether the customer contracts allow wage increases to be passed on. Third, whether anyone other than the owner holds the customer relationships. Whether an owner enters a conversation at all, on the other hand, usually depends on a quite different question: what happens to the people. In a sector whose value lies in its staff and not in machinery, that is not sentimentality but concern for the substance. In a market like this, deal origination above all means clarifying fit discreetly before a business is officially on the market.

If you are thinking about handing over your business, whether in two years or in five, an early look at value and the buyer landscape is the cheapest part of the whole process. A conversation commits you to nothing, and perhaps now is exactly the right time to assess where your business stands, isn't it?