Free tool
Business valuation calculator
What a one percent move on each profit driver adds to what your business is worth.
Most valuation calculators stop at a single number for the whole business. This one answers the more useful question: which operating changes move that number, and by how much. A small EBITDA improvement is worth the multiple, every time.
This shows the uplift in enterprise value at your chosen multiple, not a total valuation of your business.
Your numbers
Now improve EBITDA by a little
That adds £300k to what the business is worth, at 6x.
This is the point most operators miss. A permanent improvement is valued at the multiple, not at face value, so a cost line you remove for good is worth 6 times what it saved you this year.
See the full valuation bridge
The full model runs all seven EBITDA drivers and shows what each contributes to enterprise value separately, so you can see which operating change is worth most to a buyer rather than just to this year's profit.
How a business is valued on EBITDA
Most private UK company valuations start the same way: take maintainable EBITDA, multiply by a sector multiple, adjust for net debt and any surplus assets. The result is enterprise value, and after the debt adjustment, equity value.
The multiple is where sector, size, growth, customer concentration and how well the business runs without its owner all get priced in. Two firms with identical EBITDA can carry very different multiples, and that gap is usually operational rather than financial.
Why one percent matters more than it looks
At a 6x multiple, an extra £50,000 of EBITDA is £300,000 of enterprise value. That is the whole argument for working the small levers: they are valued at the multiple, not at face value. A cost line you remove permanently is worth six times what it saved you this year.
EBITDA multiples by industry, UK
As a rough guide for UK private companies: professional and business services commonly trade around 4x to 8x, recruitment around 3x to 6x, software and recurring-revenue businesses considerably higher, and asset-heavy or project-based businesses lower. Ranges move with the cycle and with buyer appetite, so treat any published table as a starting point for a conversation rather than a quote.
The calculator lets you set your own multiple for exactly this reason. If you are not sure what yours is, use the low end. The argument works better when the assumption is conservative.
This is general information about how valuations are commonly constructed. It is not a valuation, and it is not investment, financial or tax advice. Talk to a corporate finance adviser before acting on any of it.
Where this comes from
This is the valuation view of the Power of 1% model, the spine of the ROI for AI Bootcamp. Andy Bate has run 50+ M&A transactions and built the model to show operators where enterprise value is actually created.